Internal Vs External Events
What with Covid seemingly out of control, and lockdowns putting so much else at risk, we are living in a time more than any other in our lives when it is easy to blame external events for how we feel inside. I have heard many people say 'because of lockdown I am feeling...' or 'coronavirus is making me feel....' or 'I just cant wait for this to be over because then I can feel....'. I have probably been guilty of saying something along these lines once or twice myself.
The events in our lives are obviously going to have an effect on how we feel, but that effect should not need to more than the fluctuating of emotion of every day life. Every day life is fun, is boring, is frustrating, is shit from time to time, is funny, is relaxing, is scary, is sad, is disappointing, is stressful, is exciting, is inspiring, is intriguing etc. Every day life for most is all of these things, not any one of these things, and when things are difficult it it is easy to lose sight of the variety and focus only on one thing such what is frustration or anxiety.
I am concerned that many people who are struggling at this time are struggling unnecessarily because they think they feel down because of coronavirus and its consequences. We live in an illusion that external events effect how we feel, but I teach you now that you are not reacting to external events – you are reacting to your internal representation of those events. Now I know this sounds like the unhelpful advice you might get from some people 'it's all in your head', but that is what I am saying, but when I say it I will demonstrate to you why that is a good thing and how to use it to your advantage – you can't change the world, but you can change how you think the world.
Even when someone gets as far as my hypnotic chair they can still hang on to this disempowering illusion which I have to help them see through. I had two examples of this recently:
Someone with severe health anxieties called me between sessions to say that she is still having a tough time differentiating between her thoughts telling her that there is something wrong in her body and the possibility that there actually is something wrong. She had been to to the doctor far more than most and that reassurance was only ever short lived. I pointed out that she was on the phone to me now and not her doctor. So she knows that the problem is in her thinking. I can help you see your thinking and differentiate it from reality.
I saw someone who was severely depressed, and to hear her story you would not be surprised – it was heartbreaking, so her depressive thinking made perfect sense. As I started to work with her she started disagreeing me and challenging everything that I was saying. She said she has very real problems and kept listing them. I asked her if she thought that I could do anything about those external problems and she agreed she knew that I could not. I pointed out to her that she had reached out to me for help though. She agreed. So I said she knows then, deep down, that she can be helped to feel better by working with her mind. She agreed to engage more fully with what I was doing after that and use what I was teaching her as an alternative to the thinking that was making her feel like this.
The secret to emotional stability is not necessarily about trying to achieve positive thinking over negative thinking. If you are trying to think positive all the time you feel like you are failing when things go wrong. Emotional stability is about knowing that life is both good and bad, and that you have more choice than you know in how you think about that. There are more ways to think and respond to those external events that are not within your control in order to feel better.
If you know anyone who is struggling emotionally due to current events and their consequences, or any other difficult events in their lives, but not seeking help because they think it is the events themselves that are making them feel like that, please encourage them to see someone who can help them change their thinking so they are better able to cope. You know where I am if that person is me.