Curing existential suffocation

Time keeps ticking and everything changes, sometimes in seemingly imperceptible ways, like in the case of the minute changes in my body as the result of improved fitness and nutrition in the course of a few days. I’m impatient. I can’t help it (although I’m working on that too).

My work as a clinician has taught me however, that those who pay attention and move with time always do better than those who are either ignorant of its marching on or purposely ignore it through any number of self defense mechanisms … numbing out with food, substances, sex or perhaps priding themselves on “not caring,” just to name a few.

If existential suffocation is the result of time passing without fulfilling potential (i.e., hitting the goals you set for yourself, being able to experience that which you’d like to, etc.), then dealing with any self-deception and deciding to actually become self-disciplined is the cure.  

Photo by Tyler Shields from his Provocateur collection

Notice the focus is on SELF. 

Not others. Not circumstances. Just YOU. 

What are you pretending not to know about yourself?

If you were 100% honest with yourself about the thing you’d regret most on your deathbed (and that could be tomorrow, or 50 years from now), what would your soul’s answer be?

Some people won’t even be able to make it through this first step because that’s how far removed they are from their true nature.

Others will know what they want but then find they’re too afraid to follow through, either because of conditioned fear responses (e.g., trauma, dogma from culture at large, toxic relationships or just shitty mindset).

And a third group will start down the right path of true change for themselves but will quit when the going “gets tough.” 

Very very few will make it through, to the place of fulfillment and the removal of existential suffocation. And those that do usually have a wide variety of support measures in place to not only assist them in getting there but also maintain their progress. 

Regardless of where you find yourself on that journey today, if you could use some help in identifying your stuck points, empowerment to bust through them, or implementing the self-discipline to keep going, I got you.