Not Enlightened
This week I came face to face with my most unskillful self. I watched as I took a mostly harmless situation and turned it into a nosedive of blaming others, projection, and self-pity. I was angry and hurt (about nothing that actually has any relevance to anything anymore, as these things usually go), and I was unable to pull myself out of the hole I had dug for myself. In fact, I watched as I dug the hole deeper, and deeper, and deeper.
It’s a familiar place. Having been through my own high-conflict divorce, I am mostly comfortable residing in the powerless anguish of anger and frustration that has no constructive outlet. Trying to work with an un-workable ex gives one great practice at avoiding total self-destruction in those places. Yet the deep neural groove still exists and, as our minds are wont to do, I can easily and effortlessly head right back down that path whenever those gates are opened, no matter the trigger. Early in our divorces we go there and don’t even see ourselves doing it, and then, with practice (and the help of a good coach), we learn to pull ourselves out before we stay there too long.
Most of the time I can do that. I’ve been meditating for over 25 years, so mindfulness has become one of my bff’s. I started meditating the first Tuesday after 9/11 in 2001 when I needed to find a way to hold the confusion and fear I was having around our country being attacked. This notion of “holding” feelings is something I talk about a lot in divorce coaching. It’s the idea that we have to get good at turning towards our emotions, rather than away from them, and being a sort of gentle and loving container for them. Like being hugged by a most benevolent mother when you’re having a terrible day (no matter how benevolent your own mother may have been) we nurture ourselves the way we long to be nurtured when we are in pain. Supported. Accepted. Held. This is what we offer ourselves when we experience difficult and unpleasant emotions. And because many of us were not really taught how to do this in our formative years, we must teach ourselves how to do it now when our feelings are way more complex than they were when we were 4. I have listened to and sat through teachings upon teachings on this subject. I’ve read pretty much most of the books. And I have done the most essential step in the process, which is to practice; practice holding all the difficult feelings when they arise, holding them with loving kindness and compassion.
I did none of that shit this week.
My job as a coach is to walk others through the difficult fires of their own emotions. Like traversing a wild and inhospitable jungle, I provide map, flashlight, and a still voice to help usher people through to calmer, easier terrain. But when it comes to doing that for myself, I have to work much, much harder. And the fact is, I think we all do. We’re all well aware that we’re able to help our friends and even our children through some of the worst times. We validate, we empathize, we urge self-compassion above all else until feelings are eased or resolved. But when it comes to us, to our own painful feelings, we are often forcibly un-gentle, unkind, and stupidly entitled to the tantrum we’re having, outward or inward, until we’ve slashed and burned the jungle to the ground.
Have mercy on me as I catalogue here all the things I did instead of recognizing and allowing, investigating and nurturing my difficult feelings.
I laid in bed for an hour and a half not falling asleep and resisting all better judgement to get out of bed to journal or meditate or even distract myself with peaceful music or a book. When I did get out of bed, I took a shot of vodka, grumbling about feeling alone and sorry for myself. When I awoke a few hours later from a boozy hot flash (oh, the glamours of womanhood!), I laid in bed and watched as my mind crafted stories about how hurt I was and how it was all other people’s faults, and how I was going to teach them a lesson about their selfishness. I tossed and turned, still refusing to do any of the things I knew would help me. I was so angry I couldn’t cry. I was so frustrated I was paralyzed, so I laid there in bed till the sun came up and finally, finally, decided it was time to get myself a cup of coffee and listen to a guided meditation on “Sitting With Difficult Emotions.”
I think it’s fair to say we’ve all been here. I mean, it’s not like we don’t know what to do. But sometimes the feelings are so strong, and our resources are so low that we almost can’t muster the resolve to do anything different but wallow, tell ourselves stories, and fester. Think about your high-conflict divorce, how helpless you feel sometimes to protect your kids, or yourself from the lies and accusations your ex hurls at you. Or think about our current state of affairs in the US, our anger and helplessness, our fury and frustration that no one is listening to us, or seeing the injustice, or doing anything to stop it. Everything is wrong, and while it’s certainly possible for us to walk away from whatever screen or person is causing us suffering, sometimes we want nothing more than to feel the disgust and torment, even when we know we are making it worse all by ourselves.
Like Prometheus chained to his rock, his liver pecked out by the eagle each morning, only to have it grow back to be eaten again, we are pros at shackling ourselves to our interpretations, to the identities wrapped up in those stories, and the emotional loops that we perpetuate. Sometimes we’re focused so much on replaying the hurt and ruminating on self-pity that we feel compelled to actively not stop feeding the eagle. We know we should do the more “enlightened” thing. We should help ourselves out of the hole by finding a better-feeling thought, by calming ourselves down, by sending kindness to the hurt parts of ourselves. But instead, we chain ourselves to our rock of suffering and just practice the misery.
It took a whole day but by the end of it I was back to a more loving and happy self. I made it through the day despite the terrible sleep debt and was able to shake off my self-pity and resentment. I’m pretty sure this isn’t in the story of Prometheus, but I reckon somewhere on that rock there was a way out for him. Maybe he needed to rectify with himself that sometimes we don’t get our way, or maybe he could have let go of his indignancy, or the perceived injustice, or his own feelings of impotence and the subsequent need to avenge himself against the Gods. Something, anything, that would have freed him from that place in his own mind where he was causing himself a suffering far greater than anyone or anything outside of him could inflict. Maybe sometimes we can make the leap, taking a more enlightened approach to our pain and suffering. And sometimes, even when solace and peace are so much closer than we think, sometimes, we choose the sorry self-gratification of resistance. And sometimes that’s ok.
