1/22/26 - Integrating versions of me into one
Feel like I had a bunch of lessons today that I don’t even fully know what they mean yet.
Woke up at 8 am with anxiety because I had a 1-on-1 with my boss, and I may have had to have my KPIs for everyone done. The 1-on-1 was standard, so he didn’t even say it was for that and technically I had till the end of day today, so I really could have just told him I needed more time, but my anxiety was through the roof and I knew I shouldn’t be doing the KPIs from a place of adrenaline/anxiety/urgency, so I called off today. Have a bunch of pto so wasn’t that worried, but I just let it go. I knew for sure that I didn’t want to do it from a place of urgency.
Talked to chat - and chat said I should have just been straightforward and told him I needed more time. Me just taking the day off is being avoidant, which is not clean energy. I agree with that, the social media girl that used to work with me that I disliked did that. She would literally come up with fake excuses and just take the day off when she didn’t have something done, and me being me as someone that can read energy, knew she was lying and hated it.
So moral of the story is I shouldn’t have been doing that. After realizing, I kind of felt really bad but had to forgive myself because it’s part of the learning process. I just can’t do it anymore. I literally have to embody clean energy completely if that’s what I want.
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Then… I went on to analyze my dream. This time my dream was based on the show I watch with my mom but I think it also had something to do with how I feel on the inside. In the show, two people love each other, soulmate love, where they can’t forget each other and feel gravity and all but they’re stuck in misunderstandings about each other. The anger of “betrayal” is louder than the love. I feel like that’s something that can happen to me now. My self-worth is so strong that I will choose myself over someone else no matter how strong the love is. I feel that for my ex- best friend. I know there’s love and I know she means something to me. She’s still in my heart, but I can’t be her friend right now. I have to choose myself. She probably thinks I betrayed her and I probably think she betrayed me. The reality is she hasn’t done anything about it, but at the same time, I know she’s in survival mode and doesn’t have the courage to reach out to me knowing that she knows that she betrayed me. And I know all this too, but I’m looking at the reality for what it is. Just because I understand people, doesn’t mean I meet them where they are. It’s self-betrayal. She’s just going to have to get the courage to come talk to me.. until then, we can love each other from a far.
That being said, I also know exactly where the fear of being misunderstood came from too and the overexplaining. It’s a core memory.
In the past, when I decided to stay quiet because it wasn’t my territory, people rejected me because they misunderstood me.
I went to brunch with my boyfriend at that time and his older brother and wife. I was just answering whatever they were asking me because when I first met them I got nervous and asked about random stuff, so they thought I was a gold digger. Then at the brunch, again I didn’t want to come off too strong, so I let them ask me things, and followed my boyfriend’s cues. He didn’t offer to pay so I didn’t offer to pay.
In reality, I’m actually always the person who offers to pay because, as you know I have a problem with receiving without clean energy.
I felt like they had me all wrong. And it hurt me for a long time knowing they rejected me without even knowing the actual me. I was literally depressed for months, and thought it was my biggest regret.
Initially, I was word vomiting because I was nervous, and then I was taking feedback and not trying to come off too strong.
I feel like that’s where the over-explaining was born.
After that, if someone rejected me, I would have at least one heart-to-heart, laying everything I needed to say down. This way, if they rejected me, I knew at least they rejected me, knowing everything.
I never had a fear of being disliked. I had a fear of being disliked due to a misunderstanding about who I really was.
Chat said - People who are willing to misjudge without curiosity will also misinterpret explanations. The issue wasn’t lack of information; it was rigid assumptions, power dynamics, emotional laziness, and projections.
There’s nothing I could have done to change their perception of me. Which is true because even after giving my explanations and heart-to-hearts, lol tbh it just made things worse and they never got what I was trying to say.
Also the household of unspoken expectations and no curiosity was a wrong fit for me anyways.
That’s also where I learned “never be quiet” but now I’m learning that I only need to share my inner world with people that are curious. Until then, no one gets a piece of my inner world or it becomes leaky for me.
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Answered some emails, ate my chia seed pudding while watching new girl, did some KPI work on my notebook, showered, and etc. My mom went to a funeral so I was just chilling at home alone.
Then went to a stretching pilates class and then soloway coffee to get coffee. It was packed, so just went back into my car and reflected and drank my coffee in the car. Also ate my almond croissant that I got.
In the car I started thinking about all the versions of myself I saw earlier in the day.
