How To Handle Change (Even If You Hate The Unknown) | Just Be You | Amber Hawken | Mindfulness Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

My head is a world of chaos right now. I’ve picked up shop and moved south to the more still end of the Gold Coast. I’m pumped but it’s still big for me. I’ve ripped up my roots and I feel like I’m dangling mid-air, waiting to be repotted.

It’s amongst the chaos where life throws a dirty big mirror in your face and says, “Face this shit”. That thing you’re feeling right now – LOOK AT IT. Our guards of self preservation and protection are down when we’re literally unstable and/or physically tired and we tend to feel what we’ve been avoiding. Right now, I’m both.

I find that grief worms it’s way through, to come out and be felt each time. Tears well in my eyes at the smallest of moments. The irony is that I’m never anywhere longer than 6 months (12 twice) and haven’t been since I was 21. Something always tells me to go, shift, change. And each time there is an enormous grieving process. As if I’m mourning what was and what could have been or what I thought I had there that I don’t now.

Emotions are such fragile and vulnerable human energies. Whatever it is, change is change, and we need to take the time to let the juicy bits that have been dormant, rise up and flow out. NO-ONE likes to do this. I love the feeling afterwards, however I fucking resist going through it. Change at any rate, feels so very uncomfortable. We want to rush through it. But you cannot rush a caterpillar.

It’s our roots; they’re up, we’re ungrounded, untrusting of ourselves, not quite certain about who we are right now and therefore unable to make decisions with power or certainty. ‘Fake it til you make it’ might work to “get through”, but that doesn’t allow space for a deep shift inside of yourself. The one that’s trying to happen. A mask over the top will only delay what’s necessary.

So anyway, a few bits of advice that work for me when I’m in the midst of change, feeling ungrounded or in general, like I’m upside down and inside out.

Express.

Into your pillow with your fist, under the water with your voice, on top of a mountain with your body, into paper, dance, writing, painting, skateboard, exercise, talking, racing cars, cooking, singing, love making, whatever it is: it MUST bring you presence and still your mind. If it’s distracting, it’s not going to do the job. You’ll just feel a little bit of relief and the work has been abandoned.

Get Grounded.

Mother Earth is a fucking superstar savior. Get as much of your skin on her as you can. Apart from the ionizing at a biological level, your body’s breath will be drawn to kick into rhythm with it’s heart beat and your nervous system will love the fuck out of you. Body affects mind, which affects emotions – it will calm you and ease the incessant discomfort that is the unknown space you’re trying to navigate through, however ungracefully.

Sit still.

I know it’s gross and boring and weird and your mind will give you hell about your to do lists, etc.

Do it anyway, FFS. That mysterious chaos is the adventure waiting to be explored. It has answers. But you need to tune into it for long enough without fear or judgment, so you can hear what it’s trying to tell you. It’s a discipline that takes courage. Lucky, you’ve got plenty. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious chaos; It is the source of all true art and science. Treat it like the adventure it is and you’ll soften into surrender, no matter how stuck and afraid you feel. Works a fucking treat.

Kindness. The final and most important part.

Shameful thoughts pertaining to your wrongness will drive you to darker and deeper places from which I don’t have a rope long enough to throw to you to help you out. Shame is that m-fker that chokes joy and turns good people to plastic surgery, sugar, fame and shallow disconnected sex. It’s the driver of “empty” and “not enough” and it will sever the connection with that part that’s much prettier and sparklier than the ego, a divine somethin somethin in us all. Your kindness and patience with yourself whilst in the midst of change and chaos will see you flowing (perhaps still hitting a few branches along the way) rather than dragging yourself through, kicking and screaming.

Finally, beer. I’m KIDDING. I love beer. But avoid stimulants. It’ll send your mind into overdrive and more than likely down, way down. Again – ropes and length. Don’t do that to yourself. Remember your responsibilities in this situation are you actions or non-actions. We all have urges, what are you doing with yours?

Finally, I just want to take a second to say how beautiful it is; however terrified to step forward we might be, we’re still here, still fighting, never giving up. Go us!

Go you.

Love,