Where do you go when things get uncomfortable?

Where do you go when things get uncomfortable for you?

We all have that thing, or that space, that we run to whenever something gets uncomfortable.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I know for me, when things get uncomfortable, I turn to wine, cleaning, and escapism of some sort. Instead of dealing with whatever uncomfortable emotions come up, I turn to something to numb them out.

The problem with numbing it is that I can numb out the uncomfortable emotions for a time, but it numbs out the ones I need and want as well. There’s really no such thing as selective numbing.

Emotions that make me uncomfortable run the gamut from anger, fear, jealousy, irritation and frustration. While these emotions make me feel negative, for whatever reason they tend to be my go to. And who sees them the most? my family. The safest place to reveal them is to those I spend my most intimate time with. Its not fair to them, and it’s making me feel distanced from what I really need and want.

There’s something else, though. I recently realized there’s another emotion that makes me uncomfortable, and that is love.

Or maybe love isn’t an emotion, maybe it’s something else, but you get it.

All the years of numbing out the negativity I had from years of absorbing negative energy numbed out that feeling of love too.

I think it all started from childhood, or maybe even before that. I believe karmic energy follows us from previous generations in our family history that we weren’t even a part of. How can it not? My mom had a tough childhood, without revealing too much that she wouldn’t want me to share, I think its best to leave it at that. And while she spared us many of those extremely negative experiences, pain was still passed down to each of her 5 children. IT manifested differently for each of us, but it was still passed down as much as she worked to have that not be the case.

There were other factors as well too, of course. Kids at school would make fun of me for my biggest insecurities so I believed them. I got rejected from cheerleading tryouts and didn’t make the team I thought I deserved, so I believed I wasn’t good enough. I involved myself with people who took advantage of me, and some who even abused me. From there, I became an abuser myself in a lot of ways, and built a thick shell around my heart out of fear that if I reopened it, I would be hurt once again.

Almost 15 years ago I became a mom for the first time, and I told myself I would do better than my mom. I’m sure she said the same thing when she had her first child. Things never quite go as we planned, and people don’t take things the way you intended. The path to hell was paved by good intentions, so they say.

It’s so easy for me to attach to negativity instead of love. Its easier to run to, and I can’t sit here and blame my parents for it. I can’t blame the people who didn’t let me in the cheer squad for school, and I can’t even blame the people who hurt me that I allowed into my life. I believe the karmic energy of past pain in my family was handed down to me, but I know it wasn’t intentionally. And besides, I have free will to decide how I manifest my life today.

So today I sit and reflect on this and I don’t even want to say a word. I want to drink wine and escape and its not even 8am. I want to change. I am ashamed because I thought I had. I know I have changed a lot in the past 10 plus years I started becoming aware of my own issues and that I could change them. Before that, I thought that it didn’t matter what I did, and that I didn’t control anything in the world, not even myself. That we were handed the personality we got and that was that.

Now I know differently. It was yoga that helped guide me on this journey and today, I realize that even though I’ve come so far, I’m not finished. Old wounds still come flying out of the mouth without me even pausing to understand where it’s coming from.

Maybe we never really finish, maybe we just keep picking things up along the way that will serve us better on our path while we put things down that are holding us back.

I think the trick is learning to recognize and detach from the things that are no longer serving us.

Attachment is something I need to put down. Through attachment I have been controlling, nasty, judgmental, and consumed in fear. Through attachment, I have forgotten how to love. Through attachment, I have forgotten how to be loved.

But I am afraid of letting go of attachment. If I don’t control everything, then things won’t be the exact way I want them to be. I’m afraid to let go of it because I think my way is the best way. This spills over into every aspect of my life, and if I don’t pay attention, it starts to control me. If I don’t pay attention, then a whole drama is created that didn’t need to be there.

I’m not here to play victim to myself or anyone else. I have to learn how to take responsibility for my actions and say I’m sorry when necessary. If I can’t apologize for my behavior to those I’ve hurt, then I have no one holding me accountable for changing my toxic patterns.

So, I try to ask myself now what can I let go of without compromising my boundaries? What can I let go of without compromising myself and my happiness? What am I holding onto that’s holding me down, and can I let go of that without attaching to something else in the process? Even happiness, because even when we attach to happiness too much, we’re disappointed when something inevitable happens that we didn’t plan for.

It’s such a delicate balance and one that I haven’t mastered yet. That’s the real practice. When people hear yoga, physical postures of a bendy female with her feet behind her head usually comes to people’s minds. But for me, the real practice comes after that practice. It comes from off my yoga mat. As much as I don’t like to use clichés, this one is particularly true.

And other people? They’re just a mirror of ourselves. I have had that punch me in the stomach this past week. There are still people who have hurt me who I need to distance myself from for my own protection, but I also need to see people for what they are as well, and that is just human.

So, I have to tell myself today to let that shit go, pick up on love, and ground down into my own being, my own self. That means letting go of toxic patterns I created in my own self, with the tool belt I was handed from birth, filled with tools I’ve collected along the way. And perhaps throw away the broken tools that aren’t working anymore. It means not just being aware of my toxic patterns, but actively seeking to stop them when they arise. That means being in the present moment. That means being right smack in the middle of my discomfort, admitting I was wrong, and making amends. No escaping.

It means being uncomfortable to be raw and being that anyway. It means accepting defeat on this issue I have, so I can be more fully present in other areas of my life, so I don’t attach myself so much to the comfort of negativity and continue to hurt myself and those around me.

So, where do you go when things get uncomfortable, and how can you use that knowledge to sit and be still with the discomfort, so you can let go of something you don’t need, and pick up something that will serve you?

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