Why Self-Care Gets Such a Bad Rep

Recently, I had the opportunity to go hear someone speak on the topic of managing change. What it turned out to be was a sermon on self-care. It started off fine: "Let go of the things over which you have no control."

And then, it got ugly. 

If the presenter hadn't been so patronizing, and so obviously skewed to promoting her own agenda, I might have enjoyed the content of the presentation. However, having learned through experience and therapy to do the very things I heard this person talking about, I found the way it was put forth to be an insult to my intelligence. It cheapened all the valuable lessons I had learned in my healing process and reduced them to pithy little platitudes that implied that the reason why people were having a difficult time with change was that they had a bad attitude. She was, in essence, blaming the victim.

See the glass half-full." I couldn't believe my ears. "Choose to be happy. Smile. Be an optimist. Embrace change."

Excuse me? Even if change is ushered in at the hands of brutal people who care nothing about my situation but more about their career advancement, their political futures or their fat pensions? 

If I've learned anything in the last four years in recovery, it's that it is okay, and yes, even appropriate, to respond to injustice ... with anger. Anger motivates; anger - if harnessed properly - can produce positive change.  Need proof? The suffragettes, the Boston Tea Party, the American Revolutionary War, the Human Rights Declaration ... the list goes on.

The kind of change management proposed by this individual was the "lay down and accept change to the point of letting the machinery chew you up and spit you out." 

This is partly what gives self-care proponents a bad reputation. (The other side, equally extreme, is the "I'm going to take care of my self and the rest of you people don't matter, so just go jump in the lake" attitude - just as damaging.) 

The photo "Mirror" courtesy of Arvind Balaraman
at www.freedigitalphotos.net

The extreme that these folks go to, though, is passivity - something that the ancient Greeks called stoicism. It's a "Hakuna Matata" mentality - bad things happen and there's nothing you can do about it, so just throw up your hands and give up; tell yourself that it's not so terrible, and spout positive confessions that fly in the face of the truth. Never mind that it's wrong. Never mind that people are getting hurt. No, it's not your responsibility. Just sit down by the river, take deep breaths, and strum Kum Ba Yah. And don't forget to smile.

Even if your heart is breaking. 

The allure of this kind of thinking is that it perpetuates the illusion that all is well, and that you have some control over what is happening by denying its existence. Stick your head in the sand. Pretend there's no problem. 

Poppycock.

The problem is that there IS a problem. Denying it - whatever it is - is not going to make it go away. 

As a matter of fact, it's lying - to the self. And the body takes a really dim view of that kind of deception. It will exact payment: stress-related illnesses, for example. Cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, ulcers, chronic fatigue syndrome, migraines, high blood pressure, heart disease ... the list goes on.

Self-care involves letting go, yes. However, it also involves setting boundaries ... and enforcing them. It is about choosing to be happy, but it doesn't ignore or suppress emotions as they occur, and it is not ashamed to show them. There is a balance between the two extremes; that balance is self-care, and the extremes ... aren't. Self-care requires honesty with oneself, openness to explore new things, and willingness to do whatever it takes (even if it's hard) to be free. 

Why self-care gets such a bad reputation is that self-care is portrayed - and pursued - in a one-sided manner. When it's balanced, healing can take place. 

Peeling Onions

Over 30 years ago, my husband was to be away from home on a ministry weekend. Normally I would have been able to go, but my job as a waitress for the summer months prevented me from going. It was the first time we were separated since we'd been married a year or so previous. 

I was pretty much an emotional wreck inside, trying to hold it together. 

My supervisor - also the cook - noticed that I (usually quiet anyway) was more quiet than usual. She asked me what was wrong. I put on a light, airy tone, "Oh, my husband had to go on a trip this weekend - I'm just missing him."

She was silent for a minute, and then she seemed to snap out of her reverie. "Could you go out to the big fridge and get me that bag of onions in the bottom of it?" I went obediently... and found the biggest mesh bag of onions I'd seen in my life. There must have been ten or fifteen pounds of the things in there. I carried it to her.  "Yes, that's the one. Look, I need those onions peeled for the special tonight. Use the paring knife in the top drawer." 

"You want me to peel ... ALL ... of them?"

"Whole and Halved Onion" courtesy of bplanet at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

She was nonplussed. "Yep. Set yourself up over there and put the peelings in that can." She pointed to a large tin garbage can in the corner. "And use the bread-bowl to put the peeled onions in. I'll take it from there." 

It wasn't until I was onto my third or fourth onion, my eyes stinging and burning, unable to hold my tears back, that I realized what she did for me. 

She gave me a way to cry - to shed tears in abundance in front of the kitchen staff - and still save face. 

Nobody knew how many of those tears were from the onions - and how many were from missing my husband. 

Not even my boss. I was so grateful to her for that.

I found myself thinking about that experience today after having to deal with a highly stressful situation for me, one that involved telling someone how I felt, someone who hurt me - quite probably inadvertently - the details of which are not important. Even after all the unwrapping that has already gone on in my life, all of which has been as painful and as tear-provoking as peeling onions is - it is still hard for me to stand up for me and say how I feel; the fear of rejection and the dread of confrontation is that strong. 

Yet, just as there are many layers in an onion, there are deeper and deeper levels of recovery - and this is one. I am constantly reaching new levels of vulnerability and honesty with myself and with other people. It's difficult, and I wouldn't be able to do it at all if not empowered by my relationship with God. However, the more I honest and vulnerable I am, the more real I can be, the more convinced I am that it's the only way to stay in that place where my life intersects in a meaningful way with the lives of the people with whom God orchestrates relationship.

Most people can spot a phoney a mile away. 

Yes, peeling onions - getting and staying real - stings and causes tears to flow; it might even make people avoid being around that process because they only like the finished product. Be that as it may, getting beneath the surface, where it counts, is what matters to me. It's the only way that I've found to live with myself.

The right diagnosis

I've been going to physiotherapy sessions for the last few weeks after I "put my back out" one weekend.  

When I first got to physiotherapy, my therapist started treating my most problematic symptoms - in my lumbar area.  She gave me exercises to do. The pain started to become more manageable.  She got me to sleep with a pillow between my knees.  Sometimes the pain would be better, sometimes worse, depending on how I turned in bed or moved at work, getting in and out of the car, going up or down stairs.  The pain - when it came back - settled in one hip or the other and there were days it would radiate down the outside of my thigh.

