There’s an elephant in the room.

He really wants you to talk to him, to acknowledge him. 

The more you ignore him, the more destruction he’s going to make, he’ll be doing song and dances round the living room, acrobatics on a ball, anything possible to get your attention.

So, why won’t you look him in the eye? Why do you squeeze past him as you go through your morning routines without even a glance in his direction?

Because he’s big and he’s scary? Elephants are some of the most loving creatures on the planet, kinda seems weird that we use them to represent untoward feelings.

Thoughts and feelings are very invasive, certainly ones we don’t necessarily want to feel are, so when you are dealing with feelings like these, they will keep becoming more and more intruding the more we try to ignore them. A few years ago, I was taught a great coping mechanism for the elephant in the room especially if you’re not quite ready to approach him just yet.

You don’t approach him at all, at least not at first, you glance at the thoughts/feelings and acknowledge their existence and you keep doing this. You recognise that they are there but then you move onwards and once you start getting comfortable with acknowledging the feelings existence you can then begin to step towards the elephant.

You start to unravel why that elephant is there and what his purpose is.

For example;

Are you missing someone?

-          Why are you missing them?

-          What is it you miss? Is it specifically them you are missing or are you missing the comfort of the relationship?

When you begin to understand these feelings and why you’re having them then you can start to move on. Understanding is the base core for coping. If you can understand why you are feeling some way, if you can understand why ‘that’ happened then you can begin to rationalize and you can begin to carry on your journey through life.

It seems when we are troubled that life either moves too fast or is at a standstill, we have to be brave enough to take another step forward, and another and another until without thinking about it, we just feel better. In turn that makes the next time you go through an emotional time easier to deal with because you already have the skills and the coping mechanisms in place.

(photo from savvypainter.com)