Love :: To Treat Ourselves with Gentle, Tender Love

I am in a program to get a masters degree in counseling psychology. The eventual result will be licensure as a marriage family therapist. It’s exciting, and painful work!  I am blessed in that the school I attend is one that takes an in-depth perspective towards wellness.  For example, this past weekend our psychopathology class, in which clinical mental illnesses are studied, looked at factors that focus on family dynamics and emotional, and physical health, as well as what might be called spiritual factors.

It is for this reason that I chose to go back to school–to receive an education that is counter to the way that wellness is commonly practiced in our society.

I had to write a paper for the end of fall session that took this whole-systems perspective, what is known as depth perspective, to a time in my life that changed or, on the soul level, initiated me.   As a young woman, I was on a scary path.  It involved drug and alcohol abuse and running from emotional trauma in the home where I was raised.  To re-live this time from an academic perspective really was a challenge.  Even if that academic perspective valued a deep or soulful approach!

I got very sick.  That is what I want to write about today.  How I responded to the sickness is indicative of wellness and a depth way of being.  In other words, it’s not the ideas and using them to try to figure things out that matters.  It’s the practical every day choices, the day-to-day feet on the ground behaviors that make the difference in my life today.

I stopped everything in my life that was extra. I took an incomplete on the paper.  I stopped writing: on here, at my site, with my writing critique partner and my writing circle.  I stopped surfing and bike riding.  Twitter and FB. Even spending time with loved ones.  I took deep, nurturing care of my self which meant not figuring anything out!

No work on my heart with my head, which is an old behavior I can slide into that always, always hurts me even more. Instead I slept, for two straight weeks, and laughed at shows on Hulu, a lot.  Work was the only other place I gave energy.

When my period came I responded to the tides of emotion and allowed myself quiet time to grieve the old wounds that had resurfaced.   I spent time at school in the sun playing volleyball and running around: having fun!  Almost immediately the rest of the congestion in my lungs lifted.  I am not a medic, by any means.  But the grief stored in my body was alive and that, in my version of my life, is very real.

I am glad to be well again.  My paper got done.  I got docked three points.  This whole perspective, as I often need the reminder, always begins first with how I relate to my self.  What we do or don’t do to treat ourselves with gentle, tender love is then reflected out to every experience we have.

Be well, be good to you.

Photo courtesy of Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/freeman_mester/4545799556/sizes/z/in/photostream/