WillSpirit

Where Will meets Spirit
∞ A Blog Devoted to Balance, Peace, and Clarity ∞

A formerly depressed physician tells stories of trauma, grief and recovery, and offers suggestions for emerging from darkness, living with mood swings, and awakening to life.








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    • Dear Visitors:
      Although I trained and practiced as a physician, my background does not include formal instruction in psychiatry beyond basic medical education. This journal presents ideas about treatment philosophy, but must not be considered therapeutic advice. Abrupt changes in one's psychiatric medications can trigger profound cognitive, emotional, and physical symptoms, including suicidal thoughts and actions. Consequently, pharmaceutical agents should not be increased or decreased without supervision by a mental health clinician.

    • ON THE OTHER HAND, your brain belongs to you, and your opinion counts. If you decide that changing your medication regimen will serve your best interest, then I believe your providers have an obligation to help you try to achieve your goals. I want everyone to be educated about their options, and do what will be most helpful for themselves. No one should feel pushed around by dogmatic and/or limited viewpoints, whether those of psychiatrists, anti-psychiatry advocates, or myself.




Truer than Truth

Today’s post adheres to the plan laid out last time, but it’s not as short as I’d hoped. What follows is a description of one of the tools I use to achieve and maintain Peace, Balance & Clarity. It presents one of my tricks for realizing my blog’s tagline in my own life.

A recent post mentioned (in passing) that I’ve been using a new and helpful meditation. It probably isn’t my creation, but if I heard of it before I’m not sure where. Meditation may be too strong a word; visualization or fantasy might fit better. The basic technique involves imagining a better childhood and family life than I actually experienced.

Longterm readers (assuming there are any) have no doubt heard too many times about my crummy childhood. Rather than repeat it, I’ve written a synopsis on a separate page, for anyone interested. This post doesn’t require that you know the whole story, and in their essence all unhappy childhoods are the same. The truth is, I’ve spent far too much time reliving the sad details of my upbringing. My bereaved and abused childhood has become the background mythology of my life. Although there were fun times, I seldom relive them. Far more often I think about the loneliness, grief, abuse, and neglect. As much as I hate to admit it, I have built a story of myself as a Ruined Child. My aunt tells me that at my youngest ages I was an exceedingly affectionate and happy toddler. But fate and cruelty crushed that innate sweetness, or at least that’s the myth.

So what is my visualization? I picture a completely different upbringing. A big reason my parents first fought and then divorced (setting in motion the destruction of my childhood) was that my father insisted on moving to Los Angeles, where he had discovered ‘swinging’ and ‘free love’. My mother, a proper midwestern girl, hated the place and the lifestyle for which my dad yearned, and refused to go along. In real life, they divorced. In my ‘meditation’, they reached a compromise and moved to Berkeley instead. My father enjoyed the liberal, collegiate environment, and my mother managed to steer him away from the orgies. Rather than dwelling as a bitter left-winger in a conservative neighborhood, my father became a happy radical Berkeley professor. Rather than dying in a psychiatric ward, my mother continued her social work career by helping the mentally ill. She only worked half-time, however, and was home every day after school. I’d arrive home and sweep through the door with my friends, and she’d serve us cookies and milk with a broad smile, patting me lovingly on the head. In other words, I picture a childhood exactly opposite to what really happened. I build the scene out in my mind, visualizing the neighborhood with its huge leafy sycamores, the 1920′s vintage house and its redwood wainscoting, my sweet mother with her floral apron. I smell her chocolate chip cookies and feel her fingers mussing my hair. It feels as ‘real’ as any ‘true’ memory.

At a recent meditation seminar led by a therapist, I mentioned this practice and was told that the brain can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality in memory. While I believe there are embodied traumatic experiences that the brain does hold onto as implicit memory, and that can’t easily be overwritten, the narrative stories we remember may well be subject to revision. So if I spend enough time reliving my imaginary childhood, perhaps my brain will gradually heal itself. More important, perhaps my mind will let go of the Myth of the Ruined Child. In fact, that seems to be happening. Now, whenever the Ugly Past enters my mind, I replace it with the (imagined) Happy Childhood. Whereas in the old days I often made myself feel sorrowful and unwanted by replaying my upbringing, I now actually feel cheered by trips down Memory Lane. A sense of myself as a Loved Being is growing within. Does it matter that the memory I’m reliving is fictional? Not if it works, in my opinion.