This diagram I found HERE

About two weeks into treatment, my physiotherapist started talking about my sacro-iliac (SI) joint when I described the pain. 

I thought she was way off base, because for years my chiropractor had been telling me that the problem was in my spine.  Perhaps part of it was.  But this felt a bit different ... and I did the exercises she suggested, and things started to improve, as long as I did them correctly.  But I didn't quite understand what I was supposed to feel, where that "pull" she talked about was supposed to happen. 

I just knew that I hurt, and I wanted it to stop.

Out of curiosity (or was it desperation?) I looked up the SI joint online and found that it is the joint between the sacrum (just below the vertebrae, above the tailbone) and the ilium.  A dysfunction there will pinch the sciatic nerve.  And voilà - pain! A little more searching and I discovered a specialist's site which talked about a way to correct SI dysfunction through targeting that specific joint in a series of similar exercises which one could do one way lying down, another sitting, and another standing. I spent about ten or twenty minutes studying the mechanics of the exercises so I could be sure I knew how to do them.

And then I tried them.  What a difference!  I suddenly knew exactly what I was supposed to feel because I felt it!  Deep inside - I felt the stretch exactly where the pain originated.  It was difficult to get into that position.  But SO needed. SO worth it.  

It's amazing.  But if I had operated on the assumption that this was a lumbar spine problem rather than an SI problem - I might have wasted a lot of time and been in a lot more pain for a lot longer.  It's so important to know what the REAL problem is.  Going on a wrong diagnosis might fix something (more by accident than anything) but knowing what the issue is, goes a long way toward dealing with it. 

True in physical pain... true in emotional pain.  

I've been in emotional pain, a lot, and thought it was because the people in my life wouldn't listen to me, or because I needed to have this or that one need me or thank me or ... whatever.  And I imagine (because I am human and as such, selfish) that I'll experience that kind of pain again.  Hopefully not as often. :)  

I found the information I needed to be able to heal inside.  And it was hard.  But I started to heal.  And that was far better than just doing the same old thing and getting the same old results.

Being able to be honest with myself, and targeting the source of the pain, rather than dealing with just the symptoms and what I THOUGHT it was ... even though it might have been harder ... resulted in healing.  It still does. 

It appalls me sometimes that it took me this long to find what I needed to heal from the inside out, to be able to have the right emotional diagnosis so that I could do what I needed to do to stop the pain.  That's a big part of why I wrote my book: I don't believe that a person should have to wait until he or she is 48 years old (like I did) before starting to get better.  

But regardless of how long it took to start .... I'm so glad I did.  So glad.

Digging Deeper

Last evening at 5:30, the rumbling stopped.

But only for the weekend.  At 6:30 Monday morning, the trucks and backhoes will be back again.  After two full days of working, they've replaced the culverts in two driveways and prepared the ditches in between.  At this rate, they'll go up the other side of the street next week and down our side of the street the week after.  We'll be almost the last ones on our street to "benefit" from the "improvements" - yet we were the first to have two huge piles of soil dumped in front of our property.  

Hm. 

And we've learned that - joy of joys - the culvert we had paid someone to install two years ago will be dug up, taken out and replaced by their (larger) culvert pipes and concrete access wells.  We've been busy taking "before" pictures so that if the company wrecks anything on our property, we'll be billing the city (who is paying the company) for any work we have to get done to bring it back to the way it was before.  Like, for example, if they wreck our hedge and we need to replace it! 

The view "up the street" from just behind the central opening in our
fledgling hedge.  You can see some of the silent machinery in the distance.

That said, the whole idea of having to re-dig and redo a job that has previously been done brings up several intriguing thoughts to the surface.  The accuser that sits on my shoulder has been whispering - sometimes shouting - the insults, fast and furious, voices from my past echoing their agreement. The most common one is this:  "Nothing you ever do is good enough."

It's a bald-faced lie, of course.  But the voices persist.  

And my response is that if I had it to do all over again, given what I knew at the time, I would still have gotten the work done.  

The fact is, it was a safety issue in 2010 and I wanted my hubby to not run the risk of injuring himself on such a deep slope as that ditch when he was mowing the lawn.  Technically it's not even part of our property ... but  .... the city certainly wasn't going to mow it!  No, it was the right and healthy choice to make ... for the ditch, for safety's sake.  

The whole process  has me thinking again.  A dangerous thing, I know.  Yet it has brought something new to my way of thinking.

Sometimes, in the emotional and 'inner healing' realm, after I've dug down inside of me and "made it right" to the best of my ability - then .... I grow some more.  And when I've grown some more, there are more subtle, stubborn things that come to the surface - things that make me realize that it IS necessary to dig deeper and do it again, work a little harder than before, root out even more of the dangerous stuff, and make it easier to access should I ever need to get in there again and dig something out. 

The original internal excavation was necessary. (And I was SO glad I didn't have to face it alone!!)  It made life liveable... functional... better.  But it also opened up new possibilities, and set new standards for my inner life.  This new lifestyle isn't easy, and it isn't comfortable.  And often old, long-standing ideas bubble up from beneath - like sewer gases - and undermine the new thought patterns.  It's easy to slip back into them; I held them for such a long time.  

The fact is, the process is never over. That's why they call it a process.  There's always more to do, deeper to go, more improvements to make. And I can see cracks appearing in what I thought was solid.  I can smell things I thought were gone.  Reactions I have, some good - and some not so good.  The way I handled the hard-hat fellas, pretty good.  The way I handled a recent conversation between a relative and myself - some aspects were good, but there were things I could have done or said better, or not done and not said; these things let me know that there is still work to do inside of me: in my attitudes, by being more honest with myself, more open to God's renovations, and more willing to change.  

And that's okay.  
Sometimes it's good to dig deeper if it means an even better life.

Forgiving me

Last October (2011), in a post called Forgiveness Frees, in which I talked about forgiving others, I said I might talk some time about forgiving the self.  

When I was going through my initial journey of self-discovery, in the portion where I was writing down the names of all those people that had hurt me - and what they did to hurt me - I thought I'd exhausted the list when that little Voice inside said, "You forgot someone."  Asking whom He meant, the response came - ever so quietly and gently, " ....... you."  

