Reflections :: Appreciation Day

I made up a brand new holiday last week.  Throughout this coming year, I’ve decided I will celebrate “Appreciation Day” on the fifteenth of every month.  It is the one day of the month that I am committed to “tending myself”, to treating myself with what we therapists call unconditional positive regard.  It literally means unconditional love: gentle, present, self-affirming, non-judgmental love.  It’s revolutionary, if you think about it.  An entire day in a conscious attempt to truly accept and love yourself for no other reason than because you deserve appreciation.

It turned out to be tougher than it sounds.

In depth psychology there is a primary understanding of something called the shadow.  If you are familiar with Carl Jung, or perhaps the work of Debbie Ford, you too may be aware of this idea.  Our shadow is the personal darkness carried within each of us, where we have hidden all of the aspects we believe are unappealing about ourselves.  From our earliest development the shadow is an aspect of our psychological make-up, and it is precisely these repressed parts that control our choices, attitude, and mindset, from day to day without our full understanding.

Bringing to light the buried parts of our self, the parts we’ve deemed unloveable, bad or wrong, is a way of bringing vitality and emotional wholeness back in to your life.  I don’t mean slathering on phony positivity and artificial well-being.  Shadow work is about softening to our imperfections, undoing shame and guilt, making tender the areas where we are rigid.  It’s about appreciating all of who we are.

Image courtesy of Flickr

Appreciation Day occurred to me because a week or two ago I was feeling particularly down on myself for a solid two or three days in a row.  My old emotional blocks of numbness, isolation and self-pity, loneliness and inadequacy had really gotten a stronghold on me.  I found myself reaching out to friends for help applying to myself what I often remind clients: The answer is always love, how can I love a little more?  From inside this question arose the truth of my soul’s deep need, to call these hurting parts back to me, to reclaim them with the same gentle love I would show a child.

We cannot give away what we do not have.  As a mom, or a therapist, as a friend, or a wife, as a writer, or a daughter…we will only meet with harmony outside of us what we have first made comfortable within.  So Appreciation Day, it is!  A day that, once a month, I approach myself with a conscious practice of adoring warmth and love.  Warmth and love for all parts of my self, especially the ones I keep covered and don’t want you to know or see.

This month’s Appreciation Day was easy for the first half, then required work.  I will keep at it, though, because I truly do believe in the transformative power of love.  It is the light that illuminates the shadow, draws our self back to our self, makes us authentically whole and strong.

I invite you to adopt this holiday, and celebrate it, too!  Begin, within~