When Running Away No Longer Works

It's time to face the demons from your past.

Photo by Morgan Sessions on Unsplash

We’ve all been there. Our instincts as humans are to avoid pain and move towards pleasure. When things get too painful or uncomfortable, the easy short term solution is to simply make a run for it. Avoidance. Denial. Repression. Yet transformation and healing comes through doing the exact opposite. It’s time to face ourselves and deeply feel everything we want to run away from.

Running Like The Wind

There’s something so freeing about running. It feels like freedom. Like sunshine after a rainy day, like fresh air streaming through an open window, like spring after a long winter. It’s sweet and tempting. Some of us live in a state of running all our lives. Yet for most of us, what we are running from sooner or later catches up with us. What is it we are running away from? Even though it may be different for many of us, it’s ultimately the same. It’s ourselves. It’s always ourselves. Our past, our feelings about the past, our interpretation of events and the demons that lie dormant in our subconscious. Stored away to collect dust. Running is putting everything under lock and key and it makes us feel not just free, but safe. For the time being.

Running feels like a fresh start, a new beginning, a clean white slate. Yet it’s not entirely clean. Perhaps not even remotely. It’s like a white sheet of paper that looks pristine and pure until you turn it around and it’s grey with black on the other side. Out of sight, out of mind. Supposedly. 

By running away from the world no one can get peace. Anywhere you go, the problems will go with you, because the problems are inside you and not outside. Outside is simply a projection of inside. 

- Baba Hari Dass

Facing Ourselves

After having spent a long time running we will sooner or later get to a point where the past is catching up with us. We’re still carrying a heavy load with us internally every single day even if we’re not aware of it. It’s in our subconscious and it’s in our energetic field. Density. So heavy you can almost taste it.

There’s nowhere you can run to that will be far enough. Who you are being on the inside will always, without fail, be reflected on the outside. The only way out is through. We must deeply feel in order to fully heal. 

We must feel the pain to heal the pain. If we never allow ourselves to feel it, we won’t acknowledge it’s there. 

- Lysa Terkeurst

What can ensue when we’re in the midst of finally facing ourselves is that there is a breakdown prior to there being a breakthrough. This is normal and a part of the process. At some point we must acknowledge that the running is keeping us stuck (ironically!) and exhausted. It’s enough now brave one. You are finally strong enough to face yourself like never before. It’s going to be painful yet cathartic and guess what? It’s not so scary after all.

Ask yourself when you get the urge to run away from something, whether it’s a difficult conversation, a situation or a person, whether this is something that will serve you long term or whether you would be better off staying put, facing everything head on and feeling deeply everything that needs to be felt. One step at a time. One day at a time. You can do it.

Maybe the running away served a purpose after all. It was building up the reserves, perspectives, distance, space, strength and courage to finally be able to fully heal. Forgive yourself for running and decide, once and for all, that you will run no more.

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