Softening during hardship with Strength
3 ways of being (more) present with shitty experiences (which tends to make them a little less shitty 😉).
Strength is the perfect example of how arming ourselves against challenging feelings or situations often only makes things worse, while a softer touch usually turns out to be the thing that can actually alleviate the suffering.
True strength is staying present and connected in the midst of hardship.
Strength is here to remind us of 3 ways in which we generally try to control our hardships, how that actually opens the door for the suckiness to control us instead, and how you can shift your focus, soften and truly support yourself through it.
1. Literally trying to change it (with your actions)
This is the easiest one to notice.
It’s when you (desperately) try to regulate your nervous system, or meditate/breathe the pain away, or when you try to make yourself cry so you can move on from the sadness.
Important to note here: There’s nothing wrong with doing any of these things, they can absolutely be helpful, depending on your intention. In other words: It’s not what you do, it’s why you do it.
When you’re trying to change something that’s out of your control, the fact that you’re not in control (of this) only gets affirmed. Which, of course, leads to feelings of helplessness and powerlessness - all the while losing bucket loads of energy.
Not great.
So, what’s the antidote? Accepting the living daylights out of it instead? Nope. You don’t have to embrace anything, you just have to shift your focus. The opposite of trying to control something, is simply not-trying to control it.
👉🏻 What might help, is asking yourself one (or more) of these questions:
What can I do to make this moment 1% easier/more comfortable or bearable?
Which action or choice will make it easier for me to strengthen my self-trust or self-connection within this experience?
What would I do right now if I were at my best?
The answer to this question is not meant to become something to strive for, but to serve as a compass, to help you figure out where there’s a possibility to move a little more towards your true north. (Would you be on a hike? Maybe you watch a short nature documentary or stick your head out of the window for a sec. Keep it small!)
2. Mentally judging/rejecting the experience
Another, a little sneakier, way of trying to control an experience, is by deciding it should be different and/or there’s something wrong with it. It’s your mind’s way of diverting your attention from what’s actually happening in your inner and outer world.
Often this increases feelings of loneliness and self-doubt, because whenever we judge/reject something within our experience, we reject (a part of) ourselves. You start to feel like there’s something wrong with you, instead of you just being a person in a shitty situation.
Also, labeling something as a problem causes the mind to tighten and makes it hard to see the full picture, to stay open to all possibilities, or to come up with creative solutions. 👎🏻
When you can let go of the idea that it’s a problem, even if it’s just for a moment, you can unwind your stories about it and create some space for the self-care you actually need right now.
👉🏻 Questions that might help you move the spotlight of your attention:
What if this is not a problem? Just see what comes up. You can also literally say to yourself: This is not a problem.
What if there is nothing wrong with me or this experience? It would still suck, but what would happen if you stopped making yourself wrong for it? This question helps you open the door to your okayness again.
If I knew for sure that this was not a problem, what would this moment be like, what would I do? Considering this helps you divert your attention from labels and judgements, so you can just let the situation (and whatever it evokes) be, and start to feel a little more empowered along the way.
3. Closing your heart
The final, and most definitely the sneakiest, way of trying to control an experience, is best described by Glennon Doyle in her book Untamed:
‘‘So I do this thing I do. From the outside I imagine it looks like a straightening, a stiffening. From the inside it feels like turning my liquid self to a solid. Water to ice. Glennon has left the building. I’ve got this.’’
You (unwittingly) freeze your inner waters, creating a kind of internal harness – a (false) sense of security. The only catch is, you can’t selectively close your heart, it’s an on-or-off kind of thing.
The first thing to go out the window when you hang a ‘closed’ sign on the door of your heart, is connection. And if you’re not connected to yourself or to the present moment, you can’t do the things mentioned before to stop making it worse. So, this might very well be the most important shift of all.
One way to guide your awareness back to the here and now and thaw out your inner harness, is by using the body.
Not just physical sensations, but also thoughts, feelings and other types of energy move through the body. (An emotion can feel like a lump in your throat, a thought can turn your stomach into knots.) This experience is no exception.
👉🏻 Which makes the body the perfect vessel for this visualization:
Check in with your body; where does this experience evoke a sensation (no matter how big or small)?
Take at least a full minute to explore this sensation. Where does it begin and end, are the edges sharp or dull, does it have a color, structure etc.? Take in all the information this sensation has to offer.
Then, on your own pace, decide to let the edges break like dams and fill your whole body with this uncomfortable sensation. Really take your time, at least two minutes, to fill up every nook and cranny of your being with this experience.
This is the ultimate surrender; moving the spotlight of your attention straight into the thing you’d rather avoid or change, and letting it take up all the space you have to offer. You’re putting down your weapons, letting the experience be experienced fully, while keeping the door to your heart unlocked.
To reinforce this, you might say to yourself:
I choose to meet this moment fully, I choose to meet it as a friend.
This is the state in which an experience cannot control you, because you’re not trying to control it. You’re just being present with what is. You can acknowledge it, gently throw it onto your backseat and take it with you on your journey, while very much staying in the driver’s seat.
PS. If you’d like to read about my personal ‘‘challenges’’ and what happens when I’m not tending to them, check out this post from my other publication.