Yes.  Yes I had done so much to hurt myself - ignoring myself, hating myself, talking trash about (and to) myself, and much more.  It was hard to write it all down and see it all on paper.  Yet it was one of the most useful exercises I had ever done to come to a knowledge of myself.  And yes, I had to come to a place of forgiveness for the person who had done all these things: me.  

Weird, huh.  

It was a process which began with realizing that damage had been done - and that it was wrong!  To allow myself to get angry at that - legitimately.  To look at all the areas that those wrong things had affected.  There were a LOT.  And then to realize that I couldn't make up for the past ... and regret and remorse could only go so far.  So at that point, I could let myself off the hook.  That - my friends - is forgiveness.  Forgiveness doesn't make what was wrong, "okay."  It isn't carte blanche for the abuse to keep on happening, either.  But it is a process that begins with a decision to become willing to forgive, and ends (after a whole pile of stuff in between) with another decision to not punish the person for whatever that wrong thing was.  (For more information see the post I referred to, above - I put a link to it.) 


Anyway, I did eventually get to that point of being able to decide not to punish myself for hurting me.

From Ten Quick Ways to Get Happy,
http://lifestyle.aol.co.uk/2011/11/15/watching-
too-much-tv-makes-older-women-depressed/

And ... to make restitution to myself (wow that still sounds weird) ... I started to treat myself differently.  I'd stop myself from putting me down (either in the mirror or in public - well, the mirror part still needs a bit more work).  I'd make a little bit of time to do something I wanted to do, rather than putting everyone else's needs ahead of mine ALL of the time.  

Slowly I found little ways to say to myself, "I'm worth being nice to."  One of the things I started doing was smiling at myself in the mirror when I saw me "in there" in the morning.  Even if only briefly! (Guess what ... people look better when they smile! even if they have no teeth!)  Something that simple - and it felt so awkward at first - helped lay the groundwork for getting to know myself ... and starting to like myself.  To encourage myself.  To take care of myself. To accept myself.

It's a funny thing about forgiving yourself, hard as that is sometimes.  It's not optional, because it's a gateway to having healthy relationships with other people.  Lots of folks try to have healthy relationships with others but if they can't stand themselves, the relationships they have will be superficial at best, and totally dysfunctional at the worst.  I can say this because this is how I lived my life for decades.  (And then I wondered why emotionally healthy people didn't want to have anything to do with me... Du-uh!)  It's like I had this built-in 'abuse magnet.'  With rare exceptions, I ended up attracting people as friends who wanted to either control me or fix me.  This wasn't good for me - or for them.  

When I learned to forgive - not only others but myself - the magnet slowly reversed its polarity.  Instead of attracting abusers, or being attracted TO fixers, I started being repelled by them - and if they got close, it didn't take long for me to repel them (okay, sometimes I had to tell them to go away, because they didn't get it the first, or twentieth, time.)  And I started being attracted to - and attracting - those who are accepting, confident without being cocky, honest with themselves and others, and sincere.  

I can barely believe it - if you'd have asked me four years ago if this was possible, I would have said no.  But it's true.  Forgiveness really DOES free.

Cobwebs

I grew up hearing the following story.  I don't know if it's true, but it could have happened.  

It appears that there was this one fellow who used to stand up and pray these long, complaining-type prayers every Wednesday night at one church's prayer meeting. Every week, the faithful parishoners would have to endure this long tirade.  Some would roll their eyes when he started up, others would bow their heads and shake them slowly. Still others would keep checking their watches. But he would press on, unaware of - or not caring about - the reactions of those in the room. He would drone on interminably, and would always end his prayer with this sentence: "... and OH Lord, would You please clear the cobwebs out of my life?  Amen." And then he'd sit down.

This went on for years.  The same prayer, the same intonation, the same final request. Nothing changed.  One Wednesday night, one soft-spoken old woman who had listened to him every week for years without comment, finally stood to her feet after he finished his prayer one evening with (as usual), "... and OH Lord, would You please clear the cobwebs out of my life?  Amen...."  Immediately she blurted out with all the pent-up frustration of ten years, "OH Lord, please kill that awful spider!"

Source (via Google Images):
http://www.freeimageslive.co.uk/free_stock_image/spiderweb4051jpg

I remember praying blanket prayers when I was younger - things like that old man's "cobweb prayer."  It was never anything specific - just this nebulous sense that I'd done wrong and that God could make it right.  Which He could - and did - every time.  But the effects were short-lived.  They always came back... cobweb after cobweb. Time after time.

But when someone suggested to me that after asking God to take care of my life, I take pen in hand and make a fearless and searching moral inventory of myself - in specifics - that was when I started to understand the reasons why.  The spider was still alive and well and churning out web!  It needed to be exposed and disposed of... not just the by-products of its presence but the actual center of it.  Like the gentleman in the prayer meeting, I had only been focusing on the symptoms, the results of it.  

As I continued that inventory - which was exhaustive and took MONTHS and not minutes - I came to realize that the root of all of those things was not this one or that one who hurt me... or this or that event that happened... or this or that organization that didn't meet my needs.  

The problem was me.  I was the one making all the cobwebs.

I was the spider. 

It wasn't the devil using me.  He SO didn't need my help.  It was me - all by myself - making bad choices and suffering the consequences of those choices.  But as I - out of desperation to be free - brought these things out into the light and exposed them for what they were, something very strange started to happen.  The cobwebs started to dissolve and fall away. 

Some took longer than others.  Some were immediate; others? I'm still aware of their presence in my life.  But I know that it's me - MY choices, MY selfishness, MY pride, MY fear, MY obsessions fueling that critter.  The less fuel I give her, the less web she can make.  And the thing is, there is absolutely no way that I can do that by relying on my own will power.  But I know that God can and will give me the strength if I ask Him.  I am learning to pray, "God, I offer myself to You, to build with me and do with me what You want. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Your will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness (to those I want to help) of Your power, Your love, and Your way of life.  May I do what You want ... always!" 

The spider isn't dead yet, not by a long shot.  But it's spinning a little less web.

Slippage

Today I tackled a job I've been putting off for a while.  I used to do it every month, but in the last few months ... not so much. I needed to balance my checkbook.

