There is nothing 'wrong'.

This is a truly remarkable story ... so often we make ourselves and our feelings wrong. Here is how to take a different path. 

Originally posted on Huffington Post Healthy Living:

Sometimes when I talk about “Radical Acceptance,” I like to tell the story about Jacob, a man who, at almost 70 and in the mid-stages of Alzheimer’s disease, attended a 10-day retreat I was leading.

A clinical psychologist by profession and a meditator for more than 20 years, Jacob was well aware that his faculties were deteriorating. On occasion his mind would go totally blank; he would have no access to words for several minutes and become completely disoriented. He often forgot what he was doing and usually needed assistance with basic tasks — cutting his food, putting on clothes, bathing, getting from place to place.

A couple of days into the retreat, Jacob had his first interview with me. These meetings, which students have regularly with a teacher while on retreat, are an opportunity to check in and receive personal guidance in the practice. During our time together, Jacob and I talked about how things were going, both on retreat and at home. His attitude towards his disease was interested, sad, grateful, even good-humored.

Intrigued by his resilience, I asked him what allowed him to be so accepting. He responded, “It doesn’t feel like anything is wrong. I feel grief and some fear about it all going, but it feels like real life.” Then he told me about an experience he’d had in an earlier stage of the disease.

Jacob had occasionally given talks about Buddhism to local groups and had accepted an invitation to address a gathering of over a hundred meditation students. He arrived at the event feeling alert and eager to share the teachings he loved. Taking his seat in front of the hall, Jacob looked out at the sea of expectant faces in front of him… and suddenly he didn’t know what he was supposed to say or do. He didn’t know where he was or why he was there. All he knew was that his heart was pounding furiously and his mind was spinning in confusion.

Putting his palms together at his heart, Jacob started naming out loud what was happening: “Afraid, embarrassed, confused, feeling like I’m failing, powerless, shaking, sense of dying, sinking, lost.” For several more minutes he sat, head slightly bowed, continuing to name his experience. As his body began to relax and his mind grew calmer, he also noted that aloud. At last Jacob lifted his head, looked slowly around at those gathered, and apologized.

Many of the students were in tears. As one put it, “No one has ever offered us teachings like this. Your presence has been the deepest dharma teaching.”

Rather than pushing away his experience and deepening his agitation, Jacob had the courage and training simply to name what he was aware of, and, most significantly, to bow to his experience. In some fundamental way he didn’t create an adversary out of feelings of fear and confusion. He didn’t make anything wrong.

We practice Radical Acceptance by pausing and then meeting whatever is happening inside us with this kind of unconditional friendliness. Instead of turning our jealous thoughts or angry feelings into the enemy, we pay attention in a way that enables us to recognize and touch any experience with care. Nothing is wrong — whatever is happening is just “real life.” Such unconditional friendliness is the spirit of Radical Acceptance.

A step towards self-care.

Is it at all familiar to you? … the moment where you start to wonder if you are going mad or “losing it” because you no longer appear to be able to handle the pace of your life, you feel like crying or hiding away somewhere dark and private? It's a sign that your self-care needs ramping up. 

My work over the past few weeks shows that this is a feeling familiar to a lot of people.

I want to let you know now that you are not going mad. You might indeed be losing it – but we need to look a little closer at what that means … 

We need to begin by understanding what you are trying to manage right now, what is on your jobs list, what are your responsibilities, what are you carrying with you from the past too (because the more you are carrying from back then, the heavier the load right?).

We might even write it all down … to see it all there on paper, to recognise that it takes a while to get it all in print because there is so much of it.

And let’s be expansive about this. For example, if you are simply going to work each day and coming home, eating dinner and going to bed then perhaps you are assessing your life as pretty much what it's always been. But to get the full story you will need to go a step further and write about whether you like your job; you are eating in a way you want to be eating; you are sleeping a full night; you are waking up feeling refreshed from sleep and so on.  

Once you have your list and have expanded on it, take the time to look at the list and ask yourself “what else is going on?” – this will help you understand that while the day-to-day activities may not have changed or increased a great deal, your response to them has. 

Start by doing just this, for now. It’s enough.

To begin being conscious of what your life involves (not just the activities but your feelings and responses to them) is a step in sorting out why you feel like you are losing it/not coping. 

It’s a step towards self-awareness and self-care. 

Any step in that direction is life-changing. 

sarahxx

Is your motivation is intrinsic?

Setting goals and having dreams is something we are all encouraged to do. Having courage, living our values, doing the work, growing and evolving - we are also encourage to do these. The key to lasting the distance and making sure you move along the journey you want to be on is intrinsic motivation. 

