Numb and Crazy

Numb and Crazy

As I shuffled the deck this morning, the Purpose card jumped out. Again. The cards always bring new thoughts and fresh ideas to me, when I let them. This morning, the word “lost” was the standout word for me. “How have I changed from feeling lost...”

Each of us has times in our lives when our entire world shifts, when life becomes fundamentally  different.

We have many ways to deal with this kind of change. A lot of them suck, because the situation can feel overwhelming, so we bring out our worst behaviors seeking relief.

How have I changed from wanting to act my worst to choosing to be my best?

I find that it helps to know what’s going on, and why I feel like that.

When I have a huge change happen, or even a very small, very deep change, my unconscious mind starts working like a mad thing to get this change sorted out, understood, incorporated into my world view. And for every thought, there is a corresponding emotion, the physical manifestation of thought. So now I have a million new thoughts, and a million emotions flashing through my unconscious mind.

Plus, I am having a ton of old, tried but not necessarily true, unconscious thoughts and emotions happening, however I tend to run on the topic that’s changed.

As we say in Minnesota, Uff da!

So now we have a spectacular amount of unconscious activity happening so fast we can’t keep track, and we find ourselves feeling numb or like we are going crazy. We can do either one of those, but I tells ya,  I didn’t really like either one of those, just in case you were wondering.

It’s a lot like getting really cold, so cold your toes or legs get numb. It’s not that you’ve stopped feeling, it’s that your insides are working double time to keep your core warm, so normal goes out the window, and you may find your teeth chattering, and your body jiggling like mad.

So then, what the heck do you do?

Why am I patient with myself? What makes me choose to relax? How am I peaceful?

Remembering that I am peaceful underneath the unconscious material helps me a lot.

When these things happen, I often have a lot of extra stuff to do. So what I try to do is work on the extra stuff with all the focus I can muster, then stop, really stop, for a while, and meditate for a bit. All I mean by that is to quiet my body, and let my thoughts flow. If I find that I’m following a thought, I come back to the place of observation.

Taking those moments to zen in, if you will, allows unconscious material to come up, and then I can either address it, or let it go. Most recently, I had an unconscious thought banging around that left me feeling very uncomfortable. It popped into consciousness during a short meditation and made me laugh out loud. Very absurd to my conscious mind, but scary until it came up.

Choosing to practice stillness every day makes it so much easier to choose stillness for the big stuff. Treating ourselves with kindness and respect every day makes it easier to be kind and patient in the big stuff. Practicing respect toward ourselves and each other every day means that we can cope much more easily when we are taxed.

How have I changed from choosing to act out when big things happen, to being gentle and soft and respectful of me and you?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 12312013