RAKSHA BANDHAN-More on it
Raksha Bandhan, an Indian festival is all about siblings’ love and a brother’s promise to protect the sister. The sisters tie a Raakhi on the wrist of the brother wishing him well, he in turn gives her his word to protect her also gives her a token gift. Basically, this festival is about promising to protect, would it be enough that one is physically protected? I would like to point out that each and every one of us needs emotional protection too, and this can’t be provided by anyone other than one’s own self. Each of us needs to protect ourselves from hurtful mean people and from difficult situations, as this will give us protection in the true sense and make us stronger and more confident.
In daily life we come across all sorts of people that we have to interact with, not all are sensitive towards us, often people say and do hurtful things. Some do so intentionally, some trigger an old memory in us by saying something which ends up hurting us. What happens when we go through such an experience? Repeatedly going through this would leave a person depressed, often self-destructive ( in the worst case), unable to function normally, and thus becoming anti-social and probably very violent too. Difficult situations, these would be situations we aren’t very comfortable facing. It could be an exam, or an interview, a walk in the dark, or staying home alone, it could be meeting a person who triggers unpleasant memories. Most of the time we tend to avoid facing these but is that the solution? Can we live through life avoiding these?
Do we all not deserve to protection against these? I’d say most certainly each and everyone one of us does…..but let’s why and the how of it….
First let’s explore why we need to seek to ‘protect’ ourselves from such people and situations. This would enable us to be at peace with ourselves boast our confidence, help achieve our goals and realise our dreams. By protecting ourselves from painful experiences of any kind we can be of a healthy body and mind which in turn would help maximise our productivity, and then prevent depression which could lead to even self-destructive behaviour, after all who wouldn’t want a positive, healthy, happy, and successful life.
And now to How do we get there (being self-protective)… would you say avoid the persons causing the hurt or run away from the difficult situation? Yes, that’s easy but it would not be a lifetime solution as we, living in a society cannot achieve that. So, I would like to help explore few alternates are rather simple, and not too difficult if one is determined enough. As we saw it is not possible to delete hurtful people from our lives, we got to learn to block out what they say to hurt us, we can build an invisible wall protecting us from them. We need to love ourselves so very much that no amount of negative talk or action makes us feel any less than what we perceive of ourselves. Why give the remote control of our feelings in the hands of another? Then about difficult situations or challenging situations, here too not all such situations can be avoided. Probably a ride on a rollercoaster can be but a walk in the dark or facing an exam, or talking to strangers, or facing a senior, being alone/travelling alone these are few situations that cannot be avoided. So, what do we do? Well a simple thing ask yourself “what’s the worse that can happen if I were to face this?” or like ‘they’ say Face the fear head on….. further explore what is and where lies the trigger of these feelings try getting to the bottom of that. This can be achieved by CBT or NLP, basically re-programming the brain to think differently, it is easy to do so with the help of a counsellor or therapist.
So, I would like to conclude that protecting one’s own self is important and also pretty easily possible. One needs to with help of a therapist get self-equipped for this. The very basis to achieve this would be loving one’s self the most and above everyone else.
