Picture courtesy of unsplash
I recently blew my life up. I’m not happy about it, but it’s my own fault, and it could’ve been avoided, but sometimes that’s the way things go. Nonetheless, one of the lessons I’ve taken from this recent experience is how important it is to recognize that sometimes internal work isn’t enough, especially when you’re dealing with situations of stress and trauma that you haven’t fully processed.
Meditation and other forms of internal work are good for working through issues, but one of the pitfalls that accompanies any form of internal work is that it is subjective. You may be thinking you’re doing okay because of the work you’re doing, but actually there may be patterns you aren’t seeing or recognizing as problematic. When that happens you can end up sabotaging yourself.
So what do you do to catch yourself before you fall off that cliff?
First, you have to recognize the difference between doing internal work around a minor issue and a major issue. If you don’t see the difference, you won’t necessarily recognize when that major issue needs something additional that the internal work can’t provide. A major issue could be the death of a family member, or it could be leaving a job you hated. There may be things you need to unpack about those events that simply can’t be done with internal work alone.
Second, you find the resources you need to help you process what you’re going through. Get some help from a therapist, for example, because the therapist can provide an objective perspective that you might just need to situate the experiences you’re dealing with. Talk to a spiritual counselor, but get help from someone who has the necessary skills and perspective to you look at your situation from outside your own biased perspective.
Third, do some activity that gets you out of your head and your heart, and allows you to fully embody what you’re working through. It is so easy to get caught up in your head and heart. I’m certainly living proof of that and I found recently that working on on a garden project and taking a job at Amazon as a package handler helped me take everything and embody it, and that’s allowed me to start working through it.
And you can keep doing internal work. Just don’t let that internal work be the only means by which you examine and work through major events in your life, because even though it can help you unpack things, it can also just as easily lead you down a rabbit hole. Knowing when to look toward external sources that can help you process things can be just as important a skill as all the internal work you can do.
