Track-6 REPEAT: When the Carousel Starts

When the Carousel Starts — and My Mind Repeats

There are moments when I genuinely want to show up.

I value fulfilling obligations. I usually like to honour what’s expected of me. Reliability matters to me — not because I’m coerced, but because it aligns with who I believe myself to be.

And yet, there are times when my body quietly signals otherwise.

Not through collapse.

Not through overt distress.

But as a fog behind my eyes, a tiredness in my thinking that doesn’t quite match how my body feels, a sense that my capacity is thinner than it appears. Often, these signals arrive when time is short — when a decision needs to be made quickly: Do I go, or do I stop?

That’s when the Carousel starts turning.

I can now see that several inner forces often appear at once — what I’ve come to think of as the Horsemen of the Carousel.

There is Fight — my Determined Self.

Clear, firm, and grounded, saying:

I don’t want to do this right now.

There is Flight — my Fearful Self.

Scanning resources, asking:

What if I can’t sustain myself if I go? What if I pay for this later?

There is Freeze — the jammed place.

Where competing impulses collide and I can’t decide, can’t speak, can’t move cleanly in any direction.

There is Fawn — the wordless one.

The part of me shaped by relationship and obligation, suddenly silent, unsure whether to explain, soothe, or manage the moment at all.

And then there is Float.

Float doesn’t want to fight or flee.

It doesn’t want to decide yet.

Float wants to retire — to step away from the field, go to my room, lie down, and buy time so I can sense what is actually true.

Float says:

Let me process first.

When all five appear together, I don’t experience them as options. I experience them as overload.

There is no clean sentence available. No explanation that feels both honest and safe. So my body makes the decision before language can.

I cut myself off abruptly.

I leave the table.

I choose rest.

Only later does my mind arrive — and that’s when Repeat begins.

I replay the moment again and again. I imagine alternative versions of myself:

the one who explains better,

the one who stays silent more gracefully,

the one who self-criticises herself pre-emptively — before others can criticise her.

Round and round, the Carousel turns.

Each inner voice promises relief. None deliver it.

What I’m slowly learning is that this repetition isn’t about insight. It’s about belonging. My mind is trying to retroactively manage the social field — to find the version of me that would have guaranteed safety, predictability, and acceptance.

But often, no such version exists.

Because the original moment wasn’t a communication failure.

It was a capacity threshold.

My body had already reached its limit. Language simply wasn’t available yet. And when that’s the case, no amount of replaying can produce the “right” response — because the system was already beyond words.

Repeat exhausts me when I treat it as evidence that I did something wrong.

It softens when I recognise it as the echo of having done something new — honouring capacity instead of overriding it.

Sometimes the most orienting truth is simple:

My body left before my words were ready.

And nothing more is required after that.

A gentle closing note

If you recognise this Carousel, you’re not failing at communication. You’re witnessing multiple protective responses activating at once. Repeat often appears when old habits of self-management loosen and the system is learning to trust capacity over obligation. The mind may need time to catch up with what the body already knows.