dont read this if your lifes perfect

You could be happy, but then maybe you wouldn’t be reading this. You could be blissfully unaware.
If you’re not ruminating or feeling numb or down or anxious or distracted then read no further… but I know most of us are.
You could be shit scared of sitting with pain. I know I am.
I’ve hiked volcanos, swam with sharks, gone solo traveling, married a narcissist, and im still shit scared of sitting with my own pain. But suppressing or distracting ourselves from pain is like standing in the middle of a war zone with our heads in the sand. Youre still a sitting duck for the bullets, shrapnel and chaos that you will inevitably cause or receive by doing nothing about your pain.
Once you know, you cant un know, and once you’ve recognised everything, what do you do but ruminate over it and be generally miserable, which is pointless.  So; distraction, distraction, distraction, right? WRONG! The pain will not swallow you whole and leave you entirely incapacitated if you tackle it. The pain is our brains way of screaming at us to make a change, to fix something in our lives, to re-direct us. If we choose to ignore it, that pain will travel through our bodies nervous system and fester, causing all kinds of ill health there. The effects of cortisol, the stress hormone far outweighs any other long term substance abuse we could inflict upon ourselves. So how do we sit with pain without it being overwhelming? How do we listen to and interpret that pain?
 
Step 1:
Label your feelings.
Im feeling uncomfortable.  Ok, what discomfort is this? What could I label this feeling?
Anxiety.
What am I anxious about? What has happened in my day that has caused anxiety? Journal whats happened in your day if its easier and try to condense or simplify it like the examples below
 
Rejection.
‘Someone has caused me to feel like I am not enough, something they did/said’
Or
‘I forgot to do X Y and X and now I feel like a dysfunctional person’
Or
‘I said or did something that was inappropriate and now I feel like an idiot’
Or
‘Something I experienced on social media caused me to feel like I wasn’t doing or being enough’
 
 
 
Most of the time these thoughts or feelings go that deep into the subconscious that we go about our day totally oblivious. Then, by the end of the day we are feeling drained and down and we don’t really know why. This is why meditation is important. It enhances the self awareness enough to bring these thoughts up from our subconsious and allows us to observe them in a none judgmental way. sometimes we shut a lot of the causes of our pain down because we are so ashamed. It can be hard to recognise shame and shift it because of the guilt we would consequently feel. It can get overwhelming and difficult to make sense of.
 
Step 2: Recognising shame

Examples of shame include:
‘I shouldn’t be feeling like this (angry, jealous, stressed, upset)’
‘I should be so much better than this’
‘I’m so weak’
‘I’ve caused this person so much pain with my behaviour’
 
Our upbringing and society and even the whole ‘Snowflake’ concept all perpetuate this idea that if we express ourselves, our emotions and our experiences in a way that is truly authentic we are being ‘Too dramatic’, ‘crazy’, and we need to ‘Calm down’. So it seems, everyone around us is putting on a mask. We become passive aggressive, dismissive, negative ..etc.. because we are ashamed of how we truly feel or lack the confidence to confront anyone because society and parenting hasn’t allowed us to express ourselves in a healthy way. We are out of practice. Furthermore, we suppress these emotions and act out without realising what’s actually going on in our own minds.
Had we recognised the feelings and tapped into the shame earlier, we would never have been passive aggressive and reacted potentially irrationally or in a damaging way in the first place.
 
Step 3: Compassion

We don’t want to admit to ourselves that we are ‘bad’ people. this is ultimately a false narrative we are wrongfully telling ourselves.  We are not bad. We are struggling. Ill behaviour and thought patterns comes from pain that we are struggling to recognise and overcome. This rule applies to everyone. The moment we recognise this and have compassion for ourselves is the moment our compassion evolves for those around us. ‘People pleasers’ are those who allow compassion for others to over shadow the compassion they should have for themselves. Mothers/women especially fall very short of taking care of themselves first and foremost. Another societal influence.
The consequences of this mean that ‘People pleasers’ are burnt out, depleted or/and resentful. Worst case, they get to a point where they can no longer take care of themselves or cause conflict amongst those they resent.
Having necessary compassion for yourself is not selfish, regardless of what others and society think.
The fear is that you could potentially lose family or friends if you stopped ‘doing’.
But if you base your value on the things you do for others then that’s a self worth issue. If they base your value on the things you do for them/others, that’s THEIR self worth issue.
 Life is hard and busy enough to be on a constant people pleasing treadmill. Just because its whats always been done, doesn’t make it healthy or right.
 
Step 4: recognising patterns

You might want to avoid the fact that the relationship issues and emotional wellbeing issues stem from your childhood and how you were raised. I can understand theres a lot of shame there.  if you admit your parents had a part in the pain you experience today then that paints your parents in a bad light and makes them bad people. Most of us love and respect our parents so we don’t want to do that, but we need to recognise the root of our triggers. Its not to point the finger, its to find the cause and the root of the problem and to manage it going forward.   I get that its hard to do that without bringing the pain of all of that to the fore, but that also doesn’t mean its not there.
None of us are infallible. Society leads us to believe that we are all to be perfect, no mistake is allowed and if a mistake is made then you will be ostracised. So we don’t like to recognise our own chinks in our armour. We are so judgmental of our own that we are likewise judgmental of others faults too.
Ultimately if there is a reoccurring trigger, often it comes from either parent or caregiver and we will often take our pain from that experience and project it onto others we are closest to as adults today.
 
 
Step 4: forgiveness
 
When I had finally recognised my imperfections and my triggers, I was horrified as I was flooded with memories of all the people I had affected and impacted in my life from all the pain I had carried and projected onto others. An overwhelming amount of guilt just washed over me.
I was reminded that I was human, that I was not infallible and neither did I ever have to be. I was on a journey of becoming a better person and the fact that I’d started that journey when many choose to bury their heads in the sand was an incredible thing. I had to forgive myself and I could do that by making a promise to love myself more. Because the lack of self love is more damaging to others than anything else.
I also had to forgive others for the pain they had caused me that had lead me to become depressed. Im still wrestling with that one because I still struggle to love all of my own imperfections but when I do I’m sure forgiveness will be right around the corner.