Like a Tree

One of the things I realize I’m doing is resisting and struggling against the idea of going through pain, and that actually perpetuates the pain. The more I can accept that, yes, I’m going to go through pain no matter what, the less pain I will go through. I’m constantly triggering the cycle of pain. It begins with some feeling or idea, and I react with fear, and that makes something out of it and that cues these really long-standing thought patterns about suffering and worry and pain and I become fully engulfed by them. I’m stuck. 

The solution really is my daily goals. The problem is rumination and other maladaptive thinking, and my daily goals work directly against those things. Even this morning I experienced this. I was struggling from when I first woke up. Then I was working on some writing I'm doing for Medium and I got really interested in it, and felt better. But as soon as I felt that, the rumination came back, and I see myself as being in crisis, and I can’t escape. I think about how, probably for months and years to come I’m going to be in mental pain, forgetting the very real relief that I just felt. But I see now that, in a way, I’m choosing rumination, or rather, because I’m so used to thinking like that, I return to it. I don’t realize I have a choice. Because I have a lifetime of worry and rumination, it is pretty strong, and it seems like an impossible adversary. But I have a solution now. 

The rumination is like a very bad storm. It is threatening and ominous. It can be very destructive. My daily goals are like a seedling. They are my new life and it’s just starting. Seedlings are so fragile at the start. Storms have no life or consciousness of their own. Likewise, my rumination is just a voice or a story engendered by my fear. It’s my own. When I fight the storm, I’m just fighting myself. The seedling is my new life, and, as fragile as it seems, it absolutely will grow and become vibrant and strong. The storm will pass. That’s what storms do. And the seedling will grow. That’s what seedlings do. Sometimes I feel a bit discouraged or hopeless because I’m trying to make the storm disappear by making my seedling grow, but it doesn’t work like that. The best thing I can do is to do all the positive things that constitute my daily goals. 

Every day I am making progress through this process. My tree grows and the storm recedes or at least gets closer to ending.

It doesn't seem like it though, at the moment. But what helps is knowing this is all true. It's not just an analogy. It's an analogy that I'm using to explain reality. 

The thought of it pulls me out of the pit of hopelessness. It's a story that is compelling enough to break the story of my ruminations.