(Or 5 tips for checking back into your life)
Have you ever felt that there are moments when you are checked out of your own life? Do distractions, worries, and/or the busy-ness of life make it difficult for you to be fully present and focused?
“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”
― Eckhart Tolle
A moment of inattention
A few months ago, I sliced off the side of my left fingertip in a moment of inattention. I had been suffering from a virus for the past two weeks and was feeling depleted. The day before, I had attended a powerful 12-hour healing workshop. I woke up the next morning feeling exhausted but motivated. I had managed to block off five hours to write in my novel, and decided to make a big pot of soup before I started to sustain me through the day. Listening to a Pema Chodron podcast on “uncovering warmth in our hearts,” I started chopping kale. My knife was a little blunt, so I got out a new knife my housemate had just bought. A moment later, I was in excruciating pain, and a ½ inch of skin was on the chopping board, nestled in a piece of kale. My plans to write went out the window, as I spent the next weeks nursing my finger.
Being someone who takes pride in living mindfully, I felt shame at having hurt myself so mindlessly. And yet the incident taught me invaluable lessons in surrendering to what is, and releasing any expectation of how I thought things should be. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the point I shaved off is the first point on the Large Intestine meridian, which is associated with letting go. In the weeks following the mishap, I worked on releasing remaining layers of old fears from my childhood around being visible and fully present in my body. I also cleared some old ancestral beliefs (especially in my paternal lineage) that it’s not safe to pursue one’s dreams. That the only way to survive is to stay under the radar and not be too visible. My father broke that trend when he moved to Paris to be a writer in the early 1960s, but his failure to achieve his dream weighed heavily on him. He died young of a heart attack, and doing my healing work I realized that I had absorbed some of his ambivalent energy towards writing and following his purpose.
As I witnessed the miracle of my skin growing back a little bit each day, I could feel myself start to inhabit my body more fully. And the next time I sat down to write, I felt the words start flowing more easily, as though they were coming from a different part of my being. I wasn’t trying to make something happen, but rather was opening up to what wanted to come. And the remaining ball of tender scar tissue is a daily reminder to return to myself.
The following is an invitation for you to explore how you check out and why, as well as tips (no pun intended) for being more present.
1) Recognize your distraction pattern
We live in an era where distractions abound, and it takes dedication and effort to be truly present with ourselves and others. What are your favorite ways to check out or distract? This could include working overtime, shopping, eating, checking social media, playing Pokemon, binge-watching on Netflix, obsessing over the elections, etc. Although the line between what we do for entertainment and ways we distract can be blurred, the latter is often characterized by excess/difficulty finding an off switch, and feelings of shame afterwards. Start identifying what kinds of emotions and situations increase your distraction patterns (for example, stress at work, feelings of loneliness, an argument with your partner, and so on).
2) Identify your triggers
Now that you are paying attention to how you distract, think of what kinds of situations make you want to distract. Is it external demands, feeling overwhelmed, a feeling of not being enough for the task at hand? Do you tend to distract more at a certain time of day? Trace this feeling back in time. When did you first start checking out or distracting? What was happening back then, and what were you feeling about it?
3) Track your excuses/justifications
Notice the excuses you make to justify the patterns. For example “I’ve worked hard, I deserve this.” Underlying the excuse is a belief about yourself and/or the world. It may be that you are all alone, that the world is unfair, that you need to fight to get what’s yours, or that you are not enough. As with the triggers, there is a reason you developed those beliefs.
4) Acknowledge the distraction for how it has helped you
Distraction patterns are indicators of parts of us that didn’t feel safe or welcome. For anyone who has suffered from trauma, dissociating may have been key to surviving. In any case, you learned to distract or check out as a way of avoiding something, for example to numb the pain of having parents who weren’t present (physically and/or emotionally), or who were fighting all the time. Send gratitude to this pattern for all the ways it has served you.
5) Practice staying with what is arising
Although checking out can bring momentary relief, whenever we leave ourselves it creates an internal vacuum. Upon returning, we may have an even deeper sense of despair or shame, giving us little incentive to want to stay present with what is.
I know that mindfulness and presence have become buzzwords, but they really are the only way through the things we are wanting to avoid. So when you feel the pull to distract, or your habitual thought patterns pulling you into worry or anxiety, I invite you to breathe. Stay right where you are. Notice any discomfort that arises, and breathe into the discomfort. Feel into what is wanting to hide, what you are trying to avoid. You might want to squeeze or pat up and down your body, since presence is an embodied state, and this is a way to delineate the contours of your body. And start feeling into the possibility of letting go of some of the old habitual patterns that served you once, but are now only keeping you from what you are most wanting. Connection. Wholeness. Aliveness. Permission to be fully yourself.
Presence is my breath nudging its way into the logjam of my thoughts;
It is the syncing of my nervous system, my mind and my heart,
And the contours of my world coming into sharper focus.
Presence is a reminder to be patient and to trust;
It is the loosening of my stranglehold on control;
And an opening to limitlessness.
© Jenny Brav
