✨AI Generated © by Nina JF Gauss

By Nina JF Gauss

Admittedly, this title is a strong and bold statement to make, which may ruffle some sensitive feathers, but here is my realization with this, based on my personal experience and self-observation. So, please hear me out.

Just to be clear, I am not talking about the kind of suffering experienced due to the horrors of war or a natural disaster, an illness, or the death of a loved one. An acute experience of trauma is utterly painful, overwhelming, and causes a lot of emotional pain, sadness, and grief, and it takes time.  

What I am talking about is the kind of self-inflicted suffering, whereby one imposes pain and suffering on oneself by constantly mulling and churning over things that happened 2, 10 or even 50 years ago, thus constantly reigniting the pain over and over again, without ever really transforming and releasing the experience.

Suffering has an entire palette of overlapping expressions, such as anger, rage, grief, sadness, guilt, shame, self-loathing, resentment, depression, worry, envy, jealousy, powerlessness, overwhelm, and the list goes on and on. We are all familiar with it. To a certain degree, these emotions are all justified and totally okay – even healthy and necessary – to feel at times. And, especially when we wish to move through them, we need to let it all come up and be felt. There is no way around that.

Personally, I found that once I got to the bottom of something, understood it, could see it for what it was and gained clarity on it, the easier it was for me to also move through and release it. This process can take two seconds, a few months, or even a few years. And it’s okay. 

It’s totally okay to not be okay at times. No one can push or force you to move through something quicker than you are currently able or ready to. Relax. Breathe. All at one’s own individual pace.

My point though, is that chronic emotional pain, caused by self-inflicted painful thoughts, does indeed become a big problem when one gets stuck in it. And by stuck, I mean constantly looping painful thoughts. When we have thoughts of having been wronged, having been abused, the unfairness of certain life experiences, wishing things were different such as being richer, more beautiful, thinner, younger, whatever, and loop these over and over again, churning, mulling, seething, resenting things that have happened in the past or fear may happen in the future, it becomes an addiction. 

It is a perpetual battle with self, and with one’s reality, be it past, present, or even future. It’s also the antidote to allowing, as well as to the acceptance of all that is, and that’s why we end up getting stuck in that loop of suffering, spinning and spinning. 

✨AI Generated © by Nina JF Gauss

The brain cannot differentiate between incoming stimuli, whether it’s coming from the outside or through our internal thoughts and imagination. To the brain it’s all one and the same, thus it reacts in the same way whether things are actually experienced or merely imagined. So, when we mentally get stuck in painful scenarios, the brain reacts as if it were emotionally going through it in the very present moment.

Every time we churn over something that has happened, say, in childhood, we literally travel back in time to that place, re-experiencing all the emotions again, and the body reacts in kind by unleashing large amounts of the stress hormone cortisol, the fight or flight hormone that, on a chronic level, can have a devastating effect on the body, leading to premature aging, inflammatory diseases, auto-immune diseases, heart problems, etc.

Now, saying all this, I’m not just pontificating. I’m as much guilty of this as anyone else, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to talk about it. I am an expert in churning old shit ad nauseam, feeling sorry for myself, regretful of all the wrong decisions I’ve made, sometimes angry for all the injustices imposed on me throughout my life, and the seeming unfairness of life itself. 

But why the hell do we do this? Why do we engage in this self-torture, especially when we are no longer in the literal experience? It’s all in the past, so why can’t some of us just move on from things that happened eons ago? Why do we keep the old tapes playing over and over again? 

Many years ago ¹, Kuthumi said that we still create problems and experience drama in our lives because, essentially, we are bored. This sat with me for a long time. 

My life was filled with a lot of drama, but I couldn’t yet understand how I created it all because it was usually other people’s dramas that I was dragged into. None of their issues had anything to do with me per se, so why was it still in my experience?

A part of it was aspects, of course. So, a lot of it was for integration purposes and served me well as a mirror. But eventually I found the pearl of truth in what Kuthumi said. In essence, I was really bored in my human life.

Thinking about past decisions, I noticed a pattern. Whenever I didn’t know what to do with my life, especially in my younger years, I created scenarios that made me feel a tad more alive, even when I was not aware that I had set the stage with all its actors and props myself. I got involved with the wrong people because I was bored and wanted a bit of a thrill. Their behaviour and actions stimulated life a bit. It felt like something was happening, and even if that something was toxic AF, I felt more alive. It gave me a reason to play victim and not take charge of my own life, plus made me feel like I was busy.

