Self-care for Activists: Special Needs?

As I prepare to co-facilitate the All Hearts on Deck sitting for advanced Trillium practitioners a final time, I'm thinking about self-care for the Awakened Activist.

It occurs to me that we may need to give ourselves permission to use particular strategies that might come under the heading of "special needs." In truth, all people have the same needs to varying degrees at different times. (Search “nonviolent communication” for excellent material on feelings and needs.) Our needs may not themselves be "special," but may need special attention and strategizing to be met.

Setting aside the stigma that may be associated with "special needs", let me define what I mean. What makes you an activist? What makes you extra sensitive to the needs of outlier groups, underrepresented segments of society, animals, Nature? Your sensitivity and desire to stick up for the underdog may be associated with physical and emotional sensitivity that requires special care.

While I don’t think being sensitive is a problem, and in fact it’s all to the good,  we do want to make good use of the gift of sensitivity. A special focus on self-care is warranted.

By this time many of us have already done a lot of reading about self-care. We know that activists have a high rate of burnout, and we may have experienced it ourselves. Depending on our age, life experience and education we may feel we are experts on self-care.

At the same time, we may hold unconscious beliefs about being different — that is to say, "too needy," "not tough enough," or even "weird." The mutuality we find in Trillium has probably gone a long way to help us feel more OK in ourselves, and many of us, as Trillium teacher Rod Taylor describes, find the moment that we are able to say "it's OK to be me" and really mean it to be a turning point in our awakening journey.

As Margit Bantowsky has pointed out, the hypermasculine approach to activism is part of the hypermasculine approach to everything in our culture. It is the air we breathe and the sea in which we swim. So it is not surprising that, despite the Whole Being Realization process that continues to integrate in us, we may still have these unconscious and unexamined beliefs.

So I invite you to consider whether you may need to give yourself PERMISSION to have some "special needs" that require conscious strategies to be put in place. These may or may not apply to you. Take what you like and leave the rest. This list comes from my own process as an HSP (highly sensitive person.) Indeed, these strategies may be useful for anyone at various times.

• Reduced Sensory Input. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk who founded the Engaged Buddhism movement and coined the word "interbeing," advises us to "guard our sense doors." This is a Buddhist practice meaning to be mindful of the stimulation that's coming in from all directions and to consciously avoid overstimulation. For example, we may be able to listen deeply to one person's story of trauma, but need to avoid listening to and watching the daily news of trauma on a large scale. We may also be sensitive to noise, conversations, bright lights and disorderly surroundings.
• Agreements with Colleagues and Family members. In mutuality we practice speaking up about things we feel vulnerable about. In Trillium there are agreements in place, such as treating such communication as sacred, keeping confidentiality and asking clarifying questions rather than straightening each other out. Colleagues and family members may not be familiar with these. Many of us find our "buffers" disappear as we progress in our process. This sometimes results in us blurting out things we ordinarily wouldn't, or conversely, having little-to-no defense against things other people say or do. This may last a short or long time. Daring to let others know about what is going on, while asking for care and consideration, may require great courage. Sometimes a limited request may be more appropriate, such as "I'm needing more alone time right now, would you be willing to postpone this conversation until ___?" On the other hand, dear ones who know we are sensitive may refrain from having important but painful conversations. In these cases they need to know we are willing to hear them regardless of intensity. If we do a good job of self-care, many of us are particularly good at "being-with" painful communication.
• Strategies for Acceptance/Self-Acceptance. Because our sensitivity may not be understood by ourselves or others, we may come under criticism, which we then internalize. Some of us may feel pressured to change or modify how we show up, and then feel distress about behaving inauthentically.
• Increased need for body-based therapies. Modalities such as massage, music, expressive dance, imagery work, brainspotting and emotional freedom technique (EFT) may get to the heart of our needs much better than talk therapy or intellectual understanding.
• Increased vulnerability to depression and anxiety. Because we are so conscious of suffering, it may weigh us down. We may feel intense pressure to do something about it, even if it is beyond our ability. If our need for acceptance is also not met, we may be at increased risk for depression and anxiety.
• Possibly increased vulnerability to physical illness, requiring special care to maintain health. Stress is well known to predispose people to illness, often by decreasing immunity. We may become stressed in situations where others with tougher skins do not. If we expect ourselves to be able to "take it" like others we know, without giving increased attention to health practices like adequate sleep, play, and relaxation, our health may suffer. In turn, sadly, some people who don't comprehend may judge or label us as hypochondriacs. If this happens we can turn for support to other HSPs who understand.

I hope you find some use here, and I'd love to read your comments! If you'd like to contact me directly, my email is Trustinbeing@gmail.com.

