Asking for help.
This is inspired by a few recent conversations, one with another NRAM facilitator and another with family members who have recently lost a loved one to suicide.
Why is asking for help so difficult for us? simply put, its just our conditioning that makes it difficult.
Our culture has been one based on avoidance, on pretending the problem doesn't exist, by denying it, bypassing it, numbing it, pushing it away, abandoning it into the deepest darkest depths within ourselves with the hope it will magically go away.
We don't only do this on an individual level, but we do it with cultural and collective problems also.
Lets look within for a moment, and do a moment of inquiry.
Say to yourself "Its safe for me to ask for help" or "Its safe for me to be totally vulnerable"
Notice any contraction/sensation in the body that happens when you say this, notice if there is an argument that happens within you. All the thoughts that argue with this are just our cultural conditioning. Its not safe to be vulnerable, ill be judged if i express my feelings, its not safe to be honest, Im not worthy of help, no one will understand, people will think im weak etc.
Men may experience thoughts like, men don't cry, its weak to ask for help, I have to hold it together, Im not a pussy, I have to act tough to survive etc etc.
This conditioning which is actually a form of cultural/collective trauma has unbelievably devastating consequences. By bottling things up, by suppressing, repressing and pushing down we are just asking for disaster.
This cultural wounding that we all carry has been avoided long enough, we have lost enough people prematurely, and we have all definitely suffered the consequences of this self deception in our own individual ways.
We CAN untangle ourselves from this web, and come together through our pain, using our pain as a way of connecting, instead of continuing allowing it to isolate us by making it wrong.
Our avoidance to hearing and being compassionate to others comes from our own inability to be compassionate toward ourselves. We have to learn to understand ourselves, to understand when we condemn another persons pain, its just a reflection of my own self condemnation.
Its imperative we all make this shift if we are to not only survive, but thrive.
Peace,
Matt Nettleton