I can hear the collective groans.  The thing is, I used to be really good at recording every expense.  Treated every debit card transaction like a check, recorded it right away.  Then my habits changed and I started saving receipts when making a debit card purchase, (this to avoid perfect strangers behind me in line from being upset at having to wait while I write down the amount! wow.  Reality check: how codependent is that??) intending to record them later.  Most times I do.  Sometimes - and this is usually the case especially with those pesky  automatic payments - I forget.  This results in what some call "slippage."  A missed transaction or two doesn't seem like much.  But it can be dangerous!

To my surprise, when I finally dug my check register out today, I discovered I had not reconciled it to my bank account in about six months.  Ouch!!  This wasn't going to be good.  

Source of this image:
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-
775368-checkbook-register.php

After carefully verifying every transaction the bank said I put through, I ended up having a few hundred dollars less in my bank account than I thought. (Talk about slippage!!)  Not a nice feeling to be sure.  A little unsettling (pun not intended) as a matter of fact.  But, I bit the bullet ... made the change in my check register, and now everything balances, although the balance is less than I would have wanted.  Before I sat down with my wallet today, I thought I was doing pretty well.  That's the trouble with slippage.  It adds up.

It's sort of a relief to know where I stand, though.  To know that I'm square - that I won't be caught short of funds when I have to make a payment in future.  But lessons learned:  the arrival of the bank statement is the perfect signal for me to make time to make sure I've been scrupulously honest with myself.  And speaking of honesty - this putting the recording off until that evening or the next day ... has not been working for me: with all my other daily duties, I easily forget about the paperwork, and before I know it, I have a whole whack of receipts falling out of my wallet.  So - perhaps it's time to get a little more meticulous about my record-keeping - to take the time to do it at the checkout as I used to do.  It's another way of looking after myself, of reminding myself that I have the right to take up space in the world.  Even if I have to slip around to the far end of the checkout after paying, for the twenty extra seconds it would take to record my purchase.

It's just that easy to fall behind, to not be as diligent as I once was - not only in my paperwork, but also in my inner life.  I once heard someone say, "Keep short accounts with God."  I'd say that applies to all relationships including the vertical one.  I talk about it ... but when all is said and done, I do tend to let things slip.  I "coast."  I don't live intentionally - and that results in spiritual slippage.  Fortunately, I don't have to wonder if my Record-keeper made a mistake.  If there's a discrepancy, I know I'm the one who goofed.  And although it's humbling, it's better for me to reconcile with God ... and with anyone else for whom I have not been "present" ... so that my life is balanced.

Balanced is good.

As well as can be expected

I was talking to someone today on the phone and asked her how she was.  And I got the answer I usually get.  "Oh, I'm as well as can be expected, under the circumstances."  Said with a sigh and a "Martha martyr" tone.  

It made me think after I was finished with the conversation.  

Do I do that?  Do I let people believe that my life is a vale of tears when in actual fact it's quite good, I have my health, restored relationships, and so much more than I deserve?  

What's my GQ?  What's my gratitude quotient?  When people talk to me, do they wish I'd finish what I'm saying and feel relieved when I walk away? or do they smile and say to themselves that it was encouraging to have spoken with me?  Do they feel appreciated or used?  do they look back on the conversation with a chuckle or a grimace?  

It's hard to believe but (Canadian) Thanksgiving is only 2 weeks away.  

It's a little odd to me that we would have to be reminded once a year to be grateful for the bounty around us.  Yet here we are.  We are so wrapped up (pun intended) in all our limitations and circumstances we wished were better, that we forget to be grateful for what we have.  

It is my opinion (take it or leave it) that Thanksgiving doesn't happen often enough - not the holiday, just thanksgiving.  Not just thankfulness to God for things but ... thankfulness to each other.  Someone does something we ask him or her to do: "Thank you!" Someone is really nice and goes above and beyond what was expected.  "Thank you!"  It's not - - - I was going to say it's not hard.  But for some of us, it's not easy!!  The mindset is so entrenched that the first thing we look for is what's wrong with this picture, how can it be improved, that we don't see the 99% that IS right with it.  And I guess that's where the statement comes from, "I'm as well as can be expected under the circumstances," with that little martyr tone - the one that says, "Pity me, make me feel good about myself.  Please."  

I used to do that.  I desperately wanted other people to make me feel good about myself.  Because? I didn't feel good about myself, plain and simple.  When I got into recovery and started deepening my relationship with God and establishing a relationship with myself - when I realized that I do have boundaries and so does everyone else - when I started taking inventory and ridding myself of excess baggage... these cravings to be fixed, to be healed, to  be comforted - gradually fell off me.  The things I say now that make people wish I left ten minutes ago... these are mostly habits of decades from which I am slowly weaning myself.  

How's that going?  Some days, it's great.  Other days - well, about as well as can be expected.  (Wink).

Words, words, words

I took my post title today from Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act II, Scene II).  Hamlet implies that words are of little or no consequence. 

I disagree.  Words are incredibly powerful; the wrong ones can kill a thousand times over whereas an assassin can only murder a person once.  By the same token, the right words can heal, encourage, and build bridges where there once were walls, whereas a material gift will soon be forgotten.  I was reminded of the power of words today when I stumbled across a blog post while surfing the Internet.  It tells a story which is all too common - and which is pretty powerful (click here to read it).  

Some of my most precious memories of growing up are of people who took the time to invest in my life with encouraging words.  A schoolteacher who cared enough to give me individual attention.  A Sunday School teacher who never spoke a critical word to me - not even once. A professor who recognized my talents and encouraged them.  I remember these things because I spent most of my growing-up years constantly feeling like I was a nuisance, a waste of skin, a screw-up.... because of the words I heard from most of the adults and authority figures in my life. 

For many years I held onto these poison words and made them my own - I internalized them and held others at bay with my own belief of them.  Then when I realized that they were poison, I spent a significant amount of time in victim-land ... thinking that there was no way that these things could be reversed. It took a lot of years for me to understand something crucial about this.  While there is no way for anyone in my past to undo the damage he or she has done to me, there is something that I can do.  

I can speak words of healing to myself.  When I first started doing that, it felt so fake.  A large part of me didn't believe what I was telling myself, even though it was true.  Over time, though, the good news that I was worth something, that I was loveable, that my contribution was valuable, etc., started to penetrate the shell of words that hardened my own heart against me.  

Before I could speak words of healing, encouragement, and restoration to others, I first had to speak them to myself, to forgive myself, to nurture myself.  When I did, something else happened that I wasn't quite expecting.  

