Ah the vaguest word in the dictionary these days! Except maybe for vulnerability or authenticity. The whole concept of mindfulness has evaded me for years, or rather I was avoiding it. It was completely unintentional, but it happened none-the-less.
We live in a world that is evolving at a much more rapid pace than it ever has in the course of human history. Our brains can’t possibly handle all the constant pings and dings, the constant pressure to be a certain type of way. And let us not forget about supplying ourselves with basic human needs such as food, water, and sanitation.
At some point we crash, at least that’s what I did. Mine happened in the form of a propane incident. (Side note: I am no longer going to refer to this as an accident, for reasons.) I am here to tell you that sometimes the Universe will smack you down and make you listen. Ok. I get it now.
P.S. It doesn’t have to be that way. I am stubborn as shit.
Dissociation & Rumination
I learned very early in life to dissociate from hard things. Therapy unfucked a lot of the damage that little Jenna had done trying to protect herself. I’m not angry with her. She did the best that she could at the time.
In a very strange turn of events, I honed that skill later in life to be able to look at situations from opposing angles. It’s almost as if I can float up and look down on a situation, and see it differently. Weird, I know. I don’t really know any other way to describe it. The skill I used to escape my emotions, I now use to study them, to see what it really going on underneath.
All of that came after I learned how to not ruminate in my emotions. That’s what my therapist called it. I think of it like marinating. Others call it wallowing, or playing in victim mode. Whatever you want to call it, you are stuck and that sucks. But the leap from this suck to the unknown is scary as fuck. I know what this suck is. I am used to this. What if that over there sucks even worse?
Psst! But what if it doesn’t?
Wise Mind
We all have a certain wisdom inside of us. We just haven’t been taught how to find it. That tingle feeling, the butterflies in your stomach, they are trying to tell you something. We have actually been taught to completely ignore it. They know better, don’t they?
Here’s the thing: We live in a very patriarchal, masculine society. Very left brain, which is the reasonable mind. The right brain, she is too feminine and emotional to be relied upon. Yin and yang. Black and white. What about the grey area in between? That’s the place where reason and emotion come together. That’s where the wisdom lives.
The difficult part lies in quieting the noise for long enough so that you can hear her whisper your dreams back to you. I didn’t want to do that part because I knew she was right. I know I had been doing this life thing wrong yet again. That bitch is always right.
Self-Reflection
No one ever says that you are going to like yourself. That was a hard truth for me to swallow. So you may as well learn to love yourself.
Tara Brach calls it practicing RAIN (recognize, allow, investigate, nurture). DBT calls it ‘what’ and ‘how’ skills. The Bhagavad Gita calls it mindfulness. Buddhism says mindfulness is hearing, accepting, and moving past our thoughts. It seems as though we have been struggling with this same problem for all of eternity.
The path out of hell is through misery. By refusing to accept the misery that is part of climbing out of hell, you fall back into hell.
Marsha Linehan, DBT Skills Training Handouts & Worksheets
My therapist referred to this as the trap door. There is a well within the water of the wise mind. Sometimes our false wisdom leads to a trap door that lands you right back where you started. Shit. Here we go again.
Mad love, Jenna
