Numbing

Hey Party People,

We’re going to dive into a heavier topic today… the idea of numbing. So to start this post I ask you, How have you faced your situation? What choices are you making every day to live your life (or run away from life) during COVI-19? For many of us we avoiding our reality and numbing our emotions. I get it I’ve been there, done that.

Numbing is a behaviour or habit we practice to avoid a feeling or emotion that is uncomfortable or unpleasant. These emotions could be anxiety, sadness, vulnerability, shame, fear, uncertainty, unworthiness, and so on. These are hard emotions to feel, and even harder emotions to show other people. So, to hide our true feelings, or to avoid feeling weak, we often revert to coping mechanisms to push these feelings down and avoid dealing with them.

What do you think many of us are doing right now? How many of us are ignoring or numbing our experience with food, alcohol, sleep, video games, work, social media, prescription drugs, etc? This is a natural reaction to our changed realities, but we have to be careful that these coping mechanisms or numbing behaviours don’t become our new habits. Or perhaps these have always been part of our daily routine, but are exasperated by what feels like endless days of isolation.

Now I’m far from an expert on the topics of numbing, or coping mechanisms, but I have lived through a time, not during this pandemic, where I suppressed a world of hurt with food, online dating, and endless hours of Netflix. I wore a mask day in and day out and pretended I was ok. Very few people knew my pain because I pushed it down, making myself believe I was “over it.” I even fooled myself into believing I was ok until a friend, made me feel safe enough to let down my guard and I crumbled, I fell apart and all the pain and feelings came rushing back. I mean the ugly cries came out you guys. But it was a release and realization that I hadn’t healed, and I wasn’t ok. I was just masking and ignoring my experience, for months, years even! It wasn’t until that moment that I realized those feelings of unworthiness, shame, and heartache still lived inside of me.

The point of me sharing this experience is that if we turn to numbing our current experience, if we push down our feelings, we do ourselves a disservice. Those feelings don’t go away just because we ignore them or numb them. They live inside of us and will come out in other ways like emotional eating, anger, drinking, depression, weight gain, and so on.

How we respond to COVID-19 and process this experience has a huge impact on our lives, now and for the unforeseeable future. When we turn to unhealthy foods, drinking, sleeping, drugs, etc. we are attempting to mask or ignore how our world has been and is being impacted. The unfortunate thing though is that you can’t avoid what is happening, its not going away. But how you are showing up, or not, in this time, is going to impact how much harder you have to work on the other side of this thing.

Imagine yourself in a hole, you can still see the light at the top and there is a rope to pull yourself out. Ok, it sucks because you’re in a dark and dirty hole, but its ok, you can still see the light. There is a way out. But every time you reach for that extra glass (or bottle) of wine you fall deeper into that hole. Each day you don’t get out of bed the hole continues to get deeper. Each time you order a pizza and breadsticks (and proceed to eat the entire thing), you fall deeper. Each time you put another cigarette to your lips, or pills to your mouth, you fall deeper and deeper. Before you realize it, you are so far down, and so deep into this hole, you can no longer see the light, and the rope to climb out seems endless.

Now ask yourself, when do you want to start that climb? Because you will have to climb out of that hole one day to regain control of your life. Do you want to wait until that hole is so deep it takes years to climb out? If in a month, 6 months, or a year from now you were living the same life you are today, would you be happy?

If the answer is no, begin fighting for your life NOW. Not tomorrow. NOW.

Your actions, choices and habits matter today for your life tomorrow. If we don’t change what isn’t working in our lives, we will continually live the same day over and over again.

Ok enough with the heavy. Here’s your party jam to get you up off that couch and get a smile on your face.

YouTube >> Cupid – Cupid Shuffle

Spotify >> Cupid – Cupid Shuffle  

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With so much gratitude,

-S