Sciamachy

Various ways to address this. Commonest ways are, if it’s about stuff that happened to you is disassociate from it, imagine you’re seeing it done to someone else & you’re floating out away from your body. This tends to make it less fearful & panicky. Second, treat the thought of it like a fretful puppy or child - pat it on the head, tell it “That’s ok hun but Mummy’s talking now. I’ll play with you later,” & then concentrate on something else for a bit. That only works to some extent. Most psychologists tell us we need to examine closely what troubles us to find ways to cope with it. 

Here’s one from Buddhism: 

A woman was brought to the Buddha one day. Her hair was matted & unkempt. Her clothes dirty. The smell was awful, but not nearly as bad as the smell from the maggoty corpse of the baby she carried with her. She wouldn’t put it down even for a second. Her eyes were red from crying, the tears still running down her face. Her son had died, through no fault of hers or anyone’s 6 weeks previous & she had quite simply gone insane with grief. 

The woman begged Gautama Buddha, “Sir, you are a wise sage, & they tell me you have amazing powers - can you bring my son back, make him healthy again?”

The Buddha looked at the woman, & said, “Bring me a mustard seed from every house in the village. One condition though - each seed must be from a house that has never known death. Nobody can have ever died in the family of those who live there, not during the lives of anyone living there. They can not have known bereavement like yourself.”

So the woman set off, house to house, still carrying her terrible burden, but in each house she was told “I’m sorry - we have the mustard seed, but my father died here 5 years ago, I can’t help you.” or “No, my grandmother died here.” or “I lost my daughter to a sickness”, “My son fell in battle”, “My wife… she died giving birth to twin girls… They all died…” - every single house had lost someone. 

When the woman trudged sadly back to the Buddha she was calmer. She said to him “Sir, you tricked me, but I see why. Everyone - *everyone* here knows death at some point. We all lose loved ones.” & with that she finally handed her son’s body over to the priests to be blessed, so she could arrange the funeral.

I think your blog is in many ways your trip round the village. As you hear others’ stories, you gain strength & learn how others deal with their experiences, & it shows you are already on the road to some kind of recovery, coming to terms or closure.

(Source: xbeautifuldeathx)