Ep 157: Breaking Free from the Wallowing Cycle

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Truth and Transcendence brought to you by being Space with Catherine Llewellyn.

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Truth and Transcendence, episode 157.

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Wallowing this really struck me as a topic to talk about recently because I noticed that wallowing is one of those energy sinks that we can experience in our lives.

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When we're just putting so much attention into something that we have a problem with that, it almost seems like we come out of it on the other side and think what on earth happened to the last three days, three weeks, three months, three years, three decades?

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Because I've just been wallowing in my own pain, my own despair.

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It's all so unfair.

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And something I've noticed about the people who seem to be the most enlightened or have the most equanimity, or who seem to be able to move the most smoothly through life whilst still remaining vividly in touch with their emotions and their experience and their feelings.

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They don't seem to wallow quite so much as perhaps some of the rest of us do.

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So I thought what's that all about?

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Now, I do think that there is a fine line between wallowing and simply remaining present, authentically present, with uncomfortable feelings.

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And I say it's a fine line because it's slippery.

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It's really easy to slip over that line into wallowing and not realize we've actually done it.

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But in another way of looking at it, it's not a fine line at all.

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It's a hard, thick line because of the different effects of being present with uncomfortable feelings and wallowing in it.

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Because when we remain present with our feelings and experiences, inevitably they transform and inevitably we start to become open to insights and realizations that our capacities expand, our comfort zone stretches, we become more resilient, imaginative, flexible, fluent, emotionally capable and so on and so forth.

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But with wallowing and, by the way, I'm using a particular definition of wallowing, I'm not using the definition at the moment which says, you know, like the hippopotamus wallowing in the mud, they're just luxuriating and enjoying the beautiful, warm, slippery, soft feeling of wallowing in the mud.

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I'm not talking about that kind of wallowing.

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I'm talking about when we invest all our attention and our feelings and our mind and everything into something that we don't like, something terrible, something that's upset us, perhaps hurt our feelings, annoyed us.

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But what wallowing does in that sense is it creates attachment to pain, it makes the pain more sticky, it makes it stick around with us rather than transforming, whereas being present with our experience actually creates detachment from pain, because the more we turn and look at it, face it, let ourselves feel it.

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Although initially it might feel more vivid and more painful, initially, that painfulness has an aliveness to it.

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It's fluid, it's changing, it's shifting, whereas when we're wallowing, we're actually solidifying the pain, we're making it more real, more permanent, more sticky and unfortunately, when we do that, we can actually literally damage ourselves through creating ulcers, through restricting our breathing because we're tense and therefore we're not getting enough oxygen, and that's bad for us.

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Even heart problems can be actually created through wallowing.

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Not to say that they don't care for all sorts of other reasons, but wallowing in that regard, being attached to our pain, hanging onto it for dear life, is not healthy for us.

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It's not what we're designed to do.

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It's a bit like eating something and then the stomach says I'm just going to sit with this here in the stomach for days and weeks on end, I'm not going to let go of it, I'm not going to digest it, I'm just going to sit with it.

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That's really bad for us.

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So why do we wallow?

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There must be a good reason for it.

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So partly it's habit, role models we see other people doing it Partly it's fashionable.

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I've met people in groups where wallowing in disapproval or anger or grief or fear or whatever is actually the trend in that group.

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That's what that group does.

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It's a pastime, it's what they're into and if that's the fashion, then stepping out of wallowing you might lose your group.

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So sometimes we hang onto it for that reason.

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Another thing about wallowing is it allows us to avoid taking responsibility.

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Another thing about wallowing is it allows us to avoid taking responsibility.

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Because we're so in pain, because we're suffering, we can say, look, I'm suffering too badly to be able to take responsibility, I can't do it.

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And in effect, disengaging from life behind a screen of pain and in fact we're avoiding feeling, we're avoiding the live feeling in the moment.

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In fact, the pain almost becomes a concept, it almost becomes a construct and we're still attached to it, even when the thing that happened to hurt us happened years ago.

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We're hanging on to it and that can get in the way of feeling what we're feeling in the moment, in the present, which creates a numbness, and it also can contribute to a sense of righteousness.

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So we're kind of hanging on to the suffering which then says well, therefore I'm righteous, I've been wounded, I've been victimized, I've been this, I've been that.

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Now, the difficulty with this is sometimes we have been victimized, sometimes we have been cruelly treated or marginalized.

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Sometimes those things are true, but our attachment to our distress about that is not helpful for us.

