What Do You Do When You Have A Stapler Bullet Jammed In You?
When I was younger, there was a brief period in my life where I was fascinated at how staplers work. I was amazed at its capabilities, especially when people actually used it for its intended purpose as compared to me fiddling it for weeks in the attempt to figure out how to use it. One fine day, I was playing with the stapler as usual, but this time I heard a familiar loud clicking sound. Did I manage to finally figure out how to use a stapler? I could feel a smile all over my face. I was thrilled. But I realised my left thumb was bleeding. It was bleeding, because a stapler bullet was jammed right in it.
It was bleeding, because I foolishly stapled myself.
At this point in time, I was experiencing a mess of shock, pain and helplessness. I know the most logical thing to do is to take out the staple bullet, clean the wound and let it recover on its own. However, I also know that in the process of taking out the staple bullet, I would feel an excruciating pain than how I am feeling right now.
If you are in my position, what would you do?
This is the moment where fear can misguide us, and we tend to misinterpret it. There are a lot of times when we’re wounded, especially in the case of an emotional wound, whether it is an accident or an incident, we tell ourselves that the stapler bullet isn’t there. Instead of being rational and turning our attention to face the hard truth, we choose to live in ignorant bliss. We go in with the mindset of — “Even if I feel pain, it wouldn’t be as painful as when I try to remove the stapler bullet.” More often than not, we try our best to subdue it rather than question the reality — “Why is the stapler bullet there?” If the pain gets too overwhelming, we take in painkillers, or we do whatever it takes that allows the alleviation of the pain.
We make the pain go away; temporarily.
We do this over and over again. We suppress these wounds and traumas down, and we don’t even look at them. How can we get rid of the stapler bullet if we don’t want to recognise that it is there? How are we able to identify the root cause, if we don’t start looking at the symptoms? Our bodies are always trying to wake us up and get us to pay attention to these details, yet we instantly push these signs down. It is never a good idea. We have to do something, and the first step in reframing the problem is to recognise that there is one.
We can’t just chant our pain away.
We feel that most of our nervous systems are our enemies. But really, it should be our allies. We understand that fear feeds into our anxiety, however we don’t know how to respond to it. Fear is like a compass. If we misinterpret the compass, then we are bound to go in the wrong direction. If we learn to sit in fear and let our nervous system normalise it, we have a much better chance in breaking free from so many things that are holding us back. It is alright to have a little sugar to make the medicine go down a little easier, but it shouldn’t be as absurd as honeycoating every damn thing. Let’s look at the signals that our body is blatantly telling us. The procrastination, fear of failure, perfectionism, distraction, confusion, however it is manifesting, is an appropriate response to the underlying trauma that has not been dealt with. It is perfectly normal to be fearful to see a stapler bullet, or even multiple stapler bullets jammed in us. The most crucial part is when you see it, what do you do?
