Category: Thoughts and feelings

The ethics of “crisis-management” therapy

What kind of support do you need on your path?
What kind of support do you need on your path?

I was thinking about practicing psychotherapy.   Okay, I think about that a lot, and discuss it with my colleagues, and read about it and of course I also spend a bit of time actually practicing.  I recently heard Randy Patterson talking about processes in therapy, and one of his thought-provoking questions was about therapy drop-out.  What proportion of clients leave therapy before attaining their goals?

Apparently most practitioners will estimate about 20-25% but they will be wrong.  The actual, documented typical drop out rate is more like 75-80%.  So that includes the people who come once and don’t like you or the process, and also the people who work hard in therapy, start to feel better, but leave before actually accomplishing their goals.

I was just like the rest of the herd: roughly estimated that about 20 percent of people who come to therapy drop out.  Upon reflection, I can see that the drop-out rate is a lot higher.   Many people in therapy accomplish a lot even though they may not meet their goals, such as to no longer be depressed, or to get through a difficult situation.    So even without meeting a goal, it isn’t therapy wasted.   In fact, even for people who only come once or twice,  the time, money, and energy are likely not  wasted.  When the client leaves, it may be that  the process wasn’t meeting some need at that particular time, or that competing needs pushed therapy out.  And in reality, the client’s goals might never actually be discussed, or defined.   So the entire process, therapy, outcomes, termination, all of that might be very murky for both client and therapist.

But all that talk is  just prelude to my title thought.   People do leave therapy in various ways;   leave angry, leave silently, leave with congratulations and great hurrahs for accomplishments    They also return, and they return in various ways.   If they leave in a way that feels okay to them, it makes it easier to return.   And the other circumstance that makes a return to therapy easier is extreme distress.

It is not uncommon for clients to come to therapy in distress, get some relief, and, just as the therapist thinks it is time to really begin the actual THERAPY, the client leaves.  Well, she got what she came for, which was relief.   The problem is that if the underlying behaviour or thought pattern hasn’t changed, or maybe even hasn’t come into her awareness, she’ll likely be in a very similar distress again.   So she returns to therapy and has a few sessions;  feels quite a lot better, either due to the intervention, or to a change in external circumstances, or to that old placebo, time.   So she leaves again…..only to return another time.  Lasting change hasn’t happened;   there has been, perhaps, a series of band-aids, or (better image) a step-wise movement that may be more lateral than progressive.

Is it okay to keep using band-aids when therapy might actually generate some real change ?   Who makes that call?   What does the ethical therapist do with this?

Day breaks, the crisis abates...
Day breaks, the crisis abates…

I don’t have an answer.  Part of me thinks that it is disingenuous to just keep on with supportive counseling when I believe that a deeper, more focused type of work will be helpful in the long term.  But another part of me acknowledges that  for many people, symptom relief is a good thing and is sufficient.  So whose goals are important here?  It doesn’t make sense that my goals for your therapy should supersede YOUR goals for your therapy.  But you also have less experience with therapy than I do, and you might not know what is possible.

Reflection tells me that I probably have to be honest with clients and tell them how I see it….that there is hope beyond just immediate relief from distress…but that the immediate gratification may not be there.   Longer term therapies, like bioenergetic analysis which helps to restructure personality, or trauma treatments which heals through restructuring of distorted memories, can have outcomes that make a huge difference to the person.  The path to those outcomes isn’t a smooth one, though, and often the courage it requires to take that path is hard to come by.  So I can understand why someone might decide to use counseling as a symptom relief measure.

So ….. whose agenda, whose goals?  Is feeling better a good enough goal for therapy?   or do we have a better chance of getting change when we set goals that are more clearly defined??

These are some of the things I ponder.  If I don’t find an answer, I usually look for chocolate.   Which, in its way, performs the same soothing and comforting role as supportive counseling.  Chocolate for everyone!   Then back to pondering the deep thoughts.

Weather report

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I am soaking in early summer;  wallowing in it, actually.   Yesterday evening, we had the most amazing thunderstorm!   Sheets of rain pelting sideways against the house meant that we could open a window at the back and look out, feeling like being on the prow of a great ship, plunging through wild, windy seas.  I felt full of gratitude for another summer, for summer storms in general, and I could feel in my chest the expansion of being really alive.   There was something, perhaps, about the energy of the storm and my relative safety within that power, that helped me to find that place of openness.  And with the opening came gratitude.