My abuse magnet turned off.  Victims of abuse tend to attract more abusers to victimize them, and my life was a prime example.  But when I started using kind words on myself, that electric magnet built of all the abuse that I had received - and charged by my own self-talk - lost the current that made it so powerful.  Fewer and fewer bullies felt compelled to use me as a target.  The charge (so to speak) reversed polarity, and I began to naturally repel those who would have taken advantage of me before, those who would have used me as their whipping boy.  This liberated me from relationships that were harming my spirit, and it freed me to be able to offer encouragement, kindness and mercy to those who need to hear it.  

And we all need to hear those words.

How you make me feel

"...people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."  - Maya Angelou  

I ran across this quote today as I was searching for something else.  The words stopped me in my tracks and made me think.  How many times I have said to someone (whether in a positive or negative tone), "You make me feel ... " and proceeded to say an emotion or use some sort of comparison to describe it.   How many times I have said or done things that I hoped would last, when all it took was a simple act of kindness to communicate how dear someone was to me.  Those times when someone has told me how I made them feel have either been overwhelmingly joyful or overwhelmingly sad, depending on how I made them feel (obviously).  That's a tremendous amount of power that one person can have over another, sometimes without even being aware of it!

And how many times someone's behavior or opinion of me has made me feel this or that way, and I've denied it, shoved it down inside of me and pretended it didn't exist.  I figured that if I ignored it, it would go away.  It never did; it just sat there and festered.  

Or I would get trapped in the emotion, not be able to confront the person, and get lulled into a false sense of my own importance (or unimportance).  

When you think about it, emotions are pretty powerful things and sometimes they can be overwhelming. But they are what they are. They are neither good nor bad. They just are.

A couple of days ago, while talking to a friend, I mentioned that emotions are temporary states designed to alert us to what's going on in our inner life.  They are meant to last for a short time and act as warnings, guide-posts.  Like traffic lights.  When we get into trouble with our emotions, it usually happens in one of two ways: either we deny they're there (and they will surface another way - usually by making us sick so we finally WILL pay attention!) or we hang onto them longer than is necessary to locate the source of the emotion and process it.  Imagine, I said, climbing up on a traffic light and hanging onto it for the rest of the day.  Emotions tell us when to stop, when to be careful and when it is safe to go ahead or change direction.  It's okay to have them; in fact, NOT having them is just as dangerous as hanging onto them for dear life.  

Part of recovery for me, though, is learning where I stop and where other people begin, where others stop and I begin.  Those boundaries are never more important than in the realm of emotions that are based on what someone else does or says.  And the time it takes to process such emotions is in direct proportion to how deeply what they said or did impacts me.  

Nobody lives in a vacuum.  It is important, though, to be aware that the possibility exists for great joy or great harm to be done by words and deeds.  "Death and life," said King Solomon, "are in the power of the tongue."  Being aware that someone's words can take on a life of their own and can actually generate a self-fulfilling prophecy ... can help me to be able to evaluate whether something that someone says is true and decide whether it applies to me.  Then I can make the choice to accept and receive it - or reject it and not give it any power over me.  Learning that other people's opinions of me were their business and not mine, that I didn't have to let them "make me feel" this way or that way if what they said wasn't true - this was a revelation, an epiphany for me.  

This is part of what living life "inside out" is all about.  It means that I am not bound any more by the things people put onto me from the outside (like grave-wrappings). It means I live from what is inside of me, outward - grounded in my relationship with God and with myself, open (and yes, vulnerable) to those around me, being honest with myself, with God and with them - and willing to admit when I make a mistake - feeling what I feel and living from that core, from the heart.  

When I do, the grave-clothes start coming loose and dropping to the ground.  And my spirit can breathe.

Old messages

The messages come at the most inopportune of times and wreak havoc with my peace of mind. 

They're messages I grew up with.  Some I heard from family members; some I decided to believe on my own, based on my own mistakes and failures.  

And now they come back to me, even when I experience triumphant moments.  The fears, the doubts, the insecurities.  

The lies.  

The old messages are like poison, debilitating me, keeping me back.

You're a social failure.  Nobody will ever like you.  Things will always go wrong for you.  What you do will never be good enough.  (They pile on, tightening my throat and making my stomach churn.)  You'll always be alone.  What are you, crazy or something?  They're only hanging out with you because they want something.  That's all you'll ever be: someone's slave.  Don't even think about dreaming of something more.   (Ad nauseum.)

I will be brutally honest here: sometimes those messages are still overwhelmingly powerful in my life.  But they started to lose their power when I realized (first of all) that they were false and (second of all) that they came from things that had been said to me and/or dumped on me when I was younger - by family members, so-called friends, and the people in elementary and high school whose mission it seemed to be to make my life a living hell, wrapping me up in graveclothes - like mummy wrappings - suffocating me.  I knew I had to break free of them.  

Even with those realizations, the old messages didn't go away automatically.  Someone I trust suggested to me that I create my own new list of messages, statements that were true and uplifting, affirmations that would build me up - to remind me that I was worth something after all: I am special.  God doesn't make junk.  I am likeable just the way I am.  I have something important to contribute. And so on.

Slowly, over time, some of those old messages started to slip away as I told my inner child the things she needed to hear, the things she never heard.  A large part of that was in spite of the feelings of disbelief and "this is stupid" that the old voices would tell me.  I recited my new affirmations anyway.  Not by rote - but speaking directly to that frightened little kid hiding away from the world.  After a while she started to relax and accept herself just a little.  From that point on, as the grave-clothes of self-doubt and self-loathing began to drop off, God and I together uncovered the roots of those messages: verbal, emotional, physical, sexual and spiritual abuse.  More messages were needed to combat those.  What happened to me wasn't my fault but someone else's choice.  I didn't need to fix people who were emotionally crippled and who tried to rely on me to meet their needs. I no longer need to fix those same people.  I am good enough.  I can feel good about what I do without needing others to say so.

Oooo.  These new messages were filled with healing words, healing thoughts.  And as they took hold, the old messages of self-destruction (with rare exceptions on occasion) gradually became less and less frequent.  

In that nurturing soil, healing - and growth - germinated.

Squeaky Clean

I went to see the dental hygienist today.  I see her every 6 months and I always ask for this particular one, because she is more gentle than any hygienist I have ever had...and I've had a few.

