Frustration & stuckness 

The lure of temporary fixes 

We have all had the experience of frustration, which essentially is wanting our experience to be something different than it is without first fully accepting where we are at.  This often creates feelings of stuckness as we try to change, yet continue to fall back into old patterns with the inability to sustain the change we want.

Most of the time when we feel stuck and frustrated we look for the quickest path to shift the feeling because its unpleasant, and honestly who wants to feel unpleasant sensations or feelings.  If what we are feeling is a painful sensation in our body than we may go and get a massage or take a bath.  If we are feeling an uncomfortable emotion we may eat sugar, have a glass of wine or vent to a friend about what we are feeling.  All of these actions make us feel better because they are make us feel less.  They are quick fixes to getting rid of unpleasantries.

Now taking baths, getting massages and having a glass of wine are not bad things.  It all depends on what the motivation behind such actions is.  If it is to alleviate something that you don’t want to feel than you are using it as a temporary fix.  Temporary fixes are just that, temporary, and they never create sustainable change.  This is why we often find ourselves back in our same old pattern the next day or week and the frustration begins to build up, until we again find something to take the edge off.  This is a pattern that most people are doing all of the time, consciously or not.   Using temporary fixes is not a bad or wrong strategy, its simply that it does not create the kind of change you are really wanting.

Fuel for transformation

Acceptance of what is provides the power to change

The seeming paradox of transformation is acceptance.  We have the tendency to think that we can’t accept what is and also want it to change at the same time.  The thing about transformation and change is that it really can’t happen until we get real with where we are at and that happens through acceptance of what is.

When we really allow ourselves to feel (accept) how something we are doing, thinking, feeling or believing is not working we have an incredible amount of fuel to make a change.  This is the opposite of using temporary fixes to feel less.  Instead you are feeling more and allowing yourself to feel it instead of resisting it.

Stage 3 of SRI is all about learning how to be with the feelings of stuckness and frustration.  This stage of care is not about feeling better necessarily, but instead about really dropping into what is not working in your life and feeling it.  When you get real with yourself in this way an amazing thing occurs, you begin to realize that you are the one that is perpetuating these habitual patterns that are not working for you.

For some this can be scary because it means that you are the one that is in charge of your life and you can no longer claim a right to victimhood, even to your body and its sensations.  For others they find this empowering  because finally they see what’s going on and realize that they deserve more for themselves and their life and there is no other choice but to change.  This begins SRI stage 4, which is about reclaiming your power and responsibility for your own life which includes your thoughts, feelings, emotions and sensations.

This is not an easy process, but it does lead to personal empowerment in relation to your body-mind-emotions, and ultimately freedom.  Instead of being at the whim of circumstances you become the chooser and decider of your life.

Dr. Amanda Hessel, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado