attachment – peterelbridge.com

Will I be ever be able to get over my anxiety?

Will the back pain ever go away?

Will I beat this addiction once and for all?

Will not having a family ever stop hurting?

Will I ever get past this struggle?

Will I ever recover?

Will I ever be healed?

I think when we identify a problem–a struggle, an injury, a trauma–that moment we realize that a little thing has turned into a big thing, and it is taking its toll on us, and we just really want it to go away–all the way away–we immediately pose a question:

Will it ever get better?

Is there a cure?

Or am I stuck with this forever?

And I’m wondering now if that is a helpful question to answer, or even to ask.

Realistically, we won’t know the answer until we’re looking back on it.

Wondering, hoping, demanding, pleading for our lives or bodies or minds or hearts to “go back” to pre-struggle/pre-trauma . . . I actually think this gets us pretty stuck.

“[The Buddha’s teaching, ‘Nothing is to be clung to as I, me, or mine,’] is saying that it is our attachment to the thoughts we have of who we are that may be the impediment to living life fully, and a stubborn obstacle to any realization of who and what we actually are, and of what is important, and possible. It may be that in clinging to our self-referential ways of seeing and being, to the parts of speech we call the personal pronouns, I, me, and mine, we sustain the unexamined habit of grasping and clinging to what is not fundamental, all the while missing or forgetting what is.“
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Coming to Our Senses

I’ve heard that anxiety is what happens when you can’t live in the present moment–can’t just be where you are–obsessing, instead, over the daunting future.

Will I ever feel better?

The problem is, we can’t really answer the “will-I-ever” questions. The future has a tendency to do its own thing.

When we subconsciously tie our happiness and identity to “getting over” a thing, “healing,” “getting past,” we map ourselves a depressing journey.

Life before healing, fixing, getting-back . . . the now life doesn’t really count. We’re not living for now. This now sucks. I’m not supposed to feel like this. This isn’t the real me.

The days fly by as we wish them away, insisting on a “better” future to restart our living.

And as that future doesn’t come, we sink deeper into the “why”s and “if”s.

Why isn’t it getting better?

Why am I stuck here?

If I were more committed, maybe I could heal this pain.

If I weren’t so sensitive, maybe I could get over that loss.

If I had more faith . . .

If I weren’t so negative . . .

Maybe it’s you.

Yeah, maybe this is on you.

Maybe you should be better by now.

Maybe a stronger person, a better person, a cooler person, one of “those” people would’ve healed. Probably.

It’s you.

After all these years, you’re still the you that you hate.

You clearly suck at healing.

You can’t.

You blame yourself.

You feel angry with yourself.

Or if not quite anger, something along the lines of “No, Self, I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.”

I think the question “will this ever go all the way away?”–a question that only life itself as it plays out can answer, not all the guessing or hoping in the world–I think it’s a question that isn’t fair to put on ourselves. It can get us stuck in self-hurt, self-rejection, self-blame–as we push pause on our self-love and aliveness, because we can’t accept this struggling or hurting version of ourselves.

I think dwelling on that big question tends to dizzily swing us back and forth between determination and depression. “I MUST beat this” means that as long as I haven’t, I’m not good enough. And who wants to show up for a not-good-enough life?

If you look up a definition for “depression,” only half of it talks about feeling sad. That’s the half everyone knows about. The other half has nothing to do with feeling sad. The other half is about losing interest. Losing interest in activities, your life, the things you love. It all sort of stops mattering. None of it works anymore. None of it helps. None of it feels. None of it is good anymore. Nothing. Just nothing.

Depression is a complicated world, one that can’t be summed up in a 1465-word blog post. But if this “Will I ever get better?” cycle sounds familiar, I’d encourage you to consider what it does to your interest in your own life. Like your now life, not the life you think you are supposed to get to someday. Now. The you with back pain. The you that relapses. The you that suffers panic attacks. Not your “will-I-ever” you, the today you.

If your core objective in life is to become so fixed and healed and rescued that you don’t struggle anymore with the stuff you’re struggling with now . . . then each today becomes very uninteresting as you live for next-year-(if-I’m-better-by-then).

You may start passing up on activities and opportunities you used to do, because they sort of hurt and that makes you think about your struggle and that is no fun, so you’ll get back to them once you’ve beaten this.

You may find yourself opting for bed instead, more and more frequently, because that thing doesn’t feel as good while you’re in pain.

And the emotional toll from repeatedly giving it a shot, hoping that this time it will be like it used to, and then realizing no, it’s not, and maybe never will be . . . it’s exhausting.

Exhausting.

Desperately needing to be a different person is exhausting.

Disappointing.

Depressing.

Paraphrasing Jon Kabat-Zinn’s explanation of the Buddha’s teaching: Clinging to our vision of who we’re supposed to be can frustrate and numb us–keep us from appreciating who we are today.

The good news is that it’s surprisingly helpful to finally admit: “Maybe this struggle is here to stay.” “Maybe I’ll always experience some pain.” “Maybe I’ll never fully be over this.” “Maybe there’s nothing I could do to fix it.”

First of all, when we stop fearfully trying to predict the permanence of something, we may find it’s grip will loosen a little. Like, not that it’s all in your head–but there’s nothing quite like “Maybe this will kill me!” to keep you hopelessly stuck in it, even when it could have improved.

But perhaps more importantly, if it really isn’t going to get better–and it really might not–admitting that this may be the rest of your life is quite freeing, in a strange way. Self-compassion starts making sense. It really is heart-breaking that you’re feeling this pain or struggling with this thing. Goodness knows you’ve tried to fix it, but it still hurts, and maybe it always will. Maybe it’s not all your fault. You don’t need blame here, you deserve support. Love. Self-care. Understanding. Acceptance. Maybe a little hug from yourself.