Even if I am meticulous about keeping my teeth clean and flossed, I need to go to have my teeth cleaned, looked at from every angle and scraped of caked-on plaque that I can't seem to reach.  I trust this person to do this on a regular basis because not only is my hygienist gentle, she can see exactly where the problem spots are and she will keep at the task until all that extra stuff is gone. She also gives me tips on how to access those problem areas for myself (if I am serious about reducing my time in the chair!!)  And I know that if I forget, or if I'm not as uhhhh, diligent at times - she will faithfully keep on getting what I can't reach.

Part of working a 12-step program is taking a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.  

I've heard people say that a person only needs to take one moral inventory in his or her life and then just maintain on a daily basis afterward.  That might be true, but sometimes I've found that a periodic face-to-face visit with my spiritual hygienist is necessary to get the caked-on spiritual grunge that I can't seem to be able to see.  My own meager efforts to keep in fit spiritual condition are okay, but they fall short; my blind spots creep up on me and I am in need of that big Light in my face and Another's loving scrutiny.  

I am so grateful that the Light of the world also loves me just as I am ... and too much to let me stagnate that way.  It's an ever-changing, ever-increasing-in-intimacy, ever-challenging relationship.

It might be intense at times - but growth into a deeper relationship with Him is why I keep coming back.

Counter it

I got a call on my cell phone last night at a time when I was with my whole family. Since they're the only ones who know my number, I was suspicious but I answered anyway.  I was told by an operator that there was an important message for me and to please hold while they put the party through.  Then I heard a sound I had heard before:  the "shoving off" horn of an ocean liner.  

I hung up.  It was an unwanted message trying to sell me a cruise.  First, I don't do business over the phone where I would have to give my credit card number over the phone lines, and second, water is for washing and drinking, and that is all.  Asking me to go on a cruise is kind of like asking someone with a fear of heights to go skydiving.  Hello....

I get other unwanted messages too sometimes.  Those voices, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes full-throated and nearly deafening, still nag away at me from the inside, based on messages I got and believed when I was a child.  You're not welcome here.  Get out of my face.  What you do isn't good enough.  Why can't you be more like ___?  You're weird.  You'll never amount to anything.  Nobody will ever want to spend time with you.  Those messages - some of which I never even heard verbally but picked up on through non-verbal cues - sometimes won't stop.  They were so much a part of my psyche that I thought that I was thinking those thoughts.  Then when I identified the real voices behind them, I realized that not only were they not mine, they weren't true either.  Yet I'd believed them for such a long time that I didn't know quite how to get rid of them.

Until I was told to counter the messages with other ones that were true.  You are special.  You do have something to offer.  The abuse was NOT your fault.  People can like you just the way you are.  You don't have to bend over backward just so people will spend time with you.  You can be free.  You have unique gifts and talents.  You are already important to so many people.  You do not have to accept criticism or belittlement from anyone.  You don't have to assume responsibility for the bad decisions of other people.  You can let go of the shame.  

These messages, and more, were things I had to tell myself at least once, and more like 4 or 5 times, per DAY at first.  The self I was telling these things to was not my present self but the child-self that still peeked out of the closet wondering if the angry person that was just in there beating her was still angry or if it was safe to come out.  The one who convinced herself that it was safe, only to be criticized, belittled, and mocked over and over again by people who were themselves criticized, belittled and mocked by their parents.  I was so tired of that cycle and I was very motivated to be the generation where it started stopping: to not perpetuate onto future generations the horror and the pain of never knowing what words would set off an emotional land mine.  

When I look back at the way things were before, and compare them to now, I do see a marked difference inside. Yet the condemning voice still comes to me. Frequently.  It creeps in unawares sometimes.  I still need to watch for it, to counter it with truthful affirmations, and I still need to back that up with actions that tell me that I am worth spending time on, that I do have value even if nobody sees it at the moment, that I can be free of the slough of despair, and that I can rise to beauty and victory through truth in the innermost part.

Little Feelings

I've been doing some thinking lately about the reaction of some (if not most) adults when a child throws a temper tantrum or becomes upset over something.  Some think it's horrible and judge the parents.  Others think it's cute and laugh at the child. They chuckle and then say something like, "Aw.  You hurt her little feelings!"

Little feelings.  LITTLE?

As I remarked on facebook recently, seems to me that feelings are pretty big things no matter how little you are.  (Or big.)  Every strong emotion can be overwhelming especially if you have no previous experience with it.  The first time something happens to a person - whether it's rejection, physical pain, betrayal, frustrated dreams, or whatever, it's a big deal...no matter how old you are: six months or six decades - or more. And if an experience is really intense, it can be devastating, even more so if repeated (or worse yet, repeated often).

Think of it this way.  Even ONE horrific experience can cause someone to come home from a war zone forever changed.  Irritable, verbally violent, obsessed, paranoid...the list goes on.  Is it too much of a stretch to accept that a child can be traumatized even in his or her own home, if that home is filled with strife? if every day is like walking into a war zone?  Emotions are emotions.  People are people.  Why wouldn't it be just as (if not more) difficult for a child as for an adult?

The sad part is, those emotions, when stifled, get buried really, really deep.  Then when we are no longer in that stressful situation and we are finally able to "be in control" of our lives, those psychological injuries show themselves in the form of either controlling (control freak) or care-taking (doormat) behaviors, or a combination of both.

There are a lot of unhappy people around; some aren't even aware how unhappy they are.  (I lived in that kind of denial for many years.)


I think these folks would argue that their feelings are not 'little.'  If they allow themselves to feel them at all, that is (perhaps afraid to feel them because they are so big).  Some wake up disappointed that they woke up at all, trapped in a deep depression they can't begin to describe.  Some are obsessed with controlling every last detail of not only their own lives but the lives of those they care about.  All of them wonder why - most of the time - they feel abandoned, unappreciated, fearful, and angry.  That was my life until early 2009.  Thank God that He allowed me to get into therapy!

And when I got right down to it, I discovered that it all boiled down to the suppression of my feelings as a child.  Out of intense fear, I learned to only express what was acceptable - and to live in denial of what my true feelings were.  To hold in disappointment, feelings of betrayal, hatred, sadness, and anger.  Oh yes, and guilt for succumbing once in a while and letting my feelings show.  Then resolving to do better next time. 

