Balance in life is "possible" but what exactly is that? What does this- in the present day's popular vernacular- even look like? I think the answer to that is an individual's idea of balance. For me- being an optimist that I am- balance means that I am happy, that the irritations of the day leave me immediately after the situation has resolved itself, that I am happy to talk to people when I see them and I am happy to be alone when I get home as well. I think happy is at my center of balance.
What could this look like to other people? Could your balance mean literally that the bad times during the day are balanced by things going sort of ok- that your generally pessimistic outlook on life is balanced by a few things that don't suck? I know people like that. Are you an introvert and your balance in life is being largely left alone because you work in a somewhat solitary job, and you have a small family and limited social life, but enjoy being out and about in a limited fashion? Perhaps you are fairly extroverted and you are on the phone with your friends frequently, and have a public workplace, then need to spend time with others in the evening and chit chat on text until you go to bed? What does balance mean to you? I am not criticizing these ways of looking at life, merely thinking of people I know and trying to see from their point of view and imagining what could be a balanced life. I, of course, only barely touched the surface of this, but the amazing differences in people would lead to different definitions of what balance is.
In our case, we were discussing the balance between real life and healing and I have to imagine that everyone processes this differently as well. I have to imagine not everyone can do this, but, I personally went cold turkey when I began my healing and escaping from diet prison. I quit weighing, dieting, and embracing diet culture really quickly, in literally a day. I decided to stop and I did. This does mean that I floundered around for quite a while, because after more than a couple decades of thinking that following diets and shrinking myself was the only way to self fulfillment, it took a lot of time and a lot of self care and body image work to change the way I saw myself. There was not a lot of balance during the first few years of healing, there was a lot more feeling free, though. It was outstanding to just eat what I wanted. It took a lot longer to come to terms with the exercise component but I did. It is so nice to really not care what I have for any given meal. I don't care what my macros look like, don't think about if I have had more than 2 pieces of bread in a day, feel no concerns when I pick up a second cookie if it will feel good in my tummy.
Freedom gave me the space in my mind to work on my body image and my self worth. I said in the podcast that I still have feelings that I am not doing enough, that I don't deserve to take rest time, or have down days. (The self worth work goes on, but it is much easier to identify that there is something that needs to be turned and examined.) So there surely was not a lot of balance during my early recovery period, there was just a lot of time given to my inner work. I did a lot of guided meditations, I journaled, I had group and private coaching. The meditations included visualizations and breathing work. I was religious in working on these things, doing the assignments and writing prompts from the group coaching, listening to the "tapes", finding new things to read and people to follow on social feeds. And then I found I didn't have the NEED to listen to my morning meditation. Didn't HAVE to journal for pages and pages every day.... that is when the balance began to happen.
I was trying to convey in the podcast that I think the balance of healing and real life happen in ebbs and flow. We have cycles of nature, cycles of energy, and I think cycles of balance and imbalance. I think the balance in our life happen when we can handle the things that are bringing us to our knees or making us not sleep at night or rest like a giant ball in your chest that take up all the space you usually have for patience, and breath, and love, and compassion. When we know what authentic self-care tools we have to use and where we can go when we are in crisis. The balance comes in knowing that we can find our way out of this and it does not involve trying to control life and people and situations and love by making ourself LOOK different or a certain way or a eat a different way because if I lose weight everything will be right again, because it is sort of magical because all the people on tv and the internet say our life will be perfect if we shrink and take up less space and become less than what we are. whew. No- that won't work at all, dieting won't work at all.
Self-care tools at their finest frequently don't cost anything. They don't involve having someone do something fancy or luxurious for you. While having the pedicure or massage or buying the shoes or the daffodils or taking that bath in the good bubbles might be momentarily amazing, these are the lesser self care practices. These don't bring to your mind the things that affected your outlook on life from your childhood, or the friends that betrayed your, or the trauma you suffered, nor really do they help you see them from where you are living now, from your present point of view. They don't let you really decide that the mean girl in your mind is really not speaking the truth. The lesser self care practices don't cause the sublimation of healing happen in your mind and change your go to responses to stress.
Writing in journal/notebook/scrap paper, meditation in whatever form works for you, movement that is healing and not punishing, breathing purposefully and rhythmically are things that are authentic forms of self care. Moments that you find during your day- only 30 seconds or a minute- to truly give yourself positive reinforcement in some way are incredibly effective. In my case, the water bottle filling, when I breathe slowly to relax myself is far superior to the beautiful little bouquet of daffodils I bought myself last week. The flowers were lovely and I adore them, but they didn't quite do the trick to rescue me from my acute distress. Coaching, visualization, time to actually relax and giving myself permission to be put aside things that just didn't need doing are what got me out of my funk. I never could write out a sentence that said the last two weeks I have felt like a total disaster, a failure, a shipwreck and I can't sleep or relax because....... I kind of don't really know. I do know that facing all the issues that were adding up and making myself stop several times a day to hold my hand on my heart and breathe into it was the thing that broke the cycle and has me back in balance. Every time I face the demons and can bring myself back to balance without being on a diet or blaming my body for the situation brings me another day of peace.
Take the time to find your own authentic self care and think about what balance means to you. We are more than worth it.
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