Picture credit: Medium Magazine
THINKING IS OVERRATED. No, Really. I know. I have made a career out of making sense of things, mostly people. As a child, I was always trying to understand why my siblings acted the way they did. I obsessed over my mother's unhappiness--how I caused it and what I could do to fix it. In college, I majored in "Why People Do the Things They Do" (aka Pyschology). I got my PhD in "How to Fix People Once You Figure Out Why They Do the Things They Do" (aka Clinical Psychology). I was going to fix my family! Since about age 13, I was on a mission to become a psychologist to do just that.
I volunteered, I took college classes in high school, I worked my ass off to get good grades--all culminating in that goal--to be a therapist and fix my family. But I didn't read the fine print. I learned only a few years into graduate school that one could not "fix"any family, but one (a therapist) could help them change if they wanted things to be better. And I learned that you are EXCLUDED from that role if it is your own family. It's called BOUNDARIES.
Theories could explain things but it turns out that "fixing people" is the one thing you CANNOT ever do. You could have 9 PhD's and you still could not fix people. Turns out THEY have to do the work, they have to be willing to feel really difficult feelings at times, and to not blame others for their symptoms in order for them to even have a shot at changing THEMSELVES. I sold myself a bill of goods.
But there was a silver lining. While my profession didn't help me fix my family, it normalized working on oneself in therapy--in fact, doing one's own work in therapy was a prerequisite for being a therapist. So I worked on changing myself--quite an undertaking--a long haul so to speak--and I'm still working on me.
I learned that "understanding" was not enough. Explaining the why did not help one shift patterns and make changes all that much. Understanding can make you feel a little better because there is an explanation but it falls short when one wants to heal and live the way they want to live. Somatic therapy taught me that tuning into the body--the sensations, tensions, the recurring pains--gave me a felt sense experience--I call it a head and heart experience or an emotional knowing. It involves listening to one's intuition and sensing what feels right--not finding the "right answer".
It's always been about Head AND Heart! And ACTUALLY, being HEART-LED is the GOLD STANDARD. Being HEART-LED has helped me to finally love myself and to have love and compassion for everyone in my family--which HAS changed me. So don't ask "why"! Remember that everyone is peddling as fast as they can in their journey and everyone is deserving of love and compassion--even you.
