How do you feel right now? Do you notice any pain in your body, any tightness? Do you hunch
your shoulders and wear them like earrings?
Our bodies, much like our emotions, will tell us a story if we will but listen. They will tell us where we’ve
gotten off track emotionally and mentally, which always guides our physical actions.
Let me tell you a story. I have a mild pain in my neck and tightness in my shoulders, and I’m at least 20
pounds overnight. So I asked my body, “What do you want me to know?”
I began tapping with emotional freedom technique to learn more. Here are the beliefs I uncovered:
1) It’s not safe to slow down.
2) I want to be busy and scheduled.
3) It’s not safe to relax because the other shoe will drop.
4) I can allow only so much joy and pleasure in my life because if I do, I will lose them.
5) Feeling a great deal of joy and then disappointment is a much worse fall then feeling numb all of the time. So I choose the latter.
6) I’ll be abandoned if I relax and slow down.
What in the world does the last belief mean? Well, when I was 6 years old, I was staying all night at my
cousin’s, having fun and being carefree, like many 6-year-old kids do.
I got a phone call from my mom, telling me my Aunt Elaine had died. What?! She was only 16 years old
and my best friend. She’d always hang out with me and take me places. We were both born on 9/23.
She had been diagnosed with a breast tumor two weeks earlier, and now she was gone. I then witnessed
my family, including my grandma (Elaine’s mother) who babysat for me daily, go into a dark depression. And no one was talking about their feelings and grief.
I just connected the dots on why it doesn’t feel safe for me to relax and have fun more than I do. If I have too joy and pleasure and success, and relax too much, then I might get blind-sided with loss and grief, and thus feel abandoned.
If I keep myself protected by being serious and somewhat numb, I won’t be as hurt when the blows
of life hit.
Do you ever find yourself numbing the pain through alcohol, drugs, food, excessive busy-ness, sex, chaos,
shopping, perfectionism, care-taking, relationships, money, Facebook, you name it?
We’ve all done this and quite regularly. It’s just that most of us are not aware to the extent we do it, and we definitely aren’t aware of how it’s impacting our lives.
For me, the biggest negative side effect of numbing is that it numbs out ALL emotion, including JOY and love and peace. JOY is the most vulnerable of all emotions, and now I’m sure that makes sense after reading my story above.
Are you ready to stop numbing? If I’m totally honest, then the answer for me right now is NO. I don’t think we ever totally stop this behavior because I don’t think any of us is every totally conscious of what’s really going on in our lives.
If we’re not aware, we can’t stop doing something. But even if we ARE aware, numbing is an effective coping mechanism. There’s no point in feeling guilty about doing it.
Instead, what if you just stated to Life, “I’d like to fully live. I’m ready to stop numbing the pain. Please give me the willingness to really FEEL and take risks to increase my joyful experience of life!”
Next Step: Join me for a Facebook Live video in which Chelsea Dickinson and I will be discussing this topic this Thursday at 3:30pm Central Time. We will do some tapping around numbing and how to stop it.
If you want to join me for the monthly Frontier to Freedom tapping class later that same day at my home at 6pm, please reply to this email to receive more details (2 spots left).
Supporting you all the way,
Angie Monko
