Extraction
I got a facial yesterday.
My aesthetician is from Romania. Her dark hair has turned white. She pours her soul into her work and it's obvious she loves what she does. Every couple of months, I get spoiled with two hours under her supervision and care.
Yesterday, she spent an exceeding amount of time trying to extract a blackhead from my cheek. Apparently it was so far down it became an excavation project. She worked at it from every angle and finally decided to puncture my skin to give it safe passage. She kept saying things like, "Wow" or "This has been down here a really long time" and "It's embedded deep."
And I felt like there might be an analogy in there — in addition to the dirty debris.
It made me think about what thought patterns in my life require extraction.
I recently read that we can become unknowingly addicted to our stories of woe. Narratives like it isn't fair or this was promised to me or I always give more than I get. The loop that says they'll never see me for who I really am. A type of thinking that quietly removes our own peace and power, but is so easy to return to because it's become a comfortable habit.
I've caught myself in a few of these. The justice one, especially.
Psychologists call it secondary gain. It's the idea that painful narratives can unconsciously satisfy real needs. They earn us sympathy. They give us permission to stay passive. They excuse us from doing the work of betterment. Thereby the addiction.
Here's the thing: these thought patterns often feel productive. They feel like we're working through something. But there's a difference between circling and excavating. Between replaying the same hurt and actually giving it passage.
That's what I kept coming back to while my Romanian godsend did her thing. She didn't just poke at the blackhead. She gave it direction. She helped it find its way out. And that's the difference between rumination and reflection — between circling the same thought and actually moving through it.
It doesn't seem right that we would be addicted to a negative way of thinking. But there's clearly something in it that feels like it's serving us, even when it's not. Even when it's just a familiar habit that excuses us from doing the harder, quieter work of moving forward.