Do You Ever Feel Shut Down?

There are times when I feel up tight, when my heart feels contracted and shut down. When I’m in this state and my whole inner world seems smoggy and toxic, I feel a little desperate to feel something better; I’m thirsty to feel even just a tiny bit better.

This kind of shut-in-and-closed-off experience can happen when I’m in heavy, rush-hour traffic, or when I wake up to the barbed sensations around my pounding heart in another three-in-the-morning anxiety attack.

These days, when these experiences arise, I’ve learned, not to resist or struggle, but to meet them as the “old friends” they’ve become. I do not try to shunt them aside or repress them, or label them as “bad”.  I give them time and space to be just as they are.

The Space of Ever-Changing Awareness

Furthermore, as they arise, I try to notice the space that surrounds them in awareness. They emerge within the open space that is my ever-changing world of experience. I try to touch them with awareness, in the space of experience, gently, and directly. I listen to what they have to tell me. They arise, and linger for a while, and then fade away into another oncoming emotion, or thought, or feeling.

So, to a much greater degree than ever before, I am not pushed around by unpleasant emotions or experiences. I’m not so reactive because their power to push me around derives largely from trying to deny and repress them. And since I don’t resist, but open to touch, and be touched by them, I’m far less likely to be triggered by them into a rage, into saying things or acting in ways that are harmful to myself and to others.

Learning to welcome all of my experiences, to embrace the full range of my emotions and feelings, has been a long and often difficult project. A project intimately linked with our way of meditation. It’s been an ongoing project in self-empathy, of learning to start over in the face of my failures, of learning to be loving and kind toward everything that arises in my heart and mind and body, and in life.

If you have the time and inclination, you might check out this link: upworthy.com/in-2017-theres-one-resolution-we-can-all-try-to-keep-empathy?g=2&c=ufb1

It suggests many ways we can practice growing our capacity for empathy.