Foreboding Joy, Tempting Destruction
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!
The new year is a time for evaluation, reflection, changes and new beginnings which is why I kept this one in the drafts for this moment as I think it's like the best time for this.
Foreboding joy is not allowing yourself to enjoy what you have in this current moment: whether that be an experience, a relationship, basically your life because you're always thinking “what if?”, “What's next?” This is what makes joy so scary - you’re refusing to relax into the present moment because you're scared of what the future holds. This is when you cease to be vulnerable because the fear of pain and destruction is lingering at the back or in my case, the front of your mind.
A professor by the name of Brene Brown explains this emotion or action if you will so perfectly. I watched a video of her on Oprah Winfrey's show and what she said really stood out to me and resonated with me - “the most terrifying emotion that humans experience is joy”. She went on to say a quote that really stood out to me "when we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding".
So your good sis has been going to therapy to heal and to elevate and I've learnt so much about myself and life some parts of my life were particularly highlighted.
A part of my thinking pattern that was frequently highlighted was the foreboding joy and my fear of giving 100% vulnerability. The type of therapy I am doing is Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing therapy and with this comes an initial negative cognition. This is the (for want of a better word) negative thought you begin with. Mine was “I am broken” and the aim is to get you to process trauma and other things to lead you to a positive cognition (experts correct me if I’m wrong). My positive thought is “I am whole”, So I am literally 2 points away from fully believing my positive cognition or positive thought but I refuse to allow myself to fully get there because I'm scared I'll end up right back at the point where I had begun treatment.
Being scared to experience joy is something we need to unlearn is because without even knowing it, you could literally be destroying your very present which in turn leads to the very thing you didn’t want to happen but because you were so fixated on it happening, it happened: my good old friend, self-sabotage.
You see being joyful isn’t dependent on your situation or being ignorant to the fact that life inevitably has painful days and not so painful days. As Oprah and Brene said in the video, you can’t have joy without gratitude. They specifically pointed out it’s not an attitude of gratitude it’s a practice. When you begin to practise being grateful for the very things that are currently bringing you joy, you begin to look for it. Even if it is the most minute thing. Every year I give the year a theme of what I want it to be. This year I want the theme to be brave. I want to be brave enough to be vulnerable, brave enough not to continue pushing my friends away. Brave enough to love me as God loves me. Brave enough to live in the moment and actually pull through with my goals. My wish is that everyone can take this step. Joy is scary and not knowing what’s next is scary but what you do know is what you have now and what you can control in this very moment. So give thanks for it. Make it a challenge to practise gratitude every day. Make lists, make gratitude a topic of discussion with friends and family, pray on it and thank God for what you have in this very moment.
Let me leave a prayer for you to pray in this 2022:
God, give me the grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
https://youtu.be/HKwkuudWhzc