The Antidote To Internal Chaos

Feelings are hard to ignore. It is largely easy to mask them, disguising a feeling as tiredness or stress — acceptable, and widely held experiences. Though, when we feel loneliness, confusion, despair, pain or defeat it is not only easier to bottle them up because it is difficult to communicate, it is equally easy to cover it up with something else. We can sweep these feelings under the rug.

Misunderstanding the relationships and correlations between particular recreations and our emotions can be destructive. The reality is that the actions that numb the pain only do so temporarily. We naively believe the emotion is gone, but in the back of our mind and in our heart, it lingers until the medication, alcohol, drug, porn, sex, indulgence — eventually wears off.

We are still left with it, no matter what disguise, facade, or mask we choose for it — we are still left with the pain. Many people choose to live with it and they do so by placing their energy in distractions from it. We distract ourselves with work, company, illustrious social media feeds, partners, hobbies — all with the hope that it will one day make us whole.

But, that day will never come.

We seek external solutions to a growing internal problem. I have discovered that vanquishing this internal chaos requires courage more than anything else. Courage lends us the ability to inspect what lies under the facades of “tiredness” and “stress”. Courage gives us that existential will to confront our inner-self, our wounded child, and our shadows.

Pull back the facade, unmask the core insecurity, and de-platform the disguise. It all just covers up fear. The best way to confront fear is to face it, shine a light on it, and share it — because chances are, others may fear the same.

Here I’ll go first, my greatest fear is that if I don’t produce results, I will never be worthy of love. This fear is numbed by promiscuous sex and porn and is disguised by overwork, unhealthy stress, and random austerity measures.

I invite you to write about your fear, how you numb it, and what it is disguised by.

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Reflection: How have you addressed your inner-self in the past? What have you said to it, what has it said about you? How can you courageously confront what you are covering or bottling up?