How do I Release the Discomfort?
What steps go into centering and balancing?
Depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses have common threads to them. They are comprised of elements of thought, feeling, and various blended and/or mixed emotions.
Though I can’t and don’t know for certain, I believe that everyone feels their feelings in different parts of their body. Sometimes it manifests as a buzzing in the back of your head. Other times, it’s butterflies in your stomach. Maybe you experience a sensation like a weight on your chest or shoulders. Whatever the sensation is, you know it’s mental/emotional/spiritual and intangible, despite the tangible sensation it produces.
One of the most disturbing sensations that this can produce, for me, is discomfort. This manifests as a sinking feeling in my chest, a knot in my stomach, and/or a general sense of wrongness. Part of that is because there are times that it manifests when there is nothing I am consciously upset, anxious, or otherwise feeling negative about.
Yet, there it is. For example, as I am typing out these words, the sun is shining on me. I love sunlight. I swear sometimes that I’m a solar battery, and sunlight does, in fact, charge me. Yet despite the comforting sunlight, I have an uncomfortable sinking feeling in my chest. As if something is wrong, there’s a problem at the edge of my consciousness that wants my attention. Yet I am not able to discern it.
How do I release this discomfort? I believe that there are three distinct steps to process this.
The first step is to identify, recognize, and acknowledge the discomfort.
The second step is to practice active conscious awareness – i.e., mindfulness – to analyze the subconscious connections and what my current approach is.
The third step is to take action to release the discomfort via mindfulness.
Step One – Identify, recognize, and acknowledge
The subconscious mind is an amazing, multifaceted construct. Within the subconscious are your beliefs, values, habits, and memories. These things just are, they exist and sometimes rise to the surface and touch your consciousness unbidden.
Unchecked, the subconscious mind will wind up taking the wheel of your life and driving you by rote, routine, and habit. While there’s nothing wrong with that at times, it can become disconcerting because the deeper you get into rote, routine, and habit, the more you can become disconnected from your conscious awareness.
As a result of this, you might find yourself feeling a sensation you can’t consciously identify. Hence, discomfort that makes no sense when all else is okay.
The first step to take to release the discomfort is to identify the sensation. What is it? Where is it? How does it feel? What does it make you think about? What emotions tie into it?
Once you’ve identified it, now you recognize it. Obvious? No, lots of people will deny the discomfort. That’s in large part because we as a society are not fans of discomfort and the uncomfortable. Hence, you might identify it, but then pretend it’s not there and refuse to recognize it.
Recognition leads to acknowledgment. You identify the sensation – say it’s a knot in your stomach and a feeling of sadness. Then, you recognize it for what it is – I’m feeling unexpectedly sad and I don’t know why yet. Finally, you acknowledge it – Okay, I feel this sensation. It’s in me. Where did it come from and why is it here?
Now is when you move to step two.
Step Two – Practice active conscious awareness, i.e., mindfulness
My definition of mindfulness is not hooky-spooky or deeply psychological. Mindfulness, as I define it, is active conscious awareness.
Everyone is of three minds. The unconscious mind is how your heart beats, lungs breathe, neurons fire, and so on. Then there’s the subconscious mind, where beliefs, values, habits, and memories live as previously mentioned. Finally, there’s the conscious mind, from which you are ultimately aware of the world without as well as your inner being.
Awareness of the outside world comes from your six senses. These can also inform awareness of your inner being, but your inner being is best identified as your thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and approach to life.
When you are consciously aware of your inner being and your mindset/headspace/psyche self, you become enabled and empowered to take control. That control allows you to make choices and decisions in answer to what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what you intend, what you’re doing, and how you are approaching life overall. The choices and decisions can be in support of the answers you find or to change them for the better if they don’t suit you.
If you are not mindful, you don’t have the necessary power to take control of your life experience. If you have any discomfort or other mental, emotional, or spiritual issues, they’re virtually impossible to adjust without practicing the mindfulness of active conscious awareness.
Ultimately, this is how you make choices and decisions about who, what, where, how, and why you are. To do anything at all with this, however, you must take the third and final step.
Step Three – take action to release discomfort or make any other changes
There are several things that you can do to release discomfort that comes from mental, emotional, and spiritual states. Some require more time than others. Certain steps will work in one situation but not in another. Also, there will be times when it takes more than one thing to clear that sensation of pressure, weight, discomfort, or however it has manifested itself.
Here are some of the actions you can do to help release any discomfort caused by thinky thoughts, emotional matters, fears, concerns, and anything else impacting you subconsciously.
- Do some stretching
- Practice 2-5 minutes of deep breathing
- Take a walk
- Meditate 5-30 minutes
- Take a shower or bath
- Go out in nature
- Journal
- Put on music that changes your mood
- Do some cleaning
- Change your scenery in some way
- Go somewhere to scream
- Talk it out with yourself or someone you feel safe with and trust
- Play with a cat, dog, or other animal
- Watch something that makes you laugh
This is by no means a definitive list. However, each of these are available actions you can take for variable amounts of time to release discomfort from mental, emotional, and spiritual issues.
Please note that it’s entirely possible you won’t be able to release or fully release the sensation. However, what you can do is move from a place of discomfort to a place of centering and balancing. This is achieved simply in step two and practicing active conscious awareness to gain mindfulness.
When you’re centered and balanced consciously, you can better recognize and work with and from who, what, where, how, and why you are, here and now. Finally, remember that you are worthy and deserving of achieving this.
Working out how to release mental, emotional, and spiritual discomfort isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, and intentions to direct your actions.
When you take the above steps – identify, recognize, and acknowledge the discomfort; practice active conscious awareness – i.e., mindfulness and then; take action, you give yourself the necessary tools to change your subconscious processes and find your balance and centering. Knowing that you can do this – and are worthy and deserving of making it happen – you can make choices and decisions to release that discomfort caused by the intangibles. That will help you get yourself to a better place now to help you go forward with your day and your overall life experience.
This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens more dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can explore and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
The better aware you are of yourself in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can spread to those around you to their empowerment.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the five-hundred and twenty-fourth (524) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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