When the five senses and the mind are still, and reason itself rests in silence; then begins the path supreme.
Although its getting better, there is still an enormous amount of stigma and shame wrapped around the subject of mental health and seeking out help. Often times its viewed as embarrassing and/or shameful when the reality is that its no different from talking to your physical doctor about a pain in your knee or taking your car in when the check engine light comes on. Zero difference. Anyone can benefit from talking with someone when the need to unpack comes up.
The feeling of disconnection and numbness that afflicts so many people’s lives comes from habitually absenting ourselves from our difficult experiences.
Like a mountain climber that is stuck on their rope and would rather die there that way, we’re terrified of sinking down into those places within us that we refuse to inhabit. The grief for what we’ve lost or never had, the longing for a worthiness that we don’t feel, the unknown of it all threatens to swallow us whole. So instead, we insulate in the form of alcohol, drugs, sex or material objects; or we find a way to exist in an anxious suspension above our fears and loneliness.
We can undermine our own efforts to move forward, remaining in fear of becoming self; because to walk the maze towards our next selves means we need to face all that we’ve neglected or abandoned, and relinquish that which no longer serves us.
Sacrifice is a show of trust in the unknown. Like quitting a job only to have a new opportunity appear that very afternoon, or ending a toxic relationship only to meet your true love two days later, there is magic in sacrifice. Life is calling you, and the severance of the tethers that bind you to outgrown thoughts/ideas/reactions is you answering that call.
#growth #personalgrowth #psychology #cognitivebehavioraltherapy
When you reach a certain age and look back over your life, it seems to have had an order; it seems to have been composed by someone.
And those events, when they occurred, seemed merely accidental and occasional and just something that happened, turn out to be the main elements in a consistent plot.
So, who composed this plot?
Just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so your whole life has been composed by the will within you.
Just as those people you met became effective agents of the structuring of your life, so you have been an agent in the structuring of other’s lives. And the whole thing gears together like one big symphony; everything structuring and influencing everything else.
Its as though our lives were the dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters are dreaming too, and so everything links to everything else, moved out of the will of nature.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Sit with it
Instead of drinking it away, smoking it away, sleeping it away, eating it away, sexing it away or running from it in whatever manner,
Just sit with it.
Healing begins with feeling.
You wanna make a resolution?
Then start a revolution. Within yourself.
Instead of the morning bathroom mirror pep talks and mantras, tell the person in your mirror that you love them and that you’re proud of them.
Take a walk in the woods. Notice the trees; all the different kinds of trees. Big ones, small ones, tall straight ones, smaller crooked ones. Oaks, maples, and who knows what other kinds. Notice all these trees and then notice how you just accept these different kinds of trees for what they are. You don’t get all hung up about the crooked ones or the pines if the maple trees are your favorite. You just accept them as they are and walk on.
Now try that with the people around you and see what you notice. Can you really accept them for who they are or do you get hung up on something?
Go back to the mirror for a minute.
Instead of lashing yourself and telling yourself you can do better, just admit how hard you’re being on yourself. We’re all human, and we’re all gonna make mistakes and we’re all gonna be way too hard on ourselves. Nobody here is an enlightened master. But here’s a spoiler; even enlightened masters screw up. Give yourself a break. For once. Can you really do it?
It’s just three things but it’s so much, isn’t it?
A long time ago, Khalili Gibran wrote “And God said to love your enemy. And I obeyed Him and loved myself”.
Let’s make 2022 so much better than 2021. I have faith in us.
Here’s my favorite story/poem/exercise in taking responsibility for oneself
“Study author Kristen Syme, a recent WSU Ph.D. graduate, compares treating anxiety, depression or PTSD with antidepressants to medicating someone for a broken bone without setting the bone itself. She believes that these problems “look more like sociocultural phenomena, so the solution is not necessarily fixing a dysfunction in the person’s brain but fixing dysfunctions in the social world.”
Edit to add: It’s essential to get proper treatment and medical advice, and not leave mental suffering untreated.
I found this documentary inspiring and personally validating. This was my own childhood, described to the letter.
Twenty percent of the population has been identified as Highly Sensitive. And both men and women EQUALLY make up that 20 percent population. Some of most creative people in the world are also in the Highly Sensitive category.
How relevant this is today, and also very consistent with the type of work that I do with people.
So glad to see this coming into more mainstream focus and awareness.
The film is currently on Amazon’s streaming service, and also at http://www.sensitivethemovie.com
William Schmidt Counseling 