Whether you’re one of the millions or billions of Beatles fans or not, John Lennon had a point when he said “Life is what happens while we’re busy making other plans.” In 1970 Paul McCartney composed the  hit song “Let it be”, after dreaming that his dying mother told him, “It will be all right, just let it be.” What wisdom can we derive from this? When we’re in high distress our harshest critical voices coming raining down saying “why can’t you just let it go, what’s wrong with you.” There’s a difference between the attitudes “let it go” and “let it be.” If we could all let go of the difficulties in our minds and bodies this mental health website would be non-existent. So what can we do?

For most of us, when we try to let go of something or push it away, it either keeps nagging at us or only comes back with more energy. What if we didn’t have to push our uncomfortable feelings and thoughts away? What if we could just “let them be.” At this point you might be thinking “why would I ever want to let these horrible thoughts and feelings be, I just want to get rid of them.” It is this very energy in trying to get rid of them that feeds them. We need a paradigm shift here entering the “being mode” instead of the “doing mode”.

We learn the practice of avoidance at an early age. Just think about a kid skinning his knee and starting to cry. You may notice others coming up to him trying to sooth him immediately by either giving him a lollipop or maybe making faces to distract him from his pain. While the intentions of the adults are good, it begins to teach the little boy that it is not ok to cry and to look outside for distractions to his pain. As adults our deepest pain can sometimes be emotional. So what do we “do?” We pop into “doing mode” and try to distract ourselves from our pain instead of “being with” our pain. Another option would be to validate the young boy’s feelings of being hurt and let him go through the process of his tears.

In an earlier blog Calming Your Distressed Mind a person commented that they would like to hear more about the process of “being with.” In essence, we all have the capacity to “be with” and let me preface this by saying that this is a practice and just like learning an instrument, it may not sound beautiful at first, but over time you will become better at it. When being with our comfortable or uncomfortable feelings we are not thinking about them, but instead experiencing them directly through our senses. So instead of avoiding our sadness or anger (e.g., emotionally shutting down, eating food, drinking alcohol), we can acknowledge sadness is there and bring awareness to the direct experience of the sensations in the body as they are in the present moment. We may have all kinds of judgments arising and voices telling us to get away. With practice, we can learn to see this auto-pilot reaction of pulling us away, and gently bring ourselves back to noticing the actual feeling as it is. As judgments arise, we can thank them for their good intentions of trying to keep us safe from harm, and then gently bring the focus back again to feeling into the sensations of this discomfort.

Over time we come to learn that we are more than our distressed minds and there is space for the discomfort to come and go. We become less judgmental and hateful toward our emotional wounds and replace that with a sense of understanding, compassion, and love. Remember, this is a practice, so there is plenty of space to fumble along the way.

As always, please share your questions, comments, and insights below. Your additions here provide a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in private practice in West Los Angeles and is author of the upcoming book The Now Effect, co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of the Mindful Solutions at Work App, the Mindful Solutions audio series, and the Mindfulness at Work™ program currently being adopted in multiple multinational corporations. Join Elisha Goldstein's Facebook Community to keep up with important information, tips and events.

Like this author?
Catch up on other posts by Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. (or subscribe to their feed).

Comments

This post currently has one comment or trackback.
You can read the comments or leave your own thoughts.

Trackbacks

From Psych Central's Dr. Elisha Goldstein:
Exploring the Upside of Depression | Mindfulness and Psychotherapy (November 4, 2009)

    Last reviewed: 13 Mar 2009