Fighting for Thankfulness

I want to discuss thankfulness and how it effects our perspective of life. I know that I have so much to be thankful for, but it is so easy to forget and be caught up in what we don’t have and want to change, that we miss the wonderful things staring us in the face!

Life is not experienced fully.

How do we become more present and self-aware? I believe it comes through gratitude for what we can feel, smell, see, taste, hear, respond to and experience all at once. This may cause some to have severe pain because of sensory dysregulation or dysfunction. I know that I want to turn off my senses when they become overwhelming to me. I don’t want to feel anything. I know this defense mechanism helps me to cope but it takes away from my enjoyment of living.

So, how do I cope with the pain and still enjoy my life? I must satisfy myself with living one minute at a time, not focusing on the future or failures of the past, living every second in the present. I learned how to disassociate myself from my body because the pain was too much to bear. This caused me to not feel as deeply what others thought or said about me. However, it damaged my soul and calloused my responses to pain. I cannot feel my body after years of doing this. I am working on reconnecting myself to my body and allowing myself to feel again. It hurts like hell on earth, but it is not as bad as being dead to everything.

I am trying to thank God for feeling even when it hurts so much. We must each strive to rejoice even in our pain and suffering because we know that God is with us and won’t give us more than we can bear. I encourage each one reading this to search every minute to find something you can be thankful for and experience the joy in it!

Fighting for thankfulness and joy in my journey,

Jacob