What You Resist Persists
(Laura’s thoughts)
The more I resist and procrastinate doing emails, the harder it is to sit down and start them. I feel anxious and have a hard time being fully present and enjoying whatever I’m doing instead of computer work.
The article below was really long and wordy. I shortened it quite a bit, check out the link to read the whole thing. To sum it up- the longer you ignore and bury things the larger toll they take on in the end.
It reminds me of a garden weed. Pretending you can’t see it doesn’t make it go away. Chopping off the top won’t kill the weed. It will grow back stronger and the roots become more mature. You can spray chemicals on it, like drinking or getting high. Most weeds will shrivel for a bit then continue to grow back. If you wait an entire season it will be more challenging to remove than if you addressed it when you first noticed it.
With the garden weed analogy there are a few resolutions. We can change our mindset. We can shift from resentment to appreciation. Weeds, after all, are just plants growing somewhere we don’t want. If we decide its a flower it stops being a weed.
We can dig down and get it out by the roots. Accept that it might be time consuming and burdensome, but that the end result will be worth it. If we enjoy the process of ripping it out it doesn’t feel like a chore.
I have been resisting working on the magazine. I’d rather do ANYTHING else. If I do something fun like skate I feel guilty. So i’ve been putting in work on my yard. Hours and hours of manual labor. Moving a fucked up amount of dirt and rocks by hand. At least I’m working on something, right? In a way I’m punishing myself. I think its due to unrealistic expectations and a fear of failure. eeek. I’m rewarding myself with a trip to the hardware store after writing this email, then setting a timer and doing 1 hour of work on the magazine.
“You Only Get More of What You Resist—Why?”
-By Leon F Seltzer PhD for Psychologytoday.com
(Edited / shortened for our reading. Check out the full article below)
Psychologically speaking, resistance and resolution are at opposite poles. For resistance has fundamentally to do with not being able, or willing, to deal with the negative experiences in your life. And ultimately your happiness depends a lot more on handling—then letting go of—such adversities than it does, self-protectively, denying them, or fighting against them.
Without consciously deciding to, you can even get “attached” to feelings you haven’t resolved.
Long ago, the depth psychologist Carl Jung contended that “what you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.” And today this viewpoint is generally abbreviated to “what you resist persists.”
The complementary opposite of these similar expressions is another equally counter-intuitive one, which hints at the most viable solution to such a quandary. It goes: “To get what you want, want what you get.” What links these two expressions is the underlying notion that it’s wise to accept what is, if only to put yourself in the best possible position to change it—or to achieve the freedom to move past it.
So What’s Resistance All About?—and Why Is It So Problematic?
Typically, when you’re resisting what constitutes your reality—or rather, your subjective (and possibly faulty) sense of that reality—you’re shying away from it, complaining about it, resenting it, protesting against it, or doing battle with it. Without much self-realization, your energy, your focus, is concentrated on not moving beyond what opposes you, not coming to terms with it. And unconsciously, your impulse toward resistance tends to be about avoiding the more hurtful, or disturbing, aspects of the experience.
Not only can resistance take many forms, it can also apply to many situations. For example, it might have to do with revisiting a past trauma, which has never, or could ever, resolve on its own. To bring it back into focus would, at least initially, seem to risk revivifying old, profoundly distressful emotions—and, too, all the unpleasant physical sensations that accompany them. It’s therefore only human to want to distance yourself from such a memory. For you’d naturally assume that re-introducing it into full consciousness could drum up old pain—and maybe even engender more of it. To actually “welcome” such affliction back into your life—to dare to open yourself up to it all over again—might seem almost perverted, or masochistic.
Nonetheless, this understandably defensive posture only serves to perpetuate old, out-of-date thoughts and feelings about yourself, which are usually exaggerated and negatively distorted. And such instances of resistance keep you stuck in life, compromising your present-day ability to perform positive, problem-rectifying actions. Or, on the other hand, they prevent you from accepting, and reconciling yourself to, what perhaps can’t be changed—at least not now.
So not only do you squander precious energy in seeking to bypass what’s still lurking inside you, but the effort itself is futile. Things that haven’t been emotionally resolved don’t simply evaporate because you’ve paid them no heed.
