Every single one of us has had rough times, moments or events in our lives that we don’t like to talk about too very often. It can be highly uncomfortable to face those prior markers, but sometimes, we cannot avoid them. In some cases, we do what we can to avoid them, but we often find ourselves repressing those things, pushing them deep down in our minds, souls and psyches. This causes them to build up over time, and if we are not careful, the consequences can be devastating in our lives, and it will leave us having to pick up the pieces at a most inopportune time.
Which begs the question: “Am I healing, or am I distracted?”
Pushing trauma, discord, disaster, dissent, etc down in our lives only pressurizes it, and sets the stage for it to explode from beneath us at a later point. And keeping ANYTHING inside of us is akin to trying to contain a lava flow. Any feeling, any emotion, anything we may need to say to someone, any problem or block in our lives that we need to face, we must be properly prepared to meet them all head-on. If we keep them locked inside, it will make like acid and eat us from the inside out at best, and be a ticking time bomb at worst, destined to destroy both ourselves and all those around us in its wake.
Running from what we feel or are experiencing inside is not the way to go, nor will keeping one’s self excessively busy or making one’s mind imbibed with food, alcohol, sex, etc to avoid problems or shut off emotions pay any dividends to any involved party, no matter what we tell ourselves, or the things we may say, do or achieve under those circumstances. Using busy work or excessive pleasure to avoid that openness is just as toxic and damaging to one’s self as bottling it up and doing nothing on the matter.
It can sometimes feel like a game of “pick your poison”. But what if I told you that you don’t have to pick a poison?
What if I told you there is a medicine to cure these ills?
What if I told you there are three of those medicines?!
Openness and honesty and communication is tantamount to air, water and blood in importance in our lives, and the more we open up about what we are going through, the more we can either kick the dirt of what’s burying us off and climb out of the hole that we found ourselves in, or sprout roots & grow from that dirt and make a whole new, beautiful, flowering life for ourselves in the wake of it all. And the choice can only come from a sincere place inside us; it cannot come from a bottle or a pill or a magazine or the mouth of another person, it has to come sincere from within ourselves. We have to want it bad enough!
Whatever you, the reader may be facing at this time, I sincerely hope you choose the path of openness and honesty and communication, no matter how hard it may be for you to do so. I know a lot of us struggle at times with opening up about our lives and what we’re going through and asking for help, and I completely understand why, but bottling up those feelings, emotions and words can only be a poison and not a medicine. I hope you choose the path of healing, openness and bravery to walk, and I hope to see you at the end of that path!
Thank you so much for taking some time to read this blog, and in the comments, detail something you’re afraid of facing in your own life, and what you might enact to help yourself overcome that fear, and get back on even ground in your life!
As always, take care, much love and may God richly bless
-Jon