Early summer it is easy for me to find gratitude.   The long, long days support me.  The warmer temperatures soften my resistance to what is.   When I LIKE what is, I can find gratitude.  It is harder for me to locate that body state when winter reigns, or, more accurately, when we are in those interminable “between” seasons that we have here….late fall and late winter, or early winter and early spring….all of those seem to flow together with endless days of darkness, gloom, cold and ice, rain, freezing rain….I can feel my body tightening and closing up even as I write that.

So as a body psychotherapist, I have to ask myself WHAT is responsible for my change of body state that seems connected to the seasons?  Can I just label it some biological reaction of my organism?   If I were a cognitive therapist, I would say it was what I am THINKING about the weather.   If I were to actually practice the mindfulness I have learned, I would notice that it is my liking or not liking that affects how I respond to the weather.

For today, I am going  to let go of analyzing and theorizing and just enjoy.   Humid, stormy, sunny, cloudy, breezy or still, the weather of this season feels like a friend, and I am resting hand in hand with that friend.

When do I get to be me? And who is that, anyway?

Having a little time off has given me some time to think and reflect.  Almost always when I take time for that, I end up reflecting on this work that we do together in the therapy room.  It is often profound work, and I am privileged to participate and challenged by what comes up.  So I have been thinking, and reading, about depression and anxiety.

Oak branches in March

Depression and anxiety are in different categories in the DSM IV, that important diagnostic tome that helps us to decide how to categorize “mental illness.”   But if we move away from pathologizing and into humanizing, many of the issues that come through the door of the therapy room have feelings at their core.   Either not feeling enough or feeling too much.  Depression and anxiety can have aspects of both.

Usually in depression, people can’t feel;  they have suppressed or repressed feelings for so long that numbness is a way of being.  But that might only be part of the situation.   Maybe sometimes, people have told themselves a story about what it is okay to feel, and when it is okay to feel that way.

When we feel differently than our story allows, we might experience anxiety.  There is a sense that something is wrong, really wrong.  If, for example, I am angry but my story tells me that I don’t get angry, then obviously something is seriously wrong and I get anxious.   We can get to a place where every time we feel ANYTHING, what we allow into awareness is only anxiety.   So we believe that the world is scary, or that we are scary, or that feeling anything isn’t possible because all we feel is anxious.  When there is part of the self that is not allowed to feel, either by depression (I don’t feel anything) or by anxiety (no matter what I feel it is always interpreted by my body as anxiety), then that part becomes stunted, or at least diminished….the voice of that part isn’t heard.

Could that be you?   Perhaps a whole part of you hasn’t really had time and space to become whatever it is going to become.   Maybe if you only had some time, some space, maybe then you would find this part  that has not yet fully developed.

Credit: http://robertballew.com/2010/11/making-peace-with-your-body/
Credit: http://robertballew.com/2010/11/making-peace-with-your-body/

What has been waiting for the” right”time…when the chores are finished, or when the kids are grown,or when you’ve lost weight or whatever your particular obstacle is.  What is waiting there inside you? What is the part of you that is whole, perfect,complete just as it is?

When you open up space without judgment, allow just openness and reflection, what comes up?   Could that be a sign pointing to the “real you?”

 

Compassionate curiosity

I had to retrain my inner critic.   I had a critic who was so skillful, so sly, that she could find something wrong with just about everything I thought or did.   And she could present the criticism in such a way that it was clear that it was both 1) true and 2) necessary for me to know how bad I was.

Woohoo!    If I had a person in my life who treated me that way, I doubt that I would have stayed around for coffee.   But I lived with this person in my head for a long, long time.

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One of the side effects of having a strong inner critic is that often the real-life person (me, in my case) is extremely critical of everyone and everything else.   Well, it only makes sense….if that’s what you experience all the time, every day, then perhaps you figure that’s what your response to the rest of the world should be….ought to be…..MUST be.

Oh my gosh, there they are, all three of them in a single sentence….SHOULD, OUGHT, and MUST.   Hmm, my old favorite thought distortion….that there are shoulds, oughts, and musts in the world.   I remember the first time I ever knew that there were other ways to think about things.   An art therapist who was on some committee with me, many years ago, made some laughing comment about “shoulding all over oneself” but that was long before I was introduced to cognitive psychology and I had never heard of such a thing.  But before long, I was able to see that I not only “should” all over myself, but I was continuously “shoulding” all over other people as well.

thanks to http://www.minalhajratwala.com/ a lovely blog about writers, writing, and social media
thanks to http://www.minalhajratwala.com/ a lovely blog about writers, writing, and social media

In some stories, that would have been enough but no, I’m a pretty slow learner, and it took a lot more years, completion of my psychology training (which helped me to be ever more critical), and intensive body psychotherapy before I could start to really recognize the many manifestations of my inner critic.  First I had to detach myself from the messages I had been hearing from myself. And that’s where, finally, the title of this post comes in.