And as you accept today’s real you, you get to redirect your “I-can’t-do-this-life” energy into “how-can-I-do-this-life?” energy. Stop rejecting, start learning to live with, live through, live fully as the real you. Being present with yourself. Showing up for and as yourself.

What regular treatment would it take to keep doing things that I love?

Who do I need to have on my team so I can live a good life despite these impulses?

What do I want to experience in life while I carry this struggle by my side?

How often would I like to show up now even though I’m sad?

What could a beautiful, fulfilling life look like now?

Most things aren’t a death sentence–but if we decide that we absolutely can’t live with them, they sort of are.

I’m not saying that it won’t ever get better, get healed, get fixed, get corrected, that you’ll never move on, that the struggle will never be a thing of the past. Again–maybe step one in the possibility of healing is letting go of the fear and rejection. Maybe it will get better. Maybe. Maybe.

But real-big-maybe, it won’t.

So what if you gave yourself permission to be the you-with-the-thing? The you that feels that pain, that struggle?

What if you could just accept your today self, for today?

What if you stopped fighting who you are?

What if instead you loved and supported who you are?

Would that be better?

Could you give it a try?

Who knows what will happen tomorrow or next year . . .

So can you stop waiting for your life to count again?

Can you accept yourself and vibrantly be who you are now?

Thanks for reading! Wishing you all the self-acceptance and self-love in the world on your journey! If I can share the journey with you, throw your email below. :)

My best friend gave me a little figurine of a meditating Buddha. Its head was still on.

I meditate and I really like Buddhism. In a nutshell to me, it’s about letting go of our need for things to be just-so.

Our first big excursion to the mountains since my last concussion, a long road trip to the Canadian Rockies. . . . I was really nervous as we prepared to leave, because travel is my thing and mountains are my best friend’s happy place . . . but my concussion on our last adventure had done a number on me, and each month since then had felt hard, sad, gloomy–anything-but-adventurous.

So I brought my little Buddha along. To remind me not to hold on too tightly to my expectations for the trip. To help me know that it would be okay if everything didn’t end up being just-so. Its head was still on.

Things did NOT go just-so.

Morning, middle-of-nowhere, Saskatchewan, my adventure buddy’s wrist started hurting where a few days earlier she burned it on the stove. It started getting red and it became a small bump. By the end of the day it was a not-at-all-small bump, the entire arm too painful to use much. We checked into our Canmore hotel and after several frustrating calls to insurance we drove to the local emergency room where after a quick glance the doctor hooked her up to an IV for antibiotics.

Four visits to the emergency room in three days. Fevers, dizziness, red lines starting to spread, needles, blood draws, tubes installed in my best friend’s arm, a panicky midnight outing to find a thermometer interrupted by my phone ringing and my best friend telling me that she was now shaking so violently she could hardly hold onto anything.

Honestly, it was scary as hell. I think scarier for me than for her. It got a lot worse before it got better, and I knew that an infection going bad isn’t a thing you want to experience.

Just out of the woods, day two or three–the days became a blur of emergency room and hotel room–I hopped in the car to go pick up some groceries–completely drained of every kind of energy. I grabbed my little Buddha and held it in my palm as I drove, more for its vague feeling of comfort and familiarity than for anything else.

I hopped out of the car at the grocery store and tossed my little Buddha into the center console, and heard two things bouncing around. I picked it up. Its head was gone.

*feeling when your heart sinks but even sinkier*

I broke my little Buddha. :(

And then I sort of grinned. No sh**, may as well, everything else is broken. I guess it’s exactly appropriate that my little token of not-holding-on-too-tightly broke.

At first I thought about replacing it, but more and more it seemed perfect to me that it stay broken. Because now–every time I see it on my desk–I remember just how much holding on too tightly doesn’t work. That “broken” is only “broken” in the context of my need for things to be just-so.

In the 5th century BCE, a man named Siddhartha Gautama lived in what is now Nepal. His family was wealthy, but he was struck by the pain and suffering he saw in the world, so he tried being intentionally-poor instead. It didn’t “work” for him, so he embraced “the middle way”–a life of moderation: not desperately seeking ease and pleasure, but also not seeking pain and self-abasement. In all this practice, he learned a lot about life and then he taught the people around him a lot about life and then he became known as “The Buddha.”

“Dharma,” the teachings of The Buddha, have at their heart the “four noble truths.” Dukkha, Samudaya, Nirodha, and Magga. And the first three are why I love my little broken Buddha.

Dukkha: Suffering is a thing. It’s a part of life.

Samudaya: Why is suffering a thing? Because we think things are supposed to be just-so. We crave pleasure, we desperately try to control, and we hold on too tightly to what we think we want or need or love. Attachment.

“According to Buddhist psychology, most of our troubles stem from attachment to things that we mistakenly see as permanent.” ~ Dalai Lama

Nirodha: There is an antidote to suffering: Letting go of attachments, obsessive cravings, and desperate control, and living–not in a bitter past or an anxious future–but fully in the present, one day at a time. Acceptance.

What are you holding onto too tightly?

I still bring my little broken Buddha with me whenever I go out of town or when I have a big scary thing that I think needs to go just-so.

It’s a perfect reminder not to hold on too tightly.

Things break. Things hurt. Things fade.

Life is weird, and needing it to not be weird will only lead to frustration.

But life is also beautiful. And a strange and strong beauty and peace can be felt when you let go of your need for things to be just-so. . . . when you remember not to hold on too tightly.

“The root of suffering is attachment.” ~ The Buddha

Tag: attachment

“Will I ever get better?” can be a dangerous question

My Little Broken Buddha