Common Blocks to Wellbeing

When we don’t feel our best, physically or mentally, it can cause us to feel stuck or frustrated. When we’re suffering physically, we must be patient as the body heals. When our struggles are mental, we can alleviate these feelings by simply asking ourselves what’s blocking our happiness. What’s causing our distress? Is it something we’ve done, we want to do, or we are doing right now? Is it something we can work on? If we’re being diligent with our mindfulness and other healthy coping skills, and we’re still mentally uneasy, we may have a block in the way of us finding skillfulness. 

Here are some common blocks people struggle with when developing interpersonal skills:

• Internal imbalance
• Old habits (two kinds: passive or aggressive)
• Overwhelming emotions
• Failure to identify your needs
• Toxic relationships 
• Fear
• False beliefs​

Internal Conditions that Block Success

These are some of the most common obstacles to mindfulness, but anything that takes you out of the present moment or causes you to become lost in your thoughts and feelings could be considered to be a block. All these blocks are internal blocks, which can actually make them easier to transform. If we’re dealing with a block such as a toxic relationship, we may only be able to impact the situation so much. For these five energies, as soon as we are able to acknowledge them, we can stop resisting them and work with them instead. We can observe, learn, and grow from looking into any energies that prevent us from seeing clearly or acting nonjudgmentally.

1. Sleepiness. Obviously when we’re run down or groggy, it’s harder to be skillful. Feeling heavy, slow, clouded, or dull can indicate physical tiredness, but we can also feel a fatigue that is actually happening within our mind and body. When we can distinguish between these states of sleepiness, we have a better chance of handling them. 
2. Desire. When we wish for or chase after something other than what we have now, we miss the opportunity to appreciate what we really have in this moment. Why do you want what you desire? Do you actually have everything you need now, in this very moment?
3. Doubt. Feeling a lack of confidence or feeling unsure of something can fill us with distracting questions. Usually when we look deeply at our doubts we find we’re resisting something. 
4. Aversion. If we resist the present moment, we may feel fear, anger, or other unease. If we find ourselves expressing judgmentally, we’re likely experiencing aversion. 
5. Restlessness. Contrasting sleepiness, this energy is live with thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Nervousness, anxiety, and other states of restlessness can be rather uncomfortable and distracting. 

Do you resonate with these energies? Which ones do you feel most often? Which ones are you least familiar with?

I originally learned this mindfulness concept in therapy using The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook if you’d like to extend your practice.

Thinking Habits + Communication Styles
​That Can Block Success

1. Passive - If you tend to shut down, surrender, withdraw in the face of pressure/conflict, you’re passively reacting. Passive reactions can be healthy sometimes, but they can also have adverse emotional consequences.
2. Aggressive - When you’re growing up, you absorb the coping skills of the people around you. How you react to feeling angry, ashamed, afraid, or other strong emotions is somewhat developed in observing how your family members dealt with conflict. Aggressive coping habits are learned, but when you identify them, you can start adjusting them, and over time, retrain yourself to have a gentler reaction. Here are some examples of aggressive patterns:
   1. Taking away - withdrawing some sort of reinforcement (pleasure or support) from the other person as punishment (You texted the wrong number! Now I won’t text you all day)
   2. Derailing - distracting from the focus or the other person’s feelings (You’re upset about last weekend? I’m upset about last year!)
   3. Guilt-tripping - convincing another person that their needs/feelings are wrong and implying they have poor morals (If you don’t help me, what kind of friend are you?)
   4. Belittling/denigrating - making the other person feel wrong or foolish (Why do you want to go to the mall? You don’t have enough money to buy anything)
   5. Blaming - the problem becomes the other person’s fault (“All these people in this traffic need to learn how to drive!)
   6. Threatening - implying “do what I want or I’ll hurt myself”
   7. Withdrawing/abandoning - implying “do what I want or I’ll leave you”
   8. Discounting - telling another person their feelings aren’t important (“You want me to clean up after myself after working all day?”)

When you think about the last few conflicts within your personal or social life, did you use any of these coping strategies?

Noticing Overwhelming Emotions 

High emotions can put us in a dissociative fugue state, or make us act in a way that isn’t something we’d do normally. When we’re upset, we may say or feel things that we regret later once we’re calm. There’s a word in the Toltec culture for this emotional fog, they call this unaware state “mitote.” Mitote is any time when the noise in your head from any strong emotion prevents you from seeing clearly. This includes all intense feelings, such as insecurity, anger, hopelessness, negativity, jealousy, resentment, and regret; even excessive thoughts from happiness or hunger can distract us from seeing situations clearly. Furthermore, this inner noise can block us from being able to see ourselves as we really are. The Latin root of the word “emotion” means “to disturb,” just as any emotion is a disturbance to our peace. 
​
The first thing we do to calm high emotions is recognize them. When our skillfulness is threatened by a strong emotion, we first identify that we’re feeling overwhelmed, then we gently guide our emotions back to a calm, centered place with mindful breathing. 