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Stepping Toward Serenity



My idea is to write a series of short(er) posts that will help me stay in a centered frame of mind. My last entry described how I vacillate between oceanic acceptance and claustrophobic self-pity. The human mind can shape itself, and I intend to sculpt mine to stand with contentment and stability in the gale of fate. I’ve grown tired of crumbling, and knowing there is an alternative, I have committed to solidity and balance.


Success requires more than a vow. Action is mandatory. There are countless steps I take to improve my frame of mind. I work to buttress my weak areas, exercise my strengths, and explore new modes of thought and being. My plan is to write a short piece more or less daily, with an eye toward concrete behavioral, cognitive, or spiritual actions I employ (or should employ) to increase the proportion of time lived in the space of equanimity.



THINK LESS!

In earlier times, I prided myself on my intelligence. Half way through a rebellious high school career I took to heart what people had been telling me since toddlerhood: I had a good mind. With little else to prop up my self esteem, I began applying myself in studies and quickly raised my grades. In college I found an environment where sharp thinking was rewarded. I excelled in analytical sciences even more than in biology, though the latter was my passion. My father had innate mathematical talent, and I may have inherited the trait. Or perhaps living in a dangerous and chaotic family trained me to scrutinize and scheme. No matter where it came from, I had an ability to problem solve that was noted repeatedly and carried me to a reasonable level of academic success. Thinking gave me a rewarding career, financial security, and feelings of power.

As I sketched in yesterday’s essay, however, all that evaporated ten years ago. Ever after, compulsive thinking has been a liability rather than an asset. I can spend long, boring hours ruminating about my losses and my fears. If I don’t stop myself, I analyze my life from every conceivable angle, always looking for an escape route. Something inside desperately wants to fix my predicament. But thinking is not the answer. It only keeps my frustrations on center stage, and accelerates the engine of anxiety. It has taken a long time for me to truly believe this, and it requires ongoing effort to change my pattern.

I strive to think less. Even with that goal foremost in my awareness, my mind manages to churn out plenty of thoughts, more than enough to solve my various problems and prepare for the future. But whenever I notice my mind thinking aimlessly, or worrying, or criticizing, I stop. There are many tricks I use. Since my goal is to make these entries short, I’ll name just one.

Let’s say I’m walking and worrying at the same time. This happens often. If I catch myself, I start doing a body scan. The body scan is a simple mindfulness exercise taught in meditation classes, especially those given in clinical settings. One moves one’s conscious attention from one extreme of the body to the other. One can start with head or feet, but I usually start low and work up. I pay attention to one foot at a time, focusing in turn on each toe, or even each part of each toe, and then moving to the sole of my foot, the top, the sides, the inner sensations of the joints, and so on. I explore the feelings in each location for one or two breaths, and move on. I finish with one foot and then move to the other. I complete the feet and journey to the ankles, calves, knees and on up my body. If the walk ends before the scan reaches the head, I make a mental note to pick up where I left off on the next walk.

It’s a busier walking meditation than Buddhists teach, but it’s what my mind needs to distract itself. It’s a challenge to feel the fourth toe, for instance. My brain just never focused on it before, and I have to strengthen the sensory pathway. It’s interesting to pay attention to the movements in all the many foot bones, and feel the pressure of the ground transmit through my feet to my legs. I feel far more in touch with my body from doing this practice. Better yet, I think less.

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Childhood Monsters

Here comes another book-inspired post. Since my last essay, I’ve finished Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, by Tara Brach. Coincidentally, the text launches with a discussion of the biblical story of Eden’s Garden and the Fall. The same saga figured in the conclusion of my last post even though I had not yet begun Brach’s book when I wrote the piece.

Brach focuses her discussion of acceptance on the self, or perhaps I should say the person, since as a Buddhist she recommends we not hold too tightly to self-identity. She points out that with the story of the Fall, Judeo-Christian tradition has bequeathed to most of us feelings of core inadequacy and sinfulness. Our culture teaches us that we are fundamentally flawed and undeserving, thus effectively locking us into lifelong struggles to prove our worth. We are trained to reject much of what comprises us; we criticize our bodies, remain dissatisfied with our accomplishments, and reject our feelings.

