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Sometimes it feels like we’re dragging through our day, burdened with a sense of loss, confusion or uncertainty, pushing to make it to sundown, just to spend another evening wishing for some other life than the one we are living. We may be unique in how we ended up feeling stuck, angry, or in pain, but we tend to respond to intense emotions in similar ways. We agonize over needing to know the answers to questions dominating our thoughts and consuming our energy. How did I get here? How could she have treated me like this? Doesn’t he love me? Why do people always leave me, lie to me, hurt me? Is there any meaning to life? Is this all there is? Who am I if I am not my job, my title, my role? Why me? How could I let this happen? What is the point of all this anyways?
Not only do we incessantly repeat these unanswerable questions, but we also spend hours wondering how things might have turned out if we had only said or done something different when we had the opportunity. We rerun the story with a new ending each time, envisioning how the scene could have played out if we had been better prepared. Once again, wasting precious time and energy ruminating about “do-overs” that never come.
Living like this is exhausting. The relentless negative mental activity drains the life energy from our bodies and with our tanks on empty by mid-morning, we are once again forced to face another day feeling heavy, hopeless that things might ever change. We need a break from these emotional fits of rage, sadness, fear, anxiety, and grief. The desperate search for finding a moment of peace can bring us harmful ways of misusing meds, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, sex, or a combination thereof. Whatever it takes to get some rest from the pain, just for a bit, just enough to keep going.
What if we could retreat to an intimate relationship, a loving supportive environment, a sanctuary where we feel safe and seen. Sometimes we need a helping hand and a loving embrace to hold us while we work though our painful emotions. But intimate relationships require emotional vulnerability. This means we risk being abandoned and unfortunately, many of us cannot tolerate the prospect of feeling rejected, humiliated or shamed by another. Once you add up all the things that can go wrong, the possibility of experiencing love and support in a relationship may feel scary and not worth the effort or the potential risk of failure. Yet if a part of us persists to yearn for meaningful human connection, the absence of it will continue to cause much hurt and suffering.
The pull of what is familiar lures us away from trying new things. It might be counterintuitive, but we choose to spend our days in anger, depression, resentment, or anxiety because we have become skilled in knowing how to survive with these emotional patterns. We find an odd sense of comfort waking up each day and knowing exactly how to move through the hours the same as every other day, versus trying something new and stepping into the unknown and the unfamiliar. That is why we prefer to continue working in unfulfilling jobs, staying in abusive relationships, or remaining alone and isolated. We have a lifetime of practice keeping ourselves safe by staying quiet or screaming in rage, disconnecting, or becoming co-dependent, disengaging, people pleasing, care taking, … the list goes one. We have become experts in a narrow range of skills and these expertise have kept us alive and served us well… until now.
At some point we start to question our choices and begin to wonder if there is more to life than this, whatever this might be. Some of us are inspired to make a shift but most of us will have experienced grief, illness, or a major loss, pushing us to question our status quo and to finally consider a different approach to the way we’ve been living. “Different” is scary and it will take courage to examine our core beliefs and acknowledge our part in all we have created. Accepting where we are is the first step to allowing for the possibility of change in different areas of our life including career, love, family, friends and most importantly our relationship with ourselves.
I believe this is where a therapist can help support an individual’s process, by lovingly holding your hand and truly listening to what is being said from your heart, mind, and soul. Together we will go to the places that hurt the most, causing pain or anxiety, preventing you from living your dreams and desires. No one else can fix you or tell you what is best for your life. But we can experiment and get curious about what you require to help figure things out on your own. I will not lie; it is a lot of hard work and sometimes it feels like you are pushing a two-ton boulder up a steep slope. But I wholeheartedly believe it is absolutely worth the effort. With every arduous step you take up the hill, you have the chance to behold previously hidden landscapes and vistas, different ways of seeing the world around you, bringing hope that you have everything you need to create the life you want to live. So … let’s get started.