Pain and Mindfulness

I recently went through a painful experience in which, well, suffice it to say I had one set of expectation about how things were going to go and my superiors had another. You may have had a similar experience in losing a job or having gone through a painful break up, either of those examples would work for my situation. Part of my attempt to start a new blog was born of that experience. But new starts are hard, especially when you bring along old baggage. Is there ever really a new start? Perhaps a better way to view the new blog is that it is a new shuffle of the cards. The cards are the same, but the way they are dealt changes. I am still me. I come to the table with the same set of problems, the same hang-ups. But maybe this time I can look at them from a fresh perspective.

One thing that has really dogged me in the past is my propensity to replay certain events over and over in my head. I frequently find myself reliving certain events of the past in my thoughts. I used to think that this made me crazy some how. Mostly because the reliving of those thought often brought to bare painful memories that evoked bitter emotions. I would not only reminisce the past, I would relive it. I would replay the same conversation, I would experience the same emotions, I would undergo the same machinations.

Why would I think I was crazy? Well because usually as I experienced these memories I would try to alter outcomes. I would find myself arguing, pleading, doing just about anything to change the past. But the past is the past, and no matter how hard I tried the outcome was invariably the same.

I might add a note here and say that what I describe above might lead people to think that I was actively pursuing reliving these memories. But I want to assure you that I was not. These episodes, for lack of a better word, always come unbidden. I would be taking a shower, or driving the car, or fixing dinner and would suddenly find myself knee deep in thought and feeling that completely incongruous with reality, and that, more than anything, made me think I was crazy.

But I am not crazy, and no one that I have talked to about these experiences, not therapists, priests, friends, or family has ever suggested as much. In fact it has been quite the opposite. While the episodes may be crazy making, they are not the product of a crazy mind. They are the product of a mind that has been hurt. I was hurt. I was let down. I was devastated. Now my mind, ever my friend, is trying to make it all right. It is trying to help me make sense of the world that makes no sense. It has created a fantasy of familiar characters, situations and feelings that I can latch on to in the hopes that I can somehow make sense of the ridiculous.

Sadly there are times when my mind, ever my friend, is rather primitive and it is up to me to reign in on the insanity. I cannot allow myself the luxury of self-doubt, self-loathing and self-pity. Sadly, while I mourn the state of events that has transpired, the memory of them is driving me mad. Allow me to say this again. I am not crazy, but the memory of these event, however fresh, is crazy making.

So Dr. Me, what is the cure?

A few years ago I had a Jungian-like revelation that my fantasy character, the people I was thinking about, while based on real people, were not, themselves, real. In essence I am talking to myself. I can do one of two things with this revelation. I can begin to address these people for what they really are, figments of my memory, or if I am daring, I can choose to look at them as parts of myself. Either way The key here is to remember while the situation is real, what happened, happened, my memory of it is not. My memory is my memory and I can choose to remember or not.

The other day I was standing in the shower when the memory of some of these events came back to me. Before I knew it I found myself shouting at the principle players. See, even though I know what is happening, even though I am aware that reliving this painful memory is detrimental to my health, I still sometimes find myself doing it. So what do I do? I can roll with it, let it do its thing, and in the end nothing will change. The events will still have happened. Or I can stop it. I can shout “Stop it!” I can pinch myself.” I can turn the shower on “cold.” I can go for a walk. I can call a friend. I can walk away and in short, I can stop it.

It isn’t easy. The first forty times I wasn’t successful, but while I wasn’t able to stop my mind from driving me crazy, I could continue to practice, after all even if I wasn’t successful I was becoming more aware of myself, I was becoming more aware of the episodes, and awareness is key. Awareness is gold. Some people call it mindfulness or consciousness. Many religions consider it the key to liberation and in recent times it has been used in psychology to battle depression and obsessive/compulsive disorders. I don’t know much about those things, but I do know about this. I want to be free. I want to be free of this painful memory and more I want to be free to choose my own path to happiness. I don’t want my primitive mind making those decisions for me, because it never makes the right call. I have used mindfulness to battle physical back pain and emotional trauma and I am here to tell you that this works. This works. It doesn’t work all the time but it works.

It works because instead of thinking about all of the S.O.B.’s in my life I can be free to think about me. I can think clearly about my disappointing situation and instead of feeling the gravity of it burdening me, weighing me down, I can feel the possibilities of choice open up around me. When I am in the memory, the many faces, the ex-lover, the old boss speak for me, they speak collectively and they bring me down, but by being mindful I rid myself of the extraneous voices and I can finally find myself listening to just one voice, my own, and that voice says I am loved. I am successful, and I am free.