Do you ever get that feeling like your sinking…and sinking and sinking?
Not the one that comes when your stomach sinks and you realize “oh crap, this one thing is not going as expected.” That’s different from what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about the feeling that you are sinking into a deeper and deeper pit of nothingness. Like some sort of weird emotional quicksand. I’ve been there and when I think back I’m always reminded of the Neverending Story. Do you remember that? The story world was being swallowed up but nothingness because of a lack of belief. Sounds rather familiar no?
The nothingness is a dark place, a lonely place and I want to talk about it.
There I said it. People have cautioned me about talking about this because they say if you spend a lot of time thinking and writing and thinking some more you are going to invite that into your life. Bunch o’crap if you ask me. My intention is not to do that. It is to talk about so those who feel that way know that they are by no stretch of the imagination, alone. I want to stop the nothingness too!
You are not alone. The nothingness pit if FULL of people. Trust me. You just can’t see them yet because that is the trickiest part of feeling this way. It causes you to isolate yourself without you even realizing it. It’s hard to see past your own self.
Shame, fatigue, lethargy, confusion, embarassment…you name it. The emotions that prevent us from stepping out and asking for help runs a rather large list.
There is so much of this going on right now with all the cutbacks, homes being lost, fear etc that I really feel the need to talk about it. To bring it OUT of the darkness.
There is no shame in falling down. It happens. Sometimes, through literally NO fault of our own, sometimes we’ve made a bad choice and sometimes…yes sometimes, we royally screwed up and ended up face first on the floor.
It happens.
As with every event, it’s what you do afterwards that really matters.
What I’ve learned from feeling like life screwed me over, is that I have a choice at that point. I can play the victim card and start the sinking. Or I live in gratitude for what is still in my life and what is still to come.
I have been in a position where I had to sell some of my things in order to eat. My goodness that was hard. I cried and cried about how I didn’t deserve this; how I’d always worked hard and done the ‘right’ things in life. Yet, here I was. You know what? At the end of the day it wasn’t that bad. Stuff is just stuff.
Here’s the other interesting thing I learned. The darkness cannot easily exist when the light of love, hope and a thankful heart are present. It just can’t seem to co-exist. Don’t get me wrong. I had some days that were darker than others…but I was no longer sinking into it. I know where the exit is located.
Can I share an example that still makes me so grateful that I have a bit of tears show up? I was cutting waaaaaaay back on everything. I cut out the TV cable and was pretty sad about that because I used it to distract myself from life of painful recovery. I looked for another way to use my time and I began to use it to read books that taught me so much more about living well. I count that time as a time of peace and internal healing. I snuggled up with my dog and cat under a blanket and a cup of tea and read. I wrote in my journal and had time to reflect and think.
It was like I had been living in a room with a dim light and suddenly someone added a whole bunch of bright lamps.
If I had simply despaired, or tried to fight it, I never would have had that time. I looked for what opportunities presented to me and I stepped up and took them as small as they might seem.
The thing is if you are experiencing that feeling of life being out of your control, please know that it is not. You have the power to change it. You really do! It may not happen overnight and there is no magic pill but you can step out of what is dragging you down and pulling you under. This is what I help with – setting goals and breaking them down to ‘those little steps’ that make a huge difference. I’ve seen the difference it makes.
Ask for help if you need it. Sometimes this turns into a depression that needs medical help to overcome. That’s okay as long as you get the help you need. Sometimes you just need to force yourself into a next little step. Let’s face it. You are reading this and made it to the bottom which tells me you don’t want to live stuck in the dark. You don’t have to.
You can do this. Your light, your energy, is needed in this world as much as anyone’s. It’s time to talk about feeling like we’ve sunk and are sinking. It’s time to throw a few life preservers out there for others. Let’s shed some light on this and lift each other up.
Blessings
Dear Bonnie,
””The darkness cannot easily exist when the light of love, hope and a thankful heart are present””. You answered your Q. Always someone, somewhere, needs your golden pen.
Where there is life there is hope. “I have choices”…. that makes all the difference in the world.
It’s times like that when our friends are most valuable!
Yes indeed Roy. Good friends who have empathy and compassion as well as those who love you are like gold aren’t they?
Like Vixis, a mantra said out loud or perhaps shouted can be a first step. Mine is “I can choose how I feel; and today I choose to BE happy!” OK… not exactly grammatically correct, but it works for me. I believe that we need to visit the dark in order to see the light–polarity is a necessity.
lol Peggy Lee…I’ve done a lot of learning, researching, practicing and teaching around using affirmations and I’ve yet to worry about them being grammatically correct! 🙂 Whatever works with your heart is what matters. I think many people see the dark and even touch it but a few slide deeply into it and get lost there. This isn’t at all what we need to do in order to balance our understanding of life; but still some of us need to find our way out. And that means we need to stop being afraid or embarassed to look for help finding the light again.
I have found, recently, that the (out-loud) mantra “I am loved and I have choices” works for me. I will crawl out of the pit 🙂
That is a wonderful affirmation to use Vixis.