Winter Solstice Reflection

Winter Solstice’s longest night for an introspective over-thinker like me brings with it a deep review of the year. I had the realization that even though I want to be over the trauma of the hurricanes, I’m still living it, day in and day out. A year ago, I had the hope that we would be in our new home in 2025. Overly optimistic, or just a downright fantasy, I choose patience as my Word of the Year, thinking I just needed patience for that hope to come to fruition. I continued all year trying to live life (focus on emotional recovery) and to be patient with the house recovery process, while we had delay after delay. And at the end of the year, it’s hard to acknowledge that I am still stuck in negative thought patterns, still not feeling mentally recovered.

At one point I considered shifting my 2025 Word of the Year from Patience (link to my blog post on WOTY here) to Endurance. Patience felt soft and kind; it is the ability to calmly wait, to tolerate delays or a trying situation. Endurance felt grittier. It is the ability to withstand hardship, stress, and pressure over time; it’s about persevering through difficult circumstances. I was not/am not calmly tolerating. I continue to feeling like everything is a body blow, an arrow through my heart, and I need armor to withstand the onslaught.

Security/safety has always been a big thing for me – feeling like I belong and valued says I’m in a safe place. I know that my internalized nervous system survival strategy was fawning. Fawning is subtle, often invisible adaptation where safety is sought not through flight or fight but through appeasement. I tried to become who others wanted me to be – the good girl, the responsible one, the peacekeeper, the doer. I tended to say what I thought others wanted to hear, do what I thought others wanted me to do, and therefore, I stayed safe. I will not be abandoned (be unsafe/insecure) if I’m the reliable one, the competent one, the one who gets things done, the good girl.

Losing our home, our belongings, and our community has significantly rattled my security/safety foundation. I am doing “all the things” to help my emotional healing from the hurricane trauma and yes, I have made progress, but I still feel rattled on the inside. On the outside, I look capable, strong, resilient and dealing with things. On the inside, that traumatized insecure inner voice continues to whisper that I’m not safe and I’m not doing enough to be safe. I’m not good enough. I’m failing, I’m doing things wrong. I don’t belong; I’m an outsider. And my nervous system is starting to use fight as a response (over-reaction, negative fighting), which simply leaves me feeling rejected and more insecure.

I read a quote recently that really sums up my current mind set. “If we’re looking for validation that we don’t belong, that’s exactly what we’ll find.” I can expand on the quote – If we’re looking for validation that we are not good enough, that’s exactly what we’ll find. When you feel like you don’t measure up, everything you hear confirms that bias. My brain wiring interprets things with this bias. I “hear” the expectations, the should-have, and my inner voice says, “You didn’t do that, you failed.”  I hear, “You did it wrong, because you didn’t do it like they would have done it”. The inner voice tells me, “You’re not like them, you don’t really belong here.” I feel rejected. I feel not good enough. I feel worthless.

And then I pull myself up. I try and stop that interpretation and say, “That wasn’t the intent of what they said/did. It’s not true.” Or I break away from the fawning, the silent acceptance, and strike out (overreact to a trigger!) – I say no, I push back. I hurt others when I try and explain why I’m hurt. They get mad at me – I’m being unreasonable. I’m not seeing things clearly. I’m too sensitive… everyone has issues, get over it already. Either way, I’m left simply mentally exhausted. I just want to crawl into bed and not engage in anything.

And so, on this longest night of darkness, I am quite melancholy. I am recognizing that my thoughts continue to spiral in the aftermath of trauma – stuck in negative thought patterns, small setbacks feeling like big catastrophes, healthy habits hard to keep up. And I continue to overreact to perceived slights (hearing I’m not good enough, again and again) and then I over-analyze everything I said/did (I should have said/done it different, should I apologize, did I do irreparable damage).

I said that in the new year, I wanted to do things because I enjoyed them (I made a list of fun possibilities!). I wanted to stop saying yes to appease others, to eat more veggies, and drink more water. (Going to try.)  I need to add in the new year to shift my mindset and not look for the validation of not belonging or the validation of not being good enough I need to focus on breathing through the you-are-not-good-enough triggers (and consider how to better avoid the people who trigger me).

I will look forward, take things one day at a time, and keep doing “all the things” to help my emotional healing. And I again have hope that the new house will be done and we’ll be in by early summer. (A more realistic hope, less overly optimistic — we have a foundation poured!)

I share these thoughts so that someone who reads them might know that they are not alone if they have similar feelings/thoughts. I find comfort in knowing I am not alone in the struggle to feel like I am good enough and that I belong.

Are you overly introspective on the Winter Solstice? Does the long dark night bring up melancholy thoughts for you?

Picture Credit: Florida winter – flowers in bloom! (Naples Botanical Garden)

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