Bypassing a Challenging Feelings Makes it SO Much Harder to Change
If you’re White or White-passing and you’re starting to do the work of becoming anti-racist, you may feel a sense of urgency to change your thoughts ?.
This is an attempt to create different feelings without really sitting with the painful ? truth.
It’s called emotional bypassing ⏭️.
And that simply doesn’t work and will keep you stuck in the same old thoughts, no matter how much you try to not think them ?, to push them away, to ignore them.
And I get how tempting it is to want to leapfrog ? over feeling the feels, because sitting with the fact that you have implicit bias is painful.
And brains ? are built to attempt to avoid pain, to avoid change, aka maintain biological efficiency.
So let’s take a big deep breath ?️.
Deep breath in and out.
You get to recognize ? that urgency in you and feel into what those thoughts are creating within you.
Look at it, really raise that mirror in front of yourself.
And a big part of doing that work is to get right with your guilt ? and your shame ?.
Those feelings will stop ? you from stepping into acceptance and action ?.
Those feelings will just keep you spinning ? and ruminating and not moving forward to be of service.
Self-compassion is vital here.
Feel into the difference between being cruel ? to yourself for having the thoughts you have, those old cassette tapes? in your head ?, and recognize that someone else wrote those scripts ?.
And you can meet those feelings and thoughts with radical self-compassion and self-love ?.
Feel into how different that feels.
From that latter place of giving love to your younger self ? who heard ? these tapes on repeat, you can start to shift and change in ways you can’t from beating yourself up.
Move through it with love ♥️ so you can be of service.
The time is now.
