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?

Are You Living Like the Person You Want to Be?

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.

Accidental releases of tension provide a few minutes of relief, but they never satisfy us in the long run.

Our unconscious, external reaction to inner turmoil represents an accidental release of tension.  When we aren't aware of what lies beneath the surface, and when what lies beneath the surface is deeply uncomfortable, we need some release from our discomfort.  All too often that release takes the form of an unhealthy (and unhelpful) outburst over something totally unrelated to the inner turmoil beneath the surface.  

Yesterday we gave the example of fighting over the cleanliness of the house when dealing with the grief of loss.  Grief (the response to an encounter with absolute powerlessness) lies beneath the surface, but it manifests itself as an out-of-the-blue fight over something relatively meaningless and completely unrelated to the core issue.  

Why do I mention this in the context of a conversation on control?  

The accidental release of tension serves as an unconscious effort to gain control while we battle absolute powerlessness beneath the surface of things.

When we feel most out of control we are, at the same time, most likely to exert control in some other area through an unnecessary display of force.  

Scott’s Scott Critique:

Again, I don’t necessarily disagree with what I wrote above, but I would rephrase it if writing it again today (which I am, and will). I didn’t need to talk about control here in order to make my point: it’s important to confront the difficult emotions we have as a result of whatever life throws at us. When we don’t do this, yes, there are unintended consequences. But, in this case, I think it’s okay to say the problem was lingering grief that needed more attention (as opposed to control issues). 

The biggest question, in my mind, when assessing ourselves, is: Am I living like the person I want to be? In the above example, I was referring to my frustration that often comes out over cleanliness. Regardless of whether we clean house how I’d like, or if I have dealt with my grief or not, I don’t want to be a person who takes his frustration out on his wife or his kitchen (or, now, my child). So, if I’m not acting like who I want to be…what do I want to do differently? 

Or, for you, if you’re not acting like who you want to be…what do you want to do differently? 

Can you see anything you’d like to change?