You’re sitting at your desk at work, trying to concentrate and there it is, that old familiar feeling you know so well. That pain in your chest isn’t heartburn, it’s heartache. The feeling overwhelms you and you can’t shake it. This is nothing like you’ve ever dealt with before, because nothing makes it go away. It’s driving you crazy. It’s all you think about day and night and night and day.
It might be early on, after the break up, or you were battling your way through it, making progress and then you look at their social media account and see that picture of them with someone new and you are gutted. You’ve just busted open that wound that had been healing so nicely. Now all you can think about is them together and how maybe it was you, because they’ve moved on and are so happy and here you are writhing in agony.
All you know is that these thoughts are interfering with your day to day functioning. You’ve got urges to call them up and tell them off. You’ve thought about acting out in some way to get their attention. The logical part of your mind is battling with the emotional side and you honestly don’t know which side will win.
These thoughts are so overwhelming, so painful and so destructive, that all you want is some kind of relief. The emotionally stunted part of your psyche is trying to convince you that if you go to them, if you reach out, it will change things and bring you some peace. The logical side of you says, ‘do nothing, no contact, let it go.’ The deciding factor is your pride and that could go either way – ‘How dare you, you don’t deserve to see me cry. You’ll get nothing from me,” vs “How can you do this to me? Don’t you know I’m important. Didn’t I matter to you at all?”
All you know is that you need to feel better and you need to feel better right now.
It may help you to know that the acuteness of what you’re feeling is temporary. It will pass, but that doesn’t help you now. We could say that an addiction is anything that you can’t control and right now you can’t control your thoughts and emotions, so it’s a kin to substance addiction.
We could talk about trauma bonds. We could say that your over-the-top reaction to the rejection is a symptom of a deep, unhealed, childhood wound and you’d say. “Great. Knowing all this helps, but it doesn’t help the way I’m feeling.”
It is important to get to the bottom of your childhood wounds, because these types of relationships and reactions will become a recurring theme in your life if you don’t. Famous Psychoanalyst Carl Jung once said “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will forever direct your life and you will call it fate.”
If you have an emotional reaction every time someone does something that you object to, you give them the power to control you. In last week’s blog we talked about becoming like Teflon, letting other people’s stuff bounce off of you and not absorbing any of it, so that you can maintain your inner peace. When you learn to stabilize your emotions they can no longer be used against you and they can no longer sabotage you.
I can remember a few years back, being 3 months into an extreme fitness routine and I was seeing incredible progress. My brother decided that he would rather do something else than go to our family’s cottage for my birthday, like we had always done. It hurt me. It triggered all those feelings of rejection and not feeling like I was loved by my mother. I had a severe emotional reaction and it knocked me off my path. I stopped working out and reinstated my prior eating habits – thus negating 3 months of hard work. Emotions 1 – Sav 0
You may encounter incidents like the one above, or like the one discussed at the beginning of this post and you know that you have got to get control over your thoughts and your emotions – you just don’t know how. I can tell you through experiences that thing that helped me to master myself the most, was meditation.
Meditation can help you:
- Raise your emotional vibration and get to a state of love and kindness.
- Promote relaxation and calmness
- Enhance mental discipline
- Feel good
- Lower your pulse and your blood pressure * I do this every time I’m at the doctors office when she puts the blood pressure cuff on me.
- Helps with control and focus
- Promotes better health and bodily functions
- Reduces Pain
- Helps with Manifesting
- Clears any Chakra blockages
- Allow you to let go of your feelings and let them flow through and out of you
- Helps you to let go of the past and to focus on the present moment
- Helps let go of fear and anger…..it would take 100 pages to list all the benefits of meditation. I’ve been doing it for so long it is part of my daily routine. There are so many different types and practices it is definitely worth looking into an area that would be of benefit to you. I have recently started practicing Astral Projection and accessing my Akashic Records.
