3 Valuable Ways to Relieve Despair Now

Photo by Now & Zen Photography. freedigitalphotos.net

"Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go."  
May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude


              Despair....who asked you to the party?
So I've had this lingering, sucky cold for a month now, and on top of that, one morning I realized that my knee wouldn't move. It hurt! It wouldn't straighten; it wouldn't bend. I couldn't power through it.  So I did what seems natural. I gave up. A lifetime of illnesses, surgeries, pain joined me, and we all agreed that this was the end of a great life.

After a while, in the way we notice at any party, the conversation grew tiresome. My curiosity wandered away. So I thought, "I have a torn meniscus." The pad between the bones in the knee are in little pieces. Every so often a piece moves into the wrong place. I thought, "I know a lot. I can inch this thing out of the way."  I did tiny experiments, and learned that resting in between was part of the solution. Gradually, my knee began to bend a little, But if I moved even a tiny bit out of line, pain would take my breath away. It took an hour, but at the end of the hour, I was completely out of pain and dancing up and down the stairs.

Do I blame myself for the despair? No. It was part of the process.  This knee thing was no small deal.
I felt the weight of it and got to be reminded that I had good reasons for feeling bad. When we are tiny, especially before we can remember that just because mom is out of the room, doesn't mean she's gone forever, pain lasts a huge part of our life...because we've hardly lived! And we don't know it will end.  
​I've reassured "little me" a lot. I know what's true. Pain changes. Despair ends.  As May Sarton says, "...nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go."
And I say, then go for gold!

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“Catching Trust Word” by Stuart Miles freedigitalphotos.net

So the 3 amazing things to remember:

1. Despair, like any emotion, is temporary, and will pass with time.
2. It is a remembered feeing that hooks on to a present situation. We can kindly give our little selves the accurate information that we made it before (hooray!) and so will do it again.
3. Curiosity is the opposite of and the antidote to despair.

How about you? Are you dancing down the stairs; problem solved? Or is there something that needs to be addressed? Something that's pulling on your energy. And, frankly, something you've grown tired of despairing about.

Let's have a conversation. I've helped thousands of people decrease their pain; gently and easily increase their activity and get their Mojo back. Call me in the Portland, Oregon area to set up an appointment at
503-230-0812. Let's get you feeling better!

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