In recent months, a plan has formed to wean myself away from the comforting bosom of therapy. A post I wrote six months ago detailed the huge amount of psychotherapy and group work I’ve completed. Some of it enlightened me, some of it led me astray, and much if it had little effect at all.
Just as I prepare to swear off therapy forever, fate has brought me a counselor who truly helps me. Partly it’s a good personality match; partly the ACT philosophy he adheres to works well for me (as discussed on this site many times); and partly I’m finally ready for a fundamental change.
Not that I’m close to ‘cured’, or even ‘stable’, but something inside seems to be shifting. One good example came in my most recent session. It was the first in almost two months, and had been arranged as an urgent appointment because of severe depression.
The biggest reason for my suffering, being perfectly blunt, has always been self-hatred. My upbringing beat it into me. My earliest memories are of my parents’ bitter divorce, during which it became obvious that my dad despised the role of father. In most of my memories of my mother, she lies in bed nearly catatonic with depression. She couldn’t offer much love. After that came her death, a probable suicide; a six-year-old takes a mother’s dying as a personal rejection. Within weeks I began living with my bitter father and sadistic stepmother. The woman humiliated and tormented me with cold, calculated efficiency. (Those interested can read about her in a memoir fragment .) My dad, narcissistic and obsessed by his work, was also an alcoholic. In short, my childhood taught me to feel unwanted, unworthy, despised, tormented, and abandoned.
Sadly, I still feel all those things, only now the hatred comes from my own heart. This is probably the most sensitive secret I’ve revealed on a site riddled with self-disclosure. It is the root of the worst of my problems. It keeps me at arms length from life and loved ones, because I never believe I deserve either.
My counselor and I have talked about this self-loathing many times. On this last visit, he instructed me to hold out my hand. “Can you love your hand?” he asked.
To my surprise, the answer was, “yes”; loving a body part seemed easy. The full significance did not sink in right away.
My adoration of biology, which goes back to my earliest days gardening and fishing with my grandfather, makes admiration of anything alive no problem at all. People, redwood trees, mice, and all other living things enthrall me. I’m even fascinated by mosquitoes. I have an inborn reverence for everything that lives. But until recently, I had never honored myself for my own biology.
For some time, I’ve practiced a meditation where I simultaneously feel and visualize my internal physiology. I sit on my meditation cushion and breathe, all the time imagining the air seeping into the tiniest passages and pockets of my lung. I think of the oxygen turning my blood corpuscles bright red. While concentrating on the sensation of my heartbeat, I form a mental picture of my heart pumping this freshened blood to the rest of my body.
Even though I regularly settle into my biological nature, it had never occurred to me to love myself as a living organism. I was too busy hating my personality, my decisions, and my sins. All my hatred has been directed at me. Which raises the question, “what am I?” Am I a disembodied mind? Can I really separate what goes on in my brain from the body that holds it? The obvious answer is “no”.
After my appointment with the therapist, I did my usual ‘biological’ meditation, only this time I honored the miracle of my animal form, and allowed reverence to surface. At the same time, I held the thought that I am my body. After all, the sensation of a mind separate from the physical self is an illusion, or even a delusion. It’s the ego’s way of isolating and empowering itself. The truth is that body and self are one. In accessing my respect for my own life processes, I discovered a bit of love for myself. It feels wonderful.
Not long ago, I thought my recent spiritual growth had banished inner darkness. Soon after, I found myself fueling a depression with my habitual self-contempt. The old obsessions, regrets, and fears returned with full force. Having learned from that relapse, and despite this insight about my value as a living animal, I will be shocked if the horrible despair does not soon resurface. On the other hand, perhaps I will remember to feel reverence toward my body, and the biological mind it supports. Perhaps I will feel a trickle of love for myself.
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Lynn Henriksen at http://www.thestorywoman.com
Keep writing, Will, you do it passionately and with great insight. But I know insight isn’t a panacea. There’s more to it than that, and that’s the stickler, isn’t it? You’re very hard on yourself, perhaps because others were hard on you, so that just feels right – my heart goes out to you. Have you tried visualizing yourself as the abandoned, neglected, and abused little boy and then taking that sweet child into your heart and giving him the love and caring he needed back then and still needs now? – You can be there for him until he feels nurtured and strong. You never know, you might decide he’s worth loving – I know he is.
Posted at January 15, 2010 on 6:02pm.
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Margaret at http://YourWebsite
Lynn, great suggestion as a way to rid oneself of self-hatred and move on toward self-love. I need to work on that. Those of us that endured abuse as children struggle with feeling loved and lovable.
Posted at January 16, 2010 on 11:14am.
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Will at http://willspirit.com
Lynn–
I returned from my retreat to find your wonderful comment. Thank you for the vote of confidence. You can see from the brief post for today that my attitude has utterly changed. I ‘get it’ now. I am worthy of love. It was misguided of me to hate myself just because others hated me as a child. It has taken decades of confused effort to be granted a vision of how lovable I am, and to be given the courage to allow myself that love.
The Will that I hated is a flickering pattern of nerve activity. We are all chimeras, created by complicated biological structures that had their first living origins billions of years ago. I’ve known these facts intellectually for years, but over the course of this weekend their import seeped into my deepest awareness. I never understood the concept of ‘maya’ or illusion until now. How could the Hindus claim that what we experience is unreal? But now it’s clear. We live our lives as electrical and chemical vibrations that create an image of the world, and our personalities get built in the process. It is not the cosmos that is unreal, only our conception of it. We are brief flames burning in the pulsing tissues of our bodies. No one should despise such delicate, ephemeral creatures. There is so much to say about what my heart has finally penetrated. One thing that pertains to your comment is that we are all less blameworthy and more magical than I previously understood. Everyone does pretty close to the best s/he can at every moment. We are jostled by biological forces and urges that we are barely aware of, and so cannot control. I am sorry if this is muddled. I am bursting with material to write, but for tonight I just want to thank you, bless you, and express my appreciation for the fact of your entry into my life.
–Will
Posted at January 17, 2010 on 9:38pm.
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lili at http://YourWebsite
you have lots going on in your mental house. Perhaps it’s time to tell some of the occupants to find a new living space-perhaps into the void of quiet understanding-rendering them no longer necessary.
Posted at February 7, 2010 on 10:34am.
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Will at http://willspirit.com
Lili–
I may have failed to convey the slow, deep reverence with which I experience my own living presence. We are all miracles, and the point of this post is that I’ve learned to appreciate this truth. It comes out in words on the screen, but it is wordless in my heart. Quiet understanding, as you say.
Posted at February 7, 2010 on 8:35pm.