Reawaken Your Life

I've been promising a series of posts about my breakdown and waking up experience, but I want to throw in a couple more pre-remarks. When we are exhausted, lose our compassion and feel hopeless, we acclimate to the climate of this dark and dreary existence. We may not realize that this is not "us." Maybe we think this is the way life works. I want you to hear me: this is NOT true. There may be many reasons we feel "off" or bad, and I'm not suggesting that my "off" is the same as yours. I do not know what your pathway through the tunnel and back into the light might look like or what you need.

I just want you to know that you may need to reawaken to your life and it may take a LOT more time, effort and exploration than feels reasonable to you. Also, I do not want you to look for the magic bullet because I do not think there is one. I suspect that it is more likely a series of small steps forward, backward, to the left, to the right, over and under and around.

When my mother died my body tried to tell me that this was not a normal grief process. My usually sturdy, healthy body got sick. I caught every virus that floated in the environment. My joints felt creaky, my workouts were half-hearted. My sleep was off. I asked my husband, "Do you think I will ever feel happy again?"

I started my road to recovery by finding a primary care physician who believed in wellness. This required spending money on myself, lots of bloodwork, a nutritionist, an exercise guru and more. It was a decent start but did not immediately come with a side order of joy. What it did accomplish was return my body to a baseline of wellness with a regular monitoring system to warn me if something physically was moving in an unhealthy direction. I also found encouragement. My physician, looking at my numbers, asked me if I practiced mindfulness and meditation and I said, "I do." She told me that my cortisol reflected my good work in that area.

I was practicing my self-care routine even though it did not FEEL like it was helpful. Hearing that my body was getting the message even if my emotions were not exactly falling into line was an encouragement. Who knows if I could have sustained the efforts around self-care without my physician's encouragement?

When you consider human giving and human being - obviously, balance is key. How is your balance? Does one need more attention than another right now in your life?

Big T, Little t

We regularly talk about trauma in our community. We define it as either Big T trauma (a one-time cataclysmic event) or Little T trauma (think of it as the steady drip drip drip of being in a non-nurturing environment). These two kinds of trauma make it hard for some of us to recognize that we are experiencing the consequences of living with untreated trauma.

Do you wonder if you might be feeling the effects of trauma? One symptom is feeling different from others. Traumatic experiences (big or little) typically feel surreal. We are likely to minimize or excuse them - especially the Little T traumas. The type of trauma can dictate how an individual feels different or believes that they are different from others. Traumas that generate shame will often leave survivors feeling alienated from others. Feeling bad or fearing that they might behave badly, trauma survivors makes it even more unlikely that they will seek support and healing.

This sneaky trauma response might leave us more brittle and judgmental, or too pliable and people pleasing. Here's my point: it's not enough to just try to behave perfectly or believe flawlessly or better ourselves. We need to give ourselves permission to open up our lens of compassionate self-awareness. Get more curious! Explore the ways our behavior might be more about symptoms than character or competence.

This exploration has been tremendously healing for me; I hope you will consider the possibility that life could get better but the return to joy may require taking the road less traveled.

Re-Train Your Brain!

I have a friend who is not as old as I am but old enough to make up her own mind about everything. She can drink or not, smoke or not, work or not, marry or stay single, be sexually active or celibate. These are her choices. But she struggles to make choices because every time she makes a decision her mother gives her grief. Nothing she does is quite right. She's either selfish or not taking good care of herself. She is either too frugal or a spendthrift. The feedback, contrary and inconsistent, would be funny if my friend did not care so much about her mother's approval.

My friend has a boundary problem. I'm thinking about buying her a hoola hoop and suggesting she learn how to wear it as a shield against her mother's intrusion. It's easy to poke at the mom and blame her for my friend's distress, but that violates my core value of taking responsibility for every single part of life.

