At first, I didn't believe it was a real thing: quicksand. It even sounded dumb. Quicksand?! What is that supposed to mean?!? I can recall an old movie where the people accidently walked into some; they started to go down right where they stood. They couldn't really move forward or backward because once they started sinking into it, that was it. All that was left was their hats floating on top of the quicksand where they once stood. Mental note to self at that time was this: "Don't ever accidently walk onto quicksand or it's instant sink!"
Walking onto quicksand isn't the problem for us these days. Instead, too many of us choose to live right in it already sunk down to the bottom---and with not even an intention of coming back up for air. We're too comfortably familiar with living in the quicksand, because we no longer care how we got there in the first place! Today's blog post is about coming up for air in spite of our history with the quicksand lifestyle. Even though we are used to living in quicksand, and even though we have deluded ourselves into believing we are FINE (and we all know what "that" means!), reality dictates otherwise. We are not only hurting ourselves, we are authentically hurting others too. We are transmitting our drama and our pain onto other people, but being stuck in the quicksand still feels "okay for now". No, it's not okay for now. It will lead to more of the same chronic and negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that we have been stuck with for years---if not decades. If ever there was a time to start lifting ourselves up and out of that quicksand for air, it is right now.
For some, we stepped onto the quicksand when we first experienced significant rejection---and blamed ourselves for it. I have had clients specifically recount incidences both before and after the age of five that have remained locked inside them 10, 20, 40, and even 70 years later. Rejection truly represents the hugest of all of the many tangled roots that will attach themselves to our legs and feet as we are being dragged down into the quicksand.
I can remember when I was a marketing consultant to small business and motivational speakers would talk about the importance of networking. "Rejection is neither fatal nor contagious!" represented a sacred utterance to motivate anyone involved in this practice. Easy to say when a person is already all grown up and actively selling whatever they've got to current and prospective customers, clients, or patients. Personally speaking, however, even a "sense" of significant rejection by important others can be devastating to the point of no return (unable to get back to baseline or to "normal" however one perceives it!).
"Marie" lives in the quicksand. She has for over 10 years since losing her beloved husband. "He was my everything", says Marie. Without "Gene" by Marie's side any longer, Marie found herself sinking deeper with each passing month, and then season, and then year that she spent alone and on her own. "My kids are busy with my grandkids. They just don't think about calling me or coming over to visit like they used to." As Marie sees it, Gene was the "fun" parent and grandparent that everyone wanted to be around. "I'm not like him", recounts Marie. "I need my kids and grandkids more than they need me to entertain or serve them like Gene did." For Marie, being sunk down and stuck in the quicksand takes her back to her own lonely history growing up with an alcoholic father and neglectful mother. "I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that the children of lovers are orphans. In my case, my parents didn't even like each other, but I sure was made an emotional orphan by them anyway", says Marie. For Marie, a childhood history of neglect and rejection, being abandoned by the death of her beloved husband, and becoming dependent on her kids and grandkids for social interaction since her husband's death---it's all been too overwhelming and too much for Marie to bear. "Sometimes, I just want to go to Jesus", Marie mentions very matter-of-factly. "What's the point anyway if I'm not even good enough to call every once in a while to be asked how I'm doing?"
Men and women like Marie are everywhere because of the "R" word (REJECTION!) which molded and shaped their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to do with the other "R" word (RELATIONSHIPS!) over time. Without doing anything to properly grieve Gene's death and move past it, Marie quickly sunk back down into that same pit of quicksand she inhabited when she was a kid growing up with her parents.
So what's the solution? Is it possible to rise up in spite of this type of extraordinary burden (or others!) we have carried around like excess luggage on our backs that we can't unload?
There is always a solution. So often, we are so focused on our pain and those other chronic and negative thoughts and feelings that plague us---we authentically believe we are powerless to change them.
Choosing to see things differently is a choice. Just like choosing to stay stuck in the bottom of one's own quicksand pit.
Living in the solution rather than in the problem does have a starting point. For some, it would be contacting someone like me (a trained and licensed mental health professional) to assist with the journey of healing, recovery, and hope for the future. For others, participating in an online support group or attending a recovery-based group represents their first step(s) in a righter-direction. There are those who started by contacting the people who mattered to them to engage in some honest sharing. I have known of people who began coming up for air by going to the library and or bookstore to browse the "Psychology" or "Self-Help" stacks to see what books jumped out at them to checkout and/or purchase on the spot. I have heard of people who might not like to read, but who WILL listen to podcasts or to audiobooks in their car as a start.
All of these practices, if you can't already tell, involve taking in "new" information (by the way!) instead of recycling the same old negative self-talk and core beliefs within one's own mind. If that in itself isn't a revelation, it needs to be!
GIGO was a term from the old days that computer programmers used to rate a computer system's overall performance. "Garbage In...Garbage Out!" When we are living in quicksand, we are in major need of a Brain Wash; the garbage we have put in has nowhere else to go but out---and then back in again because we put it back in again! Until we identify and then get rid of the garbage for good, we have no hope of replacing it with better and higher quality inputs!
Until next post...