I'd agree to a point but then some things are so painful it can be pretty hard to give them space, especially when you know in your heart of hearts there is nothing you can do about them and letting them in is just pure pain. My dad had an expression, "just worry about the things you can do something about", I've tried to live that and learned spasmodically well to switch off those incoming painful thoughts that shoot out of nowhere sometimes but do little to improve your life. I once read someone (a 'celebrity') who mentioned that if you were driving down the road, full of cares and woe and a child or a dog ran in front of your car, the cares and woes disappeared (as long as you don't run them over). That taught me something that was important at that time in my life, that you can sometimes switch over to something less painful, it's distraction and it's why things like gardening, painting, crosswords, whittling (any mundane mental activity really) are useful (but admittedly don't work at 3am when you wake up in a cold sweat)
I suppose you make your choices as to whether you engage with pain or put it in a box, I simply choose try to put that pain that can't be changed in a box, it's full but that's my weakness. I suppose the dam might burst one day, personally I'm still running a short distance in front of the darkness so far but I am also convinced it will catch me one day, if I live that long or I let it.
Making room for painful thoughts and feelings is definitely not easy. Anyone who says it is, is lying. We all have to deal with our own stuff in our own ways too. There's definitely no one size fits all when it comes to such things.
For me personally, every single second of every single day, of every week, of every year was a battle. In my head, there was a war. Every waking moment was a conflict inside me. Now blocking all that out took so much mental energy that I was permanently drained, emotionally and physically. That takes a hell of a toll eventually. All kinds of psychosomatic illnesses. An ulcer. Depression.
Heavy drinking just to get me out of the front door took its toll too. I often made a prize gobshite of myself. I compromised my health and my dignity many times. All in the hope of blocking out my inner pain. There came a time where making room for the pain and offering it a chair in the corner was more healthy than what I was doing to try to block it all out. Sometimes, and for some people, the coping strategies can be more destructive than their original issues.
Personally, I had to stop the conflict within me. And if that meant making peace with my pain and offering it some space, then that's what I'd do. Now, I don't have inner conflict anymore. I don't have that battle now, so I have more energy to actually live a little bit. Not everyone can do this or is even willing to do it, and that's fine. It took me decades to do it too, and I only got there because I was willing.
I definitely agree on the distraction you mention, although I don't even call it that these days. I frame it simply as doing things you value doing with your time. I don't do other things in order to distract me, but by doing things I value doing, distraction happens naturally. The difference being that doing something with the specific aim of distraction is an avoidance strategy. But doing what you value isn't. It's proactive, values-based living, and more fulfilling as a result.
There's many ways to frame things, I think. We all have our own ways of approaching things and we all know what we feel helps us as individuals. Some people definitely can put things in a box and file them away, and that's great. For me though, that would feel like baggage I had to carry. Baggage I'd always fear it bursting out at some point. I had too much of that, and it was just too heavy to keep carrying. By making room for it, it sort of allowed me to put the weight down. Now if it followed me, fine, I'd continue to acknowledge it and give it room, but I certainly wasn't going to enter a conflict with it and carry it. Hopefully that makes some sense?
There's so much I can never change, so I now don't even try to change it. That frees me up to work on things that can be changed and also things that I value. We have 24 hours in every day. I suppose at some point we have to ask ourselves how many of those hours are we willing to spend on inner conflict and turmoil, and how many we want to spend trying to block it all out?
I still have all my fears, of course. Like you, I feel like I'm only just ahead of the darkness. I'll probably always feel that way too. But again, I can acknowledge that feeling, but still live in the light, rather than let the feeling consume me and pull me back into the abyss.
Your mention of the 3am wake-up in a cold sweat brings a lot back to me. I'm so familiar with that. That sickly feeling in my gut, where my anxiety about life is so strong I can almost taste it and smell it. In those moments all my fears roll through my head like items on a conveyor belt.
I noticed something last week that made me grin to myself though. I got up about 4am to go to the toilet. Straight away those thoughts were there. But I just said "oh, you again" in my mind, had a piss then got back into bed and went to sleep. Mindful Awareness in a nutshell. Acknowledge it, make room for it, don't fight it. Get on with something more productive. In that case, getting back to sleep.
Cheers for the reply, BBN. I wish you all the very best. Take care, mate.
