‘I’m so grateful’ this morning for my recognition of the fact that I often cut off my inner voice and dysregulation by thinking the bulldozing thought “I’m so grateful.”
It becomes a way to shift my state temporarily by smashing down any dysregulation. It becomes a way to avoid feeling or working on feeling discomfort, the messaging that urges me to get curious about my truth in the moment.
It’s a pretty slick technique that I find doesn’t work for long because everything the phrase covers is still there and what’s there is still not being meaningfully addressed. This seems to me how the Social Media scene, and society at large, moves through this work: affirmations ignoring the bodily sensations of discomfort all the while claiming other people have it worse.
To be fair, this technique has gotten me this far but now I’m ready to shift to a state where I feel everything thoroughly and through. I acknowledge people do have it worse, but that is not always a meaningful way for me to move through my personal discomfort.
I was raised to believe that affirming my discomfort is whining. Inner whining. My use of “I’m so grateful” allows me to shut it all down so it doesn’t become external whining or worse, full-on dysregulation. Better to be still, silent, sweet, and sedate than emotional or upset. This is an out dated belief I hold and I have been practicing noticing when I am uncomfortable. I can’t change this outdated pattern unless I am able to understand what the dysregulation is trying to support me through. I need to feel in order to heal, so to speak.
Noticing and immediate note-taking allows me to practice the ‘Art of Revision’ as discussed by Neville Goddard in chapter 4 – ‘the Pruning Shears of Revision’ from his work ‘Awakened Imagination and the Search.’ The idea is to take all of the ‘unlovely’ instances of the day and work through them in imagination as you wish they had actually gone. Imagine the ideal sequence over and over until you feel the feelings that would come from the ideal situation having happened. I practice this before sleeping at night, but it’s something that doesn’t work if I’ve crushed anything upsetting with “I’m so grateful.” I get to the end of the day and believe everything is fine. “I’m so grateful,” all the while what’s been pressed down is festering to the point where it eventually all comes spewing forth some unfortunate day when the dysregulation finally overwhelms the power of the phrase.
I’m not here for this pattern for myself anymore. The discomfort isn’t something I need to physically give voice to, but it is something that needs an inner voice and a moment of uncritical recognition with Unconditional Love. This is where meaningful growth and healing comes from. This is my path forward.
