Don’t Do Anything, Just Listen To What Your Discomfort Means
Sometimes doing nothing is the most difficult thing that we can be asked or tried when we are feeling unwell. We believe that listening to what we are feeling, even if it is unpleasant, without the intention of finding a solution, is an unnecessary task. On the other hand, we behave as if the discomfort, instead of being listened to, recognized and accepted, should be hidden or rejected because the emotions that make us suffer or hurt us are unacceptable.
We forget to take into account that there are emotions occupying spaces in a furtive way, without making noise, which are filled with information and that listening to them will make us recognize them and get to know each other better. Remember that there are no good or bad emotions, but each and every one of them is necessary to appreciate our world and show us what we are like.
But learning to listen to our emotions requires having the ability to unconditionally accept what is happening to us, not to judge anyone or anything and, ultimately, to be able to live in the present. All of this is not easy, which is why in this article we will teach you to accept discomfort and use mindfulness as a tool to live in the present .
Listen and validate our emotions, they are part of us
Listening, accepting and validating our emotions does not mean resigning ourselves to reality. To resign yourself or give up, is to let yourself be overcome and convince yourself that nothing can be done in the face of what is happening to us. On the other hand, accepting and validating what we feel helps us to understand what is happening to us, to feel it and to assimilate it into our emotional universe.
This will make us aware of the power of our thoughts, our emotions and our own internal language. Keep in mind that what we say to ourselves or what we think (without having to communicate it to anyone) can hurt us more than what is actually happening. On the other hand, this damage is magnified when we refuse to accept what we are feeling.
We would be surprised to see how generally beneficial it is to listen to our discomfort. During the consultation, when we ask our patients to take their emotions into account, often important changes occur. For example, I remember that a patient stopped trying to eliminate anxiety attacks when he was feeling them, and in doing so he realized that the anxiety was the result of the pain coming from the anxiety attacks. death of his son. Once the cause was known, the seizures decreased in intensity until they disappeared.
What is applicable to anxiety also serves other negative emotions such as sadness or anger. Letting them come forward is difficult, but it is the necessary starting point in order to let them speak and be able to listen to their message. This is why I suggest a simple idea to you: allow your painful emotions to be with you, listen to their message without trying to eliminate them prematurely, and if you find yourself overwhelmed by them, seek help from a professional. -e professional.
Mindfulness as a tool for acceptance and listening
One of the easiest ways to start listening and accepting our discomfort is through the practice of mindfulness. Keep in mind that listening to our emotions is easier if we observe our mind. Thus, being aware of what we are thinking every moment allows us to capture details of our emotional life that we would otherwise ignore.
This is the power of observation: we only notice the nuances of our experience when we observe carefully, if we use our listening skills. For this reason, observing what we think, what we feel and what we notice in our body is very important. Furthermore, to take full advantage of this observation, we must proceed without getting caught up in the experiences that present themselves to us. To this end, we can follow the following strategies:
- Breathing as a point of departure and meeting: breathing is one of the easiest means to implement on a daily basis. Focusing on it is essential to start practicing mindfulness. Also, as soon as we lose our focus and merge with our thoughts, coming back to them will bring us back to the present moment.
- Everything gets worse before it gets better: when we start to practice listening to what we are feeling, accepting what is happening to us, our discomfort often gets worse. However, let us remember that this phenomenon is short-lived and that if we do things right, it won’t be long before we start to feel better.
- Scan our body to really know it: our body stores a multitude of information. Being aware of our feelings, of our tensions, will allow us to know ourselves better and to release emotions.
- Being kind to yourself and to life: we are often our worst judges. We condemn all of our negative experiences and amplify our feelings by making a value judgment about them. What happens is neither good nor bad, it just happens and most of the time we can’t change it. It is therefore appropriate to accept and let go by considering what is happening as an additional part of the experience, because judging it will not help us.
You now have the weapons to not avoid the thoughts, feelings and emotions that bother you. You can now live without feeding your discomfort by trying to avoid it . Just listen to what he wants to tell you and learn from him, it will give you the tools to overcome it.
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