Light and shadow; can we observe without judging, without labeling?
Light and shadow; can we observe without judging, without labeling?

When I can look at myself without immediate judging (“that’s okay, that’s not okay, I like this, I hate that, I’m doing well, I’m not doing so great”) then I have a chance to see what is really happening in my inner space.   When I can catch a passing thought and see it as a thought, then I can notice….Oh, that was a critical thought.   Hmmm, isn’t that interesting?   When I can have a friendly interest in my own processes, without having to change them, harden against criticism or melt into praise, then I am offering myself compassionate curiosity.

So what happened when I began to observe my own inner critic?  At first I was horrified to hear how much harsh self talk was going on.   Then I realized that some part of me was being highly critical of the critic!   (Yes, check out THAT logic…).  When I realized that the critic was originally a defense, yes, originally something that developed to help me to negotiate a difficult childhood,  then I could bring a bit of compassion to that part of myself.

In my bioenergetic therapy training program, we talked about ways to work with the critic:  our own critics, and the critics that accompanied our clients into the therapy office.  One plan was to figure out ways to off the critic….toss him off a cliff, for example, or trick her into leaving.   I decided to take a softer approach.  I decided to try to befriend my critic, and re-train her.  I wanted to be in charge, so I thought I would approach this situation as if she was an employee who had taken on too much responsibility over the years.

I began a dialog of sorts in my journal, and basically re-wrote the job description.  I thanked my critic for the years of protection, and spent quite a lot of time reflecting on the ways that my strong internal demand for certain behaviour saved me from an angry parent, from dismissal from my graduate program, from neglecting my children despite my fatigue.   Then I just informed her that things were now different.  I was an adult with good habits and didn’t need anyone constantly harping about me.  What I did need, though, was support.

Support is one of those ambiguous terms.  People may mean very different things by that term.  So I did with my critic what I suggest clients do with family members:  I carefully described what I wanted for support.   I wanted, for example, my inner voice to learn to say things like  “Good job on that!” and “You are working hard enough” and “It is okay to take a break.”  Actually, I modeled those kinds of comments on the statements that my therapist offered to me over the years.

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Did it work?  Well, it was a program of change, and, like most changes, time, practice, and consistency have been involved, but yes, it did work.   I have to be vigilant, as I expect most people who have lived with an ornery inner critic for about 45 years would have to be.   But I can recognize my negative self talk, I can notice it without labeling and just say, oh, yes, there it is again.   I wonder if there is something going on that has that critic reverting to old behaviour?  And with that gentle sort of curiosity, I can look deeper without fear of what I might find.

The skills of depression

I have found a lovely resource, a book about depression that is unlike other books about depression.  It is called Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn’t Teach You and What Medication Can’t Give You.  Doesn’t that title grab you?  The author is Richard O’Connor, who is a therapist but more importantly, is a person who has depression.

Undoing depression

So what’s so lovely about this book?  Well, first off, he discussed the skills of depression…the particular abilities that being depressed seems to hone in people.  For example, depressed people are good at isolating, or separating feeling from experience, so that we have experiences but we don’t have the emotion you might expect to go with it.   Depressed people are skillful at procrastination:  it keeps us from, as the author says, “ever having to put your best self on the line,” because we always run out of time. (Oh, boy, can I ever relate to that!   Waiting until the last minute meant I never really knew if I would actually get through graduate school).    Depressed people are skillful at negative self-talk, at pessimism, at setting impossible goals or having no goals and lots of guilt.  Depressed people are good at setting themselves up to make sure that a negative view of the world is supported:  that is, undermining ourselves…perhaps before we can be undermined by others.  There are more skills but you probably get the picture.

The great thing about this approach is that skills are something that are learned.  They are not innate characteristics;  they are not who we are.    They are coping methods that we developed to manage our depression. So we had a traumatic childhood, or we were bullied in the workplace, or a parent died or left the family.  Or we have family members with depression, and we both inherited their predispositions and watched and learned from depressed behaviour.    Whatever the story that generated our depression,  we have used these methods to cope.  But they are skills….learned and therefore un-learnable.   If we learned these skills, we can learn other skills.

