Feeling happy while feeling crappy

Here's one way to feel happy while feeling crappy. As I build this skill set, I'll share what works with all of you. Let me know if you try anything I suggest that helps you over the hurdles in your own life. And please share other things that help. I can use all the help I can get!

This morning, I am dealing with the following physical crap. 1 a headache that is likely the beginning of the bone pain that kicked in same time two weekends ago. 2. Nausea and 3. Fatigue (we're still here in chemo land, Dorothy!).

Here's what helps: I sit quietly and focus my attention, not on the discomfort itself ( doing that makes it worse), but on the emotions and thoughts it brings up. Here are some of them...

This is terrible. I hate this. I need to do something. I shouldn't be feeling like this. I should be handling this better. If I were more skilled, this wouldn't bother me so much. This is bad. Something must really be wrong to feel this bad. This pisses me off. I am sick and tired of this....the list goes on, and on, and on....

And here's what I do with all that. I accept it. I allow my resistance to all of it to fall, and I just allow the rush of thoughts, feelings and beliefs to flood into my consciousness without resistance. I experiment with just allowing all that stuff to simply exist inside my head. And here's the really important step. When I start to resist it, to push it away, to add new layers of thoughts like "this is just awful" or " this is too much", I allow those, too. For a moment in time, I simply try the experiment of letting absolutely every ridiculous, crazy, stupid thing that pops into my head to have permission to be there.

And here's what happens. It's all okay. The emotions well and they ebb. The thoughts pass through and move on. And I am left with a feeling of deep, inner peace that comes from simply acknowledging that all that stuff, because some part of my brain has deemed it okay, has lost its power to harm. If a feeling is just a feeling, then what is the harm? If I am not afraid to feel afraid, where is the harm? If I can forgive myself for judging myself, then who is hurt by the judgement?

At the core of this practice, which I learned from the Sedona method, is a recognition that, if we can make a choice to allow, rather than resist, our emotions, we can handle them. There appears to be a part of our brain, some kind of executive function, that exists separately from the emotion. We access it, not by resisting the emotion, trying to change it or make it go away, but by letting it be.

It makes sense that our emotions are signals that something from our environment is impacting us and needs addressing. Once we address it, the signal has done its job and the body can turn on the off switch. The question is, can we access the off switch consciously, when we know the situation can't be changed, and the emotion itself has become a problem? I think we can. But the irony is that the off switch looks more like an "on." Buddhists say "What we resist, persists." Spiritual take on this aside, I have observed it to be true in the test tube I live inside. Try it and see if it's also true for you.
This skill of focusing my conscious mind on allowing, rather than resisting emotional and cognitive reactions seems to change their course. Over and over again, I find this practice simply works in an almost magical way. I would love to see an EEG or brain scan looks like when I do this. I do know how it feels, and it feels great.

Some people give this experience a spiritual name, they call this inner calm soul, or grace, or an awareness of God. For me, that is less important than the fact of my own ability to feel it. The calm at the center of my storm is something I experience directly. And I know it is good.

Here I sit, nauseous and tired and perfectly content. Letting the emotions around it, and the thoughts that drift in and out of my mind about it, pass through on their merry way. And I, some part of me that exists here beyond all that, is at rest and at peace, filled with joy at being here on this gorgeous Fall day. Crappy and happy and very much alive.

Peace, Colleen