{"id":321,"date":"2013-11-11T21:42:27","date_gmt":"2013-11-11T21:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joycejuster.com\/thoughts\/?p=321"},"modified":"2013-11-12T01:58:22","modified_gmt":"2013-11-12T01:58:22","slug":"emotional-quicksand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.joycejuster.com\/thoughts\/?p=321","title":{"rendered":"Emotional Quicksand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever felt like you were trapped in emotional quicksand? You\u2019re moving along confidently in the world and then \u2013 wham! \u2013 your next step lands you in a quagmire of depression, anxiety, anger, discontent, loneliness, or grief. Or\u2026maybe all of the above.<\/p>\n

Being of the human persuasion, we have a lot of things happen to us in life, some of which are good and some of which aren\u2019t so good. These latter events are the ones that often make us feel stuck and as though we\u2019re sinking fast. Most of us struggle mightily to get out of the trap. It\u2019s scary and it feels like we\u2019re being sucked, down, down, and there is nothing we can do to get out to get out of the trap. We frantically flail and flail around, trying desperately to save ourselves, only to find that we\u2019re getting pulled down even faster and the quicksand\u2019s grip has become even tighter. When we are stuck in quicksand, our immediate impulse is to struggle and fight to get out.\u00a0 BUT that\u2019s exactly what we mustn\u2019t do in quicksand\u2014because as we put weight down on one part of our body (our foot), it goes deeper.\u00a0 So the more we struggle, the deeper we sink\u2014and the more we struggle.\u00a0 \"Emotional_Quicksand\"It’s very much a no-win situation.\u00a0 With quicksand, there\u2019s only one option for survival\u2014to spread the weight of our body over a large surface area\u2014lay down.\u00a0 It goes against all of our instincts to lay down and really be with the quicksand, but that\u2019s exactly what we have to do.\u00a0 So it is with distress\u2014 we struggle and fight against it, but we\u2019ve perhaps never considered just letting it be, and being with the distressing thoughts and feelings.\u00a0 But if we did, we\u2019d find that we get through it and survive and thrive far more effectively than if we\u2019d fought and struggled.<\/p>\n

Guess what? This is a hard thing to do because, just as our first reaction to finding our bodies sinking is to panic and thrash around to save ourselves, so our reaction is to sinking emotionally. It\u2019s counter-intuitive and not very natural to relax and stop struggling when everything inside is yelling, \u201cDo<\/i><\/b> something!\u201d<\/p>\n

Truth be told, though, we are<\/b> doing something when we stop struggling against our emotions. We are allowing.<\/b> We are creating space<\/b> for our emotions to just be<\/i> rather than trying to suppress them or make them go away. We are floating<\/b> with the quicksand and making the slow, steady progress we need to get to firmer ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever felt like you were trapped in emotional quicksand? You\u2019re moving along confidently in the world and then \u2013 wham! \u2013 your next step lands you in a quagmire of depression, anxiety, anger, discontent, loneliness, or grief. Or\u2026maybe all of the above. Being of the human persuasion, we have a lot of things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,16,10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adult-living","category-articles","category-emotions","category-life-lessons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.joycejuster.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.joycejuster.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.joycejuster.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.joycejuster.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.joycejuster.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.joycejuster.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326,"href":"http:\/\/www.joycejuster.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.joycejuster.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.joycejuster.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.joycejuster.com\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}