Holding onto the Negative Spiral

I had an incident today where I was late for work because my first bus didn’t arrive due to it being re-routed. Not so bad you might say, certainly not the end of the world, but added to this I had over done it the day before physically, I was stiff and in pain and standing around on my feet waiting for a bus that didn’t exist wasn’t great for my achy ankles.

I had rung the bus company earlier who had assured me there was no detour and that they knew of no reason why there would be. It turns out over the weekend they decided to re-route the bus journey even though cars could still get down the normal bus route! I waited for twenty minutes until my ankles complained too much and I asked a workman
if he had seen any buses. Apparently notices had gone up on the bus stop saying it had been diverted. My bus stop doesn’t have a shelter or a bus sign so of course I was waiting there just hoping it would arrive for no good reason.

It was at this moment the fear of ‘Oh know I’m late for work and to top it off I’m going to have to work late on the day I’m probably going to start my period blah, blah blah’ And thus started this avalanche of emotions so ingrained that by the time I got to work I was in a foul stinking mood. I found a part of me holding onto it until I got to work so I could vent in the office to get it off my chest. The truth is all I did though was suck energy out of the already depleted room. I could feel it and I didn’t even feel any better for it. By the time I did off load the energy was of such an intensity that the only way I thought I could truly let it go was to write about it and get it off my chest. I still feel it lingering in my forehead and have to concentrate to relax it.

It really does amaze me how little the trigger points can be in a emotional roller-coaster. If for no other reason this event made me look at the powerful affects negative mindsets can have and for that it was worth it. That a part of me was hanging on to unload all this emotion onto my colleagues, in hindsight, makes me feel a bit sick. I’m normally the kind of person who likes to lift the room up a bit, which is why when I’m depressed I try to avoid people so I don’t bring them down and infect them with my mood. This was like a little mini episode of that.

It’s interesting how energy works with moods in a social environment. In this case I was hoping to transcend the mood by dumping it elsewhere. By holding onto it until I found a suitable place to vent it just made the whole deal even worse for all involved. Negative energy looks for ways to take energy from the ambient environment whereas positive moods can be a standing wave, like a ripple in a pond, sending out good vibes to all around you.

I work in a place where most people have a very negative mindset to the workplace, and I’ve noticed on days where I’m purely at rest in the present and peaceful that there are noticeable changes in the people around me whether I say anything or not. But equally once the negative spiral sucks you in it quickly spreads the word.

The Hidden Exertion of Mental Attachment

I’ve been struck a few times by this concept and it finally took form with a title today so I thought I sit down a write it. I have been intrigued by the idea that we can become so detached from our bodies, to reside in the mind without heed to the physical cost.

Having spent the last year and some in physical therapies I realised that I too was guilty of this, so much so that I find it incredible that we can do so well at shutting out pain for so long. To run for buses when it wears out the ankles, to hold myself in unbalanced postures and throw out my back, to even play the guitar and weaken my wrists.

It took time to realise the difference between muscle ache and nerve pain, the difference between a twinge and a flare. A whole new language had to be learned, a language of feeling not words. My mind had to grapple with this uncharted territory for new phrases to best convey it to my therapists. Perhaps it was this very necessity, for medical reasons, to translate pain into words that I came to find these terms in the first place.

To give an example:

I had to go out to the shop after work one day, having forgotten on the way back from work to get milk. I found myself unable to carry the bag very far without having to put it down. In ten minutes I probably put it down a dozen times. It was this incident that lead me to realise I’ve come to the time in my life where I need a trolley on wheels. It had been mulling in my mind for a while but I had been resisting it and ’soldiering on’, but finally at this point I realised it was time. Resentment had been building to the point that I associated a trip to the shop with pain and avoided it like the plague.

Having accepted it and purchased a really cool trolley there was a a sense of release, of being in harmony with my body and I was even able to relax from the mental struggle against the stigma of a ‘granny trolley’. It allowed me to realised how much tension I was carrying not only in my arms, wrist, shoulders and back but also in my head, and having used it for some weeks now I will never go back.

Since this incident I’ve been pondering just how much we can put our body through just because our mind is stuck on a concept. This example just scratched the surface and since then I’ve been noticing it more and more in my life.

Recently whilst working on my practise of just resting where I am by not trying force a situation into something else or flipping forward in my mind to all my lists of things to do and events to attend, I’ve found the seed of inner peace starting to take root.

Each day I practise the more I can see how quickly the mind can flip in and out of fear or aversion and how the body tenses up. The longer I hold onto it the bigger the physical cost. Being able to see it come and go at last allows me the chance to just let go. This technique doesn’t solve all my health problems, don’t get me wrong, but it gets me a step closer to accepting myself.

I found this quote recently that sums up what I’m trying to say with this post and really what I’m trying to convey with this whole blog: “Acceptance is empathy with the Dharma” or to put it in layman’s terms: Acceptance is empathy with the way things are. Somehow that just hits the mark.

I offer these words for reflection…