Chronic Forgetfulness

The world’s a crazy place these days and it’s easy to lose our way.  Our lives move at a million miles per hour and yet we never seem to catch up or get ahead.  Information and opinions are coming at us from a million different directions, all demanding our attention.  There are internal and external pressures working on us all the time.  It’s a mad, mad world.

As a result, many of us frequently feel lost, disconnected, and overwhelmed.  Some of us are navigating mental health challenges.  We seek relief in a variety of healthy and unhealthy ways, and sometimes fall into addictive behavior patterns.  It’s become socially acceptable to sacrifice parts of ourselves to keep up with the fast pace and never-ending demands of modern life.  A lot of us get lost chasing possessions and promotions and forget all about our feelings, values, and dreams.  We spend a lot of time in our heads, running towards a future or drowning in a past.  Technology and social media have contributed to an increasing sense of isolation and separateness.  It’s just really hard to be a human right now.

The Issue: Chronic Forgetfulness

After almost two decades of my own recovery and healing, and over a decade of working with others as a mental health professional, I’ve come to understand that the root of most, if not all, of our struggles is what I like to call chronic forgetfulness. 

Now chronic forgetfulness isn’t a clinical diagnosis by any means, which is part of why I find it so attractive.  You’re not going to find any labels, stigmas, or insurance companies here.  Chronic Forgetfulness just is what it sounds like.  We’ve become chronically forgetful.  And what is it that we’ve forgotten?  How awesome we are.  How loving we are.  We’ve forgotten how inherently worthy and amazing we are.  We’ve forgotten our value and impact in the world and the lives of others.  We’ve forgotten how we’re all part of the same experience.  We’ve forgotten so much. Essentially we’ve forgotten ourselves. 

In our attempts to fit into a world that’s lost its way, we’ve also lost ours.  We’ve forgotten who we really are and what we’re really about.  We’ve been so busy chasing achievements or validation or “feel goods” that we’ve lost touch with our direct experience and the present moment. And we’ve been living like this for so long that it’s become a chronic condition. We suffer from a sort of amnesia or learned ignorance of ourselves.  And as a result we’re living way out of alignment with our deepest truths and values, hence why so much of our lives can feel like a struggle.

Another way to understand chronic forgetfulness is that it’s a state of being constantly distracted.  Our attention is literally anywhere and everywhere else other than on our own experience.  We lack an awareness or understanding of our own being and what’s happening in any given moment.  Many of us can’t identify a feeling that we’re having or aren’t in touch with our motivations in various situations.  Our behaviors are reactive.  Our responses in situations aren’t necessarily aligned with our actual feelings or values.  Some of us have become disconnected from, or have a challenging relationship with, our physical bodies.  We definitely don’t trust our intuition, becoming overly reliant upon the noise in our heads instead.  We’re a big ole discombobulated mess trying to pretend like we have it all together while really not knowing what’s going on.  It would be funnier to think about if it also wasn’t so painful.

So chronic forgetfulness is really just about forgetting who we are and what’s important for us.  And then as a result, there’s a whole bunch of additional suffering that becomes a part of our experience.  But the cool part is that as soon as we can recognize this as the thing we’re dealing with, we can begin to address it.

Here and now, we can begin to remember ourselves.

With a little guidance, support, and practice, we can leave behind so much of the stress and unnecessary suffering, and open up to a simpler and more aligned experience of life. As we reinvest our energies and efforts into this process of remembering, we will see ourselves and the world in new ways. As this seeing deepens, a natural releasing of what no longer serves us occurs, leaving us lighter and freer. And as this sometimes-challenging-but-always-beautiful process unfolds, we are gradually reintroduced to ourselves and the spell of chronic forgetfulness is broken!