And enjoy! It was a lovely day today, started a little chilly, but warmed beautifully as the day progressed. I live in NJ, and things have been more than a little damp here. Of course I forgot about that when I flew off to the office today, and had to detour around my usual route, which floods readily and easily. On a hot summer day, the water, well, swamp I guess, is on both sides of that road, and the water is always nearly at the road anyhow, so it doesn’t take too much rain to allow it to flow over the road. More rain leaves it impassable to cars.
Then there’s the cresting rivers a few days after the rain, which leaves some roads that had been passable suddenly closed. My office is surprisingly close to a river, I believe a part of the Passaic (note to self to check on that one). Today, the road was open, but I wonder if it will still be by Saturday. Two rains ago, the flooding was worse after the rain stopped; hence my quick education on cresting rivers. You’d think I’d have known that by now; oh well.
Although my home was not in an area that was under water, it is built into a hill. The ground became so saturated over the past few weeks, that some water did seep into the basement. I felt very grateful that I could manage it with towels, lots of towels, a mop and 2 dehumidifiers. It was more like a huge puddle, and didn’t flow onto anything that wasn’t safely living in plastic tubs already.
This is, of course, to the hypnotherapist, a wonderful bounty of metaphor opportunities. Emotions, especially anger, can just keep building up, hiding underground so that you don’t see them, don’t realize they are there until they leak in, eventually even flooding in. Self-care is so important at these times. Addiction treatment talks about HALT, being hungry, angry, lonely and tired as a trigger to relapse. That is so true, and being mindful helps one take the actions when they recognize any or all of these symptoms. The actions of talking to others; meditation; nutrition and watching caffeine and sugar intake; taking your medication if indicated; exercise or yoga are only a few of the options.
What if, however, you haven’t recognized the anger yet? Your ground is saturated, but you don’t see/feel it yet. Do you need to wait until it leaks in? Floods over your road? Do you need to wait until you become angry, rageful, hopeless, self-destructive? Absolutely not! As you learn to live mindfully, some other thoughts may begin to occur to you; you notice what is going on around you. You notice your emotional rain, from the very first drop. You remember that the ground, your ground, can only hold so much before it becomes saturated. You remember that the rivers get full, flood even, then a few days later, when it seems they should be receding, they crest and may flood again. Unlike the weather, we can intervene when we feel the first emotional drops of rain. We can prevent the ground from getting oversaturated, the river from cresting. Or, we can wait with an armload of towels and a head full of every alternate route to get where we want to go. How will you choose to live your life?