Brach’s book offers one great suggestion after another, including meditations that can help us accept our personalities, our discomforts, and our cravings. Most of what she writes rings true for me: not just her descriptions of modern angst, but also her prescriptions for transcending the curse of self-doubt. Her meditative exercises sound a lot like my own practices of recent years, and her tales of how she and others have found relief resonate with my own recovery.

I was particularly impressed by how she helps people cope with the aftermath of childhood trauma. Because Buddhist practice cautions us against believing all the many stories we tell ourselves about our lives, it occasionally happens that those who’ve suffered child abuse end up being told that their suffering results simply from clinging to stories.

This happened to me in a recent meditation retreat that was aimed at those who battle depression and anxiety. During a discussion session, I explained that because of an extremely adverse childhood, I’d struggled most of my life with depression. I then asked about a meditation practice I’ve been exploring. Sometimes I imagine a different upbringing. In this practice, I build for myself a lovely and love-filled childhood, completely fictional. It’s a surprisingly comforting visualization.

The meditation teacher endorsed this practice. The mind, she said, doesn’t know the difference between reality and imagination. So long as I remained clear about what I was doing, and didn’t get lost in denial or idle fantasy, she thought it a skillful means to improved frames of mind. But then she opined that my so-called terrible childhood was in itself just another story.

I didn’t question her at the time, but later emailed her and gently suggested that it is a bit hazardous to tell victims of child abuse that their traumatic memories are ‘just’ stories. I asked her to clarify what she meant, since I am convinced she would never tell a person who suffered abuse that his or her experience was unimportant. I’d love to hear her thoughts, but she has not yet responded.

Brach negotiates these waters well. She is able to show how one can remain realistic about one’s past injuries, and yet find resources to transcend the victim role. For instance, she tells a touching story of a woman who visualized a fairy godmother visiting her as a frightened child. The guardian angel explained to the terrified little girl why she was having certain feelings, and how she could protect herself. The woman felt much better after this style of meditation.

I am all for using the imagination to heal trauma, but only if it honors the suffering of the injured little one. To dismiss abuse as ‘just a story’ risks perpetuating the plight of the mistreated child, who often is accused of making things up or inviting molestation. I applaud Brach for finding ways to help those with harrowing childhoods reframe events while remaining loyal to the wounded youngster’s need for validation.

Those of us who suffered abuse were kicked out of the Garden at early ages. Even more than those with more ordinary upbringings, we learned to feel worthless and ashamed. We learned to feel like irritants and toys, like ‘things’ that adults could treat however they wished.

Meditation allows us to approach and heal the dreadful feelings that remain after these torments. We must proceed gently and with great caution, but we can begin to work with the core agony that remains, and to explore the still-inflamed emotional wounds. We can quit feeling like frightened children running from deeply embedded monsters, and instead face our demons as the seasoned adults we have become. From there, we can begin to rediscover our purity and innocence, our childhood passion and budding joy. We can acknowledge the scars left by mistreatment, but let go of the mistaken belief that they define us.

Addendum (7 July 2010): The meditation teacher called to explain her meaning. As I’d suspected, she did not intend to downplay the impact of trauma on my or anyone’s history. On the other hand, she points out, people fall into habitual patterns when remembering their lives. These fixed ways of seeing the past can become boxes from which we have a hard time escaping. I certainly agree that on top of the factual events that haunt me there is an overlay of interpretation, as well as a fear that the past dooms me to an unhappy future. This accretion is not ‘truth’, and it is not helpful. The overlay indeed must be recognized as false and constraining, and it must be challenged. The teacher says she now questions the use of the word ‘story’ in this situation. Since that word gets used so often by Buddhists in describing the limitations of thought, it may be hard to abandon. But there is a definite need to distinguish between historical fact, which usually must be acknowledged and accepted in order to heal, and the retrospective myths the mind constructs around past events. The myths can and should be countered with healthier (or fewer) interpretations.

