Overwhelm and how to deal with it

Wednesday the 27th of January 2016

My first day in Queenstown will be a separate post - a lot happened - but I felt I wanted to talk about one of the biggest emotional aspects of the day, which is that of emotional overwhelm. It's easy to cope with that which we are used to but that generally doesn't lead to growth. Growth comes as a result of experiencing new things. It's when we get stretched into something new which is why I have been saying: 

'I'm not on this trip to find myself but to create myself.' 

Today has definitely stretched me and in a multitude of emotional directions and when that happens it's easy, in my opinion, to get overwhelmed. 

When I saw Queenstown a number of things happened. My jaw dropped, my lungs took in the sharpest intake of breath I can ever remember and I blinked many many times. I am travelling solo so I had no one to speak to in that moment but even if I had, I wouldn't have been able to speak, so dumbstruck was I by this place. I feel like I could turn round to discover dragons flying by and unicorns nibbling at the grass. I drove my awesome hire car along to the place I was staying and had to pull over.

I burst into tears. 

Emotional overwhelm can come about for many reasons, good or bad. It occurs when our experiences exceed our capacity to cope with them. We learn to deal with life through experience and grow generally gradually but with little bursts . 

Today as I experience a place more beautiful than I had ever imagined and where every direction I look is like a 3D picture postcard, the jaw dropping beauty is overwhelming and it is in this moment that I feel painfully alone. I am surrounded by people and I make friends fairly easily so I do not feel in any way isolated but right at this moment, right as I am overwhelmed by the beauty and slightly shaking from it, my hand longs to slip into anothers, to share the experience, share the beauty, share the pain of the growth I am experiencing as that my world expands and my emotions are stretched. 

Tears trickle down my face and I don't wipe them away; they are here for a reason and I have learnt that to grow you have to be stretched and to be stretched you have to feel and to feel you have to not resist the feelings when they come. So I just sit, in my lovely car, looking out over this incredible view and I feel.