Yes, your psychotherapist feels the heaviness in the world too!
#2020notmyfavoriteyear has been my repeated insertion in posts lately. To use this is a mantra is a gross underestimate of how I really feel about the pandemic and its impact on our world is not even accurately depicting how I truly feel about it. I am not one for wishing away time, I am not one for wanting the next year or the next thing even to happen as I have worked tirelessly over the past few years in really living in the moment and embracing a mindfulness approach to my life. It occurred to me over this past week, the struggle with this approach right now is this…..I don’t want to be in any of this “moment”……….
2020 has brought so much suffering in my family, in my life, and arguably even more so in the world around me/us. It has changed me.
As psychotherapists, our job is to be there to support others and help them to not only work through difficulties but to find hope and light in their lives for a better tomorrow. We sit with heartache every single day. We hold that space. We listen. We guide. We challenge. We reframe. We connect. Imagine, however, if day after day after day, a portion of your sessions are illuminating the collective suffering we as a world are experiencing. Every. Single. Day. Week after week. Now, month after month….loss. Loss of life. Loss of jobs. Loss of freedom. Loss of relationships. Loss.
When my Dad was acutely ill with cancer in his early 50s and my mid/late 20s, the fear of losing him and the impact on our family was my greatest fear and reality I was living in for years. While I was in the midst of graduate school and had a young family and very real stressors on my marriage and immediate family, that was THE worry I was facing. During that time, I had this amazingly supportive community of Gilda’s Club Metro Detroit to be not only my internship site but also my subsequent employer and friend/family group. That focused support was essential in helping me move through my grief and the grief and stress for my entire family. There was hope. There was light. There was love.
Now, when I wake up….for a few moments in the morning there is peace. There is stillness. There is calm. Then….I remember…..
Pandemic. Political Chaos. Police brutality & racial tensions & racism. White Supremacy. Pandemic. Job loss. Relationships lost. Children at homeschooling versus being in class in person. Family members dealing with new health diagnosis. Loss of ability to see friends/family without thinking of…the Pandemic. Fear of reversal of the Supreme Court’s prior rulings affecting many of the family members/friends I love. Loss. Pandemic. Loss. Loss. Loss.
When I am stressed, when I am struggling…I turn inward. While I used to have a myriad of non-helpful/healthy coping mechanisms that just enabled me to numb myself and the pain I was enduring, I now have intentionally chosen to “not” use said coping mechanisms and have opted for more grounding and useful techniques that quite frankly are freaking hard to maintain. There have been times in the past few months I have full disclosure cursed myself for choosing this path. I sooooooooooo want the easy button. I soooooooo want to just be numb. I soooooooooo want to move to the next thing so I can avoid the real work, but I have tried that path for so long and it didn’t work before, why would I think it would work now?
Now, I need to sit with the really tough emotions, rather than busy myself as a form of distraction to wish them away. I am strong. I am resilient. And in the stillness, in the quiet, in the intentional sitting with my often REALLY BIG EMOTIONS….in this space, I fight light again and find hope. I am writing these words with full disclosure the “answers” I am seeking are but glimmers of light and hope in the distance, but I am starting to see them. They are starting to illuminate my thoughts and my heart, and perhaps that is the point? Perhaps we are not meant to have all the answers revealed to us in the timeline we prefer, but rather in the timeline that is more expansive giving us the perspective we cannot see when we are hyperfocused on the “fix this and me NOW culture.”
Age. Gender. Roll. Career. None of us are immune to stress, to heartache, to dispair. That person sitting with you across the therapy room (or via zoom) to the neighbor you casually wave to as you walk your spoiled dog for the 4th time in a day….we are ALL suffering in some way. We are ALL hurting. But….we all have within us tremendous capacity to love, to forgive, to find peace, and to THRIVE if we allow ourselves the time, space, and the mindset to lean into the emotions, rather than choose the easy path in an endless sea to escape them.
Wishing you all the courage to lean into your emotions, and trust in yourself that you are capable of doing really hard things.
Peace…….
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