While my mom was at the funeral, I saw the version of myself that was scared to find joy in being home alone. I literally saw myself from two years ago sitting at the island, coming home to an empty home, wishing my mom would just come home from the hospital. I was so alone. And I didn’t even know if she would ever come home. And now that same loneliness is joy to do whatever I want at home. How far I’ve come.
Then when I was driving to my pilates class, I saw someone waiting at the bus stop in the freezing cold. In that, I saw a version of my mom and I when my dad first left. My mom would go no matter how cold it was because she had to worry about keeping me alive, and in high school, I would go right after school and would literally come home at 1am-2am sometimes. My mom definitely had it worse than me, but I also saw that version of me. And now, I choose to go to pilates, driving by that same bus stop with a car that has heat and my mom at home. Again, how far I’ve come.
While I was emailing this event planner in Seattle, where my toxic ex lives with his wife. I randomly thought of how that would have basically been my life right now. Living in seattle with him if I said yes to marrying him. I was so sad and depressed with him that I would literally read at night to “escape” and cry in the shower. The shower was my only safe space. That too was a version of me, and now I’ve been happily single for two years, healing, free. When I was deep with him, tbh I didn’t even think I would be able to get the peace I have right now. I was a “wife” that was soo miserable and stuck since we basically functioned like we were married when we lived in SF together. So again, how far I’ve come.
These versions almost feel like versions of me from an alternate universe, like that dream I had where I was in a terrible house, no job, running for my life. Sure, that was a bit extreme.
But these versions aren’t a part of an alternate universe. They’ve been a part of me in this universe. It’s all a part of my story. All these versions seem so far from the version of me today. Like I can’t believe they were a part of my story.
I know I’ll get to a point where I’ll be stupid rich with generational wealth and that person seems closer than the one who was waiting at the bus stop in the cold.
But like wow. I’ve had to kill/embody soooooo many versions of myself. Forget embodying ancestors, there are so many Shalini’s in this Shalini.
Especially since I’ve had to live a life of transformation within everything. Money, identity, etc.
Chat said - I'm feeling grief mixed with awe, and that I’m integrating. It feels like alternate universes because my nervous system exited survival, that’s why I can look at the past and feel the distance. I’m no longer in it. You can’t process or “see” something you’re still experiencing.
I didn’t kill those verisons, I outgrew them.
Chat said the most important takeaway is “You can now look at past versions of yourself without shame, without panic, without urgency to escape them.” That means my system believes I’m safe. My identity is coherent. My story is integrated.
The reason why “each version” is visiting me today isn’t for me to relive the pain, it’s telling me “You don’t have to carry me anymore. Just witness that I existed - and that you survived.”
Integration is “I’m not haunted by my past selves. They are being absorbed into me.” And I’m not becoming someone new. I’m becoming all of myself, at once.
The reason why I’ve been so drained is that different versions of me are doing different things. That’s why I’m miserable even going to the grocery store or getting coffee for 2 minutes.
I imagine it as like 10 shalini’s living inside of my brain and body, each experiencing different things. When I go somewhere, and feel something, my brain/body doesn’t know which shalini needs to do what.
I’m finally accepting it’s not 10 shalini’s. It’s 10 shalini that’s lived through each thing. It’s only 1 timeline of experiences, not an alternate universe working in the same timeline.
This kind of makes me feel stronger too, like wow… I survived ALL of that.
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I came home, worked for a bit, watched TV with mom, decided to check my IG post and saw DJ N liked it, so brief moment of giggles. Walked for a bit, ate some tofu makhni, and then walked some more.
While walking, I realized it wasn’t just pain I was integrating, it was also joy. The joy of dancing that my 10 year old self experienced.
And today after a LOOONG time, I didn’t feel drained after having a whole day. I would have needed to decompress 5 times by now. I didn’t even feel drained after checking IG.
Chat says - It’s because before parts of me were split (protecting, monitoring, scanning, managing), every outing required background processing, and now I’m one system. My baseline is also recalibrating.
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At night, I went I decided to look up my birth chart again and the one question I kept having was if my family was going to be reunited. But I wasn’t really getting a good answer and it was making me a bit upset.
Also i keep wanting to go on TikTok and IG, so I think my brain needs stimulation. I might start a new show. But at the same time, I’ve processed a lot too, so idk why it wasn’t stimulation. I just don’t feel drained and new girl feels boring, not comforting.
Intuition - I need to have another day of relaxing my brain, but confused between whether I need stimulation or not.
9/10 - Busy day but happy I wasn’t drained. I just hope I’m also not subconsciously overriding my body.
Energy:
25% - a day rebalancing with yoga, coffee
25% - processing
50% - noticing past me’s
