All the behaviours we do: drinking, smoking, eating too much, not eating enough, purging, drugs, shopping, self harm, gambling, sex, OCD rituals, over-exercising, binge-watching Netflix, zoning out in front of the TV or Xbox… we do them to numb ourselves.

We get feelings we don’t want to feel and thoughts we don’t want to think and we want to get rid of them or stop feeling and thinking them as soon as possible because they make us uncomfortable.  We don’t like them and we sure as hell don’t know what to do with them.  Feelings of shame, of fear, of grief, of being out of control.  Feelings of anger, of vulnerability, of hate.  Thoughts of not being good enough, beliefs around not being worthy, or loved… the list goes on.  We just want them to stop.  So we do the behaviours to numb ourselves to them.

The trouble is, you can’t selectively numb.  If you numb out the ‘bad’ stuff, you numb out the ‘good’ stuff too.  The stuff you actually want to feel, like joy and gratitude and calmness and excitement and love for example.

I’ve had many conversations with clients over recent weeks about this, and everyone has nodded – they get it.  And they know that I get it because I’ve been there too.

The thing is, the more we do these behaviours to get rid of the feelings and thoughts that we don’t want, the more of those feelings and thoughts we end up having because we know that the behaviours we’re doing ultimately aren’t healthy or positive.  In trying to escape them, we actually create more of them.  That’s the therapeutic paradox.

For the vast majority of the eating disorder clients I work with, these thoughts and feelings are constant and unrelenting.  And if they try to challenge those thoughts and feelings by taking action to move into recovery, even if that step towards getting better seems absolutely miniscule to anyone in the outside world, those thoughts and feelings magnify a thousand-fold.  It’s torturous because you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.  I’ve lost count of the number of times clients have cried in session with me and asked with tear-stained faces how they can possibly do it.  How can they cope with the cruelty of that voice in their head and the depth of the feelings they feel?  They wonder how I did it.

My answer is always the same:  You just have to sit with it.

No matter how uncomfortable it is.  No matter how distressed you feel.  No matter how much you want to go and do those behaviours that you are working so, so hard to overcome.

You just have to sit with it.

It’s excruciating.

The voice goes crazy.  The feelings intensify.

You just have to sit with it.

It feels like you might die.

(You won’t.  I promise.)

You just have to sit with it.

_____

I’ve been trying my hardest to numb a feeling for a year.  A feeling that I really don’t want to have because having it means that I need to acknowledge something that I don’t want to believe.  I’ve written several times about how I’ve been feeling since my Dad died.  The truth is, I write those posts when I’m in the midst of an emotional hijacking.  When all my efforts to numb the feeling of grief have been unsuccessful.  Those moments are intense and overwhelming and exhausting and horrible to experience.  But they don’t actually happen that often.

Most days I’m pretty successful at numbing it.  I think of him and miss him every day of course, but most of the time my mind is occupied with my girls, my husband, my Mum and stepdad, my friends, my clients, my supervisees, my to-do list, blogs that I’m writing in my head, plans for the future, random stuff that I need to remember plus what feels like a million and one other things.  And when I’m thinking I don’t feel, so I can usually keep it at bay.

Then the other day a friend shared this on Facebook…

…and I felt something inside me change.  I’m not even sure what it was that I finally realised, I just know that reading these words really helped.

And I stopped trying so hard to stay numb.

___

Today would have been my Dad’s 65th birthday.  I wrote him a birthday card, and so did my girls – they each put in a little message and lots of kisses.  Thursdays are my day off from work and it’s the day I go to yoga.

At the start of each class, my yoga teacher invites us to set an intention for our practice.  I usually choose something along the lines of ‘calmness’ or ‘gratitude’ or ‘wellness’.  Today I chose to dedicate my yoga practice to my Dad.  Part way through our vinyasa Claire asked us all to envision a colour and without even knowing why I chose orange for it’s warmth and energy,  It wasn’t until a few asanas later that I made the connection in my head and remembered that orange was Dad’s favourite colour.  For the first time ever, I cried on the mat, the tears dripping down my face as I held myself in half-pigeon pose.

There was nowhere I could go and nothing I could do.

I just had to sit with it.

And so I did.

It was as uncomfortable as hell and everything inside me desperately wanted to distract myself and think of something else but I didn’t.  I sat with it.  I remembered what my friend had shared on Facebook and accepted that today was going to be hard and that’s ok.

After class I bought some orange roses and added them to the vase of daffodils (his favourite flower) that I have on my kitchen windowsill and I smiled.

 

4 Comments for: Thursday thought for the day: Sometimes you just have to sit with it

Chloe

Thanks, Debbie. I’m glad you found my words helpful and I hope the difficult times begin to get easier for you soon.

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Chloe

Thank you Mum. I think the thing that helped was realising that there is no right or wrong way to deal with something like this. Indeed, it’s not necessarily something that can be ‘dealt with’ and then it’s over. It’s an ongoing process that takes time, and whatever form it’s taking right now is ok, because that too will change again further down the line. Your support, as always, really helps – in ways that you probably aren’t aware of. I love you too xx

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