Allow yourself to feel

The past few months have been a mental hell. Significant life changes, stress, anger, and crippling depression ravaged me like a killer.

I took up a new sport in BJJ and started this to help me heal from my significant trauma. I have spent years of my life building walls and damage, and the effects on my 48-year-old mind and body are profound.

I ruined relationships, including the one I had with myself.

Now, I am working to fix my most important one, and it doesn’t come easy.

I have a few goals remaining, and I intend to see them through, but I can’t achieve shit until I see some sustainable progress inside of me.

Today, I talked with my BJJ coach, who pulled me into his office and listened to my pain. He asked me last week why I started BJJ, and I didn’t have an immediate answer. I gave it some thought and told him what I had written earlier. I started this journey to heal.

To help heal my anger, my lack of self-control, my inability to be present and enjoy the moment, my instinct to isolate and withdraw from people, and to learn how to thrive under intense pressure.

I told him I wasn’t ready to compete yet because I had always taken my hobbies to that extreme. I can’t remember a single time I did anything physical without the intention of competing and winning. I am an athlete, and that mindset is hard to break, but I need to break it because I am desperate to enjoy something without giving myself a pressure cooker mentality with it.

What he said next moved me, and I wasn’t expecting it.

He said, “you are a part of this team; we need you here. Even if you aren’t ready to compete, you are important to help others get ready.”

He continued, “it’s ok to be sad; I get it. Allow yourself to feel it, and don’t try to fight it.”

I looked down and cried a little, and he hugged me.

I never had a father figure, and this man is ten years younger than I am, so I don’t look to him like a father or my older brother, but I respect him for what he does and how he leads.

Hearing “you are needed” was — not to sound redundant — just what was needed at that time.

I guess that made me understand my importance in this life a little more than I give myself credit for. I don’t always feel appreciated, valued, and cared for despite knowing people do care for me. Mental illness is a bitch like that. You can rationally know you are loved but irrationally feel you are not.

I said, “I want to be ok, that’s all.”

“What if you will never be ok?”

That is a realistic question to ask. What if I am not? How do I equip myself to handle when I am not okay, so I don’t degrade into wanting to end my life?

Allow yourself to feel.

The Buddhist Philosophy of suffering comes to mind.

Suffering is inevitable.

Accepting life’s imperfections helps relieve suffering.

Living in the present can help relieve suffering.

Feel, accept, and be aware.

Three seemingly easy tasks that many of us fail at time and time again.

This is the answer to healing, it is elusive, but it will happen.