When younger, I would often find myself lying in the bed ruminate over my past experiences. Most of these situations were where I did something embarrassing. It became something of an involuntary night time ritual for me. Lay your head on the pillow, close your eyes and cue the movie of your most embarrassing past experiences. Each night the experiences would feel more embarrassing. Looking back, I think the ‘embarrassment quotient’ of the experiences was way more than what they needed to be. But embarrassment is a feeling, the more you fixate over it, the stronger it gets.
I probably continued doing this till in my late teens. I don’t remember when I actually stopped doing it, but I think it was more accidental thanks to college and my new found freedom to experiment with things. But I think that this habit of replaying embarrassing situations did instil some form of fear. Because you’d want to avoid situations that bring embarrassment. It took a toll on self confidence. I wanted to avoid social situations. As soon as I felt that there was a potential of embarrassing myself, even without any doing of my own, I would withdraw. And come night time, ruminate.
Sitting with yourself, without any distraction or noise can bring about similar thoughts. Your mind starts wandering to places and times in your past which bring with them a feeling of shame, fear, embarrassment or dislike. And this is one of the biggest reasons why sitting with ourselves is so unnerving. But if we never practice getting over this, we will go through the whole of our lives without really knowing ourselves. We never learn what truly matters to us, we never learn what truly brings us happiness nor do we realise our deepest motivations of living. It’s extremely important, therefore, that we learn to get comfortable this flurry of past, deep emotions.
One way to do so is to practice observation without judgement. This does not come naturally to us. Forming a perspective based on what we see is innately a human nature. Or maybe more of an animalistic nature—to figure out the danger quotient of any situation. When we sit with ourselves and our minds begin to wander in the past, we need to learn to be okay with the feelings it may invoke. Whatever you’re experiencing is already in the past. It has already happened. Nobody is reliving that and judging you, except for yourself. Just tell yourself, you’re okay. Be kind to yourself, like you’d be to a friend who went through a similar experience.
Try to not judge. Feeling of cringe and dislike comes when you judge. If something good happens, you’d feel happy but if something bad happens, you’d feel unhappy. But what if you view the reel your mind is playing for you without any judgement of it being good or bad. It’s just something that happened, make a note of your learnings and move on. It happened so that you may learn something. It’s neither good nor bad, it’s just a lesson for you to move ahead in your own journey.
Practicing this, like everything else in life, makes it easier.
When you sit with yourself regularly, you’d first have to get rid of the bottled up feelings. Sit through them. It might take a while. But that’s okay. You will begin to feel lighter, generally happier. Feelings is how our bodies communicate. If we don’t allow our bodies to express, and instead distract ourselves or escape using substances, those feelings get bottled up. As they pile up, they bring with them, unwellness.
Working through our feelings regularly is as important as bathing everyday. Sitting with ourselves, observing what we feel, but not judge. A warm, loving embrace with a quiet ‘it’s okay, we’re still learning’ when our minds wander to the darker parts. Being okay with sitting with ourselves without feeling the urge to call up a friend, or open our phones, will prove to be a superpower. Deeply feeling your feelings and working through them is, in my humble opinion, a big part of being alive.
Thanks to Akanksha Mohla for reviewing this article.
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