Latest / Thinking Out Loud | Kimberly / How Do We Live Outside of Survival Mode? | Thinking Out Loud
Transcript
- Kimberly: How do we live outside of survival mode? What if the problem isn't that you're lazy, unmotivated, or broken? What if it's your nervous system overloaded, overworked, screaming into the void, trying to tell you this isn't okay? it needs rest and not just sleep. Sometimes it needs rest from people, from places, expectations, patterns that slowly drain us while convincing us this is fine. Change can feel impossible. Sometimes changing feels scarier than staying in what hurts us because at least the pain is familiar. It reminds me a little of weight loss. We're taught how to lose weight, how to grind, how to push, how to survive the process. What happens when nobody teaches you how to maintain it? How to maintain your weight? How do you live afterwards? How do you exist without swinging between the extremes? If the skill is never learned, does life become a never-ending cycle of highs and lows, of weight gains and weight loss? Sometimes we get so good at surviving, we accidentally sabotage peace because survival feels more familiar than safety. We overcommit, we create problems. That need fixing. We stay busy so we never have to sit still. We pick apart our progress. We push ourselves past exhaustion. We make messes just to have something we know how to clean up. We mistake stress for purpose. We confuse chaos with being alive Maybe we were never taught what it means to feel safe enough to thrive. Welcome back to Thinking Out Loud. Hi, it's me Kimberly. Before we begin, a quick note, this podcast is for reflection and conversation, not professional advice. Take what resonates and leave the rest. Here we slow down and explore life's gray areas, especially in relationships and behavior patterns we can observe and reflect on. I'm not here to tell you what to think. I'm here to offer framework, be a sounding board, help you understand your relationships, strengthen your thinking, and hold space for complexity. Let's think out loud. I think we've become too judgmental of survival mode. I've seen people pity others only to end up in similar places later on. Sometimes it feels like projection and I noticed the hypocrisy everywhere growing up. Me feeling sorry for other people, people feeling sorry for me, apologizing for me, warning people I was a lot, while also telling them to be nice to me. And honestly that hurt a lot because many of the same people who viewed me that way were struggling too. They were overwhelmed, hurt, lost. Maybe they were just better at hiding it. But because I was honest about it, because I couldn't mask anymore, I became this non-consenting charity case. Meanwhile, I was simply trying to heal and make sense of my world. Trying to figure out what thriving even meant. In a lot of my social circles growing up, I felt like nobody wanted to have that conversation. Maybe it was easier to hide behind, at least I'm not as bad as Kimberly, and honestly, I still find that hurtful. But over time, I've started focusing less on proving myself and more on healing myself and becoming who I want to be. I want to become so grounded in who I am that other people's perceptions stop defining me. While still holding compassion for them because I don't want to forget the past versions of myself. I don't want to be ashamed of her anymore. She did the best she could with what she knew. And she got us here. She got us places that I never knew I was capable of going. And instead, I want to create space for people who genuinely want better for themselves. People asking, How do I thrive? Because honestly, it feels like so many people are either manically productive or completely crashing out from hyper independence and suppression. This constant yo yo one of the hidden costs I had to learn after years of surviving, after years of abuse, was what happens when you finally get out. At first freedom feels exciting. I thought I finally have time to do all the things I wanted. And then my body stopped me in the tracks and said, How about no? my mental strength felt fragile. My energy disappeared. My ability to function constantly started collapsing. it reminds me about how people talk about retirement. Is it really that people retire and then just die? Or is it that after years of nonstop productivity, chronic stress, emotional suppression, and pushing through exhaustion, the body eventually says, I'm done because stress does stop stamina in some ways. So does constantly holding your breath. You can adapt to almost anything temporarily, but holding your breath too long, eventually you pass out. And I think survival mode can work the same way. In a weird way, my body started falling apart once I finally took healing seriously. I went from hiking constantly, honestly probably overdoing it, to barely being able to get out of bed on the weekends because work drained every ounce of strength I had left. that's how little stamina remained underneath all that survival. I had to admit something uncomfortable. I had been abusing my own body just to keep functioning. Even while I was healing, even while I was learning lessons, I thought I had to deserve rest when I was doing stuff all the time. Whether it was mentally or physically, at the time I was letting go of people who genuinely did not have my best interest at heart. I started eliminating my emotional exposures because sometimes relationships are 80-20. Most of the time things are okay, but when things get bad. it becomes emotionally unsafe. Those time become so damaging makes you feel like there's no stability in the relationship. Because how do you love someone and acknowledge they are unsafe for your nervous system, especially when they're good people? People can have good intentions and still cause real harm. Impact and intentions are not the same thing. we often see people hide behind phrases like, they're a good person. They didn't mean it. They were just having a bad day. And sometimes I realized I had fallen into that mindset too, because sometimes it's easier to minimize harm than face the terrifying idea. That good people are still capable of hurting others. I remember one time I was having a panic attack, terrified of hurting people's feelings because I needed to be seen as good. my bestie asked me something I never really got asked before. Kimberly, do