Aha!  so my tendency to procrastinate and put my job at risk, and isolate myself and put my relationships at risk, and to engage in pessimistic and negative thinking and put my own safety at risk…those are skills I have learned to cope with depression.   They are not character flaws.  They are not immutable parts of my self.  They are SKILLS.

Somehow, that is a tremendously hopeful message.

One of the keys to undoing,  according to O`Connor (and a lot of other people, including researchers) is to cultivate mindfulness.   Mindfulness is practically a buzzword these days;  everyone is being mindful of something, somehow.  But the mindfulness that seems to be particularly useful in retraining people who are skilled in depression is of a particular type.  Mindfulness is “spending time paying attention in a particular way:  on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally,”   according to Jon Kabat-Zinn.  According to O`Connor, it is about  “deliberately trying to attain a new attitude toward your own thoughts, feelings, and everyday experience, a viewing of oneself with compassionate curiosity.”  This practice is embodied by meditation, the content of which is one’s own experience in the moment.

peaceful

The ability to see oneself, to experience one`s moment by moment being, complete with thoughts, emotions, images, and body sensations, is to free oneself from the anchors of the past and the anxieties of the future.  For a few minutes every day, you can be as free as possible from all of those things that otherwise feel like constraints.   During mindfulness practice, we can learn to defuse from our thinking, those beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world that limit us.   We can be just as we are and see what that is like.

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This kind of practice enables a freedom in the world, as well as on the meditation cushion.   I am thinking that perhaps that`s part of O’Connor’s message.   When I create some  space away from the skills of depression, I am aware of being able to make choices in how I will be, how I will respond, how I will live in the world.   And that is a place from which skills for the full experience of living can develop.

People-Holding-Hands

Happy Friday…how to have a happy day everyday

candles burning

Early morning, hot tea in hand

Candles on the table burning bright

Steam rises, candle flame flickers

Sighing, I feel the comfort of Friday

Happy every day….that’s what we want.  We want it all the time, every single day.  But happy doesn’t come in big swathes like that, not usually.   Happy usually shows up in moments…just a tiny moment in time, and if you are not paying attention, you can miss it.

See what moments of happy might be available to you today.   Slow down, take a breath, look around you and see what is really there.  Then look within you, and notice what is really there, right now, right THIS minute.   Who knows what you’ll find?  Maybe you’ll even find ….happy.

 

Why I hate winter….but not really

I think possibly I have developed some faith.

I have been thinking about winter.  It is hard to NOT think about winter, since we are smack in the middle of it here in Atlantic Canada.  My smarter-than-me phone told me this morning it was ZERO degrees American.   That’s cold, for me.   When you translate to the 19.6 degrees Celsius it is less compelling for someone raised on the Fareinheit system, but zero….whew.  It is winter.

Winter conjures a lot of negative stuff for me.  Old family of origin stuff, of course.  Winters were long and hard in Maine when I was a kid.   My family was fairly poor, but only as poor as most of my classmates, so we all knew what it meant to have the house barely warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing, and that when we went out to play it was wearing extra layers of clothes we already had, not special technical fabrics or down or polyester filling to our coats and pants.  Down was for rich people and polyester hadn’t been invented yet.   So there was a lot of cold and wet involved in winter, and that special, awful, burning feeling in your hands and feet as they start to warm up again after playing outside for hours in the snow.

I also had the spectre of my mother, who was not a warm, positive influence at the best of times.  She was at her worst in winter;  felt closed in, imprisoned by winter and by being a mother-at-home without a car.   So there are some negative things that just arise for me when it is cold and snowy.

Snow
Snow

I have worked hard to restructure that part of my brain. In 1994, when I moved from Louisiana to upstate New York, I was determined to make winter my friend.  I got snowshoes.  I got really excellent snow tires, four of them.  None of that “all weather radial” nonsense for me;  after my first accidental 360 with my all weather tires, I replaced them.   I got cross-country skis and taught myself to use them.  (Note:  simply translating my running skills to skis was not a good strategy. It was years later that I had to unlearn a whole pile of bad habits).  I put on extra sweaters, extra blankets, and sucked up the extra expense to have my house warm enough for me to feel okay.

