The Mindfulness Ands

I have a new distress tolerance reminder tool to start out this Kaia Hell Week: sticky self-validation. My goal this week is to really focus on carrying myself with kindness and holding the experience in awareness. I think my desire (and attachment) to wanting the class to feel more supportive and encouraging has only served to create more suffering for myself. Especially with all the judgments that come up when I feel like I'm the only one in class having these negative self-judging emotional reactions in class. I'm going to pay close attention to what I feel emotionally when I start to see the screaming judgments pop up. What am I reacting to? What am I attaching to? This is a prime scenario for distress tolerance skills. This is a situation that is not likely to get better anytime soon, and I have to tolerate it until reality eventually changes. In the interim, the best I can do is to manage the emotions that I know are likely to come up based on the triggers and pad myself with a ton of self-care and self-validation to make it easier to tolerate the negative parts of the experience.

Today I noticed what I feel is a systemic aura of competition even when it's declared that this is not, in fact, a competition. Having to call out a time of completion for the exercise rounds really served no purpose at all other than to call attention verbally to the individual ability to complete the exercises in class. If it was set up to really feel non-competitive, I don't think we would need to call attention to individual progress. There is a much better way to format some of these class exercises to really foster a forum of mutual support and non-competition. Calling out an arbitrary time of completion for no apparent reason is not one of them. I didn't pay attention to time or calling out my completion for the exercises. I immediately noticed how it made me feel like I was, in fact, being compared to others and rejected the idea completely. I choose to move at my own pace and complete the work in a way that felt as self-honoring as possible knowing that a good portion of the class was probably staring at me while I finished my slow-moving attempt at proper form and good effort. I don't particularly like being watched when I work, and I really don't like to be randomly cheered just because I'm moving with a slower intention. It's OK not to like things right? I suppose where I fall into the pit is when I keep thinking, "this sucks." My sticky validation did help, and I turned my sleeve to glance at it several times during the class when I needed a reminder that I'm working hard & this is difficult and making me bump into all of my edges & I can do this because I'm a strong person & it will be over soon.

It was nice to start with mindful walking when the class began today. I decided to count my steps and notice my breath while I walked. I have never done a mindful walking exercise so quickly before. So that was a new experience. It helped to notice the physical experience of being in my body with the blisters on my feet and the cool air on my skin. It brought me fully into the present moment and allowed me to let go of some of the anxiety I had about being in class. It also gave me time to tune myself to being in the class for that hour. I noticed the people around me and reminded myself that I'm only here for me.

Now that class is over it's time for me to do a LOT of self validation. It has been a difficult week. I'm going through a lot and have a lot of pressures all around me. I'm doing the best I can to balance everything and it's OK is sometimes I need to take a break to care for myself when I feel overwhelmed. I don't have to be good. I don't have to be perfect. I don't have to compare myself to anyone else, ever. I don't have to worry about whether or not I'm going to fail, because all that is required is that I try, and I did that. I am not a bad person because I prefer to work alone. I'm not strange because groups make me nervous. Not everyone likes to be singled out and cheered in a group, sometimes that adds pressure and triggers self-invalidation.