According to information from Google, cocooning in psychology is a state of emotional and social isolation in which a person closes themselves off from the outside world, limiting interaction with people, and immerses themselves in their inner world.
This can be called a stage of reboot, when life is put on a big pause and there is a feeling of some kind of mindless existence, even a state of thoughtlessness in some ways.
We can periodically experience such states, and how you treat yourself during these moments is important. Read on to learn how to support yourself during a period of cocooning.
Little Pot, Do Not Boil
For some people, during a period of cocooning, old emotions that you don’t know what to do with arise.
This state can also be called “little pot, do not boil.” Something is boiling in the pot, something is maturing, breaking through either as a powerful surge of thoughts, realizations, or emotions rising. But these processes are barely conscious.
You just want to do nothing, external physical activity is minimal, there is no desire to do anything or delve into anything, because mental activity is on pause.
See also: Feeling of Lostness on the Path of Spiritual Development. How to Get Out of This State
Three Factors That Determine How We Feel
Our emotions, thoughts, and how we feel are heavily dependent on several factors, and this is the big catch:
- mood (good or bad),
- state (resourceful or non-resourceful),
- well-being (how you feel physically: good or feeling ill).
When you feel normal, in your element, in a good mood, you have wonderful thoughts, you are a normal, decent, spiritual person. Everything works perfectly for you.
Techniques and practices are not needed at that moment; you feel in equilibrium, in balance.
But as soon as you let your guard down somewhere, get sick, for example, we do not accept ourselves. We categorically do not accept ourselves when we feel weak, exhausted, tired, when there is no flow, no grand ideas.
Who has caught themselves doing this?
Many people have the impression that the state of flow, flight, expansion is the natural default state. And everything below this level is perceived extremely negatively. Everything that should not be activated gets activated: self-criticism, self-flagellation, self-annihilation.
There can be two options here: either it is all directed at yourself, or, if the person is not very developed, it is projected outward (others are to blame).
This state is similar to what psychologists call emotional burnout — only without an external cause: the person is not overloaded, they have simply completed a cycle and entered a pause.
Inability to accept oneself in a state of cocooning, collapse, reset
States of cocooning and reset periodically arise when one huge cycle ends, and we stand on the threshold of another such cycle.
You need to “go through an illness,” internally reconsider many things. This pause is needed to cast your sensors in different directions and understand what inside me corresponds and what does not. To catch this wind of change.
First, you need to feel it, sense it, and then our ego-personality comes into action.
But she doesn’t know how to accept herself in such states. If this process doesn’t last long, two to four days, probably everyone can handle it. But when it drags on, the more of these internal enemies kick in, the harder it is to keep yourself under control.
It spills out both externally and internally. And instead of offering yourself support and care, you start demanding it from others, and immediately sink even deeper because they don’t give it to you, or you start berating yourself for this state altogether.
But what’s important is to allow yourself to be in a state of cocooning.
And instead of paying attention to the emotions that have arisen, the hooks you’re still clinging to, it becomes a reason for you to unleash your entire arsenal of indignation and resentment.
During a period of cocooning, of resetting, anything can surface: hatred, envy, even if you’ve never been envious in your life, never delved deep into negativity.
It may not even be related to you at all. Collective processes haven’t been canceled, but in such moments, we connect to them as well.
When you are expanded, you hover above all of this, you don’t get involved. It’s there, you might even notice it, but vibrationally you are higher at that moment. You are in a different state, on a different frequency.
But during a period of cocooning, if you don’t accept yourself in that state, self-criticism, irritation kick in, you fall into a state of codependency, and external circumstances affect you.
Because the support you had built seems to have disappeared. But it doesn’t disappear if you don’t devour yourself and start digging yourself deeper when you automatically fall into lower layers, vibrations with all those negative thoughts, automatic programs, patterns, stereotypes.
See also Emotional crash. 7 ways to accept yourself during this period
How to support yourself during a period of cocooning and reset
1. Develop routine actions, rituals
In any unclear situation, take care of yourself physically. Everyone will have their own set of recipes.
In a state of stress, ordinary daily routine actions can be very helpful.
For example, for me, it’s getting up in the morning, turning on music, making myself coffee or mint cocoa, then unloading the dishwasher, going out onto the balcony, and photographing the sunrise.
