I’m in my early 50’s and I’m facing …
THE EMOTIONAL CLOSET CLEANING. My “emotional” closet was bursting at the seams! I had never cleaned it. Literally never cleaned it! I kept everything stuffed away! Every hurt, slight, fear, worry, guilt, sorrow, anger, all of it was stuffed in the emotional closet. Crap, I have no idea how to clean up this mess. I figured the only way to start is to open the door. But, how do I do that? It’s scary and dark, and there are monsters in there.
My reality was … I had no idea how to process any of these emotions.
I started with the Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. (recommended by my therapist) It’s one of my favorite books. It’s underlined, highlighted, and has notes in the margins. Conceptually hard to read for an emotional basket case, but I read, and reread, and reread. It’s about all the stuff we “stuff”, hold on to, never let go of.
Bottom line…this was the beginning of the healing process. I learned to pause and listen to myself. There was a voice inside my head that talked incessantly, and I didn’t like what I heard. It replayed conversations, events, exchanges. Over and over again. Questioning if I handled it well, should I have done something differently. Are they mad at me?
One of the first things I learned was that the voice starts talking as a way to protect us from pain and hurt. (for me it started at a time when I wasn’t able to protect myself, so the voice had it’s own power) Once I started listening, I was able to recognize the signs. I’d feel uncomfortable or anxious, something made me angry or fearful, there were triggers. These thoughts whether real or imagine were happening because the outside world wasn’t the way I thought it should be or the way I wanted it to be. When the world triggered me, the voice started. Understanding this made an enormous difference for me. Slowly I stepped back from the dialogue, and worked on discerning the reality of the voice, was the story it was telling real, and did it keep repeating the same thoughts? In the beginning, one incident could have my head trash talking for days and days, sometimes months if the struggle was life altering. I’d been doing this my whole life, and I was tired.
How do I change this? Let go. Not easy, but doable. This involved recognizing the trigger, trying to understand where it originated, and then letting go. I used affirmations, (positive words and thoughts are so powerful!), music, walking, journaling, and quiet time alone.
I was healing, by changing old patterns into new ones that worked much better for me. And I’m grateful for that.
This was a choice. One of the best I’ve ever made. You can too. Just choose.