Desire Over Demise

The thing about the severe impacts of unhealed trauma, you tend to think only in extremes: “this or that” (not both); “all or nothing” (not the amount you need or want); black or white (never color). And while thinking this way tends to put immense pressure on an individual, causing more harm than good in the long run, there is also the matter of the significance of what you make your focus in life. This can look like black and white thinking, but it’s actually not. It’s a place of looking at opposing ends of the spectrum, and choosing which way you want to lean.

In short: your focus becomes your life. So are you leaning towards desire or demise? Triumph, or torture? Success, or failure? 

Your focus becomes your life because it’s in your mind’s eye, and what's in your mind's eye for an extended period of time creates cognitive habits. Those cognitive habits settling into your subconscious mind + confirmation bias programming. I know I’m not the only one here, who faced a struggle for far too long with trying to make all the pieces of my life work together. It's like living life taking on big lego pieces that don't go with your small lego set. They don't go together, and that’s the point. In order to keep moving through life, you can’t take everything with you. A human doesn’t have the capacity to carry everything with them. This goes all the way down to our human biology — there’s a reason why we expel waste — we cannot carry it with us. Same goes with your mind and unresolved trauma. When you focus though, on the waste or negativity you don’t want in your life, this inevitably becomes your life. It leads to constant overcompensation, constant living in restraint or a state of force, to earn someone’s respect or prove your worth. It’s a constant battle against a subconscious belief which says that you’re, “never enough”. 

Never just being you. Whole, authentic, you, happy with what you're doing, where you're at, because it is what you want. That kind of enough. Never just focused on your day, because you're thinking about the other million things you have to get done by the end of the week, or month, or year. Never enough time given to yourself to really go deep. And when you live this way for so long, it becomes a state of being: to either coast with no ambition, or to be aggressively a go-getter, doing so much you exhaust yourself before you’re even 30. And there it is again, a state of extremes. Unresolved trauma still calling the shots in the background. 

So what do we do about this dilemma, to break out of the habit of thinking in extremes, which is a result of trauma?

We focus on what we want. 

Here’s why. 

When you focus on what you want over what you don’t want, you initiate your natural drives for living. These are all positive drives that lead to building, growth, creation and aliveness. But when you focus on what you don't want, you initiate manipulation of those drives, leading you into a space of survival mode. The manipulation looks like shying away, hiding yourself, timidness, constant feelings of "not belonging" -- all of these coming from a space of fear. And not the healthy kind of fear, which is respect. But fear, based on lies, the what-if's, the comparison to others. Fear is the manipulator. Fear does not create life, it creates destruction.

But fear does not play a factor when you are focused on what you want. When you are focused on what you want, you're only thinking about what you have to do to obtain or get that thing. Of course, this only works, if those things you want are life-generating things. If they are toxic, unhealthy wants, fulfilling some sort of false compensation of saving, "If I only had...everything would be okay" — these things can very well lead to demise. 

If you're trying to figure out where you're at, just take a moment and observe how your mind feels. Does it feel like you have clarity, right now as you're reading this? Or is it like your mind has the eyes of a fly — looking in a gajillion ways all at once? When you can narrow in, look at what's directly in front of you, that shows you're focused on what you want. That you're working towards success and triumph. If your attention feels pulled in a million ways at once, you're most likely caught in a space of neutrality because of the tearing in two feeling, from cognitive habits of thinking in extremes.

If you want that chaos to end, here's what you do:  

1. Identify the problem (this may require some reverse-engineering)

2. Shift your focus into working towards a goal

3. Keep showing up everyday towards that goal

When you accomplish that goal, set another one. 

You didn't get to choose that you would have life. Why do you think you get to choose when your life ends? That's not how life works. I know I'm touching lightly on a grave topic, but that's truly why I'm here. And I'm going to keep owning that.

You are worthy. 

You matter. 

You are loved. 

Find the person underneath everything you've been through, the one that loves you. The one that's kept showing up. Find them. 

Now, which way are you going to lean? 

Cause here's the thing, you probably just need cleaner fuel, or a new fuel-source entirely. 

-B

U.S. National Suicide & Crisis hotline: 988