When Our Life is Over, What We'll Remember Most Will Be Our Emotions So While Living with Vaginismus, What Do You Think That You'll Remember?

Do you have an answer to this question, dear, as a woman living with vaginismus?
If this question were asked to me while I was living with it, I’d definitely say what I’d remember would be a lack of EVERYTHING.
It would be as though I had missed tonnes of things in my life;
🡪deep emptiness,
🡪unworthiness,
with a HUGE QUESTION ASKING WHY ME?!
If you feel like this now, don’t worry, dear, it’s SO NORMAL!
Feeling like this is a consequence of vaginismus. That’s why I say it’s normal but I don’t want you to think this means that we need to go on with it.
It’s normal and WE ARE NORMAL but we can forget this perspective while living with our condition. So, here in this post, I’ll talk about what this perspective is and how to cultivate it!

But before we get to that, are you new here? Then you’ll have to check out these other helpful blogs that I’ve written to help you overcome your condition.

and of course, you should join our EXCLUSIVE Facebook Community “Yes We Can Cure Vaginismus Together” by clicking here!
Oh and, you can download here your FREE Vaginismus Cure Guide based on my personal experience and research!

Let’s go on, dear!
I want to begin with a remarkable moment shared with my aunty just before she died.
She was not my real aunty, but she felt as though she was. My mom and she were very close with each other; closer than sisters; they talked on the phone every single day- except Sundays 😊. They cared about each other from the bottom of their hearts, and knew each other to the bone!
And I loved her so much. May she rest in peace!
She lost her daughter to cancer, who was only one year older than me and a mother to an eleven-year-old son, and then passed away from same cancer.
Why am I telling you this? Because of the moving moment, she left with us as she was taken into intensive care.
Her other close friend came to visit her at the hospital and they spent almost six, seven hours together and just talked.
My aunt’s mind was on and off, which meant that she talked about incidents which either never happened before or have changed a bit, for example, she thought her beautiful daughter was still alive.
Despite all of the ups and downs in her life, just before intensive care and close to dying, she only remembered beautiful emotions and happy stories. If they were not beautiful enough, she made them beautiful!
You might know that I’m Turkish and there is a beautiful metaphor in my language; where we say, “life is what remains in your mouth”. Does that make sense to you?
So for her, what remained in her mouth was delightful, delicious, and joyful!
I was so happy for her.
All of us will die, dear. But, I didn’t tell this story to get lost in grief, rather, I shared her moment with you dear, to get you to ask yourself this question: what would remain in your mouth when it’s almost over?
When we live with vaginismus, we tend to get lost in our

sadness,
or frustration,
or disappointment.

And, I genuinely get this because I’ve been there too.
Ok then, what can we do about it?
Let’s think about this together.
How to help ourselves with difficult emotions when vaginismus becomes our suffering

We need to ask this magical, powerful, and yet very simple question to ourselves: How can I help myself?
Look at the compassion and kindness in this question! It’s like a friendly hand up, from us to ourselves.
When our life is over, that’s what we’ll remember, dear: how we treated ourselves, and the emotions that resulted from it!
This question soothes our nerves, blocks our old way of reacting and habits towards incidents: and we literally focus on what would help us in the very present moment.
But how do we ask it in the midst of difficulty?
Fair question! I want to share with you 3 important notes, dear.
Note #1: Accepting the nature of our minds which tend to overthink and create stories
Think about it: We have very entertaining minds when we look carefully.
Every single moment we judge things around us or ourselves. Here’s the beauty of it: if we practice observing these single moments, which means observing the “present moment”, then we’ll be amazed by the capacity of our minds.
Not only are they wonderfully talented in connecting things together and creating tonnes of stories which might never happen; impacting our mood incredibly😊
We need to ask if these habits of the mind are serving us or not.
If some of our habits are not serving us, then seeing them as they are and accepting them as the nature of our minds and knowing that there is still room to transform these habits into the ones which serve us for the better.
There is a beautiful saying from the Dalai Lama & Desmond Tutu which I also shared in our beautiful private Fb community Yes We can Cure Vaginismus Together:
“We create most of our suffering, so it should be logical that we also have the ability to create more joy. When it comes to personal happiness, there is a lot that we as individuals can do.”
To do this, we need to be more aware of the moments. The more we become aware of these tiny little moments, the less impactful they will be, I promise you 😊
Note #2 Being aware of the moment is the key to recognizing the emotion before it becomes frustrating
Difficult emotions don’t visit us suddenly, dear, they come gradually.
Most of the time our thinking patterns get triggered by specific incidents.
So we need to know how to recognize these patterns and accompanying emotions!
Maybe,

we tolerate our partners’ disrespectful behavior because we believe that we deserve it,
or we tend to not express how we feel in the moment, and choose to rather suppress them without realizing that we choose to do so,
or we believe that as a woman we have to fulfill our partner’s needs first instead of thinking that our needs matter too.

Which leads to us feeling:

like a failure,
or not enough,
and disappointing to others!

If we can’t recognize these beliefs, or our thinking patterns when they arise at the moment, then we also can’t see the whole picture of what’s gradually happening.
Eventually, the patterns which are associated with these triggered emotions patterns become heavier and more frustrating as they are not properly seen.
That’s why it’s incredibly important to see the emotions as well as the arising thoughts of the moment so that we can recognize both to avoid being insanely controlled by them any more.
Note #3 Being a bit more compassionate towards ourselves with knowing that it’s OK to feel our emotions

We can’t practice a healthy thought process without being compassionate towards ourselves. If we can’t be kind to ourselves whenever we are aware of our habits, if we continue to judge ourselves without realizing we are doing so, at that moment, then there is not that much success from the first two notes which I mentioned above, dear.
That is why we need to practice mindfulness, to observe what’s happening “NOW” without being judgemental towards ourselves, to allow us to see our habits, thoughts, and emotions as they are while being kind and gentle to ourselves.
Again, that’s what we’ll remember when it’s over: the emotions around how we treated ourselves!
Asking how we can help ourselves during the difficult emotions of the moment has the power to bring ourselves compassion and kindness.
Genuinely believing that it’s OK to feel like that and saying either out loud or silently these phrases are so powerful, dear:

It’s ok to feel the way I feel right now,
It’s going to pass,
This is just one of the experiences that I’m having right now.

This way we can take better care of ourselves especially when we are healing our vaginismus. You can check my post here which touches on this in more detail: How to Take Better Care of Ourselves While Healing Our Vaginismus
And lastly, whatever we reinforce today, will impact our tomorrow and so that of our life!
So what do you want to reinforce from today, dear?
What kind of attitudes do you want to strengthen within you: frustration, despair, and fear, or compassion, joy, and happiness?
How will you help yourself with whatever you are struggling with, dear?
And most importantly, when?

”We create most of our suffering, so it should be logical that we also have the ability to create more joy. When it comes to personal happiness, there is a lot that we as individuals can do” the Dalai Lama & Desmond Tutu