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Commentary

JesusBuddha

As often happens, a reader’s comment prompted me to discuss an important topic that I should have thought of on my own. Invoking Buddhist meditation as a path toward freedom from anguish risks giving the impression that I am suggesting a particular spiritual path. In fact, I view Buddhist meditation pragmatically, as a way to learn about myself and my relationship with the world. For spiritual philosophy, I draw from many other sources. My thanks to Wendy Love, who pens an inspiring blog entitled Depression Getaway, for reminding me to emphasize that Buddhist meditation can be blended with many other spiritual traditions.

Wendy asked: “Can you tell me is there is a specific kind of meditation that fits in with Christian theology?”

Here’s my response:

Wendy–

There is a rich meditative tradition within Christianity. For my part, after some profound spiritual experiences ten years ago, I twice completed 8-day versions of the exercises of St. Ignatius. They really deepened my spiritual awareness, and set the stage for my current work in Buddhist meditation. I often hear Thomas Merton mentioned as an important commentator on Christian meditation, though I have not yet read much of his work.

In my view, Buddhism on the one hand consists of a set of meditative practices that help one better live within a human mind and body, and on the other it develops a metaphysical picture of reality that centers on the concepts of karma and repeated lifetimes. The meditative part can be comfortably practiced by people of any spiritual faith, since it makes no statement about the nature of the universe or the existence of God. In western meditation centers, Buddhist metaphysics are often ignored or at least downplayed. Many people work to blend Buddhist with Christian wisdom.

Personally, I define myself as a Quaker, not a Buddhist. Quakerism came from a protestant lineage, and still centers on a particular understanding of Christ (as the Light within each person). I see no conflict between my Quaker philosophy and my Buddhist practice.

The specific advantage of Buddhist meditation in the context of accepting hardship is that it helps one see the inner workings of the mind. With that understanding, it is possible to begin to influence the flow of thought and feeling so that grief is honored but needless suffering is avoided. Christian meditations are more about deepening one’s feelings of connection with divine energies. Both approaches help with gracefully embracing sorrow, but they do so by different means. After many years of meditating with an eye toward deepening my connection with the divine currents flowing through creation, I am now concentrating on learning to work with my mind so that I get the most out of this experience of human life. I find the two methods complementary.
–Will

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Satipatthana

trapped

The recent marriage between neuroscience and meditative traditions may hold the key to the future of human civilization. Few other modern trends hold any potential to derail humanity from its track of destruction. Many of Daniel Siegel’s writings demonstrate how a combination of internal (meditative) and external (scientific) explorations of the mind can relieve age-old sufferings of humankind. Rick Hanson’s book, Buddha’s Brain, distills this fertile and vast field into a roadmap for personal breakthrough to peace.

Living north of San Francisco, I am fortunate to be able to attend a weekly meditation event led by Dr. Hanson. Recently he guided a discussion about the fruits of practicing a venerable Buddhist meditation called Satipatthana. In the course of such work, one sequentially pays attention to body, to feelings, to mind, and to the obstacles and vehicles one encounters on the path toward awakening. Rick inquired about our personal takes on the benefits of this system of meditation. My thoughts cohered too slowly for me to participate in the discussion, but after returning home I wrote down what I believe Satipatthana is teaching me. I soon recognized a close connection between this meditation practice and what I’ve been saying on this site about the value of sorrow.

Back when I still suffered from chronic depression, my mind seemed like a monolithic psychic prison. With effort I could adopt a few moments of positive thinking, but all-too-quickly my internal world spiraled back into its baseline state of despair and negativity. It was as if my emotional habitat had been formed of poured concrete; it looked like a solid and monotonous block of cold gray stone. Changing my inner experience seemed about as likely as a prisoner breaking through the walls of a penitentiary with his fists.

Partly as a result of Satipatthana, I now understand that my mind is actually a fragmentary collection of mental activities that can be reshaped with the right kind of effort. The gray monolith turns out to be no more rigid and massive than the Styrofoam used to make stage props. By using this meditation practice to explore my body, feelings, and thoughts, I have learned that my mind is composed of many different parts. There is a module that directly monitors sensations; another evaluates what has been perceived; a slightly separate unit grasps or rejects the judged experiences. Further along the line, there is a component that suffers when desired experiences dissipate or undesired ones persist. Finally, there is an expansive region that remains detached and simply observes. While enjoying the steady peace of meditation, I can shift my focus and attend in turn to these distinct elements.