Here are some signals that indicate we feel overwhelmed by strong emotions:
- Heart pounding
- Tightness in chest
- Tension in hands, shoulders, or forehead
- Feeling hot
- Shaking
- Sweating
- Hearing a ringing/buzzing sound
- Talking more quickly or more loudly than usual 
- Wanting to dominate a person or situation, or wanting to hurt something 
- Wanting to flee or leave a situation 
- Feeling numb

Think back to the last few occasions you’ve felt strong emotions, and note what physical sensations you remember. Our emotions are the leading factor behind our stress. All stress is emotional, ranging from emotional unease to intense emotional turbulence. Every person has different reactions to intense feelings, and different situations may provoke different experiences; but if we're able to identify the red flags of our strong emotions as they arise inside of us, we can quickly soothe them before they get overwhelming.

Dealing with Overwhelming Emotions

Stress Management

Quick Relaxation Meditation

Strength in Knowing What We Need

Another potential block we’ll face is when we’re blind to our own needs. If we cannot see what we need to be more content and peaceful, we’ll feel anxious, overwhelmed, discouraged, or even hopeless. Our body wants us to feel our best, so these negative feelings are signals from our body and mind to try and illuminate whatever is off-balance. Once we can identify and articulate our needs, then we can act in a way that respects them. We may have to change an action or confront someone about a difficult topic, but our gut knows what we most truly need. We just have to listen.

Self Awareness

Developing Intuition

Balancing our Needs

Are Your Relationships Blocking Your Success?

A major block people can experience is a toxic relationship. Sometimes we can have the best intentions with someone and their aggressive or unexpected behavior can trip us up. If someone in your life blames, threatens, or picks on you, it may be healing to separate from that relationship. If it’s difficult to determine how we feel about a relationship, we can use mindful breathing to stay grounded and calm while we’re experiencing uncertainty. Breathing mindfully is an amazing tool for gracefully navigating uncomfortable interactions with other people. Connecting to our breath (and the present moment) allows us the space to non-reactively observe the positive and negative elements in our relationships so we may know more clearly how to improve them (including our relationship with ourself!)

Mindful Relationships

Self Love

Fretting Over Fears

Fear is a major block for most people. When we feel afraid of something, our skillfulness can go right out the window. Our thinking becomes jumbled with “what ifs” and other catastrophic worries, making it hard to think clearly or see in a calm perspective. When we feel fearful of something, we may become more aggressive or aversive, or sometimes we’ll completely avoid the triggering thing altogether.

“Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. 
If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay.
Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously.
​Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones."
​—Thich Nhat Hanh

Deep Your Understanding: Usually our fears stem from worrying about the past or fretting about something in the future. Learning how to cope with anxiety can help liberate us from the past and future and help us return to the present moment. In difficult situations, we use mindfulness to see clearly so we may determine what we can and cannot control, allowing us to focus on meaningful change and reducing worry about things outside of our control.

Overcoming Anxiety

Radical Acceptance

“Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering." -Yoda

We Choose Our Beliefs

Our beliefs determine our perspective, and our perspective creates our reality. Some beliefs may serve us, making us feel inspired and strong, while other beliefs may harm us, making us feel inferior, doubtful, or scared. When we look deeply into our beliefs, into why we think the way we do, and into who influences our daily ideas and opinions, we can consciously choose which beliefs we want to have. We can significantly influence our success depending on how we shape our perspective. If believe we're a victim, we'll feel oppressed, limited, and depressed. If we shift our perspective to recognizing our strengths, acknowledging our skills, and we believe we're a strong survivor, we'll feel more empowered in difficult times. If we think something is impossible, our experience will be entirely different than if we believe we can accomplish anything with enough practice, patience, and resourcefulness. Sometimes, we may cling to ideas because they have become a part of our identity, but with mindfulness and compassion, we can have the wisdom to adopt new beliefs that inspire us to feel good, and we can consciously shed old beliefs that don't amplify our best wellbeing, 

Deepen Your Understanding: We can have an adaptable perspective. When we don't cling to one way of looking at things, we can let go of painful, draining, or otherwise damaging beliefs and incorporate more nourishing, supportive, and inspiring ways of thinking into our belief system.

Looking into Our Beliefs