So I have been watching myself...
When I first started working as a counsellor, many moons ago...back in the days when people permed instead of straightening... I took it upon myself that I should be able to live the principles that I was aiming to foster in my clients... I figured I "should" be able to rationalise my way out of pretty much any emotional jungle... I mean, as the map holder I admonished myself that it didn't bode well for the party if I got lost myself... So I pummelled and prodded myself into a sort of odd intellectualised rationalised being... I bored myself stupid with terribly controlled and "appropriate" responses to life's pickled beetroot stains and... of course... eventually internally combusted in a big messy gooey heap.
Soooo then I took a stand with myself and, in my way, gave myself a bloody good talking to about being bloody human not a robotic representation of psychotherapeutic theorising... and I made a decision. No longer would I even attempt to be perfectly sane, perfectly rational, perfectly controlled. I realised that it was through my own messy humanity that I was able to approach helping others from a place of authenticity...and it sure did take the pressure off. I decided not to "work" 24 hours a day... I decided that outside of professional hours I would deliberately be as "human" as I needed to be.... and if that was tough going - well I could always see a counsellor myself! Which I did periodically... and I gotta say - life was a WHOLE lot more fun. I pouted when I wanted to, I chucked tantrums when people gave me the shits, I was nutty as a anaphalactic's nightmare when the mood struck me. And its been working for me ever since! Long live the authentic human being! (As my terribly terribly wise friend Kath would say...)
So as I have travelled along through life's hiccups and hurrahs...things have developed, as things do. Now I find that I exist in my emotional world in a kind of split way. I have my internal counsellor - and my internal client... I still allow myself to feel what I feel in a real way...but the same time I step back and observe myself with as much empathic understanding as I can. Its odd and yet comforting and it seems to work. I know I am being petulant, for example, - but I let the mood be, and it passes... kind of like meditation - when you stop fighting the distracted thoughts and just let them arise and fall away...well, they stop battling for total mental domination (wouldn't it be nice if it worked for world politics!).
So I see myself now... and I know that I am grieving... Grieving my little blue eyed family that are mine no more... I feel it and I observe it at the same time...A living kind of curvacious hazel eyed grief cycle...
At first I felt numb (shock)... then I kept thinking that it would all work out somehow and was not really so bad (denial).... then when I kept noticing my depleted key ring I faced facts and in flooded "anger"... (damn it...I deserve so much better than this!). And as I felt my anger I knew that it would pass and that soon, after a brief foray into the temptation to try and bargain my way out of this (perhaps I can find a way to fix things??)... I would need to feel sad (no matter how much one tries to "maintain the rage" it passes as it should)... this morning I felt my sadness start to trickle in.... so I am sitting with it (patting it on the shoulder, making it a cup of tea)...and in it and outside it at the same time... and I know that the next stage is acceptance and moving on... so I am looking forward to that.
And in the nature of it being familiar territory - I know what a grief cycle is and how it works, I know that its a process and it will pass and its normal - and in feeling that I have a map to go by... well, it makes it all less overwhelming and scary.
I know these paths, sure they are bumpy and tough going sometimes... but I have been here before and I am not afraid.
“Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”
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