Imagine yourself going through a difficult time in your personal life.
As an example,
It could be a difficult period after the breakup of a long-term relationship.
You keep having thoughts,
Feelings and memories that you know are not beneficial for your mental health,
And yet they keep appearing in your mind.
The following metaphor may help you to unstick yourself from these thoughts and feelings.
In your mind,
Picture yourself in a large Olympic-sized swimming pool,
Filled with a large number of balls that float on the surface.
You can give them different colours,
Reds,
Yellows,
Blues,
Greens,
Whatever.
The balls seem to be attracted to you somehow,
And they actually interfere with your ability to swim.
Some are so large that they even interfere with your ability to look ahead to see where you are going.
You decide at first that the best way to manage the balls is to try to push them under the surface of the water,
So that you can see clearly ahead.
This works for a time,
But it doesn't last long as the balls pop up to the surface again and again and again,
And are attracted to you time after time.
You find yourself getting tired very quickly,
And the action of trying to control the various balls is also stopping you from doing other things in your life that you wish to do.
There must be another way,
You think for yourself.
All this pushing and shoving and trying to control these feelings,
Emotions and memories is just not working.
I'm so tired of this,
You think for yourself.
And then you get the idea of just leaving them be.
What happens if you just let them float as they are?
They bob up and down on the surface as before,
And interestingly,
You notice that if you just let them run their course,
That they naturally float off,
Carried by the current in the pool that circulates and cleans the water.
They are gently washed away from before you and begin to create space in front of you.
You can now see more clearly ahead of you.
You're able to move more freely and engage in the actions that you want.
You can actually swim freely.
The balls are no longer such trouble,
Even though you still notice them.
What this metaphor is telling us is that if we stop fighting our emotions,
Memories and feelings,
The uncomfortable ones that appear in our minds,
If we let them appear as they will after such an experience as breaking up,
We know that eventually they will float off by themselves because they are no longer energized.
They might still be at the edge of awareness.
They might still come up occasionally as memories that we consider,
But we know that they no longer impact our lives because we aren't taking actions to forcefully repress them,
And so we're able to engage fully in life.
Try this metaphor for yourself and let me know the effect of that.
