The New Year inspires reflections of all sorts, goals and dreams to be pondered on and strived towards. All beautiful things on our journey of awakening and becoming our best selves. I've been struggling, though, with this notion of how to marry the concept of needing and wanting to change with that of self love and true, complete self acceptance, of truly resting easy in one's worth. Both are noble and seemingly positive practices, yet when I really think about them beyond a surface level they seem to be somewhat contradictory. After all how can one both fully accept where one is, to rest easy in one's worthiness and being enough and also want and be striving to be thinner, fitter, richer, healthier, kinder, fill in the blank'er?
Slight detour
My training is in psychology and my initial education was very cognitively based. A top down perspective of changing one's thoughts, achieving insights in order to affect change in one's life. However, the population I was working with had been through neglect and abuse at early developmental ages (complex trauma) and of a scale hard for most of us to imagine. As is often the case when we strive to have an open and humble approach to life, I learned as much from these amazing old souls as they did from me. One such gleaning was that quickly I saw how cognitive based interventions were often not helpful, more frequently than not leaving them feeling frustrated and like more of a failure for not responding to "treatment". It drove me to seek to understand complex trauma, especially during early developmental phases, and to look at what was working- usually the power of our therapeutic relationship and more active, experiential therapies where it was less about talking and more about being, doing, connecting with others and with nature. The more my lived experience with these wise and resilient kiddos taught me, the more I saw the holes in my educational training and sought to understand what I was witnessing through an exploration of a new paradigm (but ancient understanding especially in eastern modalities) of somatic psychology and neurobiology.
This detour down my professional memory lane has relevance here. One of the primary facets that influenced my therapy practice and my own life personally, was a neurobiological principle of top down v. bottom up processing. The triune brain develops from the bottom up- sensations first (brain stem), emotions (limbic system), and then cognitions (neocortex). It would be nonsensical to think of telling a baby to stop crying by telling them you are trying to study for a big test tomorrow. Instead we would soothe them, feed them, change their diaper. . . all sensorily based responses to their distress that would attune with them and even if we didn't get it right the first time, would meet the need they were expressing through their cry. But what is the first thing we do to ourselves (or others) when in the middle of grief, sadness, anxiety or fear? More often than not, we try to talk ourselves, or the other, out of it with well intentioned, but misattuned platitudes. Try to be positive, read your Bible, put a smile on your face, buck up, the variations of the top down responses are as endless and varied as we are. Let me clear, none of these things are inherently wrong or bad advice. However, the reality is that sometimes an unintended consequence of these well intentioned comments can be colluding with spiritually or cognitively bypassing the depth of the emotion versus entering in to holding space and accepting what is with trust. Trust that completion arises from this sacred held space and allowing and supporting this fluidity strongly influences health on a physical and emotional level. Anxiety that doesn't get pushed back to emerge later as panic attacks, sadness that doesn't get glossed over to push back through as seemingly untethered depression, unresolved trauma and fight/flight reactions that end up preventing restorative sleep...
So full circle back to the seeming dichotomy of self acceptance, embracing ones' inherent worth and setting goals in this new year. From this neurobiological framework, goal setting can be framed from a top down perspective of intellectually desiring something in your life- healthier relationships, more financial ease, a certain weight, stopping an addiction. Framed another way it is the paradigm of will power and determination of using conviction and perseverance to go after what you want and achieve it. Possible? Of course. Likely? Well, one only has to look at one's own history of resolutions to answer that on a personal level or to zoom out to a societal level to know that on average only a very small percent of people keep their resolutions.
So let's paradigm shift this baby. Wonder if, just wonder, if instead of a top down perspective your complete and total focus was on self acceptance. Unconditional love. Grace for past mistakes and a journey that maybe up to this point has had some twists and turns you are not proud of. Speaking to yourself as you would a most treasured and loved little one- one of your children, grandchildren, niece or nephew who was lost in self doubt, recriminations and shame. Stepping in to your voice of compassion and love and saying to yourself with sincerity that you are enough. Your path has not been perfect but you have done the best you knew how. To be present to what is- the difficult, the painful, the messy. Pulling up a chair, breathing deep and holding sacred space for whatever is. Letting the clarity and wisdom that comes from this deep quiet presence pervade your entire being, so much so that you feel one mask and layer, one held tension after another melt away. Maybe, just maybe, you even consciously thank each of them for the protective role they once served, maybe even helping you get through hard times. You exhale them out, you let them go with love and compassion and gratitude. In their stead you allow your birthright of peace and acceptance emerge and strengthen. Maybe there are some suppressed feelings that need releasing as you walk down this path. Maybe there is force behind them from being held in and you need safe others who have walked this path to hold your hand, be a shoulder to lean on. With this support your trust in the rhythmic nature of completion strengthens, you begin to embody trust and faith that you are strong and can do hard things- including feeling painful sensations and emotions. In the aftermath of this release, truly paying attention to the calm after the storm. The peace that pervades, the softening of your physicality, the clearing of your mind and the settling of your emotional body. Letting each one of these experiences build your trust in your own wise mind/body so that when other uncomfortable feelings arise you remember the choices you have- to constrict and hold in and how that tension manifests in your unique constitution- what the cost of this is (there is always a cost). Or, just perhaps, you hold onto the power of this somatic memory of peace and surrender, of clarity and ease, and you step in and trust allowing these feelings and sensations move to completion.
As you affirm your worth choice by choice, breath by breath know you are putting lived experience to your affirmation I AM LOVED. I AM ENOUGH. That you matter. That you are loved unconditionally. That there is grace for your, for my, missteps and appreciation for acquired wisdom as a result of them. That you release your suppressed emotions that create physical holding and inflammation with your steady deep breathing and in its place begins to creep in a long lost friend. One that is a dear companion on your path to wholeness and radiance, a return to your birthright of who you are at your most authentic self. As you get lighter and with each emotion expressed and holding released, as acceptance of who you are and embracing of being right where you are meant to be grows stronger and brighter, joy begins to take root. JOY, rooted in the freedom from the heavy load you have been carrying. Freedom that opens your heart and spreads your wings so wide that your very essence begins to take flight. Letting go of attachment to labels and your story, instead sinking into the essence of who you are at your core. You are not what you have been through, although it does matter. You are not what you identify as and with, although these have significance. Deeper than all of this, my friends, you and I, at our very essence are souls having a human experience with our particular unique mind and body manifestations. But they are not us. We are spiritual beings, in a human mind and body. When we sink into that profound realization of our worth and begin to feel a self love so deep, our layers of conditioning and hiding and numbing through food, excessive electronic use, alcohol or drugs, toxic relationships or any unhealthy choice becomes, well, simply become unfathomable. Not from shaming ourselves and using willpower to reach our goals. But from a self love, a joy in being awake, free and knowing our worth as a soul in this world, that we make choices that nourish and feed this fire, strengthening it and brightening it until any other choice is incomprehensible. We know this is in our depths, that if we lose our health physically or emotionally none of our other possessions matter. Similarly when we are awake to the beauty, importance and value of our soul's mission here in this world we would no more damage that light with toxic anything (food, people, drugs, you name it) than we would deliberately put the wrong gas in our new Mercedes, wear our favorite new outfit out to do yard work, or light a fire in our home. Yep, seems a little crazy doesn't it? Yet the prevalence of variations of doing this to our own mind/body pervade our society. Here's to lifting that veil, to awakening our soul to our calling in this world and letting nothing dim that radiance.
Here's to you. Being your best, most radiant YOU in 2020. More awake, more free, more self accepting and a deeper self love affirmed and strengthened choice by choice, breath by breath.
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