My friend shares this value but she is struggling to practice it. So is it a value for her? Yes, I believe it is and I have seen her over the years develop good skills with others. But her mom might just be her final test in taking responsibility for her life. All of it. Including learning to reject, let go of, activity resist HER REACTION to her mother's words.

Yes, that's it I think. She cannot control her mother but she can learn how to practice new ways of responding. Her brain, lazy as all brains can be, prefers that my friend respond with despair just like she always did when faced with so much negativity as a child. She will have to try all sorts of new tricks of the trade to re-train her brain to stop caring so darn much about her mother's opinions.

This is hard work. It will be learned clumsily over time, so long as she practices. She's practicing and I'm excited to hear, over time, how it works for her. This I know - if she figures this out, she will be able to be more loving to herself and maybe even her mom. That's a big win from my perspective.

Final Thoughts on Control…

This month, I (Scott) went through and critiqued a month’s worth of my past posts. There is an awful lot that I hated about my prior posts- mostly the tone that I write with- but also quite a few of the ideas, and perhaps even my approach to life in general. 

I have become softer as I age- but I mean that in a good way (not the way a basketball coach would say it). I more easily recognize the importance of seeking out the good in people, rather than assuming the worst or looking for all the ways they might be self-deceptive or psychologically damaged. 

I no longer feel confident that I know why I do things or that I could figure out why other people do things. However, I do think it’s important to consider how our actions impact each other and to take responsibility for them and to make changes when and where we can. I just don’t necessarily think the “why” helps us do that. 

But mostly- I just see how helpful it is to treat people as if they already are the person they aspire to be. I sincerely think this helps people get closer to being who they want to be. And I think this is how God views us- not as we are- but as the person He will one day make us (or, more precisely, the person he’s in the process of transforming us into…a process which will one day be complete). The following verses speak to this point- and it might be worth spending some time with them today as we wrap up this series:

So then, from this point on we won’t recognize people by human standards. Even though we used to know Christ by human standards, that isn’t how we know him now. So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived! 

2 Corinthians 5:16-17

Safety and Growth

For a month’s worth of posts, I (Scott) am critiquing my own past blog posts. I’m viewing this as an experiment in being willing to admit when I’m wrong, change my mind, and to do so publicly.

Make sure to read the past couple days before reading today.

The trigger in our example is the mother's voicing of something related to the son's cleanliness.  Because of the nature of their relationship, the son explodes on his mother in reaction to his trigger.  The reaction in this circumstance is loud, external, aggressive.  It's also something that, to the son, feels justified.  

But triggers also translate to other relationships and this is where they begin to get tricky.  Let's say the son has a girlfriend, wife, spouse, roommate, partner, etc.  Let's say the the son and his partner have a history of a wonderfully healthy and mutually respectful relationship.  Let's say the partner one day says, "Hey, since we've got company coming in this weekend would you mind picking up the dirty clothes next to your side of the bed and I'll do the same?"  How does the son respond?  

It depends on many factors, including how attentive he is to himself and how much work he has done.  If he's aware that, given his history, requests for cleanliness are always going to sound like harsh critiques then he may be aware that he has to suppress the experience of a trigger in order to choose an appropriate response to his partner.  He may find that his internal reaction is angry, he may feel like his stomach is in a knot, he may feel uncomfortable.  

If he's done some good work with a support system to process and deal with his issues, and has learned to be attentive to himself, he may have the capacity to resist an accidental release of tension.  Instead, he may say, "Sure, I'll get this stuff cleaned up."  

2021 Scott’s thoughts on 2017 Scott:

The son’s response in these examples is not just about the work he’s done- it may also be about the role these other relationships play in his life. Let’s say he has a partner that makes him feel safe, secure, and deeply loved- it may very well be that this is what it takes to lessen the intensity of his reactions. This is because we can have a healing impact on others through being safe, through avoiding criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and more. This helps us all stay calm. 

You can, with your presence alone, help someone feel safe. When they feel safe, they might even grow.