It seems like we spend most of life avoiding uncomfortable sensations.
As a person who suffer from OCD and anxiety, I understand this desire all too well. When the anxiety grips me, my chest tightening, stomach straining, head pounding. I'll do anything to stop feeling it. For years I tried to distract myself, making up excuses, "stories" of why I was feeling the way I was feeling.
One of my dearest, oldest, wisest friends directed me on her last visit to a way of coping with the negative emotions.
All feelings are fleeting, if let them exist and accept them.
So I stopped avoiding the pain, hurt, anxiety, sadness, anger, hate that inevitably comes up in both the every day and extraordinary moments of life. I stopped telling myself why I felt that way and just allowed myself to feel it.
In the seconds before I truly faced the emotion, terror gripped me.
But as soon as I allowed myself to peer over the cliff, and into the pool of emotion. It began to dissipate.
And that's how I face my anxiety now. Head on.
That doesn't mean I don't ever feel it anymore. It just leaves on it's own after I buckle down and face it.
Perhaps in order to feel the greatest of joys, love, beauty, we must allow ourselves to feel the greatest hurt, horror, grief. Without one extreme, how can we recognize and appreciate the other.
And perhaps the dark would be just as fleeting as the light, if we'd only welcome it in our lives as part of our existence. See the beauty in the dark. It is what makes us human.
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2 comments:
Lindsey- I think that's really wise. Braving these terrors can be so difficult. But it's more difficult when we can't acknowledge them or even accept what they are or where they come from-- and what we have to do.
No word from Montana in the mail today, either.
ok. man. so i gotta say, this one's a tough one.
i avoid stuff - like I said before, I'll procrastinate and get other important things done first, knowing the problem isn't gonna dissipate until I make it so. but r.p. is right too, how can you really discover what those sources of anxiety are? what if they're so many and .... funny as I'm writing this, I'm realizing what the answer is. what I can do to face it. even this response was turning into a bout of lazy pretending to misunderstand myself. we know exactly what we aren't doing. and wow it sucks to figure it out, know you're not doing it, and know it won't be resolved or changed until you do. ... hmm, a bit ambiguous
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