But they didn't go away just because I didn't express them. They came out in other ways. I developed survival behaviors during childhood - turning into a chameleon, seeking pity, throwing guilt trips, being a perfectionist - and these continued long after the danger was over. Especially after I had children of my own.  By the end of 2008 I had pushed my husband and children away from me and I felt so very alone, friendless, isolated, misunderstood, unappreciated, angry, you name it.  Dealing with my own childhood feelings was an important part of my recovery: learning that it was okay to express them, then reliving and allowing myself to express the feelings that I couldn't as a child, to face those experiences and come to a place of forgiveness - of others and of myself.  

So when anyone diminishes the impact that their actions have on another human being - no matter how old or young - I tend to be rather skeptical.  

Been there. Done that. Don't want to go back.

Faking it - Part 2

This morning I stayed home to look after a family member who is not feeling the best.  So I started doing what I normally do when I have the opportunity - catching up on reading other people's blogs.

I found one that tells a tender story, a "God-moment" between mother and son, on "Faith Imagined" ... it's called "Receiving Mercy."  I highly recommend it because it speaks volumes about the kind of life-lessons we often miss growing up. Happily, the author of the blog seized an opportunity to not only teach that lesson but re-learn it herself.  

The hidden message many (if not most) of us get growing up is that this or that thing that we have done (and into which we have put our heart and soul) isn't "good enough."

When my oldest child was 3, she showed remarkable talent in drawing.  Her drawings looked like those of a 4-year-old.  Yet whenever she drew something she would say she hated it.  "Why?" I would ask her.  "It's very good!"  

"No it's not!" she would wail.  "I can't get it to look like it is inside me!" She had a picture in her mind which, when she tried to put it on paper, didn't turn out like she envisioned.  She didn't have the skills to make it look that way. Then she'd say the inevitable.  "I'm never going to draw anything ever again!"

And I would sit beside her and tell her, "You're learning.  Everyone needs practice to do something well.  Your drawings are very good for the age that you are.  I bet if you just keep it up, they will get better.  You'll see."  

Shy eyes would look up at me and a glimmer of hope would be rekindled. "You really think so?" she would say, almost in a whisper.

That same theme would be repeated as she got better and her concept of perfection grew as she did.  "Agghhh!" I heard her yell from her room one day. When I asked her what was the matter, she said, "I can never get the HANDS right!" (This was about 8 or 9 years later...) 

"Keep at it honey.  Use your own hand as a model if you like...just to get more practice.  You'll get it!"  And she did.

Since I had been told so many times in my youth that what I did wasn't good enough, because it wasn't the way my mom did it, I tried not to pass that on to my kids.  I remember all too well being criticized and compared to the "doer" my mom was when she was a child ("When I was six years old I stood on the chair and did the dishes so my mother wouldn't have to do them.") Ugh.  I rolled my eyes internally when she started down that road.  She was a Martha, I was more of a Mary (doing versus being).  After so much criticism, I got tired of faking it, and just gave up trying to please her.  So I hid in the bathroom when it came time to do the dishes or some other chore she'd only tell me I was doing wrong because it wasn't like she would do it.  The bathroom was the only place I could go where she wouldn't tell me I was doing something wrong, I guess.

But even with that, I ended up trying to make my kids into perfect little carbon copies of myself when it came to matters of faith, taste in TV programs and music, and other things I considered dangerous - and the more I tried, the less like me they became!  (That's a whole other blog post, one I'll save for another time).  

She calls this one "Family Man."

Back to my story.  

She persevered - is completely self-taught. Today she is somewhat of a celebrity in her circle of friends.  Even her "doodles" are sought-after. I have several of them on my wall at work; people sometimes ask me about them.  I am so very grateful that God allowed me to play just a very small role in encouraging her to develop her natural talent.


How is this story about "faking it?" 


I can't count the number of dreams in my life and the lives of those I love - dreams that have been stifled and/or subjugated because of perfectionism and a refusal to practice self-care, from a fear of really living instead of just being alive. These core beliefs about our own worth come primarily from things we hear from others about the value of what we do, and the value of who we are (including the lack of any kind of message, which will tend to lead toward the belief, "I'm a nothing.  I'm a nobody.  Nobody even cares.") They tell us that our dreams, our longings, don't matter.  They tell us that we may as well just settle for what our parents had.  They tell us that we couldn't possibly aspire to be more, to do more.  


They are lies. 

They kill creativity, suffocate the soul, and crush the spirit. They rob our identity from us.

They are so very hard to counter.  But it is possible.  We do it by telling ourselves the truth - over and over and over again.  We ARE worth it.  We DO matter.  We CAN make a valuable contribution.  We are NOT what we do.  We are more than what we have become while trying to survive life.  We CAN start to really live.  We DON'T have to be perfect.  We are ALLOWED to make mistakes - and learn from them.  We DO have the right to occupy space in this world.  We do not NEED to fix other people's problems for them.  We CAN have a life of our own, feelings of our own, dreams of our own.  We DON'T need to fake it anymore.

What makes us human?

We dance all around it.  We talk about it but then try to hide it whenever possible.  The defining trait of humanity - as I have come to see it - isn't so much our intelligence, our social structure, or our accomplishments (including how much money we make or even that we have the concept of money!)  Rather, it is the capacity to both experience emotion and KNOW we are experiencing it, to have thoughts and know we are having them.  

Psychologists call this capacity "meta-cognition."  We have no problem with the thinking part.  We think and we know we're thinking, and we can even express in words, either verbal or written (another defining human trait), the ideas and thoughts that we think.

However, we have a harder time with the other part.

Emotions.  We are taught (especially in Western culture) that emotions are bad, especially negative ones, even the positive ones - if they are intense - are suspect.  For this reason many try to clamp down on their negative emotions.  I did it for years, even prided myself on nothing being able to affect me.  The problem with that, of course, is that nothing affected me.  In cutting myself off from my negative emotions, I also cut myself off from the pleasant ones.  I lost my self, and not in a good way.  I lost touch with who I was - and at the age of 48, I had no idea who Judy was or if I would even like her if I got to know her.  If there was a feeling there at all, it was of bewilderment... of sadness so profound I could not even begin to get to its roots - by myself.  

