Do you let yourself be?
How letting yourself be through mindfulness creates
better mental health
Do you let yourself be? I mean really be with whatever is coming up for you?
No. You don’t. I’m confident of this because most of us don’t. My spiritual teacher calls this “meddling with ourselves.” Meaning we don’t actually let ourselves experience and digest what is happening –typically our painful experiences. And the only way to really heal and have overall good mental health and emotional intelligence is to let ourselves be through mindfulness.
Feelings and experiences we typically avoid fully allowing are feelings of helplessness, boredom, despair, fear, rejection and embarrassment (and many more). I know what you’re thinking: Well of course I want to avoid those feelings! Those feelings suck! And also you’re thinking: are you saying I’m just supposed to sit all day in bed if I’m sad? I mean…maybe? But if you actually let yourself be really sad– like full body, country song, cry all the tears kind of sad, chances are you won’t stay in bed that long. It’s the meddling that prolongs the sadness. Many of you reading this can sense this is true as you remember that you usually feel better after a good cry. Others of you are deeply afraid you’ll be stuck in the emotion if you let yourself actually feel it. I get it. Some of this will take practice and baby steps.
So what do I mean by “being with an experience.” I mean that you observe with curiosity (even when it hurts) the experience you’re having. This is called mindfulness. This does not mean you’re in your head ruminating about what he said or she did. You’re not rehearsing the story over and over about how you’ve been wronged. Yes, you may have been wronged– but what are you actually feeling? Hurt? Embarrassment? Rejection? Angry? If you’re feeling those things, how do you know you’re feeling them? Does your body feel a particular way? Where does the emotion express itself? Are there images? Do you have impulses to move a particular way? Can you let yourself growl or stomp (without harming yourself or another being)? Will you let tears flow? Will you let your body curl up or stretch out? Can you let the feeling just exist without doing anything about it?
To do this well, you have to cultivate the practice of mindfulness– which means the ability to observe with curiosity your experience without getting swept away by the experience. This takes the ability to pause. To catch yourself and take some deep breaths. To ask yourself some questions– “what’s happening right now? Let me see if I can get some distance from this and just look at what’s here. What am I feeling? Where is it in my body?” It takes some practice. And I know you can do it, because I learned how to do it.
Here are three ways to recognize how you’re not letting yourself just be with your experience:
#1 Your inner critic gets really loud.
Almost always the inner critic/super ego comes in to help you avoid feeling something - even if the inner critic is really mean to you. So instead of exploring embarrassment about your fat thighs or your crooked teeth, your inner critic comes to beat you up: “Serves you right, you don’t exercise enough!” or “You’re pathetic and self absorbed. There are children starving in Africa!” And then you believe those thoughts and now feel shame. You’ve just meddled with yourself instead of letting yourself just feel embarrassed about some part of your body. If you start hearing the inner critic, see where you started before the inner critic came on line. What were you feeling that you didn’t like feeling? Practice waving away the inner critic: ”Go away and let me see what’s actually here right now.”
#2 You concentrate on all the things your partner, boss or the driver in front of you are doing wrong.
This is called projection. Instead of dealing with your painful inner experiences, you focus on everyone else’s flaws or put all your effort into fixing their lives. Stop meddling with them and stop meddling with your experience. Feel, explore, and get curious about what’s really there that you don’t want to face.
#3 You do anything to fix or change the experience of your feelings
So you grab a glass or three of wine after a stressful day of people yelling at you so you can disconnect and repress. You rationalize away your partner’s mean comments. You pretend or you don’t feel a certain way. You distract, numb out and avoid at all costs.
Really allowing yourself to just be – be with whatever arises takes effort and practice and patience. And, I can tell you from ongoing experience and practice, it’s so worth it.
Note-With clinical mental illness, while mindfulness is still extremely helpful and essential, what to do with emotions is
complex and nuanced and needs expert therapeutic intervention to work with.
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