Midlife crisis? Divorce? Anxiety? Panic attacks? Extreme dissatisfaction with life? Depression?
Whatever you call it, it is your SOUL REBELLING. Your Soul is a very real part of you, and you are finding yourself in bits because you know nothing about it. You have neglected that part of you for a long time and now it says 'Enough is enough!'.
People you know for a long time feel somehow foreign. You feel disjointed, disheartened, like you don't know who you are anymore. Like you are living someone else's life! And you are...
You dissociated, drifted so far away from who you (deep down) DESIRE TO BE, your True Self, that you question your own sanity. You wonder if life was intended for you this way - so discontent, unfulfilled, stressful and sad. You live, but don't feel at all ALIVE.
You have CRISIS of the mind and body on your hands to deal with, usually suffering from some form of mental and physical ailment. From multiple food sensitivities, chronic fatigue, autoimmune conditions, or any stress related diseases manifesting in your body and mind.
All that are just visible, palpable SYMPTOMS of a much deeper issue.
Your body is a part of a larger whole. The mind (emotion)-body-soul complex works in tune and in relation to each of its parts. You cannot separate them. Yet medicine focuses largely on our bodily symptoms, psychiatry/psychology on our mental issues. But who will heal our Soul??
Luckily modern medicine and psychology are finally starting to understand the intimate interconnectedness of our body - psyche - soul system, its totality and complexity.
'So WHY has this happened to me?' you ask.
A surprisingly simple answer to this is: You stopped listening to yourself.
You have been listening to everyone else but you. You stopped trusting yourself, and although your body-mind-soul has long warned you about things not being well you ignored it. For so long your went against yourself, not knowing how to deal with your emotional pain, you simply followed the crowd. You have dealved into what OTHERS do: the 'tried and tested' ESCAPISM. Denial supported by distractions.
I have been there too. It is much easier to be avoidant, to block things out, to ignore our pain, pretend it's ok, stick our heads in the sand. It is more convenient to hide than to tackle things head on. One has to have some guts to even ACCEPT that something has gone wrong, that WE made a mistake somewhere...
Emotionally we tend to be all over the place, diagnosed with PTSD, personality disorders, anxiety, depression, panic attacks. Finding ourselves addicted to numbing substances in a desperate attempt to cope. Alcohol, sleeping pills, happy pills, TV, shopping, video games, sex, RELATIONSHIPS, illegal drugs - the list is endless. We do anything to distract ourselves from the painful emotions we feel. From the lack of contentment, the emptiness in our hearts...
The society and our surroundings happily cater to soothing our pain. They helps us to deny ourselves the unhappy part of Self, pushing us further away from recovery. And as the pain gets worse one needs a stronger painkiller, right?
Until the day our Souls can't take it anymore. Untill the pain we feel is worse than our FEAR of admitting that we somehow failed. That perhaps we missed something, not really knowing how to live our lives...
Our souls starved to death, we are exhausted SERVING others. We live catering to everyone else's need but our own !
Since childhood we have been moulded TO FIT other people's lives. Our parents, teaches, preachers, friends, partners...and our children. THEIR wants, needs and desires. We pleased our way into a number of jobs, friedships, relationships, marriages. The desire to be someone else who is accepted, desired, respected, loved, was way stronger than our INNATE desire to be true to who we are. In the process of wanting to be respected, accepted and loved we lost all the respect and love for ourselves. We rejected ourselves. The self-neglect has reached an alarming level because we ignored what rang true for us for so long.
So the only way back 'home' means to un-become all that we became...
To return back to who we once were - the happy, joyous, carefree and curious child, we must start with inner healing. Our Inner Child got bruised, wounded by the process of shaping, the conditioning by our families, religions, society. We have been cultivating our False Self (Ego) and it took over our lives. The layers of our False Self just kept piling on, reflecting in the weight we carry today. Our demon of a false belief structure brings us nothing but suffering. Life feels 'heavy', no fun, and just a chore, drama, disappointment, stress and NEGATIVITY. Nothing we once knew life can be. We feel like we are living a bad dream we have no control over, wanting to wake up. And that is exactly what is required from us.
Your pain is your wake-up call, you teacher, your healer in disguise. Make it your friend and stop running away from it. Attend to it. Attend to YOU! Be brave. Be kind and patient with yourself. Only you can release yourself from the prison of your darkness. I guarantee you that when you see the light on a horizon you won't EVER look back.
These further readings will be necessary for your further advancement and understanding yourself: Who are you? Do you love you? Do you know your mind/Ego? Do you understand your emotions? What is your belief system like? Learn about your in-tuition and start trusting yourself.
Thank you for reading. If my article contributed to understanding yourself, please be generous and share it with others.
Copyright © 2016 Michaela Patel