Spring Detox: Brain Sweep
The average life expectancy of an American woman is 76.3 years old. At 42 years young, that leaves me with 34 Christmas’ left. Now, I personally plan to be around a lot longer than this, but seeing that number is pretty sobering.
Fear can be a great motivator. But, so can love.
As a part of my morning routine, I look in the mirror and repeat,
“I love you, I love you, I love you.”
This may sound a little woo-woo reading it, but I’m ok with a little woo-woo in my life.
25 year old Linda would have never done this. She was skilled at finding flaws - fixating on imperfections, wishing them away. Always chasing the next promotion, seeking validation as a hard worker, smart enough, good enough... not realizing that her power or worth wasn't tied to any of these external measures or based on what anyone else said.
Carl Jung said,
“To love someone else is easy, but to love what you are, the thing that is yourself, is just as if you were embracing a glowing, red-hot iron; it burns into you and that is very painful. Therefore, to love somebody else in the first place is always an escape which we all hope for, and we all enjoy it when we are capable of it. But in the long run, it comes back on us. You cannot stay away from yourself forever. You have to return, have to come to that experiment, to know whether you really can love. That is the question - whether you can love yourself. And that will be the test.”
It’s funny that we are taught countless ways to love another, but somehow missed the chapter on loving ourselves.
In her book “Loving What Is,” author Byron Katie uses four key questions when helping clients through life’s challenges through what she calls, “The Work.” They are,
Is it true?
Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
How do you react when you believe that thought?
Who would you be without the thought?
Reading through client stories, I found myself squirming in my seat, having this weird dual-experience. First, the AH-HA moment as a reader you see coming as Byron does “the work,” recognizing that there are so few absolute truths we really know, but yet hang so much of our reality and perception on. And the second, the connective experience to the client, hearing and seeing yourself in their words. Begrudgingly at times.
Eventually Katie reaches a point where she asks clients to come up with a “turnaround” which states the opposite of what they believe. For example “She doesn’t understand me” could become “I don’t understand her.” Or “I don’t understand myself.” It is here where you start to feel the perspective shift and expand away from the external to the internal.
De-toxing limiting and/or harmful thought patterns maybe one of the most beneficial steps we can take towards our health (personally and collectively). It just so happens to be the hardest.
Take perfectionism for example. By definition perfect means, “having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be.”
All required and desirable, qualities or characteristics according to who?
The Perfect Police? Who are they, where do they live? I would like a meeting.
Perfect is made up. An opinion, thought, image created by humans communicated to another human using “perfect” images to sell, convince and manipulate partnered with “perfect” words like “flawless" or “ageless”.
According to Psychology Today, healthy perfectionism, “can be self-motivating and drive you to overcome adversity and achieve success.” Personally, I don’t categorize this as perfectionism, but striving for excellence. I don’t believe that perfectionism and healthy can live in the same sentence.
Perfectionists fear failure. I know, I did. They tend to believe that love has conditions. They expect that other’s approval and affection are all contingent on their performance. They are quick to find fault, are overly critical of mistakes (theirs or others), tend to procrastinate things out of fear of failure, and often shrug off compliments and forget to celebrate their success (SO GUILTY OF THIS!!).
I consider myself to be a recovering perfectionist. Influenced from childhood, school, and TONS of societal messages and visuals of what is, good/bad, hot/not, and successful/unsuccessful. I paid attention to what behavior was rewarded, what wasn’t, and how achieving brought much praise.
It took a while for me to really identify the perfectionist patterns within myself. And years to unravel them. It wasn’t like life stopped. Quite the contrary. It was the the continually living of life that shined the light so bright, it was heal it or burn my retinas.
Trading perfection for excellence was very helpful. Excellence is ever evolving and progressing. There is a flow and continued evolution to excellence, a flexibility, and curiosity.
Perfect is stagnant. It eludes that there is an endpoint. That if you achieve “x” you will get “y.” That if we were all this one perfect way, the world would be perfect. Perfectionism tries to control, a classic fear response, many times due to trauma.
In his book, “Waking the Tiger, Healing Trauma,” Peter Levine, PhD writes when speaking to commonality amongst those carrying trauma…
“This is a theme present in traumatized people. They are unable to overcome the anxiety of their experience. They remain overwhelmed by the event, defeated, and terrified. Virtually imprisoned by their fear, they are unable to re-engage with life.”
He then goes onto say, “I learned that it was unnecessary to dredge up old memories and relive their emotional pain to heal trauma. In fact, severe pain can be re-traumatizing. What we need to do to be freed from our symptoms and fears is to arouse our deep physiological resources and consciously utilize them.”
Summary. The majority of us carry trauma. Healing it, does not require re-living it.
Un-processed trauma is stored in the body. So healing it becomes more about finding, feeling, and releasing vs. finding, feeling, reliving, and then hopefully releasing. I highly encourage anyone to reach out for help on healing trauma. There are several somatic modalities that can really help.
I didn’t see it at the time, but dance changed my life because it allowed me to release a lot of unresolved pain that I had inside by reconnecting me to my body. It gave me permission to express myself and all my different personalities freely. Dance brought me back home.
Therapy, hypnotherapy creative outlets like painting, beading, gardening, cooking, and travel, all help me get out of my head, get messy, use different parts of my brain, and just have fun. While daily meditation, time in nature, breathwork, gratitude, morning “I Love you” affirmations, journaling, and movement help ground me everyday.
So what’s taking up space in that beautiful brain of yours? Is it hurting or helping you?
Only so many Christmas’ left.
Only so much time.
You deserve them to be the best.
XO