This helps me recognize the difference between the bodily and mental sensations that accompany sorrow, and the suffering that results. In the ordinary course of mental life the experience of grief and loss seems inseparable from the anguish that arises. In actual fact, there is a sequence: first comes identification of loss, then comes the sensation of grief (often felt as a hollow ache in the viscera), and finally comes the mental anguish.

Loss is inevitable. Grief is a natural and largely unavoidable reaction to major loss. But we can influence the depth of anguish and despair to which we descend. Before I started this work, the experience of grief almost always led to depression and a loss of all enjoyment of being alive. Meditation helps me embrace ongoing sadness while appreciating that life is a beautiful gift.

There is a difference between the sorrowful ache of mourning and the choking darkness of despair. The second does not necessarily follow the first. One can experience and even savor pangs of grief and remain grateful for every moment of human life.

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Building a Peaceful Mind

ToolBox

About four years ago, the mental health providers who were helping me encouraged me to ramp up my meditation practice. I’d been pursuing silent worship and retreats as a quaker for twenty years by that point, and had taken my first mindfulness meditation class six years earlier. But I had slacked off in my efforts. Since that prompting to be more serious about meditating, I’ve found settling into the mind that lies beneath surface turmoil to be very helpful to my emotional balance. No doubt many readers will find what I write to be naive, which is unavoidable given that my intensive practice began so recently. Still, meditation helps my state of mind so much that I can’t resist commenting on a recent realization.

When I first began to practice mindfulness meditation on a regular basis, my instructors cautioned me to toss out the idea of emptying the mind of thought. They taught me to observe thoughts, sensations, and emotions without trying to influence them. Given the context of a psychiatry clinic, these instructions were all presented from a medical perspective; they followed the Jon Kabat-Zinn formulation. There are many other approaches to meditation, and some schools place more emphasis on achieving a mind free of domination by verbal thought streams. But that early teaching held, and for a long time I assumed that attaining silence in the mind would be difficult if not impossible.

Being a newcomer to this practice style, it’s no surprise that I’m finding my early understanding to be incomplete. More and more, I’m finding it easy to shut down verbal thought, and not only while formally meditating. It’s becoming a bit of a refuge, in fact. When I find myself starting to obsess, and especially when the thoughts take a negative turn (as they almost inevitably do), I find it easiest to just stop thinking. Cognitive Behavior Therapy taught me to challenge my assumptions, and recognize the distortions in my interpretations. To do so is still useful at times, but often the quicker route to relief is to simply shut down the thought apparatus. It takes a bit of effort, and it certainly requires that I remain conscious and alert, but it’s not as hard as I believed. If I were to dissect the experience, I would probably find a few echoing words deep in my awareness, but the loud and intrusive thinking is becoming relatively easy to turn off.

I sleep better as a result. It used to be that worries or even pleasant fantasies kept me awake; there was always something that seemed interesting to attend to. If I shut down the thinking apparatus, in contrast, then if my body is tired sleep soon comes. If sleep eludes me it usually means I’m not that tired, and I either get up for a while or I lay on my back and simply experience the peace in my mind. It’s another opportunity to meditate.

Once on my Twitter stream I wrote, “If you can’t think anything nice, don’t think anything at all.” Although I think this phrase was my own creation, it’s possible I heard it somewhere; it is a variation, in any event, on the old line: “Don’t believe everything you think.” Regardless of its origin, the statement was meant more as a joke than true advice, but now I’m taking it to heart. I’ve added the technique to my chest of tools for building peace and sanity.

Looking back, I realize it has taken a bit of discipline and practice to get to this point, and that my ability to achieve tranquility has gradually increased over time. Recognizing how my understanding has progressed makes me realize that meditation must have many surprises in store for me. The recent trend in mental health toward emphasis on mindfulness (seemingly the preferred label for meditation in clinical circles) appears to be well founded. Especially for someone like me, who once pursued favorable mind states so vigorously that I developed troubling relationships with intoxicants, the discovery of self-generated tranquility is profound. Anyone dedicated to improving mental health probably already knows the value of meditation, but if you have delayed putting that knowledge into practice, I highly recommend meditating regularly.

