Let’s face it. Most of us carry around a load of sadness and heartbreak. How could we not, considering the challenges we face and the state of the world?
But we don’t want to feel it. We tuck it away, pretend it isn’t there, and put on our armor of “everything is fine.”
“Unless you are willing to scrutinize your deep-rooted emotional undercurrents and long-standing fixation on yourself,” writes Buddhist Judy Leif, “your so-called calmness and relaxation will be superficial.”
We need to dig deep and feel our pain, so we don’t project it onto each other. If we fail to work with our own suffering, it may become what Resmaa Menakem calls “dirty pain.” We get triggered, lash out in anger or withdraw in fear, and make it someone else’s fault.
How do we do the scrutinizing Leif advises? “Push your own buttons,” she writes.
Pema Chodron describes the problem as “getting hooked.” We feel uneasy and want to escape whatever sensations, thoughts, or emotions that are arising. Sometimes we self-medicate with drugs, alcohol, TV, work, or some other kind of addiction. That may work temporarily, but the suffering will reemerge.
In meditation, we practice being with discomfort, simply labeling it “thinking” and returning to the present moment.
Chodron suggests a four-step approach:
- Recognize the upset.
- Refrain from getting hooked and “scratching the itch.”
- Relax into our urges to have things be different than they are.
- Resolve “to continue to interrupt our habitual patterns like this for the rest of our lives.”
This month’s kind promise is “I will ask for help gracefully.” I can’t do that if I am pretending that I am invincible. If I am acting as a I am John Wayne and don’t need anybody, I won’t reach past my hard shell of individualism to admit I am not enough alone.
My task this month, then, is to notice when I need help but am pulling back into ego, drop that story, relax with what is, and make a new pattern by picking up the phone and asking for help.
Like most primates, we do better when we live and act in groups. We need each other. Pain and discomfort remind us to reach out and reconnect.
In your journal:
- What do you not want people to know about you? What do you wish people knew about you?
- Who pushes your buttons? What do they do that bugs you? Might you be projecting?
- How do you push away your heartbreak?