What do I mean by the corners of recovery? During emotional recovery there are several different stages; denial, guilt, anger, bargaining, sadness and acceptance. And these have been well documented. But what I hear in session again and again are the stages between the stages. When you are feeling sad and you transition to anger, what happens? When you are coming to the end of the recovery and moving towards acceptance, what happens?
What I hear is people are experiencing a variety of uncomfortable feelings and thoughts. They say, ‘I am so bored of being sad, it feels like I have been here forever.’ Or ‘I’ll never meet anyone ever again. I had my chance and I blew it. It’s too late, I will be alone forever.’
Key Considerations
What these statements say to me is that you are about to turn a corner. You are moving from one stage of recovery to the next. And the only way this can happen is if the present stage has finished. And, often, the only way to know this is if you feel it. But the thoughts that come with these feelings aren’t always helpful. Psychologically we know that we have finished with the stage we are in and the only way we can let ourselves know this is by changing how that stage feels by throwing in feelings that make that stage feel too uncomfortable to remain in. But because the feeling is uncomfortable the general assumption is it’s bad. Or our mind does. Something is changing and we do not recognise it, it’s a new experience. It is taking us away from what we are used to, even if that place is uncomfortable.
At this point it’s easy to get stuck. We believe what our mind is telling us and often this is that we aren’t good enough, we aren’t strong enough to move on. That somehow we have failed. We listen to the thoughts and we agree with them because the feelings attached match. That means they must be true. And the urge to give up and stay where we are emotionally at that point, or spiral down, becomes extremely compelling.
A Closer Look
What seems to happen time and again is that we believe the thoughts and we stop. We stop our progress and we start to ruminate on why. Why am I not good enough, strong enough, desirable enough? And when we start looking we always find answers to back up these beliefs. This then confirms the thoughts. It becomes a spiral of unhelpfulness. We have misunderstood why these thoughts came to us in the first place. They come to us needing us to fight/challenge them. Prove them wrong. Show them that we don’t have to stay sad/angry/single etc. That change is possible and necessary and the only way for true change to occur to is take responsibility for ourselves and forge a way forward.
The minds ability to believe everything it thinks and therefore not question it keeps us trapped in these cycles. I am single because I am unlovable and it’s too late. This becomes a fact even though there is little to no evidence to back it up. How can we know that we will never meet someone when the future has not yet happened? We don’t even know what will happen tomorrow, let alone every day for the rest of our lives. But we don’t question these thoughts, we succumb to them, allowing them to become facts. And the longer we succumb the more real they feel, and often, the more real they become.
Moving Forward
What is infinitely better is to sit with these thoughts and feelings and to understand that the discomfort they bring are just indictors telling us that it is time to move on. They are designed to make us question why our present state is no longer working and find one that is more helpful to us. That may be returning to a previous stage temporarily or moving to the next stage. But ultimately we want to be moving in a direction that makes us feel better.
And one of the most powerful tools for this is mindful awareness. Instead of listening to the thoughts attached to the feelings we want to try and listen to the initial feeling. This can often be quite obvious with something like ‘I am bored of being sad’. Boredom is the underlying feeling but the thoughts start to tell you that you are stuck and that your life sucks. You get caught up in those thoughts and they spiral away, feeding into one another and telling you why your life sucks and how stuck you are. But what would be more helpful would be to look at the boredom and try and sit with that feeling. I am bored. This suggests that something needs to change to relieve the boredom. So what is that? Depending on your situation it could be a variety of things from getting back on the dating scene to moving house or job. What has caused you pain? What triggered this current trauma that has sent you into emotional recovery?