Elevate in Flowstate

I started to learn circus trapeze, whilst I was going through, what I called ‘hell’.

I grasped those ropes as if they were a lifeline, dragging me out of a dark hole until I felt safe, the safest I had felt in forever. While I was ‘up there’, I wasn’t thinking about the outside world. The only thing that I felt was actual happiness. I was in this world of just the trapeze and myself. I had found a place where the intrusive thoughts stopped, and those horrible dark emotions vanished into thin air.

Intrusive thoughts stopped

In the flow state you are:

• In the here and now (present moment)
• Releasing dopamine (happy chemicals)
• Focused on the task… forgetting your problems

I was so good at pretending

I was 13 when it happened, when I was raped. I kept it a secret for a long while. I was so good at pretending everything was OK, it was almost like it had never happened at all. I was randomly reading a magazine; it was about someone else it had happened to. It wasn’t so much the things they said, more how it had felt. It reminded me, I crashed to the ground, the pages of Elle falling around me.

The next year was difficult. It was like I was on a boat just drifting, further and further away. Reality was no longer black and white, it was different shades of grey. I found solace in talking with the counsellor and it really helped but I continued to grapple with my emotions.

It was easy to convince my parents to let me try trapeze. They had been trying to get me out of the house for a while.

Soon, I was learning full tricks and routines. Something happened to me. I felt different; time stood still. I was me again, the me l had been before. Psychologists call it the ‘Flow state’. I call it ‘magic’.

Just one hour a week. I needed more, so I started to write. Just about my day to begin with, then poetry. I would write and write until I completely lost track of everything, in a good way, in a brilliant way. Gradually the way I felt when in flow, crept into my regular life. It was like the relief of being in that state for a few hours, took enough of the strain away for me to recover.

Look how far I've come

I am writing this blog post, at the age of 17. I still have my counsellor and I do still have moments. Then I remember where I have been and see how far I’ve come.

By Georgina