FREEING YOURSELF FROM MENTAL TORMENT
LESSONS LEARNED FROM QUICKSAND
Christine Palafox, L.M.T.
September 26, 2019
The following scenario may be familiar to you. It is for many people with trauma histories. Something has tripped the switch to your traumatic activation. Whether you are conscious of the trigger or not, suddenly, your mind is spinning at a fast rate with the urgent message “Do something!” You feel pushed and agitated to solve whatever it is that has set off such a reaction in you. Your mind is racing.
Perhaps your body is, too, as you pace around “taking refuge in action”. But somehow this kick into a higher gear isn’t necessarily leading to any real productive action. In fact, you find yourself getting more and more pulled into a mental hyperdrive that often just leads to beating yourself up.
In a way, this scenario is similar to what happens when someone steps into quicksand. Panicking, flailing and struggling to get out only increases the underground suction caused by more water in the sand flowing in around your legs. Struggling only sucks you down more.
The way to respond is to bend at your ankles or knees and actually lie on your back. Lying on your backstops this suction and allows you to either roll over slowly onto your side and back onto the land or to slowly do a backstroke over to land.
How is mental torment similar to being in quicksand? When you find yourself in the grips of that agitated state of mind, do something counterintuitive (as in lying down in quicksand).
First, start doing some Jin Shin self-care. For a helpful video tutorial, visit, iteaplus.com/promoting-calming or iteaplus.com/restoring-balance. Jin Shin self-care helps activate the internally balanced state of wholeness and harmony.
While your energy is balancing, use your imagination to evoke the quality of Kindness, like the ultimate good mother who gently reassures you that you’re OK– all your wild and woolly sensations and thoughts included. What if this Kindness makes it OK to be just the way you are?
Now, you may feel doubtful about these suggestions; however, the harmony that the Jin Shin is activating within you supports this state of Kindness. You may discover that the torment filling your mind and body peaks, and then subsides as a wave of internal quiet flows in, the way that lying on your back in quicksand releases you from the suction.
You may discover that this quiet is then replaced by yet another wave of mental obsession. Once again, call in Kindness—real, true Kindness– and allow your mind to just do what it’s doing. This may take a few alternating cycles of mental distress and calm until the activation settles and dissolves entirely into stillness.
Meanwhile, you have just educated and empowered yourself with new information and experience. You have created neurological change in your brain that provides you with a more gentle option for how to respond when you feel upset.
If you have already experienced the work and feel that you could benefit from an additional maintenance session, please leave a Comment in the Leave A Reply box
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