Awakened Self-Care

How would it be to feel at ease in the knowledge that you are taking good care of your body, your mind and your spirit? To actually trust ourselves, not out-sourcing our inner authority to external experts?

I wonder what such a process would look like. First to come back to ourselves, break away from the cultural myth that has dominated us for so long - the myth that it's dangerous to consider oneself the expert on ourselves.

Then, how to get to know ourselves in that way? How do we know what to eat? All the experts seem to disagree, clamoring for our attention (and our money), asserting THEY are the ones to trust.

How do we know what kind of support for our health we need? All media seems to be focussed on selling products, and medications are promoted as if slick sales practice determines the value that we will receive.

I'm interested right now in listening to your answers to these questions. I don't know what this kind of process would look like, but I know we surely need one.

I hope to see your comments. I'd like to co-create with you a new way of discerning what is truly in our individual and collective best interest, one that relies on waking up to the reality that is accessible to us, common sense and clear thinking and feeling. More soon I hope!

You can feel bad if it makes you feel better....

There is a country song written by Matraca Berg and Tim Krekel with the lyrics "you can feel bad if it makes you feel better..." from around the turn of the century (wow, for most of my life that phrase meant the transition from the 1800's to the 1900's!).

We can always do that, and we may need to do that. Whatever it takes to fully mourn the events in our lives that call for mourning. In Marshall Rosenberg's transformational spiritual practice Nonviolent Communication mourning is considered a truly universal human need.

And, paradoxically, "feeling bad" can be a strategy we use to punish ourselves for something we did that didn't serve us well, in order to (and this is the strange part) unconsciously avoid actually changing our behavior. It truly can work to take the edge off the regret. We can feel somehow that we have paid the price for what we did, and then leave it at that. Then we find ourselves repeating the behavior and wondering why.

Can you relate? I can. I must have actually been taught somehow, that when I make a mistake I should grovel. Of course, no one was really ever expected to make mistakes. Mistakes were something you should feel ashamed of. So, externalizing the process, I would make profuse apologies and really feel bad about things that were just things that happen. You know. S*#T happens.That was supposed to take the pressure off that might come from people around me. Shaming myself was better than enduring the shaming from others.

I find this to be not useful in the long run. On the other hand, I notice that something in me wants to acknowledge a mistake, and even grieve the harm that was done. There are ways to do this cleanly, that are less likely to result in resentment. Btw, that's one to ponder -- why do I sometimes resent the person I harmed? So... I am feeling curious, dear reader. What ways do you like to use to express regret that leave you feeling clean and tend to result in learning?

Afraid to Hope

Dear Ones, here is a story with no moral, at least not yet. I invite you to respond--your thoughts will increase my understanding.

A friend of mine told me (I truly do not remember which friend) that her therapist had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) at around the same time that she began therapy with him, a year or so ago. And then she said something that chilled me -- she said he had told her he didn't want to hear any stories of hope or reversal of the disease. 

I found myself wanting to share Dr. Terry Wahl's story of recovery and reversal of all her symptoms, using a way of eating as well as quite a few lifestyle changes. I mean, strongly wanting to share. This is the kind of result from nutritional intervention that made me want to pursue my career as a dietitian as a young teen, and still fuels the fire of my professional purpose.

Dr Wahl's story can be found in her Ted Talk https://terrywahls.com/tedxiowacity-minding-your-mitochondria-with-dr-terry-wahls/ and in her book Wahls Protocol .

Her recovery is not only her unique personal story, but the result that many (in the hundreds or more, I believe) of her patients, research study participants and readers have also achieved.

Still, there is a part of me that seems to resonate, on some obscure level, with the resistance to having hope.

I have heard folks say things like "that diet is too hard" or "that might work for others but not for me". Of course, I have seen this resistance in other contexts than MS as well.

I have seen people jump in with extreme determination to follow a huge change and then fall off due to discouragement at setbacks and pitfalls. THIS is why I personally feel such as strong urge to "help", because in my work I have learned many techniques to ease the discomfort of change, to delve into and transform resistance, and in a very practical sense, overcome many of the obstacles that arise specifically when changing one's diet, such as techniques to overcome bowel issues, energy issues and palatability problems.

Does it boil down to wanting to spare oneself the pain of disappointment, in case we are the one person this treatment doesn't work for? Or possibly is it that the mind rebels against something it does not feel it has the bandwidth to take in?

We are all "terminal cases". We will all get sick and die, eventually. Unless we die of something that takes us quickly, we will all face the experience of feelig our Life Force drain away. There are indignities that go along with this process, and we feel a natural aversion to even thinking about them.

Is it that thinking of a "cure" requires us to face what we need the cure for?

I invite you to share your thoughts by commenting below.