you even wanna be a good person? And without thinking, I said, no, not because I want to be cruel, because In that moment I realized I had been trying so hard to appear kind, appear a good girl, that I was portraying myself constantly. being a good person is so subjective. I was smiling politely at people who kept throwing metaphoric wine on my dress, like we were in some dramatic telenovela. I kept telling myself, be nice, include everyone, don't single people out, Kimberly. Even when I genuinely did not want certain people in my personal space anymore. that was hard to admit because I started realizing how often People force relationships out of obligation. Family groups, friend groups, committees, clubs, people inviting each other while secretly disliking each other, resenting each other. gossiping afterwards, like do we really not have anything better to do than talk crap about people after we went to something? Performing closeness instead of actually having it really sticks with me. And somehow if you stop participating in the performance, you become the bad person. not every relationship needs to become deeply personal to have value. I can play DD with someone and genuinely enjoy that connection. I can go to book club and genuinely enjoy the people in book club. Well, not having them involved in my daily emotional life and that doesn't make the relationships fake. It just means we have our own things. I think that's healthier than forcing intimacy where it doesn't naturally exist because some of the best connections in life happen unexpectedly. Sometimes the people you least expect become deeply important to you. Those connections can't grow naturally if we're constantly forcing relationships out of guilt, obligation, or fear. That realization changed how I approach healing entirely Because I realized thriving isn't something you suddenly unlock one day. It's a skill, a muscle. And for some of us, it's a development stage we never fully got to experience safely Healing started feeling less like fixing myself and more like learning how to walk for the first time. For babies, learning to hold their head, then roll over, sit up, then crawl, and eventually they stand They keep falling until one day they start walking. For me, part of that process was learning how to be transparent. not necessarily vulnerable, at least not yet. It started about being honest with myself. One thing I began doing was writing thank you letters, even to the people who hurt me. Now, did I send them? Absolutely not. Because they weren't for them, they were for me. And I needed help ending a cycle. I needed help because in a way I was addicted to drama and trauma, Sometimes I woke up, thank you for showing me who I don't want to become. Sometimes I realized, wow, I think you were trying to care about me. I just couldn't see your compassion through all the noise of pity and cruelty from others. Sometimes I was angry or crying or numb, but it was a start. It was me working my neck muscles, then came rolling over. Putting myself out there, writing letters to people I cared about, only two people wrote back, and that hurt at first, but eventually I realized I don't always need to take it personal when I'm not chosen. Sometimes people simply don't have the capacity, and that's okay. Then came sitting up, learning I could still be thoughtful because I wanted to be, not because I needed validation back. Then came crawling, and wow, crawling was hard. Learning to trust, learning boundaries, learning how to recharge socially, learning how to repair hurt, maybe most importantly was learning how to receive from others. Because I realized when you only give and never allow others to give back, that imbalance can be just as unhealthy. How? Because you're robbing people opportunities of feeling connected with you too. And you're creating a power and hierarchy dynamic. People who have little can still be helpful. People who are struggling still want to be needed. now I think I'm somewhere between standing and trying to take my first steps. I still fall sometimes, I still get scared. Now I have people around me reminding me to keep going, people cheering me on, people reminding me to take my baby steps, people reminding me how far I've come. I think I'm finally starting to walk. And it's a great feeling. back to the question. How do we live outside of survival mode? Maybe it doesn't happen all at once. maybe it starts with the smallest moments where you let yourself believe I'm not in danger anymore, even if my body hasn't caught up yet. Maybe living outside of survival mode isn't about becoming fearless. Maybe it's about slowly teaching your body, your mind, and your relationship that life is no longer an emergency. I think a lot of us were taught how to survive chaos, but never taught how to exist peacefully afterwards. How to rest without guilt, how to connect without performing, how to receive love without feeling weak, how to have boundaries without feeling cruel and maybe thriving starts there, not in perfection, not in productivity, not in proving our self worth, finally feeling safe enough And to stop treating ourselves like emergencies. I'm still wobbling, and I'm still taking baby steps. I think I'm finally starting to understand something important. Survival mode may have kept me alive, but I have a life that feels safe enough to actually live in it too. If today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'm still figuring this out. I'm a little awkward, but I really do want to hear and have conversations with you in the comments below. When did you realize your body was still in survival mode? Even when the crisis had already passed? Or maybe a better question is When was the first time you felt even a little bit safe to rest, to receive or to stop performing? you're welcome to share your stories in the comments, a message, or just by taking a quiet moment to notice your own answers. And if you're still in survival mode right now, that's okay too. Healing isn't about forcing yourself to thrive faster. It's about offering yourself a little bit more safety, a little bit more honesty, and a little bit more gentleness than you had before. Thank you for slowing down and thinking out loud with me. Until next time, take care of yourself and make a little bit more room for softness alongside survival. I'll see you in the next episode.