Topic: THE WAR INSIDE YOU
THE WELLNESS TRAIN MAIN SITE
THE HEALING STATION NEWSLETTER
FIBRO GIRL BLOG
AIN'T NO SUNSHINE SINCE YOU'VE GONE
THERE IS A WAR
GOING ON WITHIN YOU
BY SKYE HOLDON
FIND MEANING WITHIN YOURSELF WHEN YOU ARE ILL
If you are feeling a terrible yearning within you, a restless searching for something that you do not have, or a piece of the puzzle that is missing in your life, it could be the call of every part of yourself, except your intellect – body- heart and soul – trying desperately to get me to listen to them!
Often people suffering from illness and chronic pain are like a ship that had lost its compass or charts. The pain, frustration, the lack of quality of life often makes the victim feel aimless and uninspired, and at a loss for their life’s purpose. Therefore, it is important that the person who suffers from chronic illness learn to consciously reconnect with his or her essential self. Then he or she will have regained the capacity to their own course toward happiness, whether that lay in his present job and marriage, his disability, or in a completely different life.
Your essential self yearns for the freedom of nature; your social self buys the right backpacking equipment. Your essential self falls in love; your social self watches to make sure the feeling is reciprocal before allowing you to stand underneath your beloved's window singing serenades.
This system functions beautifully as long as the social and essential selves are communicating freely with each other and working in perfect synchrony. However, not many people are lucky enough to experience such inner harmony. Many people who are ill allow others to take charge of charting their path through life. They never even consult their own navigational equipment; instead they steer their lives according to the instructions of people who have no idea on what you need, want or feel inside. In this manner, unwittingly, they often steer you off course.
If your feelings about life in general are fraught with discontent, anxiety, frustration, anger, boredom, numbness, or despair, your social and essential selves are not in sync. Life design is the process of reconnecting them. It means that communication between your two selves has broken down.
Your essential self formed before you were born, and it will remain until you've shuffled off your mortal coil. It's the personality you got from your genes: your characteristic desires, preferences, emotional reactions, and involuntary physiological responses bound together by an overall sense of identity. It would be the same whether you'd been raised in France, China, or Brazil, by beggars or millionaires. It's the basic you, stripped of options and special features. It is "essential" in two ways: first, it is the essence of your personality.
The social self is the part of you that developed in response to pressures from the people around you, including everyone from your family to your first love to the pope. As the most socially dependent of mammals, human babies are born knowing that their very survival depends on the goodwill of the grown-ups around them. Because of this, we're all literally designed to please others. Your essential self was the part of you that cracked your first baby smile; your social self noticed how much Mommy loved that smile, and later reproduced it at exactly the right moment to convince her to lend you the down payment on a condo. You still have both responses. Sometimes you smile involuntarily, out of amusement or silliness or joy, but many of your smiles are based purely on social convention.
Between birth and this moment, your social self has picked up a huge variety of skills. It learned to talk, read, dress, dance, drive, juggle, merge, acquire, cook, yodel, wait in line, share bananas, restrain the urge to bite - anything that won social approval. Unlike your essential self, which is the same regardless of culture, your social self was shaped by cultural norms and expectations.
If you happen to have been born into a Mafia family, your social self is probably wary, street-smart, and ruthless. If you were raised by nuns in the local orphanage, it may be saintly and self-sacrificing. Whatever you learned to be, you're still learning. Your social self is hard at work, right this minute, struggling to make sure you're honest and loyal, or sweet and sexy, or tough and macho, or any other combination of things you believe makes you socially acceptable.
The social self is based on principles that often run contrary to our core desires. Its job is to know when those desires will upset other people, and to help us override natural inclinations that aren't socially acceptable.
Many of you become retrospective during an illness and are essentially responsible citizens who have muzzled their essential selves in order to do what they believe is the "right thing." There are, of course, people who fail—or refuse—to develop a social self. They live completely in essential-self world, never accommodating society in any way that runs contrary to their desires.
Often the ill and disabled try to make themselves a better person. Or, conversely they feel that the whole world owes them a living and show the nasty selfish sides of their characters. Having a strong social self is a terrific asset. It's allowed you to sustain relationships, finish school, hold down jobs, and meet a lot of other goals. But if, in spite of all these achievements, you're feeling discontented and unfulfilled – then your internal wiring is probably disconnected. You need to re-establish contact with your essential self.
The most reliable places to find meaning and love in your everyday life are in moments that affect you emotionally and move you most deeply. I call these human moments. The most reliable places find human moments are in the connections you make. These are connections of the heart. The people and the places that you love. The part of work you really care about. The children you raise and the grandchildren they may give you. The friends you trust. The pets you adore. The garden (or any pastime) that you fuss over. Even the teams you fanatically root for. All these connections lead to human moments. We hold these moments in our hearts, long after they occur, and feed on them when we are hungry for something to lift our spirits, or simply for something that we believe in and care about. They are emotional sustenance for the heart. It is not healthy to starve the heart.
Nor is it healthy to retain bitterness, to wallow in self pity, to demand that the world revolve around you just because you are sick. Laying the burden of YOUR illness on your nearest and dearest is about the most selfish and inconsiderate thing you can do in your life. Sure, it is awful being sick. Nobody wants to be sick, or if they do, they should seek immediate help. Rising above your illness and retaining your sweet character is not difficult if you put yourself in the other caregiver’s shoes. How awful to be stuck with a sick person all the time! Ever think of that? Now hold on here. Perhaps they love you enough to make it all matter. And perhaps you love them enough not to take out your misery on them and to not reflect the negativity of your life on their lives. Holding yourself above your illness and cutting out the whining and complaining will go a long way to helping you feel like a productive human being again. Life is a learning process. Sick or well, our characters are developing and there is simply no excuse to allow your character to become bitter, spiteful, whining and complaining because you are ill. Instead, rejoice in the fact that somebody cares enough about you to take care of you. Their part of the bargain is difficult, and compromising to their own dreams and aspirations. Its not all about Y O U. If you can understand this, you will be on your way to developing a partnership of the heart and soul, one that you cherish, and one that you will be proud of, knowing that you are following your own star, while allowing your partner to follow his or hers. First star on the right, right until morning. Skye Holdon
Posted by drskye
at 11:05 AM EDT