Tribute to Plum Village Meal Contemplations

Thich Nhat Hanh, affectionately known as "Thay" has long been a strong influence in my life. I learned his Contemplations Before Eating several versions ago (he likes to change things up to keep them from becoming dogmatic) and have used them whenever called upon to say grace before a meal.

Lately I have been moved to write my own tribute to his blessing. Here it is, I would love your comments!

This food is a gift of earth, sky and sea and the lives of beings. May we eat it with joy and attention so as to be worthy of it.
May the beings responsible for this food forever know our gratitude.
May we eat according to our hunger and fullness in order to be attuned to the cycles of Life.
May this food prevent illness and nourish us on the path of love and understanding.

Amen!

What's in Your Consciousness?

In the post before last I began an exploration of how the Body invites us to wake up - or as we in http://www.trilliumawakening.org/ sometimes say, "wake down".

I want to share something I heard from Reverend Janet Schmidt Kingsley Darling. To paraphrase, she told of how in New Thought circles there was no shame in anyone "making their transition" (i.e. dying) but if someone is sick, the question tends to arise : What are they holding in their consciousness?

She was making reference to a fallacy that can come about as a misguided extension of the assertion "Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind". (see https://dianescholten.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/unity-principles-thoughts-held-in-mind-produce-after-their-kind/ )

In other words, Blame the Victim. So, as with all great truths, there is a Paradox: Yes, the body talks to us, sometimes quite loudly - through pain, illness, and injuries. Yes, by listening, by opening to what our body, that most personal of material manifestations, is "saying" we can often go on a healing journey that includes not only physical but emotional and spiritual healing. And, despite this, the body is finite. No matter how well cared for, eventually it will get sick and die. During our lifetimes we will experience varying degrees of  health or illness, and in many ways we are powerless over this.

I invite you, my reader, to comment on this paradox.
May you enjoy this day, with all it brings.

Saying Grace

Prayer while contemplating the meal before me:

May I be attuned to the whole system that made this food possible, and may I transform the dysfunction in myself that contributes to the problems that threaten this system.

So Be It (Amen)

How the Body asks for Awakening

Embodied Consciousness Awakening - that is the promise of the Trillium Awakening path. I am so grateful to be about to transition to becoming an interning teacher in that work. Today, on my neighborhood walk with my dog, I reflected on the origin of my journey to emBODIED awakening, not because it was "up" for me but because walking by my neighbor's house started a train of thought.

Pondering the things my neighbor I'll call Carole has told me, I realized not only that she reminds me of my miserable self of 30 years ago, but that my path to awakening arose out of the same physical, body-based misery that she is clearly suffering from.

This was my thought process as I walked my dog past her house this morning: Oh Carole. So many complaints. Physically so much older than your years. In pain and looking for the magic bullet, only relaxed and happy when you are smoking pot. Bitter and resentful, you married quite young and are still with the man. He seems to the neighbors to be all sunshine and smiles but from your account is a negative old coot, in pain all the time and generally a hindrance to anything fun you want to do.

When I first moved here, Carole told me that neighbor Judy doesn't like me, and that the man down the street nobody ever sees had a wife who cheated on him and broke his heart.

Ah. Hmm. What happened to me that kept my story from being the same as hers? What was the very beginning? I remember being envious and bitter of my co-workers who got promoted, the ones who had the nerve to criticize my work. I took offense at everything and of course I could not speak up directly to the "offender"...but boy I could tell everyone else who would listen. I was miserable and from what I could tell everybody else was too.

Remembering.... Louise Hay, the Queen of affirmations! You Can Heal Your Life.   ( https://www.healyourlife.com/authors/louise-l-hay ) I was in physical pain and used Louise Hay's affirmations to get relief. And then, to get relief from the emotional pain, I read further...so challenging! Louise was asking me to step up, to get brave. To change.

And around the same time, 12 step programs ... what a whole new way to look at Life! I suppose if I had had access to a substance that "worked" I might still be back there. The food kept me on the rollercoaster and showed up on my body as fat. As a health professional that was too mortifying. That and the general unmanageability of my life kept me in Program for long enough to begin learning a new way of life.

It's been a long story since then. My body has been my teacher even though I really did not consciously know it. As Dr. Bessel van der Kolk says The Body Keeps the Score (see https://www.psychotherapy.net/article/body-keeps-score-van-der-kolk ). Trauma is stored in the body. The body tells us, using pain and illness of all kinds, that the trauma is there. We can listen and use the body's signals as a Doorway to Awakening.

Happy New Year Everyone. May we all LISTEN to what our bodies are saying. This morning's musing is just that -- there is much more to say. Thankfully our bodies don't stop talking no matter how much we wake up and wake down.