Knowing Yourself Whole

An audio version of this blog post is here.

“Self help books (or videos) are like car repair manuals: you can read them all day but doing so doesn’t repair anything. Working on a car means rolling up your sleeves and getting under the hood, and you have to be willing to get dirt on your hands and grease beneath your fingernails. Overhauling emotional knowledge is no spectator sport; it demands a messy experience of yanking and tinkering that comes from a limbic bond. If someone’s relationships today bear a troubled imprint, they do so because an influential relationship left its mark on a child’s mind. When a limbic connection has established a neural pattern, it takes a limbic connection to revise it.” “A General Theory Of Love” Lewis, Amini & Lannon, MDs

In the past few weeks I’ve received emails, listened to clients or read articles filled with despair: people seeking to be free of suffering. There’s been an uptick in the wish to get free, along with frantic searches. In the process they’ve read every self help book or viewed videos across the internet. And they’ve come up with a painful hodgepodge of self diagnosis. I call it “painful” because the self diagnosis is based on just enough psycho emotional knowledge to deem themselves as insufficient. There’s not a shred of self compassion: after all why else would they still be in psychic or physical pain, they must be failing in their quest!

What propels our quest too often is the assumption we are not enough and that we live in a reward and punishment system.

Once the pain in our lives has reached a crescendo, it often spurs us to begin our search and that is good. What’s also good is that we stop our search somewhere. Just. Stop. It’s good to give ourselves a place to land. It’s good to also appreciate that each method, technique or “life hack” has its strengths and limits. At different times we need different kinds of support but to avoid committing altogether is also a form of suffering. When we recognize that, we could then commit ourselves to going deep rather than going wide. The process of healing remains the same as it always has: “the way through, is in”.

At some point in our healing quest, we need dare to acknowledge the relief of how small, simple steps add up to larger shifts over time. It’s not as sexy, it doesn’t have the same heady buzz and it’s not Instagram worthy.

Simplification requires discernment, letting go of much of the “wellness bling” and accepting that life contains suffering: suffering is not a moral failing, it’s a part of life and it’s an invitation to learn something about ourselves and how to experience agency within constraints. Those of us who have a life that allows us to transform our suffering into wisdom have an obligation to do so. At some point it’s not just our own private little project. We too can help others to navigate the chaos and complexities of our times. If we want a world that reflects wholeness, we need to commit ourselves to knowing ourselves whole.