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So, again, it's one of those distinctions which, in a way, is subtle and in another way, is really not subtle, because the effects of the choice of attitude are so profound and have such an effect on us, and also things like a sense of superiority and elitism.

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I'm better than you because I've suffered more than you have.

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I'm better than you because I'm righteous.

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And it reinforces victimhood, it reinforces helplessness and it reinforces the notion of there's nothing I can do and I can sit here doing nothing.

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Now, my authority to say this comes from the fact that I have actually done this, really quite profoundly.

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My earliest memory of it is as a child coming home from school and rather than telling my parents I was upset because someone had bullied me, I would be found sniffling in a corner.

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I would be found subtly letting them know how much I'm suffering and what a poor little thing I am.

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I was not a poor little thing as a child.

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I was a bolshie, argumentative, bossy little girl.

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And anyone who knows me, thank you for what you're already saying about me.

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Get someone to come and go.

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Oh, you poor thing, you need help.

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You need us to actually give you a hug and make you feel better.

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And now, when I look back at that, I can see that that capacity is still present for me, and I also recognize that capacity in other people.

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So rather than responsibly saying look, I am hurt, I'm feeling wounded, I need help, in a kind of adult fashion, instead we're wallowing and calling to us the sort of attention that will rescue us, which, of course, is then further disempowering for us.

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So learning to distinguish between wallowing and deep diving into our lived experience and our truth is not always obvious.

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And equally, it's not always obvious as to which one your friend may be doing, or your partner, or your child, or your parent, or your colleague, colleague, or your people who work with you.

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Do they need space or do they need shaking out of it?

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You don't know.

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But we can practice accepting the fact that we don't know that about other people and about ourselves, and we can practice making sure that people know that we're available when they want us, when they're ready for us, and we can practice trusting people to do what works for them.

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And in regard to ourselves, we can practice trying to trust ourselves and we can practice trying to recognize and distinguish the difference between wallowing and deep diving into our truth.

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So how do we get out of wallowing?

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Well, a wise man, a wise teacher, said to me if you're wallowing, get into movement.

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Any kind of movement.

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Wallowing is stuckness in the past or fear about the future.

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Fear about the future is usually also rooted in stuckness from the past.

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It's not normally coming from nowhere.

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So if we say that the vast majority of wallowing is stuckness in the past, movement pulls us into the present.

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So whether that movement is standing up and dancing or singing or going for a walk, or whether it's getting up and doing the washing up, putting away the washing, cleaning the mirrors, whether it's having a conversation with somebody, whether it's grooming the cats, whether it's doing some gardening, whether it's doing some admin, whatever it is, so long as there's actual movement going on of some kind, that kind of brings us into the present.

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And when that happens, the wallowing loses its power over us.

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I had a very difficult time some years ago where I was wallowing a lot because I was genuinely dealing with some very difficult situations and some of the time I just got into wallowing where I would just spend days feeling sorry for myself and this was just not productive.

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It was productive to recognize I was having difficulties.

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It was productive to take quiet time and meditate on that, reflect on that, be with it, look for the lesson and all of that.

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But there came a point where the wallowing went beyond what was productive and helpful and I remember getting advice from this teacher.

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I was working at the time.

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He said get into movement.

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And just literally I would suddenly realize that I'd been sitting almost motionless, doing nothing, and that motionlessness in that situation was keeping me stuck.

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Now, not to say that meditation and all kinds of stillness practices are incredibly important, but I'm talking about in relationship to wallowing.

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We get into movement.

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That's the way out and that's the way we actually shift it.

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I saw a great quote earlier today from Timothy Leary who says you're only as young as the last time you changed your mind, which is another way of saying you're only sort of unstuck.

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You can be unstuck by changing your mind.

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Sometimes getting into physical movement changes our mind.

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It creates a different perspective, a different frame on things.

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So happy week with minimum, wallowing, I hope.

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Or if you are wallowing, if you have to wallow, if this really needs to be done in order for you to get to a place where you're ready to get into movement and do something about it.

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I hope that you enjoy your wallowing and I hope that the chocolates you are eating are of a high quality and exquisite, and I hope that the long, hot bars have got the right kinds of salts and oils and so forth in them.

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So, if you're going to wallow, luxuriate in the wallowing, but when you're done, when you want to shake it out, get into movement.

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Have a great week and I'll see you next time.

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Thank you for listening to Truth and Transcendence and thank you for supporting the show by rating, reviewing, subscribing, buying me a coffee and telling a friend.

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Thank you.

Ep 157: Breaking Free from the Wallowing Cycle

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