I turn off my car in the Trader Joe’s parking lot and finally face silence, for a second. The train of thoughts that has been speeding through my subconscious all day (for reference, revisit this clip from Spongebob) is finally made aware to me.
Still, I cannot stop the thoughts from racing, metastasizing. Reality is sluggish in comparison; it refuses to catch up with my brain and demands that I wait.
Wait for what? For divine providence, for an easy life, for me to see my purpose met?
I check my phone. This morning I’d texted my nutritionist “very stressed rn” after crying in the office bathroom. She’s texted back, “Have you tried diaphragmatic breathing?” and sent a video link. What a rad human being.
Unfortunately, I have zero desire to open any link or do any thing. It was challenging enough to glance at the unread messages that had piled up on my phone. Right now, the world is a chaotic cumulonimbus cloud thrashing around my skull, and to it, breathing sounds childish and super dumb. I’d rather get whatever I want because that is what I deserve for having to be in such an unfair, hard day.
I know that breathing has more transformative power than we realize. I know this because breathing into my lower belly is sometimes the only thing that gets my gut to work after I’ve taken my medication cocktail, eaten the right foods, drank digestive tea, and done yoga. Only the breath, quietly and intentionally targeted to that space, yields a little shift of a response from my intestines. Instead of the efforts that I tend to compound into calculated strongholds, all my body ever wanted was a loving relationship—— Easier said than done (especially when being human is transitioning in definition).
The truth is that I don’t think my current frame of mind would let me do a breathing meditation. I’m wrapped up in the security blanket of my thoughts to the point of entrapment, and I’m not ready to let go.
Aha, I think to text back. You speak to the art of disrupting destructive behavior. A wisdom akin to time management, gentle parenting, and other skills achieved just before one crawls into one’s deathbed.
I am learning that I am young and have not mastered anything. These skills will take a lifetime to practice— they won’t be bought, even though self-help apps are emerging to tell us otherwise. In the meantime, I’m beginning to allow myself forgiveness for not doing the “right thing” right now. I’m choosing to be with myself where I’m at.
If instead of breathing, I want to go into Trader Joe’s for some “retail therapy” and then drive home to stress eat my trendy crackers into round 2 of hyper-productivity, that’s okay. The breath will be there tomorrow. The breath will be there at every moment of every day for me to turn to when I’m ready. The more I allow myself to be, the more I will see that any choice is possible for me, even disrupting destructive behavior, to open my life into one of greater love.
I don’t remember to actually text my nutritionist back until two days later. She responds, “Sounds like a book title. Are you going to write it?”
Since I don’t go into detail regarding how to actually disrupt destructive behaviors, here’s an article from Psychology Today. I’ve found it helpful to demand a stop to the brain train and reschedule its operation for another time so that I can ask myself:
Do I really want / need this compulsive thing/behavior? I know how it plays out if I choose it again, but what’s the worst that will happen if I choose differently this time? What want or need is this craving hiding, and how can I address that? aka I’m in my head right now, but how can I be there for my heart? Is there a friend I can call instead, even just to listen in silence together as I wait for this wave to pass?