Safety In Sadness

“Ninety percent of the thoughts you have today are the exact same thoughts you had yesterday.” ~ Dr. Joe Dispenza 

Dr. Dispenza teaches that people become addicted to feelings. 

We repeat over and over the same thoughts so that we can recreate a familiar feeling in our bodies.

I like to feel a moderate level of unhappiness in my body.

It’s like my body is an oven.  I don’t feel normal unless I’m set at 400 degrees. 

I wake up at 225 degrees.  I can never let myself stay there.  No matter the day, no matter what is going on, I need to get my body up to that 400-degree feeling and I do it with my thoughts.  I do it without even NOTICING. There must have been a time in my life when that exact level of feeling made a cellular impression on me.   

And it stuck.

I am sitting here right now at around 300 degrees, writing and thinking and sifting through feelings and I could bring myself up to 400 degrees in about 2 seconds.

I do have good days. It’s just that I am now realizing that for a period of time almost every day, I crave the comfort of overthinking the past. This gives my body a feeling that I somehow need.

It is exactly what Dr. Dispenza talks about, people find comfort in the familiar past and the predictable future.

Learning that my default setting (familiar past) is running hot inside with a loop of swirling thoughts and feelings has been the most important thing I’ve learned about myself.  Ever.

There was a very long period of time in my life where this served me quite well.

If I’m in a level of moderate discomfort, then I feel in control somehow. I’m not far from the bottom so falling isn’t as scary. And I’m not too far from the top either- so there remains the hope that I’ll have a good day.

I think another issue is that my body has become addicted to stress hormones. Trying to rewrite the past in my mind is what gets the temp up to a level in which I feel at home inside my body. Which means I’m living in the past. Creating this state within myself sets up a predictable future.

Homeostasis at 400 degrees does not come without a cost.

I am missing the present.  Even worse, I could easily live the rest of my life in a state of being that steals my joy.  My god.  What a waste that would be.

I’ve created a life that I should be able to settle into and enjoy, but I don’t because if I am not running hot, I feel uncomfortable. Imagine that. A good day actually feels uncomfortable.

The biggest shock is that all of this has been going on in my mind and body for over 20 years and I never saw it at all. I could never understand why I couldn’t seem to grasp happiness for any length of time. It came and went so often.

My mission now, is to learn to be ok with feeling uncomfortable.  This is what I hope will allow me to find a new normal… a nice 300 degree setting for an entire day.  A week.  A month.

What temperature is your oven set at?

***Update- It has been a few months since I wrote this. The change in me is overwhelmingly positive! I am catching myself when I start thinking my old thoughts! I say out loud, “Wow, my brain wants to go back to the past.” And I let it go. Or “Wow, my body wants to feel angry today!” It gives the thoughts and feeling a label, and I can see that what my mind is cooking up is not the truth of how I actually do feel or want to feel. I make the choice to live in the present. It instantly resets my body and mind into a calm state. I am learning to find comfort in peace instead of chaos.