I’m doing the thing again. I feel a slight pain in my side and it could be IBS, or maybe be a vaguely strained hip muscle. It’s not painful, but noticeable. At least to my brain. This is making me want to “not think about it” so I’m spending my time desperately searching for videos to watch to take my mind off it.
It’s insane how often I go through this cycle a day. My Thought > Emotion > Action cycle is almost consistently Pain > Fear > Avoidance. But I’m not sure what other emotion I can have in regards to that, besides fear. Let’s take a look at one of my favorite things ever – coined by Holly Conrad – the feel wheel!
So when I feel any sort of sensation in my body, my brain goes to that shitty brown slice of the pie: scared. And honestly, all of the sub-emotions from that as well. Especially foolish/embarassed – I know it’s ridiculous to feel such strong emotions for something that logically is FINE.
I think this is where my neural pathways take hold. I am so used to the Pain > Fear > Avoidance cycle that it has become a well worn path in a garden. There are other paths to take, but this one I’ve used so much that I take it without even realizing it.
I know this journal is supposed to be just “get out the emotions” and maybe it says something else about me that I don’t want to just express, I want to fix. I want optimism. I want to make it solveable. Maybe another time I’ll work on “expressing without fixing” but for now, I’m kinda on a roll here.
What emotion can I replace fear with? Maybe contentment? I think I can try to be content with uncomfortable sensations. Contentment is not nearly as strong of an emotion as “scared.” But holy shit – I just realized that they set this up for you to see what the opposite emotion is and guess what – the opposite of anxious is contentment! So maybe that is the pathway I need to go down.
Welp, guess I need to start wearing down a new path in my garden.