Penny for your thoughts

I’m an over thinker.

I have been told this numerous times and I am aware of it and yet I can’t stop over thinking or worrying. I have been speaking a lot lately about self suffering as part of my healing process, how my thoughts lead me back to the past too much, which of course I cannot change. I also think too much into the future and so I worry about the what ifs, would could and what may happen. I worry about losing people I love, I worry about people I don’t even know. Seeing so many homeless people fills me with great sadness and I feel helpless that I can’t do more to let them know that people do care about them.

I have always been a day dreamer since I was very young. Being deeply unhappy as a child will do that to you. I was bullied as a kid at primary school, it started when I was 6 years old. The kids would call me horrible names because of how I looked, the boys would sometimes beat me up. I used to come home from school crying and sit in a wardrobe and hide under piles of clothes and wished I could be somewhere else. The tears are flowing as I recall these painful childhood memories. Scars run so deep. How many of us have unresolved issues that started from our childhood? How do we get to work through them all?

To get me through a difficult childhood, I used to day dream that I would be adopted and I would be allowed to have lots of pets. I would write fictional stories and imagine that I fought monsters, could fly like Superman and saved the world. I became a class clown in the hope the other kids would find me funny and want me as their friend instead of someone they could bully. When that didn’t always work, I then discovered I could physically fight back. The boys stopped beating me up soon after that. The name calling still continued, but I also learned to answer back.

As an adult, I am still fighting monsters, but now they exist in my head. Occasionally they turn up as people too. I have been gently challenged recently to turn my ‘monsters’ into my allies by following the Buddhist practise ‘feeding your demons’. https://www.lionsroar.com/how-to-practice-feeding-your-demons/

I am currently in the process of building my army of allies.

I don’t know how long it will take for me to stop over thinking. I regularly have to tell myself I am not my feelings, I am so much more and I have more control than I think.

For now, I will be open to my lessons and focus on being present and ground myself so I can enjoy what is now.

I am not my anxiety.