We take out a lifetime policy on our misery when our daily practice is to numb its existence.

Misery has a message but if we aren’t present enough to take delivery, it will knock on our door every day.

The pattern of running away becomes a way of life that ensures our sorrow will be our shadow.

Chasing away the blues is a strategy that’s always available, but it is best used “once in a blue moon” rather than from July through June.

Facing your sorrows is a “Stand up to the bully” moment. They prey on your weakness, but begin to disappear when you take the time to feel your fear.

What we are numbing is the feeling of fear.

Whatever we use as our numbing agent, sadly, becomes a defining label that others use to describe us - excessively active, couch potato, drug addict, alcoholic, etc.

Those agents are problematic and symptomatic of what really ails us - fear.

I don’t believe it’s possible to turn your fear into power (although that’s a popular self improvement mantra). Fear is fear and power is power and one does not turn into the other, just like muscle never turns into fat or vice-versa.

Fear needs to be absorbed rather than be denied or defeated. When we take the time to face our fear and fully feel it, we metabolize and neutralize it. When fear dissipates, we make room for our creative power to show up. Fear has a way of crowding out our power to come up with solutions.

Your sorrows are destined to continue as long as they are fed by fear. The band aid we use to numb fear can only push down fear, only to have it immediately surface when our numbing agent wears off.

We are not drowning our sorrows, we are drowning our aliveness when we attempt to numb fear.

Fear is as natural as breathing. No sane person says, “Oh my God I’m breathing” and then goes looking for a way to suppress it.

If you notice and feel you are breathing too rapidly, that is often recognition enough to cause your biofeedback loop with your brain to slow it down.

The same is true with fear. It needs to be recognized and fully felt.

Fully feeling your fear is not talking to yourself about it, but actually feeling its sensation and location in your body. Think of it this way: Your body is designed to feel that which your head wants to repeal.

Your body can absorb and metabolize the feeling of fear; you just have to allow yourself to feel it to begin the process.

Feeling your fear is feeling your aliveness; suppressing your fear keeps you deadening the pain. Anytime you say, “I shouldn’t feel this way,” you are denying reality, and then the next step is to reach for your version of what the Rolling Stones called, “Mother’s Little Helpers.”

There are no tomorrows when drowning your sorrows; only a repeat of the day we are trying to numb away.

All the best,

John