Bring It!

Currently, my path feels divinely contrary to what I was led to believe culture approves or encourages. 

My days feel drastically different than even a year or so ago.  I know that Change Requires Change and still I watch myself and those around me resist and label change as bad before we have fairly assessed it’s purpose.    Fear is slippery that way.  It creates limiting beliefs, rules and casts shadows. 

For forty or fifty years this country has tried to stop feeling it’s feels.   It’s smoked out emotions.   We have lived in avoidance of sensations that make us feel something uncomfortable.  We’ve meshed uncomfortable with wrong.  This has been a mistake.

These days I’m doing the opposite, on purpose and shouting about it. 

It’s throwing others off.  It’s throwing me off. 

Yet, I trust I am exactly where I am supposed to be right now. 

I am, gladly, in the middle of change.

I hold extra tight to my mantra.

I am all I need, for all I need right now.

I have all I need, for all I need right now.

I know all I need, for all I need right now.

I AM ALL I NEED, FOR ALL I NEED RIGHT NOW.

What I’m learning feels counterintuitive and yet if is undeniably true. 

I trust my gut to validate the wise from the unwise.  It’s my best judge. 

I question how new realizations can be possible and what that means for me, for others, for my family, etc. 

I pretty much question everything.  I’m clumsy and unsure.   Why?  Why now?  Why me?  Why them?  Etc.,

Daily I know less and more all at the same time. 

In this time of evaluation, of deeper reflection than usual, of questions, I look for lessons, hope, and ways to take off the edge.   

I over exercise, over explain, over eat chocolate or over label myself with judgment.  I give into fear.   And then I stop and feel the feels some more.   I stop over doing and I breath. 

It can feel too intense. 

I remind myself, I know I am exactly where I need to be and I am experiencing only what I CAN handle. 

I find I can handle a LOT. 

A LOT!

I believe we all can.

The Polish psychologist named Kazimierz Dabrowski studied survivors of WWII in Poland.  He studied people who had outlived horrific trauma, which often included the brutality of famine, rape, POW torture and confinement by the Nazis, and then later by the Soviets, loss of family members of childhood and of loved ones.  

He concluded that while no one enjoyed these painful times, they were often grateful for the lessons that they learned through them.   

This is a human thing we do; look for the silver lining or the lesson to make sense of such unreasonable pain and distress.   I am very human in this way.  

Dabrowski believed that fear and anxiety are not awful or non-useful.  In fact, he suggested they are quite the opposite.  That fear and anxiety are made tolerable by the lessons they evoke and useful in how (if acknowledged) they can guide us towards/away from something that may serve or not serve us. 

This is brilliant!  He concluded that fear and anxiety and pain and sadness are actually byproducts and required states one must experience fully to attain psychological growth. 

I love growth so therefor I learn to love my anxiety and my pain and my sadness and ALL OF IT!   

This is genius.   My gut confirms it. 

With this understanding there is freedom and encouragement to embrace every moment without needing it to be a certain way. 

I lurk longer in the darker feelings knowing they are indeed byproducts of movement and they are part of the transition and part of letting go of the old, the stuck and the stale. 

I linger in the pain, at least for a few more breaths.   At times I even embrace the intensity of sensation.  It’s so beautifully intense.  I grow stronger and more resilient each time I do.   I can feel it.  It’s changing me.  It’s causing a ripple effect of change and movement around me. 

I’m letting others around me stay in the depths longer too.  I see how my change creates their change and vice versa and they deserve and require the same room to breath and settle into new truths.

It’s messy, unrelenting and real.  It’s fresh and vibrant and alive.  Give me all of it! 

Dabrowski suggested that to avoid pain would be the same as avoiding our own potential and in essence, cutting us short of what we are possible of becoming.  

Just as we must experience physical pain to grow stronger bodies, we must experience emotional and psychological pain to develop greater resilience, patience, discipline, a stronger sense of self, a greater sense of compassion and gratitude. 

Pain is actually the roadmap to a greater quality of life and a happier state of being. 

Bring it. 

The millions of clichés stating how things get easier after they are the most challenging are of great truth.  And, since I personally feel like I am ebbing in and out of some of my most intense emotional experiences these days I find reprieve in the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. 

It’s what I have to hold onto.   It’s always true.  My gut and time are my guides. 

Let me feel it ALL! 

Hannah Zackney