In my hypnosis practice I come across many people who are extremely high strung and full of nervous energy and anxiety. Xanax is their best friend and they just can’t relax. I can get them to recline, but as soon as I start my relaxation process they jump up and say, “Nope I can’t do this.”
I always say the same thing – “Try.”
Practice Practice Practice
If you want to be a great pianist you don’t sit down at a piano, open your music book and play like a concert pianist. When you first sit down to play you’re not going to be very good. It takes many hours of practice before you sound half way decent,. Any new endeavor will take time to master – you try and you fail and you keep on trying. Learning how to master Meditation is no different.
When you learn how to stop absorbing the negativity of others, paired with learning how to control and focus your thoughts and emotions, you have mastered your life. Now take a deep breath and relax….
Your Comments!!!!!!!
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When it comes to my childhood, I have figured out what happened through pictures & some things people had said. Especially what these wonderful coaches have been teaching. I thought that my mother’s abuse started at 5 years old, but I was a few years younger. With her bare hands, she nearly put me 6 feet under. She caused a brain injury. I thought, I got to 5, but my pictures say different. Every time, my picture was taken with me by my mother, it was clear that I didn’t want to be near her or her holding my hand, at only 2 years old. I would get yelled at, for looking so miserable, for my picture being taken.
I learned how to meditate in my early twenties during a self esteem program. I had a head injury in 2015,two spine surgeries in 2016, and my husband of 20 years walked out because he couldn’t deal with me being sick. I lost the ability to walk but I used meditation to keep my sanity. I knew that I was going to go crazy from the pain.. I am stil standing after getting the ability to walk again..
I recently had a conversation about meditation with a reiki practitioner. Reiki works for me but I’ve always gotten down on myself that guided or silent meditation makes me want to jump out of my skin. She assured me that not everyone is wired to benefit from it and in fact, it can hurt more than help people like me.
I find peace in action as oppposed to stillness. I find peace from obsessive thoughts thru my music ( drums and piano) or other creative processes like photography, art work, or writing. Doing something with my hands or setting my sights on an aesthic puts me in a more positive place.
Frankie – I can appreciate every individual’s uniqueness. Yoga and Tai-Chi are excellent ways to calm yourself through movement. The point I was trying to drive home was not so much the need for peace, per se, but the need to control and discipline the mind – which is hard to do when you are distracted doing other things.
You wrote this for ME. It’s EXACTLY what happens when I try to relax and be quiet. My brain goes on full obsession.
I am going to take a meditation class this next week.
I love all your insights and your understanding of how difficult this process is.
Thank you
Caroline S
For anyone out there who’s experiencing emotional turmoil from a heartbreak, I can attest to this – things will get better. It has for me. Now, I can take a walk outside, look up the blue sky and smell the air without feeling as though I am inhaling toxic fumes.
10 months ago. I was a walking mess and shadow of myself. I was caught up in a cloud of obsessive thinking and ruminating, day in day out. My sleeping and waking thoughts were about this person who left me with many unanswered questions. I prayed, read tons of articles on this blog and online, which provided me with the answers I needed to move on. In all, I’d add that time does heal wounds and NO CONTACT is the only medicine for these types of wounds.
Dear Savannah, thank you for your writings. If you can, please offer more resources on meditation practices.
This, for me, was one of your very best, most relatable articles ever! You have such an amazing way of articulating so precisely the exact anguish that comes from the obsessive thoughts and emotions of these painful, unhealthy relationships. The more I kept reading, the more I found myself continually thinking, “yep, I do that”, “I feel that way” or “that is me”.
Thank you for sharing your amazing gift and understanding perspective with those of us who have been there, done that, and/or still trying to let go.
All the best,
Kathleen
Three and a half months NC and still the thoughts are cathing me out.. needed this post very much to remind myself that things will get better and that I am in charge of the changes I want to see in my life.
From experience I can tell you that looking at my childhood traumas is probably the most painful thing I have ever had to do but it’s so worth it..
So, thank you for his post!