Gloria Ogunbadejo
Someone once said it helps to think of failure as success in the making. In reality, it’s pretty hard to be thankful for our past experiences and struggles, at least not while we are in the throes of them. I know I have sometimes wished events in my past would be erased so I can start anew. But I have come to understand that without these events, I wouldn’t have made the changes I have, I wouldn’t have learnt and grown. At some point in our lives, we will all have a story of failure and disadvantage, those things we wish we had done differently, done better or maybe we wish we had not done them at all. We might feel we don’t have what it takes to live the life we secretly dream of. The truth of the matter is that we can draw from all these experiences and depending on how we choose to think about them and make use of the impact on us, we can actually be strengthened or allow them to weaken us.
At some point in our lives, we have all probably experienced feeling bystanders in life and feel as if we are watching life passing by. I know at times I have felt like a spectator rather than a participant. Other times I have felt like I wanted the world to stop so I could get off and rest for a while. In both scenarios, I had to get back on track if I wanted something different or wanted more than I had. If you have never felt like that please let me know what elixir you ingest or what pomade you apply so the world can share in it!
We can decide the meaning of, or how we want to interpret our failures which will differ from person to person. Don’t let someone else define it for you. It’s important not to wait for permission to live the life you want to live. You have heard of the expression ‘you only live once’ (it’s really true!).
When you experience anxious thoughts, embracing your failures can be helpful. Forget past mistakes, failures and everything except what you are going to do now. Decrease hypotheticals in your life and focus on things that move you forward. Anticipate something good happening in the future, visualise every detail of that experience. This exercise can help you to feel it in the present. It’s like tricking your brain, because your mind responds to the information you give it. It doesn’t know any better, so if you affirm yourself and act the part, it can actually put you on the path you want or desire.
You have to be open to experience happiness. If you are a pessimist, you will struggle. Happiness requires a level of openness and the ability to live in the present. The present is a gift. The past is done, the future is still a mystery, but the present, today is here and now and is all we have at our disposal to manipulate and to make something of.
We can be so affected by what others think of us that we live in perpetual fear of criticism and failure. Whereas failure can give us the opportunity to gain strength, courage and confidence. No matter the situation, there is a creative opportunity to it. Changing just a few of your thoughts can change how you feel and how people respond to you.
We need to make mistakes and to fail so we can grow, learn and do things differently. Maya Angelou said ‘when you know better, you do better.’ (I know that doesn’t always work out like that, but you get the sentiment). Failure is the stepping stone to success. There is no success without failure. Letting go of self-pity is the key to propelling you forward and freeing you to embrace life and facing your fears.
I recently received a letter from a reader describing a very painful experience of failure and asking some questions about how to move forward. Is it possible you have experienced something similar? How did you cope and what can you say to this reader to help her negotiate her way through her fog of pain, suffering and failure?
Dear aunty Gloria,
Thank you for your column that I have been reading for many years. My week does not start right if I don’t read your column on Sunday. I want to meet you! God bless you. I have a very serious problem that I have been struggling with for a few years now and I thought I was handling it but reading your column regularly I think I now realise that I am not really getting anywhere and in fact, I might be getting worse.
I have been married for over 20 years and I am quite clear that my marriage was doomed from the first day. Before I married my husband, I always knew he had many girlfriends other me but I looked the other way because my family encouraged me and assured me this was the way men were and as long as I was the one he was claiming as his girlfriend, the other ones did not count. I have always been an insecure person with low self-esteem. I now also realise from reading your column that a lot of my insecurities and poor self-esteem stemmed from how I was treated in the family. I was never made to feel good about myself and this continued all the way to when I was getting married. I was made to feel that I was lucky that someone from a good family was marrying me. So I felt grateful and I accepted what I thought was normal, acceptable behaviour. I always believed I was not the real child of my parents because I was always treated differently from my siblings.
No sooner we got married than my husband continued his affairs with different women, in fact, it increased for a while then he settled for one woman whom he seemed to be attached to. I got pregnant and faced my children and my home. I tried to get further education but my husband refused. He raped me when he wanted and continued with this woman that everybody knew about. It was very humiliating because it was someone in the church and everyone knew about it, even the pastor. I couldn’t understand how so-called God-fearing people who preached morality every day could just turn a blind eye to such behaviour by a church member. My conclusion was that I was not a worthy person and deserved to be treated this way. After all, I have always been treated with little respect and regard by everyone around me.
I felt so much pain on a daily basis and there was no one I could talk to. One time the pain was so intense while I was cooking and cutting vegetables, I didn’t realise I was cutting my hand. The strange thing was after I cut my hand and I started bleeding, the pain I was feeling in my heart and head stopped. This happed a few times and I concluded I had found a way to deal with my pain. Then I read in one of your articles about self-harming and I was shocked that this was an actual mental health problem. I was horrified but also relieved that I was not the only one who had a problem like this. I still cut my hand when I feel the emotional pain but I am conscious that this is a coping strategy. I learnt this from reading your column.
I am determined to build myself up and find healthy ways to get well and find a life for myself. I know there is no support from the church or my family so that is why I am writing to you to help me find a way out of this nightmare. Please if you publish this letter don’t use the very personal things I have said or my name. I know it is helpful to other people like the letters you had published had helped me too. I have to say since I have been reading your column it has encouraged me but I feel very hopeless at the moment.
Name and address withheld
Chronic physical pain can hurt your mental health too
Everyone knows what physical pain feels like; we have all stubbed a toe or cut a finger. Now imagine amplifying the intensity of that stubbed toe by ten or more and feeling it every day, all day and you might come close to envisioning how it feels to live with chronic pain. Chronic pain persists as the pain signals in the nervous system continue to fire for weeks, months, or even years. Serious chronic pain afflicts at least 116 million Americans every year.
It’s easy to understand how chronic pain affects an individual’s physical well-being, but what about mental health?
Chronic pain can severely impact a person’s mental health, as each day becomes a struggle and the physical pain becomes a way of life. It can be extremely difficult to maintain a healthy mind when the body continues to struggle.
Clinical Psychologist in Grand Rapids, Dr. Andrea Rotzien, says people dealing with chronic pain often battle mental health issues, especially anxiety and depression, that, in turn, can aggravate the physical pain. “Clearly having chronic pain can trigger [anxiety and depression], but also these mood states can exacerbate chronic pain.”
That line of thinking has a detrimental domino effect towards someone’s well-being Lower activity levels and poor coping skills cause more intense pain, which is actually not typically supported by tests and scans, thus harder to diagnose and treat biologically. Rotzien notes, “Fear and avoidance lead to deconditioning, which leads to higher potential for injury or reliance on other muscle groups. This then expands chronic pain to other areas.”
As a 25-year old dealing with an autoimmune spinal arthritis that causes chronic pain, I fully empathize with the difficulty in separating how your body feels and how your mind feels. It is true that chronic pain causes a depression over the lack of control over life, a doubt in your ability to cope, and the battle over self-efficacy and pain management. A notion that has helped me personally is an understanding of how important it is to help nurture the acceptance that complete pain relief may not be possible.
“The concept of mindfulness comes into focus here on the acceptance of negative experiencing and developing the ability to function and move through experience,” states Rotzien.
Though it takes practice, mastering a state of mindfulness as a person with chronic pain is essential for balancing mental health and physical health. Placing importance on stress and anxiety reducers will directly correlate to whether or not pain increases.
Source: ahealthiermichigan.org
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