WHY ISOLATION AND CONFINEMENT IS UNNERVING
"The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear".~ Aung San Suu Kyi
Most of us in the recent months would have felt the pain of having to be isolated and confined to our houses. Most of us would now know the ache of having our bodies and our minds to forcefully stagnate, the ache of not allowing our minds to freely skip around the place to release any built up frustration, the ache of having to experience what our worst fears might feel like and then the resulting anxiety. The frustration starts to build bit by bit. Slowly you start to give up on the idea of daily routines, then your workouts, then daily bath and then even routinely tidying up your house. So what is it about isolation and confinement that is just so hard to bare? Why did Heath Ledger aka Joker have to face the worst coming from isolation and confinement? What is it like to be imprisoned, albeit, in better conditions?
We are used to the auto pilot life where our conscious brains are barely thinking about everyday activities. Now when that auto pilot mode has been thrown off gear our minds get terribly confused and start feeling lost. Nothing makes sense anymore because what we are looking at now is something very new, something of the sort that happened to us when we first came into the world. The only difference between the time of birth and now is that there is an inertia arising from years of constant activity that is pushing us to continue on the same path of continuous activity. We feel a push to stick to the same speed but since we can't make sense of the world ahead of us, there is instead a sense of fear and the feeling of being pushed into a fearful abyss.
Another thing that happens during this phenomenon is that you start identifying yourself as an independent entity that is separate from the rest of the people and the world. You are ,in essence, shifting your own self into your own focus with little disturbance.
In order to overcome the push of inertia it is necessary that you are able to sit with your thoughts for a long duration. To achieve this, the most basic and fundamental step would be to sit in a meditative state. Sit comfortably with your palms open to the outside environment (this helps activates the parasympathetic nervous system). Bring your focus on to your breath and let your thoughts flow. Instead of trying to control your thoughts, observe them as they pass. Don't try to control your breathing, your thoughts or even your posture. Just observe your thoughts and, if compelled, the outside world. To make this particular act easier to follow picture the stories of those sages and strong willed humans who sat in a meditative state in order to meet God in person. You may not meet God, but you may find the image of a God within you. Or a more noble version of yourself that you didn't know existed right within you.
Through all the years of being on auto pilot, while our conscious minds were busy focusing on the tasks at hand, we pushed away all the little things into the subconscious. The little things, like the irritation of having being shouted at for driving slow in the fast lane by the biker on the road, the hurt you felt when your spouse snatched the newspaper you were reading(which may not have been intended at hurting you in any way but it still left you a little hurt), the sadness of having dropped and broken your father's favorite artifact, or certain things much bigger than mere trivialities. Unfortunately these little things don't just go away until they are processed. They just get pushed to a little corner within your subconscious. And when your auto pilot mode gets disengaged and you start to sit in confinement the spotlight shifts to these little things.
If these scenarios come back to your head repeatedly ( or you ruminate over them), then process them- What was the situation? What was your response to the situation? Was your response a healthy one? What would a healthy response look like? Would you like to make the change to the healthier response? Soon it'll be out of your head.
And if you are just feeling largely frustrated by past events then repeat this mantra- "Forgive, but don't forget". The act of forgiving is like applying balm to your concussions. It is therapeutic.
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