My experience since writing this post has been interesting. Eight years of thinking about it, talking about it sometimes but vaguely, writing about it privately … and then wham – there I am sharing it with the world. After pressing the initial ‘send’ I decided to take it a step further and email the link to my family – knowing that they don’t regularly read my blog meant knowing that this experience was not going to be known by them unless they stumbled upon it.

Then I published the link on FaceBook. Now all the people I have known across the years from school through to now were sharing this piece of my life. Freaky stuff!!

The traffic on my site peaked quickly. I watched it do so, and watched myself racing around my mind grasping for a hiding place … followed quickly by a reminder to myself that this is what I had created and I needed to suck it up, stand in the discomfort and breathe (which I did).

When you put yourself out there (like I did) you have to be quite clear about your motivation for doing so (which I was). There needs to be somehow an understanding of the process that is involved – I don’t mean “how” you are doing it, but more like “why” you are doing it and what it means for your own individual evolution. Yes, large parts of it relate to sharing with others so they know they are not alone - but altruistic notions may not be enough to get you through the cold, lonely, vulnerable, terrifying, incredibly painful and difficult experience of having it ‘out there’

Intrinsic motivation is the key. Do it for your Self. Tie it to a value: self evolution; self witness; self-awareness; letting go … tie it to anything that is for you - and you alone.  That is what intrinsic motivation is. 

Those moments where you want to run and hide will be tough – but if you know that you are doing it in service of a value you hold, you can sit in the vulnerability and know that you are living a whole-hearted, full life. 

Sarahxx

Are they reasons or excuses?

Many of us want our lives to be different; we seek change in our feelings, our behaviour, our life experiences, the results we are getting. 

Many of us don’t know where to start, or how. 

We say “I am not sure, I don’t know if I am ready”.

We fear what will happen if we make a change.

We see the way we are entwined with others; we tell ourselves we don’t make the change because someone else will be affected or won’t like it.

We hesistate.

We resist.

We make excuses.

We find other values to serve – ignoring what is, upon reflection, a higher priority.

We say “I have to work” (because work is a society-sanctioned escape route “work is good”).

What are your excuses for not living the life you want? 

What do you want when you are not making excuses or squashing your dreams?

Sarahxx

Stepping back to let go a little.

I am writing this on the train as I return home from a weekend away with girlfriends. Nine of us left our children and partners for two nights and took a train ride to another town. There, we shopped, exercised, ate, drank, slept and didn't sleep, laughed and talked about lighter and weightier things than we usually have time for.

There is a shared knowledge that we are mothers but the experience is different for each of us because we are at different stages of parenting. One of us has two teenagers and an elder daughter who just got engaged to be married. Another has three children under 5 years old. Some of us work part time, some not at all outside the home (inside the home the workload is more than ample!). There are those with only sons, those with only daughters and a few with a mixture.

Even the mix of cultures is varied. Some have partners from the same culture while others are bi-cultural families living within a third culture. For this group, these things bring us together rather than segregate us.

Additionally, it is very rare for any of us to leave our families behind and run away for a weekend. For some it was the first time ever. For others it has happened a few times but those times can be counted on one hand.

A weekend away to reconnect to Self – outside the role of partner/wife and mother is a trip to another time. I heard the words 'before kids' frequently. “that was in another life” was met with nods of recognition. We know that our Self has been in there somewhere - under the roles we play in our day-to-day lives. We have, at times, almost lost hope of ever seeing our Self again.

At first, we need practice to reconnect. We try on that old Self and see if we recognise it in the mirror. We realise how much we have changed … and how little we have changed. We acknowledge the rich stories around us and are liberated by the differences and the similarities, the whispers and shouts of 'me too'. We let our vulnerabilities show more and more as the weekend goes on and we get tired of holding up the curtain to avoid being seen in our discomfort with ourselves without the protection of our roles.

We get glimpses of the life we know we must return to at the end of the weekend. Most of us are ready to 'go home' as we call it. We are ready to once again resume our lives as we know them.

Yet we do so a little differently. A little  changed for the chance to have stepped outside the box a moment and see what it all looks like from the outside.

The re-entry is not always easy. It requires letting go … again. We had to let go to come here, we have to let go to return. None of the letting go happens without a change, however imperceptible to the naked eye. Things are different for having let go, for the perspective created by a different view. A glimpse of ourselves, as we were, as we are … when no longer wrapped exclusively in the role of Mother and partner.

When did you last visit your Self?

sarah xx