...aren’t taught about how to cope with uncomfortable ones in a healthy way. Be it addiction to phones, or drugs, it’s a human attempt to help oneself. We are wired for belonging and connection, and so, when we don’t find it in a person, we’ll find it in some ‘thing’. It’s what keeps us alive. But we dehumanise others as a collective. We label people. We are treated based on symptoms, instead of the root cause being addressed in life.
Everyone reads quotes on “life is too short” etc. and shares them on social media. The question is, how much do you apply on a daily basis?
While 2020-21 was a year of grief for most of us, it was also a year of mass spiritual awakening. The shifts that have taken place. Be it an existential crisis for some, or conscious parenting for some. The paradigm shift in the context of self-education and homeschooling.
Healing in a nutshell is “I can accept being misunderstood. I can say no without feeling guilty. I can accept your perception of me. I am worthy of love for simply existing.”
We live in a world where we know we all have to go one day, and yet, we are deeply attached to those in our lives… Because some of us live with our hearts open, we give it our all, and for us, that’s life worth living. Most humans were stuck in the rat race, until corona came to say hello. While there are many who did face themselves with some uncomfortable questions, some of us still feel stuck.
We are social beings, and seeking love + connection, being our most basic survival needs as a species, leads our brains to come up with coping mechanisms, from a very young age. Returning to yourself by unlearning, the conditioning + learned behaviours + beliefs, along with becoming aware of the survival patterns that did help you at one point but are probably hindering your personal + relational growth today, can be your biggest contribution to the world.
Healing ourselves so we can be facilitators in the healing journey(s) of others. We evolve when we question the norm. Your relationship with you is the most important relationship there will ever be. So, knowing yourself makes all the difference! And, that, is a lifelong journey. With practice at observing ourselves, we get better at knowing how to become better versions of ourselves than we were yesterday.
The fact that we are fed with ‘buy this’ to become ‘more this’, ‘get this’ to feel ‘more this’ – is evident that not wanting anything isn’t good for profit, and if all the womxn in the world woke up tomorrow feeling completely secure in their bodies, the industries banking on our insecurities would run out of business.
It hurts me to see how we tend to question our self-worth by giving our power away into the society’s hands, or by letting others define it for us. From personal experience, the more you remember that people’s behaviour is how they feel about themselves, the easier it gets to not take things personally. So when we receive compliments, we know that this person is only understanding us through themselves, and the same goes for when we’re being judged. Another human cannot ‘complete’ you, and vice versa. This belief has led to self-sacrifice and self-betrayal being glorified. Each of us as an individual, is a whole and complete human being. A partner can only be a bonus, who ‘adds’ to your happiness, but isn’t responsible for creating it for you in the first place, and vice versa.
In the words of Dr. Nicole, “we live in an emotionally phobic society”. And to be able to find that inner peace, we need to turn inward. Yes, that can be uncomfortable for most of us. Because letting all the repressed emotions come up can be overwhelming. But we also know now that the only way to heal is through.
The mental health, personal development and wellness industry needed a disruption since long. Especially in the context of racial trauma, lgbtqia+ clients, emotional literacy, grief awareness, conscious parenting, and most importantly, a trauma informed approach/lens of empathy. Labelling and dehumanising has gone on for too long (especially for those of us dealing with addiction), instead of really getting to the root of it, like Johann Hari did. So many of them are my mentors, including Dr. Gabor Maté, Bessel van der Kolk, Dr. Jonice Webb, Frank Anderson, Allyson Dinneen, Susan David, Dr. Bruce Lipton, to name a few.
“You are not what your mind says, you are the awareness witnessing what it says.”
– Garima Nagpal