As I lay here in bed at 4.42pm doing my best to rest, my mind is bubbling away with ideas.
Wee side note before the blog- I develop heat stroke and my first ever case of COVID on my last day of our camping trip. I am now at day 3 of symptoms, which include deep muscle aches, cramping and overall fatigue.
However, camping and immersing ourself in nature for the past week really gave my creative brain the time and space it needed for ideas to sizzle. I can’t really switch that part of my brain off, even in the midst of balancing everything life throws, my curious brain is always making connections and philosophising about the world. However, I have felt a deep sense of sadness in the last few months because I’ve not been able really put the time and energy into writing my ideas down. The emotional energy it has taken to balance the journey of becoming a counsellor, with my job supporting young people and student placement alongside supervision and person therapy has left me little energy and time to write. Writing has been the most healing and cathartic thing in my life. I began blogging around 8 years ago when I finally let go of the judgement I had around myself and dyslexia (with encouragement of many kind people) and decided to just pour my ideas on to the digital page. Alongside posting my blogs publicly to a small audience, I’ve ravenously journaled- in fact that has been the only writing I’ve down this past few months. Journaling allows me to formulate and process my thoughts, feelings and experiences. It can be painful at times but wow journaling been such a journey in self awareness and healing.
I have been learning a lot about the journey of self awareness from my own experiences but also hugely from my experiences holding space for clients in counselling sessions. Sometimes I imagine my role as a counsellor to be a soft, compassionate, kind and non-judgemental sounding board for clients to create connections about their life experiences, thoughts and feelings. A space to sit with, process, move through and let go of a range of unique and sometimes connected experiences, thoughts, feelings and emotions.
I relate this process to journaling, in a way that is similar to a recent book I read: “How to be your own therapist” by Owen O'Kane. In this beautiful, informative, practical, empowering and healing book, Owen documents the journey of sharing your story in full with yourself and someone else, he then gives you practical steps in processing your story, letting go of narratives that don’t serve you and practical things you can do everyday to maintain mental well-being.
I really believe in the power of sharing our story. This always takes me back to Maya Angelou. Her first autobiography “I know why the cage bird sings” and her quote “There is no greater pain than a story untold”.
When we lock parts of our story away, (often the parts we feel shame or pain around) we lock parts of ourselves away.
I think this is why social media can be so damaging because it encourages a curated version of who we are. It trends towards sharing joyful or uplifting experiences. It encourages us to share one side.
Surprisingly, and I’m only the making this connection as I write, this “one sidedness” is very similar but in contrast to the mainstream media. Mainstream media in all its forms leans the complete opposite way, it tends to focus on the dramatic, sad, angry, painful events and experiences of the world.
Both often live in extremes. Both social media and the main stream media require us to ignore parts of ourselves and the world. Both create untold stories. Both lead to inauthenticity- leaving things out to fit with narratives and ideas people want to portray.
I truly believe leaning into who you are and accepting the painful uncertainty of life, sets us free. It liberates us. It means we don’t have to add layers or hide layers of ourselves to fit into the world.
It reminds me of an incredible thing I heard recently by the wonderful Elizabeth Gilbert. “You can draw a circle around yourself and define everything within that circle as sacred.” Imagine if we decided that we were sacred?! That everything and everyone we let into to our space mentally and physically had to honour us too?! Woweee this idea hit me hard. It had me thinking about a range of things including boundaries, honouring ourselves, having choice, developing self worth etc etc.
We can imagine the circle as a defined black circle that sometimes opens gently to let something we love in.
This doesn’t mean we exclude parts of ourselves in fact it’s the complete opposite.
It means we embrace the different parts of us whilst leaving room for growth and letting go. The circle change in size or even colour depending on what season and chapter of life we are in…
However, the one thing that remains the same and runs like a threat throughout our life when we draw the circle and honour ourselves is self worth. We begin to believe and see our worth.
Back to the life long journey of self awareness. It’s painful. I am seeing this more and more working with clients and hearing them recognise how challenging it can be to become aware of patterns within ourself and the people around us. This becomes even more challenging when they the people around us have decided consciously or unconsciously to close some doors to their own self awareness.
However, self awareness has to come with self compassion. At the beginning of my first experience of depression around six years ago I was FILLED with shame and angst. I didn’t have an internal drop of self compassion. I have blogged before about the triggers of that first episode of depression, in short I had my first major running injury that led me to recognise I was physically running away from a lot of mental pain. When I couldn’t run the pain came crashing down on me. It felt like a physical ache and dark heavy cloud above my head like a hat I couldn’t take off. I dug a hole deep deep down within myself and I felt like I couldn’t climb out. I also couldn’t tell anyone because I was perceived and perceived myself as a strong, independent women (who did not need to smoke- that sentence always reminds me of the friends episode) who relied on herself to overcome difficulty. I found it soooo easy to sit with others in their pain and vulnerability and feel nothing but empathy, compassion and understanding. Yet I couldn’t give a drop of it to myself.
more on shame, courage and healing here: https://hippeadventures.wixsite.com/website/post/transitioning-the-courage-to-heal
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