I also noticed that those who constantly create drama in their lives and the lives of others, essentially creating a mess wherever they went, were also just bored underneath it all. Then I noticed that when life is quiet and no one creates the dramas for me, I started creating the drama in my own head. Looping.

When one doesn’t have anything to do, when there’s nothing to provide a sense of joy, excitement, or even purpose, we start to brood, or we create outside drama, abundance issues being one of them. It’s like poking the BON for a bit of stimulating action on the outside, because the path within is blocked.

“Energy flows where attention goes” – be it toward something that we find joyful and fulfilling, or toward old shit we’re brooding on (and thus creating even more shit). Energy doesn’t care. It just flows, but we are the ones that set the valves as to where it goes and what it creates. 

Only when I could finally see it for what it was, could I finally walk out of my old, habitual ways of creating things. It came with a combination of acceptance for all that is in the way it is, including all past experiences; acceptance of the world the way it is; acceptance of the way others are, honouring their own journey; and a good dose of “No more.” 

It is not that we have to expose ourselves to other people’s toxic behaviours as part of our “allowing” experience. No, we have every right to close that door for the sake of self-preservation, releasing them back into their own reality without having to be part of it. Acceptance is the absence of any “should-isms” about how others should or should not be, according to our own evaluations filtered through our own beliefs. Let them be. It’s up to us whether we invite them onto our stage or not.

✨AI Generated © by Nina JF Gauss

At some point, I decided I wanted to live the rest of my life in joy. But to be able to do so, I realized, I needed to check in on myself and see what this might require of me. 

To start off, it required a hard, honest look at myself. What games do I still play with myself – and why? As I peeled off the layers one by one, I discovered a new level of love for self. A love that from now on only wishes the very best for me. And I don’t mean this in a selfish, self-centred, narcissistic, or even materialistic way, but in the sense of a loving, kind, compassionate love for self, akin to a loving parent only wanting the best for their child, while acknowledging its needs. 

In fact, I use this example a lot in my practice: “If you were your own child, would you allow your child to be treated this way? Would you allow your child to get into these kinds of situations? Would you allow your child to be bullied or treated less than worthy? And if not, why then would you allow it for yourself?”

In other words, I became my own parent. This sounds very weird but is actually very effective. 

From that point on, I consciously started to make more self-empowering decisions that are in alignment with my inner truth; and I don’t mean a dogmatic, inflexible kind of truth based on some ingrained beliefs of what others expect of me, but a truth I felt at my inner core. My truth. A sense. Even if it made no sense to others.

It was high time to take charge of myself and my life, with all the decisions required to do so; to step up to the plate, take some effing responsibility and steer the ship in a direction I want it to go, with my gnost as sat-nav. No more blaming others, or circumstances, or past events. It’s up to me, nobody else. So, what’s it gonna be?

As crazy as it sounded at first, yet totally following my gnost and nudges, I now find myself doing things that surprisingly bring me great joy, that feed into my core interests and passions, and that keep me busy in a good, healthy way – even if exhausting at times – and that open up entirely new potentials for me. In fact, I feel blessed. I have no bloody idea where this is going to take me, nor does it really matter. All I know is, I just need to show up for myself, every step of the way.

And without even realizing it at first, after a while I noticed that I felt good. I am happy, content, experience beautiful things and warm interactions with people, feel a new sense of ease and inner freedom; and with that shift of focus, the negative self-talk and the self-pity brain (drain) loops have gradually quietened down.

Not to say there aren’t any bad, choppy, heavy days anymore, or irritations or bad moods. 

I still get triggered by things, but it’s rather trivial things now, like people having loud phone conversations on the bus. I’m not interested in what your doctor said or what time you’ll be home or what Aunt Tilda had for breakfast. Please, just shut up, and let me read my book!

The difference now is that I feel a whole new relationship with myself. It’s a fulfilling relationship, full of honouring, true compassion, and total acceptance of self, even with all the subjectively perceived “flaws” that still exist. I realized that I am enough.

I now move through choppy days much more gracefully, always returning to the acceptance of all that is, including the mother of four screaming kids on the bus. Irritated at times, perhaps. In acceptance of it all, nevertheless. Compassionate towards others, even when they irritate me? Yes, absolutely. 

Essentially, it was actually nothing but a mere walking out of the old shit loop, which was surprisingly easy once I made the choice and allowed certain things within to finally fall into place. 

I’m now too busy truly enjoying life with all its magical moments to sit at home bored, feeling sorry for myself, mulling over old stuff from years ago and keeping myself stuck in a repetitive shit-loop, robbing me of the life I could be living.

Nah, no more. 

1. July 2006 ↩︎