What To Do When You Get Stuck in Your Cocoon

A mindset for when life throws you curveballs

We delight in the beauty of a butterfly but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

—Maya Angelou

When life is easy you feel inspired. You are able to focus on personal development, your health, and live in a state of bliss. You move through life with ease.

It is harder to live this way when life hands you a pile of poo and says — Here you go. Figure it out! You are left with two options. You either take the poo and compost it to feed your garden or you smear it on your face. When you smear it on your face you wear it around everywhere you go and for everyone to see.

If you follow the latter approach you eventually become your problem (poo) and lose the space between yourself and it. I am anxious. I am depressed. I am tense. I am inflamed. I am sick. I am unworthy. I am broken. The more you say this out loud the more our friend the subconscious mind says:

“Ok got it. You are this. Your wish is my command.”

Let’s speak some truth: You are not anxious, depressed, tense, inflamed, sick, unworthy, or broken. You are present to those sensations and experiencing them. They are not your identity.

As humans, we fall into patterns where we get caught playing referee with our thoughts and bodily sensations. In this process, we miss the lesson our challenge is meant to teach us. We are meant to be butterflies but instead, we get stuck in our cocoon (chrysalis).

Your cocoon could mean safety. It could be habitual patterns. It could be comforting or it could be a war. As you twist, turn, shake and scream you get further caught in the cocoon losing sight of the process. You eventually forget that you started as a caterpillar and built your cocoon to emerge as a butterfly.

We Hate Pain

The hardest challenge we face as humans is pain — physical and emotional.

We do anything to not feel it. Drown it with alcohol or drugs. Take over-the-counter pain killers. Death scroll on WebMD. Buy unnecessary products, supplements, and quick fixes to alleviate the fear. We do whatever to push away any tension we feel in our bodies.

The limbic system is part of the brain involved in our behavioral and emotional responses, especially when it comes to behaviors we need for survival: feeding, reproduction and caring for our young, and fight or flight responses. It is therefore activity in the limbic system that governs a person’s pain tolerance.

The limbic system is known for recording the emotional and motivational aspects of pain. Chronic stress can activate the limbic system in a way that is damaging to the body. Think of the limbic system as a connector of the mind to the body.

These emotions are interpreted by the limbic system, which can help us activate the fight, flight, or freeze response. Pain may signal danger causing a spike in our stress hormone. Heightened emotions like fear, anger, frustration, sadness, can cause this beautiful evolutionary process to get out of sync.

A process that was meant to help us, transforms into our enemy — ultimately skewing our understanding of our pain and the mind-body connection. We begin to hate this system that all along was trying to protect us. We are no longer safe and we tangle ourselves deeper and deeper into our cocoons.

The Butterfly Struggles

Butterflies are known to “rumble” as they struggle to emerge from their cocoons. The butterfly cannot escape this part of the process to achieve its freedom. While it may be tempting to try and help the butterfly escape, it hurts the process.

We too rumble in our cocoons. We turn to external forces, asking anyone we can find to help us break out. Pleading with them — doctors, friends, family, spiritual teachers. We then forget that our rumble is supposed to help us achieve the ultimate goal — freedom. No one can do it for us but ourselves.

Unlike butterflies, we have multiple cocoons that we build throughout our lives — either willingly or unwillingly. When life throws challenges at us, we retreat back to our cocoon or it envelops us. Like the caterpillar, we must struggle to reach our end goal of becoming who we are meant to be.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. -Haruki Murakami

Mindset

Once there is some space created between you and the sensations you are experiencing, you start to take a look at your cocoon. A simple mindset shift can help you dig deeper and pivot from nonstop rumbling to surrender.

Beauty: How can I find beauty at this moment? Even in pain. Even in strife. Where is the beauty?

Resistance: What am I resisting? Is it physical or emotional pain, memories, a situation, or a feeling? Say it out loud. Write it down. Invite it in.

Fear: What is my biggest fear? Even if it’s irrational, it helps to say it out loud. Then you are no longer hiding from it or running away from the pangs and loops of your mind. Do it now: Say what you are scared of.

Survival: Have I ever survived something difficult? Was there another point in my life where the going got tough and I made it out?

Expectations: Let go of expectations and how you think they should be.

Mantra: I am exactly where I need to be.

Imagery: Imagine yourself as vividly as possible. Close your eyes. Immerse your mind in a happy situation, memory, or who you want to be when you emerge from your cocoon. Imagine it so vividly that your mind thinks it is happening right now.

Breath: Three deep breaths to calm the nervous system down when anxiety or emotions arise. One — I am strong. Two — I am alive. Three — I am present.

Emerge

As you go through your curveball, you may set time limits or expectations of exactly how it needs to be. Let go of those as you look around your cocoon and challenge your ideas or preconceived notions.

Maybe your cocoon needs some dusting. Maybe there’s a rip and it needs some love. Maybe there’s a TV on that’s constantly playing an old memory or fear you refuse to deal with. Maybe there is a huge stop sign asking you to slow down. Maybe your pain would like to tell you something.

Your process is yours alone. The struggles will come but resistance, tension, and grasping are what keep you buried in your cocoon.

As you evaluate your cocoon and make necessary changes, adaptations, and observations you may even find a window. A window called HOPE. You can look through this window with a smile until it’s your time to emerge to know your truth and the lesson this trial held.

You fly away as a beautiful butterfly. Unique from the rest. Letting go of the cocoon that helped you step into your truth and find freedom.

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