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First Love

Lovers2

After perusing a variety of texts about spiritual growth, I better understand the universality of my recent stirring mind states. This perspective helps, because it is easy to get carried away after numinous experiences. Hopefully, visitors will forgive my naïve enthusiasm and beginner’s ignorance.

It is no secret that profound experiences have blessed many people around the world and throughout human history. Those committed to spiritual paths devote their lives to seeking and exploring such epiphanies, and no doubt enjoy far greater understanding, equanimity, and wisdom than I ever will. My purpose here is only to describe my particular journey, and perhaps offer hope to others burdened with chronic depression. The most important fact of my ‘breakthrough’ is that it has swept away most of my misery. Even when I stumble and feel defeated for a few days, the memory of a better place remains, and the ease with which I exit the darkness astounds me. Six months ago my plan was to learn how to live a full life in spite of depression. That I would ever be completely free of it, even temporarily, seemed impossible. Before, in my best frames of mind, there remained patches of depression that threatened me with shade, like scattered clouds on an otherwise sunny day. Now I spend the majority of my time feeling light and balanced, with no ominous darkness on the horizon. And when depression does descend it doesn’t linger, it leaves behind no shadow, and while it lasts I appreciate its solemn beauty (most of the time, at least).

The Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James, is familiar to many western seekers of spiritual growth. The book describes the vast range of spiritual frames of mind, and the large variety of ways we reach them. Sometimes a person achieves transcendence after years of meditation, study, and intention. Spiritual awareness accumulates gradually as the result of such effort, with progress punctuated by moments of sudden growth. But a life of seeking is not required. Not infrequently, a person ‘awakens’ in the aftermath of catastrophic stress or after collapse into utter despair. Crisis and failure offer us the opportunity to give up the fight and drop all barriers. The reward can be a flood of clarity, acceptance, and universal love.

If I were to classify my current situation, it would fall between those extremes. Although I have certainly not devoted my life to a quest for meaning, I nonetheless have been studying and searching. And despite a decade of bad luck, nothing in the past year has been particularly awful, nor did my ego disintegrate in an acute moment of hopelessness.

The nature of my recent spiritual experiences also lies between extremes. Ten years ago a series of ‘visions’ transported me into a mood of wide-eyed ecstasy, a kaleidoscope of marvelous sensory experiences, and a conviction that I had seen and spoken with God. A more magnificent and soul-quaking episode would be hard to imagine. However, much of the mental content was unbalanced, irrational, or poorly grounded. Although the clarity and salience of recent weeks equaled those of the earlier episode, they were not accompanied by ecstasy or hallucinations. As I’ve discussed, strictly supernatural beliefs played no role. Instead, what I know to be true about how the world is structured and how my life has unfolded took on a new light. Every particle of my mind understood that the universe is both dispassionately random, and lovingly numinous. This sounds paradoxical when stated in words, but from a state of exquisite nonverbal awareness, it made perfect sense. This solidly sane sacred experience felt just as profound as the arguably insane ‘religious visions’ of a decade earlier. But it was a little less intense, and was free of ‘delusional’ and ‘hallucinatory’ content.

Looking at the other end of the spectrum, I’ve explored mindfulness meditation for some years, and the recent ‘awakenings’ felt akin to the state of wordless peace that comes with such practice. The way I felt intensely ‘alive’, for instance, mirrored the way mindfulness brings one in touch with one’s body and sensory surroundings without the intervening filter of the verbal mind. In fact, three days ago it was a combination of meditation and acupuncture that returned me (for a whole afternoon) to the frame of resonant clarity that began with my spiritual retreat in January, and which is becoming more and more familiar. But the psychic impact of my recent moments of understanding exceeded that of even the deepest meditative states I’d previously achieved.

Experienced practitioners probably read my descriptions with a bit of amusement. I must sound like an adolescent who has just discovered sensual romantic love, and thinks he or she has stumbled on something personal and exceptional, when in fact it is universal and expected. But even if everyone else already knows about such love, it’s new to the teenaged romantic, and soul-penetrating clarity is new to me. So I hope those further along this path will indulge my childlike wonder.

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Self Love and the Biology of Self

Heart&Lungs

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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