I look perfect from outside but deep down I feel deeply unhappy.
What should I do now?
1. Be honest with yourself
Until we are willing to be honest with ourselves, with our feelings, and with our life situations, we cannot create a desired change in our lives.
Accept your fact and let go of the story.
Fact is simple and straightforward:
"I feel unhappy with my life now."
"I do not feel valued in this relationship"
"I do not enjoy the place I work now."
"I do not feel comfortable with my body."
"I have low self esteem."
"I can't forgive the people who have hurt me."
"My financial situation is not good."
We can always handle the facts, no matter how difficult it may seem.
Stories are tricky. They go round and round in our minds. They make us suffer and drag us into the loop of unnecessary drama.
Stories usually go like this:
"He is so stupid. He can never understand me. Why is he not paying attention to me? He should help me. Why is he not loving me like I want to? What am I doing wrong? What do I need to do to make him love me? When will he realize that I'm the one for him?"
"Life is a struggle. I must be tough. I need to endure this painful process. I can't give up. I have to swallow my pride. I need to just take it like a champ. I don't want other people to see me as a loser. Maybe I don't deserve success. Maybe I will never be good enough."
Identify your fact in the chaos of your stories.
When you catch your mind being self-indulgent in its never-ending stories, stop yourself and figure out what the fact is.
The moment you have accepted your fact, you can move on with your life and take the necessary step to make the necessary changes in your life.
Knowing the fact is necessary in order for you to ask yourself, "How can I fix this?"
Once you have make peace with your fact you will get a clearer vision on what steps you need to take to change your current situation.
2. Allow yourself to feel whatever emotion you have been suppressing
After you have accepted your fact, give yourself permission to genuinely feel whatever emotion that has been trapped in your system.
For example, maybe you realize that your fact is: "I am still angry at my Father"
Feel the anger. Don't run away from it. Don't try to numb it with food, sex, alcohol, drugs, work, or any other distraction.
Face the uncomfortable feeling. Feel it. You may cry. You may scream. You may feel a surge of enormous energy from the feeling. Don't suppress it. Allow yourself to experience that energy. You may want to get in your car and scream as loud as possible. You may want to unleash that surge of energy by running for two hours. Do it. If you suppress that energy, you will suffer. Let it out. Transform that energy into something beneficial for you. You can use that energy as an inspiration to write or to make art. You can use that excess energy to motivate yourself to exercise or create something amazing.
Another example maybe: "I feel worthless as a human being."
Feel any emotion that is associated with that statement. Feel the shame. Feel the guilt. Feel the fear. Feel the unworthiness deep inside.
If you're not willing to feel the emotion, the emotion controls you. But the moment you give yourself permission to feel, no matter how uncomfortable it may be, you are now in control of the emotion. You can observe the emotion objectively and you can release it more easily.
You get out of the trap of painful emotion by going through it, not around it.
You may cry for hours, you may witness your body trembling, you may experience pain in your chest, you may want to curl up in the corner of a dark room. Experience it. Once you go through the emotion, you will feel a sense of relief. You are no longer a prisoner of your pain. You don't feel the need to constantly run away from the discomfort. The moment you become brave enough to experience the discomfort, you are free.
Emotional healing can be a messy process. Don't fool yourself with the idea that you need to stay positive through it all. That's bullshit. Allow yourself to feel the anger. Allow yourself to feel the shame. Allow yourself to feel the loneliness. Allow yourself to feel the confusion.
Be present with your emotions. You are where you are and that is absolutely okay.
The sooner you give yourself permission to go through the discomfort, the sooner your healing process can happen.
3. Let go
After going through the painful process of feeling all the pent up emotions, you must learn to let go.
Let go of your painful stories. Let go of the blame. Let go of your identification with your trauma. Let go of your pitiful stories.
Pain can be addictive. Pain can give us a false sense of identity. If we are not aware, it will be difficult for us to move on toward positive change in life, simply because it is not familiar to us.
So many people choose to remain in painful situation because it is familiar.
Our natural state of being is loving, joyful, and passionate. For so many of us who have lived in pain for so many years, happiness can be terrifying simply because it is unfamiliar.
This is why letting go is very important. We must let go our false idea of who we are in order to embrace the truth of who we really are.
Let go of the idea of yourself as a victim.
Let go of the image of yourself as someone unworthy.
Let go of the illusion that your life is only filled with pain.
The moment we begin to let go of something false, life will bless us with the truth: love, joy, abundance, kindness, and peace.
When we are brave enough to let go of something familiar, life will grant us the gifts of something new and much better from what we have been holding on for so long.
It may take a while to realize, but unhappiness always carries a seed of blessing deep inside it.
Until we go through the uncomfortable process of facing it, we can never know what that blessing is.
The moment you have found what that blessing is, share it with the world so others can know that healing is really possible.
Love and Blessings,
Affandi
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