Fast forward to now.  I live in Canada.   As my brother and his wife asked, in all kindness, “What were you thinking?”   They, of course, live in balmy Chicago.   But yes, I live in Canada and suffice it to say that I wasn’t thinking about winter when I made that decision.   I am here now, though, and working through my negativity every single day.   Every winter day, that is.

winter trees
winter trees

I heard on the radio that loveliest of winter expressions from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons at the very same moment I reflected that in only 12 weeks, or less, actually, we’ll be celebrating the vernal equinox.   And that’s the faith part.   I have learned to have faith in the sun rising and setting, and in the days lengthening and shortening.   Nothing stays the same but this pattern of change is something I can count on.

BUT…and this is a big BUT………I don’t want to spend the next twelve weeks wishing for winter to be over.  That’s not okay with me;  that’s like giving away three months of my life and I don’t have it to spare!   So it isn’t enough to just grit my teeth and wish for spring, resisting what is actually happening in hope that the future will be different, better, a destination.

That’s a hell of a way to live your life, waiting for the next thing to happen.  I think I have had enough of that.

Sun rise in winter
Sun rise in winter

I wonder how much of my childhood self is caught up in my winter blues?   The self that didn’t have any hope for change, that had no capacity to take action on my own behalf, the child who was stuck in a family and home where unhappiness was always the order of the day….that’s who is awake and operating when my negative side starts to dominate.

So I need to reconnect with my faith in the pattern of life on this planet:     because I can count on the sun, I don’t have to give my winter away to negativity and complaining.  I can take care of me.   I can notice how I feel and think about winter.  I can sit quietly with those thoughts and feelings.  I can remember how it was to be a kid in that setting, and also remember that I am no longer that child, no longer in that life.   Now I have choices:    I can ski, and snowshoe, and eat roasted root vegetables, and drink warm comforting drinks and be present to the winter, without wanting it to hurry by to get to spring.   Some days I’ll likely resist the winter, and feel constricted and angry and frustrated by what I perceive as the limits of the season.   Whether I resist or not, though, I know this:  the sun will rise.  The sun will set.  The days will grow longer and then, in June, they’ll begin to grow shorter.  No matter how I feel about any of it, this pattern of change will go on.   On this I can depend.

Finding the deep desires of your heart

What is your heart’s desire?  What do you REALLY want?

Thanks to http://www.djrichardsdesign.ca/2011/11/16/hearts-desire/
Thanks to http://www.djrichardsdesign.ca/2011/11/16/hearts-desire/

Notice what happens inside you as you sit with that question.   What is my heart’s desire?  What do I really, really want?  Watch your mind generate all sorts of answers, excuses, plausible reasons not to even consider the question, and perhaps even responses that are socially appropriate.

Maybe you were taught that it is rude to WANT something.  Maybe you had many experiences of disappointment in your wants, to the point that you stopped WANTING.  Or you told yourself you didn’t have any WANTS.   Maybe you are very busy trying to make sure other people get what they WANT, and your own little wants have lost their voices.

Watch your thoughts as you start to consider this question.  Notice if you resist the question itself (“I don’t need to read this stuff.”)  Notice if you reject your ideas about what you might want.   How do we get past the mind’s pattern of criticizing itself?   It is hard to know what you really want if you have an inner critic telling you to shut up all the time.

A beautiful place to sit and ponder
A beautiful place to sit and ponder

Now try an experiment.   Get up on your feet.  Yes, you, right now, on your feet!   Jump up and down a little bit, get your breathing going.    Now hop around on one foot, then the other foot, and maybe even wave your arms around up over your head.    Yes, get silly and move around vigorously, shaking your head, letting your jaw go loose, maybe letting some sound out of your mouth….
“ahhhh,   ooommmmmm,  raaaahhhhhh,    bbbrrrrrrrr…” whatever sounds come out as you are jumping, jogging, shaking, and waving.

Oh, yeah.  Just let ‘er rip!  Let your body move, let your voice come out, get energy flowing all through your body.   It could be a dance, could be cheer-leading, could be gymnastics or calisthenics  whatever works for you, but it needs to be vigorous, free, and energetic.  Yahoo!

Now let your body come back to a still place.  Feel your feet firmly on the ground, feel the breath in your body, notice your heartrate, still elevated, and notice what is happening in your thoughts, in your mind.   And now, just standing there, let your answer come….What do I really, really want?   What is my heart’s desire?

