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Be kind to yourself!

by Alaa Hijazi
April 3
I thought I was spared the horrid "motivational" phrase going around now "If you don't come out of this with a new skill, you never lacked time, you lacked discipline" until I saw it on my local yoga studio page.
As a trauma psychologist, I am utterly utterly horrified, enraged, and bewildered about how people can believe and spread this phrase in good conscience.
We are going through a collective trauma, that is bringing up profound grief, loss, panic over livelihoods, panic over loss of lives of loved ones. People's nervous systems are barely coping with the sense of threat and vigilance for safety, or alternating with feeling numb and frozen and shutting down in response to it all.
People are trying to survive poverty, fear, retriggering of trauma, retriggering of other mental health difficulties. Yet, someone has the nerve to accuse someone of lack of discipline for not learning a new skill, and by a yoga teacher!
This cultural obsession with [capitalistic] "productivity" and always spending time in a "productive" "fruitful" way is absolutely maddening.
What we need is more self compassion, more gentle acceptance of all the difficult emotions coming up for us now, more focus on gentle ways to soothe ourselves and our pain and the pain of loved ones around us, not a whipping by some random fucker making us feel worse about ourselves in the name of "motivation".

Allamanda 8 Apr 9
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2 comments

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I agree but would add we need a lot more reason. Emotions, we have had enough. Sorry, my late partner demonstrated the absolute need and value of a reasoned life and I totally agree.

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Sounds like something outta a religious persons playbook. I detest that that sort of thing. WHY? Because it makes no damn sense. No one knows what goes on in my mind, what my motivations are, certainly the teachers I had for grades 1 thru 12 were not much help. Always felt like a square peg in a world of round holes.
The best thing I ever did was see a therapist for a deep depression after a person I loved was killed by a drunk driver. He suggested I read Sheldon Kopp's, If You Meet the Budda on the Road Kill Him.
I also read Illusions, the adventure's of a reluctant messiah by Richard Bach.

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