|
Have you ever had one of those days where everything just seems to go right? You wake up refreshed, you enter the day with ease, and one good thing after another keeps happening?
Have you ever had the opposite kind of day?
When I was in third grade, our school librarian gathered our class in a circle on the floor of the library at Falconridge Elementary School. Listening to stories being read aloud was one of my favourite things as a child, and this particular teacher made the characters and the scenes truly come alive.
That particular day, she read us a book called "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day."
The first thing that happened was that Alexander woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
Now, I didn't really know what this meant, because I wasn't aware that beds had different sides. My bed and the beds of my siblings had always been placed against a wall, and I thought only grown-ups had beds with two sides. When I got home and told my mom about this story, she said, "That's why your bed is against the wall - you can never wake up on the wrong side. And anyway, children don't have these kinds of terrible days. But if your day is going bad all day, that's your own fault."
That slightly off-handed, 80's parenting-style comment from my mom brought me so much relief, because of three things which I didn't understand at the time, but make sense to me now as a therapist who hears about memories like this all the time from clients.
One, I believed my mom had purposefully designed my room so I wouldn't have bad days, making me feel supported and cared for. Two, I believed that only other people had entire days that were horrible, making me somehow immune from the experiences of the character in the book, and three, she introduced me (without knowing she was doing it) to the idea of Sovereign Agency. She was telling me (in a bit of a blunt, immigrant-parent way) that it's up to me to manage my internal state even if things around me are not going my way. Unfortunately, I didn't have any clear direction of how to do this as third-grader!
Fast forward thirty years, and suddenly, I am drowning in a mental health crisis of a deep, clinical depression.
For decades before that I told myself that I had mostly good days, and some part deep inside still believed these terrible days wouldn't (and couldn't) touch me. Though I had experienced other depressive episodes, I didn't really know that's what was happening at the time. When I was finally diagnosed, I realized I had navigated at least five severe depressive episodes with zero treatment or support.
During that last (and most debilitating) depressive episode, I stopped being able to do much. All I wanted was to sleep and to be left alone in Dreamland. I thought about that childhood book a lot during those low years, and wrestled with the disappointment that I was not immune. I felt like I had failed and I knew that nothing in my outer environment was going to fix this. Putting the bed against the wall wouldn't help! The worse part was I couldn't seem to think or feel my way out of it.
I simply felt trapped in an never-ending terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.
As the years went by after the deepest and darkest part of the journey, and I learned to live with the ebbs and flows of the illness, I found myself fluctuating between high-intensity over-performing followed by a drawn out crash where all I needed was uninterrupted rest.
I know now that this cycle was really tough on my two young children, but I didn't even really notice that at the time.
Last summer, I said goodbye to clinical depression once and for all through an incredible consciousness experience that I have shared with a few people and I may one day write about here. But that's a story for another day.
One of the underlying reasons I was able to heal my depression is because for two and a half years, I have been cultivating a new relationship with Being and Doing. Here is where I want to introduce you to one of the Ten Spiritual Axioms from Advanced Consciousness Therapy: There is a rhythm to Being and Doing.
As a former high-achiever, I was over-scheduled, stretched in many directions, and forever chasing the next outcome. So much of my identity was wrapped up in what I had accomplished, and there was always another goal to chase, even while I rode the waves of clinical depression.
There was no room for rest, no room to JUST BE....
...until I five years ago when I moved to this tiny town where nothing really ever happens. Shops open or close as per the whims of the owners. People lolly-gag and galavant, and conversations are prioritized over transactions. Spending an afternoon putzing in the garden or polishing your vintage car or picnicking at the lake is applauded and encouraged. A morning walk could take ten minute or ninety minutes, depending on the neighbours who might stop you for a chat.
No one rushes about anything.
And I had to quickly learn to slow the fuck down.
Just as my nervous system was starting to match the pace of my new home, I met Texas Peck. He took this teaching to the next level, getting my body and heart on board with this new way of moving through the world where what I do doesn't matter as much as who I am.
And I started tuning into my own natural rhythms of being and doing.
My hidden fear was that if I surrendered my schedule and my carefully constructed life plan, I would end up under the covers, back in the depths of the darkness. My busy-ness was actually a mask for a much deeper fear that just being myself was not enough, that I still had something to prove.
So whether it was a golden day or a dismal day, every moment of every day had to move me closer to some vague idea of success that I had mapped out back when I used to play house-house (or school-school!) as a kid.
But some part of me knew I was just going through the motions.
Learning, deep in my bones, about the rhythm of being and doing (as we talked about in this week's video) has liberated me, and I am hoping that as you read this, it might liberate you too. As Monique Peck writes in "The How" (pg. 200):
"Healing and transformation don't follow a linear path. Advanced Consciousness Therapy honours the ebb and flow between action and stillness, movement and integration. Clients learn to trust their inner timing and respect the wisdom of rest, reflection, and receptivity as much as the impulse to change or act."
If you are someone who would like to feel that internal rhythm, someone who is tired of having terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days, I invite you to book in with one of our practitioners and begin your own journey back to balance.
Check in. Either way, you'll know.
Yours in The Ebb-and-Flow,
Dr. Saira
P.S. For anyone local to the Shuswap area in British Columbia, we will be re-starting our in-person Meditation Circle on Wednesday September 17 at 6 pm Pacific. This will be a 15-20 minute guided meditation (either live or a pre-recorded audio that we will listen to together) facilitated by one of our team members at The Expansion Project Headquarters each week (140 Hudson Avenue, Salmon Arm). In order to manage volunteer time and capacity, we will NOT be offering a Virtual Meditation Circle at this time, and are no longer offering the regular refreshments. Participation is by donation.
Responses