Suppressed (shall I put it another way - denied and unexpressed) anger, fear, or disappointment, mixed with a sense of being trapped, are the seeds of depression, clinical (that is, lasting more than 3 months) or not.  

Only now, now that I have been in a recovery process for over 2 years, am I starting to allow myself the luxury of having fun.  In order to get there, I had to express some pretty strong feelings (in a safe way of course and with people I had come to trust).  All that pent-up anger and feelings of betrayal, sadness, and self-pity had to come out, to be brought to the surface and ... FELT.

Yes, it was hard.  It was incredibly hard.  I am not a big fan of pain at all!!  But I had someone who was wiling to walk through the process with me and let me know that it was necessary in order to be free, to come to a place of forgiveness, dare I say acceptance ... and compassion.  Before, I could not get to forgiveness because I could not allow myself to express those feelings that - truth be told - I was forbidden to express growing up.  

Being assured that my emerging feelings were normal for what I went through was extremely liberating.  Just the validation of that carried me through many painful months of having those "normal" feelings... I put it in quotation marks because it felt anything but normal - they came out in a flood because they had been pent-up for so very long and I had only allowed overflows (like a pressure cooker letting off steam enough to keep from blowing up).  The flood was overwhelming at times. And most of the stuff I felt was negative.  A lot of negative stuff happened to me in my life.  My emotional recovery was like a storm in a lake - all the silt and mud gets stirred up and the waters look so dirty.  That's how I felt - soiled somehow - until these things started to be brought to the surface, dealt with, and forgiven.  

Gradually, though, the waters cleared ... and I could begin to see clearly.  I began to experience something I had not known for many years - if at all.  Happiness.

I would not trade that sense of everything being as it should be - for anything.

Too Much

So to update you on my last post, my brother was supposed to have a dye test but opted out of it because it is hard on the kidneys ...and so they'll keep him on blood-thinners and have him do a stress test on Thursday.  They gave him something last night to calm him down and help him sleep, and he had a good day - was even sitting up in his room watching informational videos when I called the nurse's station today.

When he had the heart attack, he had been having a few 'episodes' of fluttering in his chest, and the more stress he was under, the worse it got.  He was in a situation he hated, enduring the toxicity of attitude of someone on whom he would be relying on to get to a doctor's appointment - and his body couldn't take it anymore. That his artery was blocked only provided the ideal atmosphere for such an attack to happen.  It had been building for years.

There's something really revealing about having your life reduced to a bunch of numbers and squiggly lines on a screen and hearing that beep-beep-beep of a heart monitor.  

It exposes - in real time - all the stresses, all the secrets you've been keeping from your loved ones: increased heart rate, shallow breathing, high blood pressure, poor lung capacity.  Things you store up inside yourself, feelings you push down because they're not "acceptable" or "Christian" to feel - these are the things your body screams out loud when hooked up to the machines that reveal oxygen saturation, breaths per minute, electrical activity in the skin, fast or slow heart beat, and the most revealing one for stress levels: blood pressure.

The body is like a sink into which is poured all kinds of "non-body" things: emotions, experiences, circumstances, thoughts, beliefs, the list is endless.

If there's an outlet for all that, it's all good.  The body can handle all those things and leave room for more. But when yesterday's built-up stuff is clogging the drain, then it's not about today anymore.  It's about the clog - because life still happens: circumstances, other people's stuff, the economic climate, world events, family upheavals, work (or lack of it). If yesterday's stuff clogs the outlet, then there is only so much new stuff that the body can take before it spills over into one big mess.

The process of healing is first admitting that there's a clog and that we can't clean it out ourselves - NOR can we turn off the tap of stuff that keeps happening.  We admit that we need help.  We ask God to be that providential plumber who gets His hands dirty and unclogs the sink.  But it doesn't stop there.  We identify those things, one by one (in specifics) and give them to Him.  We do it in specifics, because until we do, we will never admit to ourselves that it's there.  And we'll never be fed up of our inability to do anything about it, at least not enough to want to change, to want to have God remove those things from us.  

Honesty is key to the process of healing.

And once the clog is cleared - it's important to keep it from clogging again, to express our feelings in a safe way, and live one day at a time.

I'm sorry - not!

:D
D:

Okay sometimes you just GOTTA laugh.

I just got the weirdest apology from someone. Suffice to say that it left me with the impression that the person didn't really believe they did anything wrong.  But they said they were sorry that I thought they had.  Oh, that's rich. (:->)  Anyway, I'm just glad that the person got the message...and respected a boundary I set.


But it got me to thinking about all the non-apology apologies I've heard.

Let's see.


According to Wikipedia,"An example of a non-apology apology would be to say "I'm sorry that you felt insulted" to someone who has been offended by a statement. This apology does not admit that there was anything wrong with the remarks made, and, additionally, it insinuates that the person taking offense was excessively thin-skinned or irrational in taking offense at the remarks in the first place."


Okay so how many non-apology apologies have you heard (or given)?  I can list a few to get you started:


The 'obfuscated' apology:  "I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."


The backhanded apology: "I'm sorry your feelings got hurt." (i.e., what I said/did wasn't wrong; you are too sensitive.  This is like the one wikipedia cited.)

The "you-should-have-known-better" apology:  "What in the world were you thinking?  of course I didn't mean to hurt anyone!"  (This one doesn't even say the words, "I'm sorry.")

The "please make excuses for me" apology:  "Oh I'm sorry.  I was in such a bad mood."  (And yes, I used to use this one a LOT.)


The "guilt trip" apology:  (I got this a lot growing up).  "I am so sorry.  I must be such a rotten [mother/friend/sister/brother _____(fill in the blank)___.] I try and try to be a good ____(again, fill in the blank)____ but I guess nobody appreciates that...."  Another version of this one is, "But I was only trying to HELP..."


Or the no-words apology (I'm still sometimes guilty of this one) - buying the person something or doing something really nice for them to make it up to them... but never saying the words because... it's uncomfortable.


Okay, now that I've gotten the creative juices flowing - what IS a real apology?


I believe that it is when you recognize that the actions or words you have done have hurt another, whether you meant them to or not.  It carries with it the idea that you don't want to hurt them again, and that you will take concrete steps to avoid that happening in the future because you care about them.

So, here's an example of a real apology (if it comes from the heart):  "I am so very sorry for what I said.  I didn't know that it hurt you.  How can I keep from doing that again?"