operating like everything meaningful requires force

a dream study

My dreams have been comically straightforward lately. There’s no mystery — just my brain serving up exactly what I’ve been sitting with all day, barely bothering to disguise it. Honestly, I appreciate it.

Last night I was in a crystal shop, choosing three crystals to wear on a necklace. One for my root, one for my sacral, one for my solar plexus. Safety. Connection. Power. The parts of me that determine whether I can actually be here, want things, and move toward them. I considered how expensive the crystals were going to be and decided I would just put them on the credit card. I was willing to pay whatever it cost to have access to that aliveness.

Then a musician I follow on Instagram told me I didn't have to pay for them. She lives exactly what I'm working toward — making money from music, DJing for the joy of it, teaching kids classes in the park. Of course she was the one to say it. Like that version of me already knows I don't have to pay with suffering to get there.

She looked at me with a huge, sincere smile and told me I had won the crystals. I couldn’t believe it. They looked activated, bright, alive. I was ready to put them on my body.

I held them in my hand and they turned gray.

This is what I’ve been dealing with in real life. I keep trying so hard to conquer safety, my desires, my sense of power. And the moment something opens — a little hope, a literal energy, a sense of possibility — it gets crushed by all my expectations. Like it can’t last. Like I won’t be able to keep it. Like it’s not actually available to me. This pattern is absolutely devastating.

The way I've been living, as a body stuck in functional freeze — a nervous system state where you're neither fully online nor fully shut down, just stuck — assumes that everything comes at a cost. If I want to create, I have to push. If I want money, I have to override myself. If I want a life that feels like mine, I have to force it into existence. It doesn’t even feel like a belief. It feels like reality.

And right now, with money being tight, it gets activated constantly. I’ll think about something I need or want, and there’s an immediate reaction in my body. Sharper than stress. It’s the rage I’m always covering up, suddenly activated — and then it turns on me. Like my invisible gigantic bully is pounding on me again, the one no one can see, which means no one believes I need any help. It’s collapse heightened by urgency and I’m screaming internally — I NEED TO FIX THIS. I NEED TO FIGURE IT OUT. I NEED TO DO SOMETHING NOW.

But that energy doesn’t actually move anything. It makes me do things in a panic — force myself to create, to produce, in the hopes of gaining connection or making money — and then I’m so wrecked by all the force I used that I forget I have a heart center I could access. And then I spend way more time than feels helpful in fetal position, frozen.

In the dream, I was fully prepared to pay. Willing to do anything in exchange for access to safety, connection, power. But what the dream showed me is something I don’t know how to do yet. That I might not have to pay to access myself. That the parts of me I’m trying so hard to activate might already be there.

The real edge isn’t accessing them. It’s holding them.

I can feel desire but it turns into obligation. I can feel energy but it turns into pressure. I can feel possibility, but it becomes something I have to immediately act on or I’ll lose it. And then it disappears anyway.

The dream showed me the pattern clearly — that I’m still operating like everything meaningful requires force. That there’s another way available, one that doesn’t rely on pressure, but I don’t trust it yet. Of course I don’t. I’ve been here for almost thirty years — long enough to work myself into a physical illness that had me begging to die. I’m still slowly coming out of that. That thirty years makes me sad. But I know that seeing it more clearly is going to help me.

The work is to notice the moment something alive in me turns gray. And instead of immediately trying to fix it or push past it — pause. Check in with my body. Look for proof that I’m safe where I am. Remember that I can choose, with my breath, to drop back into connection. And make whatever decision I would actually prefer to make. Not label the situation a problem. Not plan an attack that will leave me exhausted.

I’ve felt flickers of it a few times recently. A moment where I feel grounded, slightly taller than usual. Where I can actually see my options laid out in front of me — the force, and the easy way. Just being able to see both is new. That’s the thread I’m following.

I want to figure this out fast. I’m bitter that I’ve spent my whole life living this way — I have never not been exhausted. But I know my job is to slow down and do this the easy way. It’s crazy how unnatural that feels. Could it be possible that someday I’ll hardly have to try?

If any of this resonates — if you’ve felt that same thing where something alive in you just goes gray — I really want to hear about it. And if you’ve found something that helps, a practice, a reframe, a moment that shifted things, please share it. I’m genuinely trying to figure this out and I don’t want to do it alone. Drop it in the comments.