If these negatively-charged memories are ever to exit your self-constructed cage and leave you alone—if you’re ever, that is, to be free of them and to heal those parts of yourself damaged by them—you need to let them out.
Investing energy in keeping from conscious awareness what has yet to be dealt with may help block the pain still inside you. But though you may not actually feel it very much, as many mind/body theorists have pointed out (e.g., see Candace Pert, Ph.D., Molecules of Emotion), various diseases and deteriorative physical conditions have been linked to what, emotionally, has never been released or discharged. The pain you may have worked so hard to stifle—but which nonetheless has “prevailed” within you—will eventually make itself known physically, in the form of symptoms you can no longer avoid.
Not always, but frequently enough, this is the fine you pay for trying to escape what I term “necessary pain.” And it can be exorbitant. For your resistance to opening up what feels like a noxious can of worms can’t address, and excise, your original suffering—only postpone it. But, like ignoring a mortgage payment and then being slapped with a stiff penalty, what you fail to confront (and possibly for the simple, “innocent” reason that you don’t know how to) leads to a much larger “bill” that has to be paid later on.
So What’s the Solution to This Self-Imposed Dilemma?
As Werner Erhard proclaimed in his est trainings: “Happiness is a function of acceptance.” Or, as I like to put it, anything you can manage to accept, you can be happy with.
And while doing this may seem untenable or far-fetched, in essence, it’s precisely what the Buddha counseled over 2000 years ago, as a way of getting off the “wheel” of human suffering. Over the centuries many wise thinkers and teachers have espoused basically this same viewpoint.
One route that many of us take to avoid suffering is by blaming others for our misery. But allowing your resentments and animosities to linger indefinitely only perpetuates your gloom. And this is why there are reams of literature on the practical value of forgiving those who have wronged you. As long as you hold onto your hostility or hatred, you’ll never be able to rid yourself of the bad feelings still residing within you. The only way to free yourself from such toxic emotions is to accept that what happened happened, and that it’s now time to let go—so you can move on and put your energy into something that would be more fulfilling to you.
It’s similar to grieving a loved one, especially your life partner—one of the most painful emotions you’ll ever experience. If, mindfully, you dive into these feelings and permit yourself to fully “engage” with them, at some point they’ll begin to fade and you can put your life back together again.
Contrast this with “wallowing” in an almost indulgent self-pity over your loss, which can then make your suffering last considerably longer. Besides, “Death ends a life, not a relationship.” For the deceased can continue to live vibrantly—and supportively—inside you (and do so until you yourself pass on).
As regards the energy that’s available to you when you let go, it might be useful to add a few more words about the so-called “Law of Attraction.” Based on the homeopathic notion that “like attracts like,” this not really scientifically validated precept centers on the principle that you’re “blessed—or “cursed”—with whatever you focus on. So if your attention revolves around what you don’t want, you’ll just attract more of it to you. By devoting all your energy to what you’re convinced is so important to avoid, you paradoxically further “energize” it, and so permit it to have even more power over you. Through your misdirected attention, you actually strengthen exactly what you’d hope to weaken.
And just as your resistance to it lets it “take you over,” abandoning this self-protective, defensive stance paves the way for positive change. For this negativity, no longer “fed” by your attention to it, will in the natural course of things wither and die. And even if it doesn’t, accepting what has felt so un-acceptable reduces the stress it’s been causing you. Or rather, you’ve been causing yourself.
As I mentioned earlier, you’re much better off focusing not on what’s blocking you from realizing your desires, but on the desires themselves—and how best to reach them nonetheless.
To sum up, it can hardly be overemphasized that to maximize your chances of getting what you want, it’s foolish, and futile, to dedicate your time and attention to resisting what you don’t want. On the contrary, what’s needed is to reapply your energy toward what you do—and plan a prudent course of action to get there.
Otherwise, however regrettably, you’ll have made yourself part of the problem, rather than the so-longed-after solution
Thought/ Journal Topics:
What memories or emotions do you resist?
What physical tasks do you resist?
For the things you are resisting, can you change your mindset or take a form of action?
Think of something that you tried to burry or procrastinated for as long as possible. In the long run did this help or hinder you? What can you learn from the past experience?