Let go of any judgment, any self-criticism.  What do I want, now that I have let my body start to have its voice?  Just notice what ideas come up for you, and see if you can make note of them without commentary.  What do I want?  What does my heart want most right now?   Nothing is off limits…whatever arises for you, that’s what you want.

And your job is to let it be okay that you want what you want.   That’s all….you can want whatever it is that you want.  Just wanting is a big thing for many of us.  This  exercise is a beginning. Your heart’s desire is there waiting for recognition.

What did you find out when you tried the little experiment?   I wonder what would happen if you did it several days in a row?  Could you get more skillful at letting the body’s truth come out?  Could you start to recognize self-criticism and learn to just let that go?

Reason to change

Boy, do human beings ever dislike change!  We don’t like it when we have change thrust upon us.    If something changes without notice, well, then, I am unprepared, maybe taken unawares, feeling out of step or off kilter.    We prefer to call our own shots, to have predictability in our lives.   We don’t even like it much when the weather changes, even though it is eminently clear that the weather means nothing personal.

When we see the need for change in our own lives, we often resist it.   Even if we want the change, seek it, work toward it, sometimes we get in our own way.   Obstacles arise, apparently by themselves.   Inertia settles into the body.  We may actively sabotage our own efforts to change our behaviour.   Then we give up, saying, “It’s too hard.   I’ve been okay like this so far;  I don’t know why I think I want to change anything anyway.”   Then we settle for living less than our full lives, sighing with resignation.  “I can’t change.   Things just won’t go the way I want them to. There is no hope…”

I respectfully disagree!   Change is possible.  In fact, change is inevitable.   We work incredibly hard to try to keep things, including ourselves, from changing.  But change is going to happen.   We can prepare for it, try to focus it in a particular direction, and let life change us.   The key is letting it happen rather than trying to force it, or force ourselves.

People come into the office wanting something to change.  Sometimes they want circumstances to change, but mostly they know that the change has to come from within.  Sometimes people want harsh measures, and they are particularly punitive with themselves.   “I have to lose twenty pounds and so I am not going to eat anything good for the next two months…”   Sometimes they want me to be punitive with them;  it may be the only kind of relationship they know.  How different it is to allow change rather than to force it!   How different to set an intention rather than create a goal and rigid steps to achieve it!

Change is happening to you, right now.   It is happening to me, it is happening in all of our lives.  What one tiny step can you take right now to move that change in the direction you prefer?  Maybe you can step outside for a walk, or maybe just a deep breath to change your relationship to your work.  Maybe you can email a friend, to change your social connections.  Maybe you can pick up a bit of litter.  Maybe you can send a positive thought to someone you fear, to change how you relate.

If not you, then who?

If not now, then when?

Fall bounty

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I’ve been writing and thinking about darkness, and the lack of light, and how the late fall contributes to my own desire to hibernate.  But here is a lovely little picture of the fruits of the fall;  vegetables at the Boyce Farmer’s Market in early November.   The colours are muted, compared to summer vegetables and fruits, but they are still full of good nutrition and of course the pungent onion may help us to remember that we are, in fact, alive…if we can smell and taste and even tear up due to a vegetable!

The darkness is an opportunity.  It provides us with a chance to slow down, to listen to the still small voice within, to take stock of our lives and our selves.   The holiday season is a last final frantic rush of business before winter;   perhaps a way that we try to distract ourselves from the realities of reflection.   I used to be so busy that I didn’t have time to think, to stop and ponder, to wonder.   I suspect I used to make myself that busy.  Of course social expectations support busyness…do you know anyone who says, oh, I’m not that busy…?   People find being busy to be a status symbol of some sort.   But I think often we want to stay too busy to look at ourselves and look at our lives.  We are too busy to feel our feelings, except superficially.   We like it that way.

The darkness and the cold draw us toward quiet, toward reflection.   Rather than being something to try to escape, perhaps we could see them as opportunities to carefully consider how we are living.   Taking some quiet time in the dark days may help illuminate a path for the future, for a way for life to be different or maybe just for US to be different.

Make sure you take some quiet time this solstice season.  Don’t let the forced gaiety of the holidays overwhelm your need for time for yourself.  Don’t let social expectations flood you so that you can’t feel what you really feel.  Just because “everyone” is happy, you don’t have to pretend.  And know, too, that everyone is NOT happy.   People feel what they feel, and usually that’s a range of feelings.

May the blessings of the season of darkness be yours.

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