Are you coping too well with a bad situation, a job you hate, a bad relationship?
Have you mastered ways to make things positive, reframe the situation, change your thoughts, focus on what’s working?
Do you believe deep down that he who endures the most suffering without falling apart will be rewarded in the end?
I did and so do most of the people that I coach.
If you share this trait, then you are what Martha Beck refers to in her book Steering By Starlight, as a fire fleer. A fire fleer is a pain avoider. We ignore, avoid or repress our suffering and keep it to ourselves. Super successful fire fleers manage to hide their pain even from themselves. The opposite of the fire fleer is the story fondler – those people who recount their tales of woe endlessly. You can spot the story fondlers by looking for the glazed eyes of those poor people that are forced to listen to them.
We fire fleers desperately don’t want to story-fondlers or inflict our pain on anyone else. We get so adept at coping of looking like we are coping that we even hide how bad we feel from ourselves. Here’s the problem:
When you flee from your pain, you don’t receive the message that your emotion is trying to send you.
Your emotions are your sophisticated signalling apparatus. Like the lights on a car dashboard, each emotion signals that you need to check something.
When you are miserable and trying to avoid, ignore or repress your misery you actually hold on to those feelings longer than you would if you stopped trying to ignore them – and you don’t get information that could really help you.
Karla McLaren in The Language of Emotions talks about the message of different emotions. Here are a few emotions that most firefleers try not to feel and their messages:
Anger: a boundary is being violated;
Sadness: something needs to be released or rejuvenated;
Grief: something needs to be mourned.
If you have a habit of fleeing the feelings that feel bad here is a simple, safe way that you can start feeling them and figuring out what they mean for you:
Create a Misery Board.
You’ve probably heard of a Vision Board – where you select pictures from magazines that appeal to your heart, cut them out and paste them on a Bristol board. The Misery Board is similar to the Vision Board, but you select pictures from magazines that resonate with the misery and discontent that you are feeling.
Doing a Misery Board leads to surprising results.
I first did a Misery Board when I moved to the small Northern town that I live in. I had been unwilling to admit that I hated living in the town. I couldn’t find anything to appreciate about my town. I was scared of being a Debbie Downer. After repressing my emotions for far too long, I did a Misery Board.
I acknowledged that I really missed the city, that I really missed speaking English (my town is a unilingual French speaking town), that I felt like an outsider and that I feared that no one would ever appreciate the real me. Doing the misery board allowed me to feel my grief and release my attachment to the past.
Then I did a Vision Board.
As a direct result of that Misery Board/Vision Board combo, I started an on-line business where I work almost 100% in English. Now with clients all over the world, I don’t miss not living in a big city. I appreciate the open spaces and nature, and I travel to large cities regularly. It’s a pretty miraculous shift. And I really credit the Misery Board!
By permitting myself to feel what I was trying to avoid, I found the space and energy to create my own new beginning.
And you can too.
You can download a 5 minute recording on how to do the Misery Board and Vision Board here. If you are a firefleer, do a Misery Board first then do a vision board. It’ll help you to find your freedom and stumble upon your passions!
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