Phightphear,

I’m sorry for your suffering, and know how desperate life can feel sometimes. It’s as though a heavy fog descends across everything, and joy, brightness, freshness…. nowhere to be found. Don’t despair, dear friend, there is always a path to blue skies, and reaching out for help was a great step in seeing that fog lifted.

Consider that you’ve been through a few different kinds of stressful events. These events are like mosquito bites (sometimes pretty darn big mosquitoes). Consider that when the event happens, like being stabbed in the back, unkind words, a house fire, there is the initial bite and some blood sucked. This is like the immediate reaction, the startle or anger reflex, lasts just an intense moment. But then there is the welt, and it itches. We scratch and scratch, focus our attention there, and try to rub and tear at it in a way that produces relief from the itch. But the more we scratch, the more it itches, and soon we have bites and scratches.

Said differently, consider that there are the initial moments that hurt, and then the depressed feeling that lingers on. We try to overcome the depression, ignore it, soldier on, but it doesn’t seem to go away. The depression is disorienting, confounding, and makes finding peace and freshness seem impossible.

Now, on the surface, it may seem like a string of bad luck to be bitten by mosquitoes, and have itchy skin. However, its actually fortunate. Consider: people that have it easy do not meet the kind of challenge you’re going through. In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a notion of “the God realm”, where things are good and easy. Sunshine and roses all day. In that realm there is little challenge to ego, little cause for any growth. When the good times run out in the god realm (and they always do eventually), they crash into deep suffering. However, in the human realm we go through tribulation, and once we have found our smile in the face of the struggles, we find an inner resilience that cannot be lost.

Here and now, though, with the fog heavy, finding that inner smile can seem almost impossible. However, its easier than you think. There are simply a few keys. The first: forgive the initial bite, accept them. Such as, forgive the house fire, the fiancé, the lost work friends. Who knows exactly what the causes were for those events, but you don’t need to know tonset it down, let them go, and move on. “I forgive you, choose to let the past pass.” The second key is stop scratching. Consider, the events have pushed you into your head. Thinking about yourself, what happened to you, what they did to you, how you feel, you, you, you, you. This self focus is like itching, and too much of it just tears up your skin. Said differently, after the initial event, you focused too much on the event, grabbed it, tightened your fist around it. To stop, instead let the itch be met with peace, space, openness. Like focusing on the 90% of the skin that doesn’t itch, instead of the 10% that does.

To this end, its about self nurturing actions. Walks in nature, baths with candles, soft music, keeping a gratitude journal, exploring your inner artist, and meditation. Consider especially metta meditation. Metta is the feeling of warm friendliness, and is a direct counter energy to the fog. And, it can be grown with practice. A natural process, normal process, well walked path, reliable. Consider “Sharon Salzburg guided metta meditation” on YouTube. When we practice metta, we grow space around the itch so we don’t just automatically scratch. It shifts deep subconscious patterns, lifts the fog.

Finally, just as it took time and many events to create the fog, it will take time and effort to lift it. Stick with the good work, its effective. A few weeks with more intentional acts of nurturing and metta mediation, and the fog will be noticably thinner.

With warmth,
Matt