Routine allows you to get out of stress because it is familiar to you, and when there are many unfamiliar variable factors, the nervous system is under tension.
In such moments, you can pull yourself out through the simplest household actions.
But for these simplest actions to turn on automatically in a negative state, they need to be built into your daily routine, into a daily ritual over a long period of time. Because when you fall into a negative state, everything falls apart.
Those who do physical exercises every morning, in a negative state, they continue to do it. But for others, there is a regression to old bad habits: for example, stress eating, or, on the contrary, refusing food.
If you develop some useful ritual for yourself — every morning, year after year, I do this — tuned to self-care, then in states of uncertainty, through habitual, internally programmed actions, you can cope with stress.
There is no mindfulness in these actions; you do them automatically, just as you automatically prepare breakfasts, send children to school, and get ready for work.
Make sure that these automatic actions primarily include care and support for yourself. For some, it’s a physical exercise; someone loves to walk a lot and for a long time, and they walk every day.
Here’s a question to think about: what helps me get back up? Some people listen to music, and it puts them in a certain state, so the task is to continue listening to it.
When you realize that this is what pulls you out, you automatically keep doing it.
Introduce into your daily routine actions that are pleasant, not stressful, so that they don’t fall away later. That’s the real mastery: to have it so deeply ingrained inside that it doesn’t fall away.
For this, you need to get pleasure from it the rest of the time. If you try to get used to something through force, little will remain.
See also Immersion in Yourself. Three Phases of Deep Unpacking
2. Give Yourself Time to Recover
When you have been very ill, you need time to recover.
You rejoice in small steps: today the fever went down, I can at least read or watch something, and now I can walk normally without feeling dizzy, and now I even managed to perform a physical action, to sort through what has accumulated during this time.
But we don’t even know how to do this when we are sick: to lie down calmly and give ourselves the opportunity to process it all.
If you don’t force it, don’t try to grab onto those glimpses when it gets easier, it gradually begins to unfold.
A bud doesn’t open into a flower right away. And when you want everything at once, and quickly, it’s very easy to start resisting. You hold on too tightly, you try too hard to grasp it.
See also How to Ease the State of Transformation
3. Determine What You Can NOT Do
The state of cocooning is normal and natural in itself; it may not take much time, but we aggravate and weigh it down in many ways ourselves.
There are basic things that need to be done: for some, going to work; for others, handling certain tasks at home.
Determine a minimum set of actions, and for the rest of the time, allow yourself to stew in this state—without scolding, without kicks, without criticism.
Support in such states is in your hands.
You don’t need to do anything serious to support yourself. The task here is rather to identify things you can avoid doing. It’s not that difficult, even in this state. Just don’t do them to maintain balance within yourself.
Leave a minimum set of basic functions that you perform.
If your work is creative and the flow of incoming money depends on the amount of actions you take, then you should have a massively large safety cushion.
If you are a specialist who works with people, your next step is: do I want to continue this service? What do I want to change? What no longer brings me pleasure?
Trying to go down the same path might not work. And this also becomes one of the elements of the fall, because you cannot force yourself.
That’s how I stopped answering questions in the Telegram channel and stopped posting podcasts, because it was too much hassle.
This way, you can understand what really stresses you out. The task is to find a way to either not do it or delegate it to someone.
4. Use Basic Practices of Acceptance and Gratitude
Two basic practices—acceptance and gratitude—if you incorporate them into every day, and not just in a general way but specifically accepting and giving thanks for certain things, you will not fall into a state below the baseboard no matter how hard you try.
Even in a 3D state, there is something to be grateful for and to accept. The difference will be that in an expanded state, you give thanks and appreciate more, and you see more, while in a 3D state, it will be more grounded.
See also Simple Practices for Improving Your Inner State
5. Create a sense of hygge
I have lighting in different colors, I have candles.
I don’t just turn on the light; I create a sense of hygge. When the candles are burning, it all looks great, especially when you’re sitting in the evening.
The goal is to warm yourself, to give yourself warmth. In my cocooning state, I had no problems with warmth. And this is not about physical warming, but about the feeling of inner warmth.
What rituals or habits help you stay afloat during a period of cocooning and reset?