Recover from suppression and addiction (4 of 8)

I invite you to have a serious look inward as to see how the suppression of your capabilities looks like. You can check whether you are fully using all of your mental, emotion, spiritual and physical capabilities. It is very likely that you will notice some level of suppression. By the time you are 25 years old, it is likely that (parts of) your capabilities have been suppressed for 20 years or so. 

The main question in life ‘who am I’ is hard, if not impossible to answer. How can you know who you are if you have mostly lived someone else’s life? How can you know who you are when you are not used to listening to your emotions or your spiritual needs? Basically, what has happened is a loss of self. By constantly meeting expectations from others, we have lost touch with who we are and what we want. Like I shared earlier, I was 40 years old when a coach asked me ‘Arnold, what do you want?’ and I had no clue. The loss of self is also the essence of trauma. Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside of you (Dr. Gabor Mate). Recovery is about finding yourself again. The purpose of the FiFlo Framework© is to reconnect with who you really are and what you are capable of. Recovery is a crucial element that cannot be skipped.

Sabine Sonnentag (as mentioned inAlex Soojung-Kim Pang’s book Rest)has researched four major factors that contribute to recovery: relaxation (a state of low activation and increased positive affect), control (having the power to decide how you spend your time, energy, and attention), mastery experiences (engaging interesting things that you do well), and mental detachment from work (the ability to feel disconnected from the job). 

"Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are." ~ Chinese proverb

Recovery as well as discovery is crucial for continued success in the new world of living and working. 

It is harder to accept that you also might have an addiction. Benjamin Hardysays: “Personal progress and achieving success are best approached like you’re overcoming addiction. Because, quite literally, that’s what you’re doing. As human-beings, we all have addictions. I openly admit being addicted to social media, my current belief system, my comfort zone, and my excuses. I’m also addicted to a lot of other behaviors that contradict my goals. We are all addicted. And the cognitive dissonance is numbing.

It takes courage and honesty to admit that you are somehow addicted. My frequent use of alcohol was an addiction. I could only change it, once I did accept that my daily usage was not healthy.

“Show me someone who isn’t a slave! One is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to power, and all are slaves to fear. ~ Seneca

We’re all addicts in one way or another. We’re addicted to our routines, to our coffee, to our comfort, to someone else’s approval. These dependencies mean we’re not in control of our own lives – the dependency is (Daily Stoic September 25^th).

Recover from suppression and addiction

See your stuckness

Accept your addiction(s) and/or suppression

Commit to curiosity

Walk for wholeness

Sooth with self-compassion

Review resistance

Write for relief

Forgive to be free

Love for Self

We are conditioned not to love ourselves, not to feel good about ourselves. In that way we are never satisfied and we keep on trying to improve, in the hope that we will receive recognition, approval. That won’t happen, so we are stuck unless we start loving ourselves. Only then we can become independent from others. 

Surat Singh says: “People look for love through relationships. Yet this love is colored with expectation. When these expectations are not fulfilled there is a tendency to get upset. Before we can love others, we need to learn to love ourselves. When I love myself, I am able to appreciate all the unique qualities and virtues that are part of me. I feel happy and secure within myself, and I am able to project that love out toward other people. The more love I express the more love I receive in return, filling my life with joy.”

Where there is love there is no fear. Where there is fear there is no love. Suppression is based on fear; in order to flourish we need love as the basis. The more I love myself, the less I am a beggar for other people’s approval, and the more strong and independent I become. Suppression is based on constantly being judged as well as judging others. 

“We avoid feeling our deeper feelings by being judgmental. It is an addiction. By being judgmental I am projecting out what I don’t want to feel. The wounds that live beneath the judgment are the reason we act out. To fit in you have to be judgmental, especially at school (Gabrielle Bernstein, Judgement Detox).” 

My wound is not being seen/loved, as well as not being good enough. It started from my parents and then also from teachers and bosses. And I also copied that behavior towards myself as a kind of rehearsal and prevention how others would react to my failures, weaknesses or shortcomings. I started to belief that I was not good enough. I said also to myself that I failed, that I was not good enough. Judging is like comparing yourself constantly and that makes you constantly feel insufficient. 

Judging = Comparing; Comparing = Judging

Stop comparing! Choose the metrics that you can influence. AsNilofer Merchantwrote in Onlyness, there are two ways to conduct oneself in daily life. One is to be competitive/comparative and measure your own value against that of others. And the other is to do so in a contributive way which is to focus on doing what you can. Comparative judgments and the inevitable anxiety to which they give rise do not inspire you to use your own only for the good of the world. But contributive focus does, because it inspires you to do what you, and perhaps only you, can.   

You are unique, therefor you are invited to focus on your unique talents. 

Everyone wants to be seen, wants to be loved. Love is one of our basic human needs. Everyone is unique and everyone has flaws. Nobody is perfect. Accept yourself and others, unconditionally. Everyone wants to be seen, as they are, right now. “Many people have never had the feeling that they have been truly seen by another person. To be seen, without walls, without judgment… just to be seen, recognized, accepted (Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking).”

The good news is that you can start to have compassion for yourself, right now, at this very moment. Every morning, I look in the mirror and I use this affirmation: I love myself. In the beginning it feels awkward, but after a few days you get used to it and you start to feel some warmth inside. Just give it a try!

“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person – without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other.”
~ Osho