How to Avoid Painful Processing
If anyone wants to buy me this bag, here is the link
Sh*t happens to all of us. This is a fact of life. As a student studying counseling, I am well aware of the processing (whether internal or external) that has to occur as a result of the facts of life hitting us in the face. [By processing I mean systematically going through what happened and how it feels, either through journaling, self talk, or external communication]
Walking through the act of processing can often be painful and difficult to understand. In my opinion, processing is a necessary evil for us to heal and grow from challenging experiences. Understanding the "necessaryness" of painfully working through your issues is often easier said that done... Therefore I have created a list of how to avoid this dangerous task... Because who needs to understand why things affect them anyway?
- Check social media outlets every ten minutes
- Talk to your family about the weather and food and your MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling
- Try a new workout
- Eat a lot of french fries
- Only eat coffee and french fries for a week while trying a new workout
- Go online shopping
- Go regular shopping
- Wander around whole foods looking for all of the different things you can buy that have sweet potatoes in them
- Avoid all contact with people who can hear the inflection in your voice that things are not really that okay**
Unfortunately this is a hyperbolic "how to" and the things that I have included in this list are not actual ways to deal with the issues that need processing. Now, to be clear I am not advocating for an instantaneous processing to take effect; sometimes it takes me months or years to understand the way that things have had an impact on me. This list is merely a way to showcase how one human avoids dealing with the issue at hand.
If you're not careful and persist in your lack of awareness around the way that you are avoiding, processing may never happen and I believe you will run the risk of being hardened to how life is hurting you (newsflash, it will and it probably already has). I don't know what is best for you to process your issues, all I know is that it is imperative that it happens. I have found so much healing through the awareness I have achieved. Consider how you might be avoiding the mental and heart work that needs to be done. Where is your body and mind forcing you to go when you are in pain? What are some ways that you process? Let me know!
**Some or all of these things may have been experienced by one of our writers here on this website (fun fact: I am the only writer for this website)