Insights from one of my clients:

These are my thoughts…

Most people around us think that our life is in chaos. Lots of people, including friends, therapists etc have been giving me lots of advice but a lot of what they are saying doesn’t sound true for me. For example, alternative therapies are rubbish and everything I’ve done up until now hasn’t worked. It’s like they know nothing of the changes that we’ve made the last year but have opinions anyways. Someone else told me there is nothing wrong with my life, I’m just an anxious person and I blow things out of proportion. I didn’t even ask them for their opinion. Anyway I started to feel pretty overwhelmed and sad and depressed as I let their opinions in and started to believe them.

But my husband J and I were chatting and we came up with some pretty funny thoughts about having these other people’s opinions in our head and needing to let them go…

Most people around us including most of the teachers, psychologists and friends are white bread and they live in the white bread section. Daughter 1 is definitely not white bread and doesn’t want to be in the white bread section. She wants to cruise the other sections and see what is out there. Daughter #2 tried to be white bread but found out there were too many messages of perfection that she felt suffocated and unhappy. She’s decided not to be white bread either. 

I am also not white bread even though I have spent most of my life living in the white bread section and trying to blend in. I think I have some of the same ingredients as white bread, but I also enjoy being in the multigrain section and the cupcake section and the foreign bread section and even the section that’s not really baked goods. The people giving me advice are advising me on how to stay and succeed in the white bread section. They think there is something very wrong because I’m not staying there. They either don’t know about the other sections or are afraid of them.  

I’m really looking forward to coming to the retreat event soon and mixing with some other baked goods, cupcakes, and pastry type people and I should probably look for some more here.

I’m finding it a little challenging talking to the people around me at the moment. I think if I said out loud what I think sometimes, they would think I was insane. My favorite things to do are things like sitting in nature and imagining that I am nowhere in no time in an open minded meditation. And thinking about my life like a video game and what is required to get through the levels without getting emotionally hacked and having to replay the same challenge over and over again.  

Husband J and I are practicing with each other. We play the game in the world but others don’t know. A person comes up to us with their bag of problems and tries to drop it at our feet.  We don’t take their bag and kindly hand it back to them. We then give the person unconditional love and compassion. We have started role playing this and its pretty funny but also very useful.  We are not allowed to give any judgments or opinions or give the person any advice.

Thanks, A.

I think A and J are playing some helpful storytelling, and real life games of awareness, and choice with their emotions, and with love and compassion.