Thoughts on Thoughts

I was walking in the park this afternoon and listening to an audio recording by Tara Brach. Lately, I've been listening to her a lot. This particular audio is called True Belonging. 

I became emotional because her subject feels relevant for me at this point in my life. I want to belong and I'm not sure where I belong, which is at time distressing for my parts because I'm not a wandering teenager. I'm in graduate school. Like most students, I'm busy and in debt. I'm looking for a job. Body image ebbs and flows. I'm following a compassionately disciplined practice. This is life. As far as the ED is concerned: I'm following my meal plan, my exercise plan, my practice of yanking myself out of bed when I feel depressed, my meditation practice, breathing, breathing and breathing if panic attacks happen. I'm assertive even to individuals who are not willing to tolerate it. I'm following this, that, this, that and being overwhelmed is never an excuse to use an eating disorder behavior. It just isn't. Shit, sometimes it's really hard. I mean, most of the time it is beautiful and free and I feel one with the trees that sway to the sweet rhythm of life. But sometimes its just fucking hard. Brach's True Belonging is relevant because at times, I still feel pain from my parts. I still into a low-grade fear of non-acceptance; a fear of rejection; a fear of not living up to my potential. Essentially, there is a fear of trusting that my natural beingness is enough. In many ways, I think that this is what the first few years of recovery looks like. I mean tolerating uncertainty.

Brach asks her listeners to consider how much time they spend during the day attempting to feel better about themselves. Further, what do you do to try to feel better about yourself? I realized that I spend a lot of time trying to feel good about myself. I think as humans this is something that we just do, whether we are aware of it or not. We do it even when "feeling better" is not necessarily the intention. All of the doings. All of the things that we do every day. The way we dress, the way we work, what we talk about, what we choose to eat (or not to eat). These choices. Who we speak to and what we speak about. Comparison. Positive self-judgement. Lots of good things. Even following the meal plan. It’s not bad to do any of these things, but it is helpful to be honest with ourselves about why we make the choices that we made. Sure, we might not be thinking, "oh, I'm going to go ahead and do such and such thing so that I feel good, or so I feel like a better human being." But it’s still seeking. It’s just passive seeking. So there's no explicit agenda, and it’s not a major thing. It’s not as though any of these doings will ever disappear (and I'm not saying that they should!); so, why be aware? I mean, we can always rely on them being present to bring us happiness, right? Well, what would it be like to imagine that these things, the things that we have reason to believe will always be there for us to choose, what if they were not in place? Could we, would we be willing to swim in our natural human goodness? Would we feel in touch with “basic goodness” or would we tap into the more common perception of “basic badness?” Just curious. 

And Brach, she asks us to think: what are you doing and thinking RIGHT NOW that is causing you to think that you need something to feel better about yourself, or just to feel good at all? Why is it important for you to feel good? I forget exactly how she phrased it, but the gist of the message was: what are you avoiding that gives “feeling good” such an allure (as opposed to acceptance of whatever is happening)? Do you understand the difference between seeking feeling good and acceptance of what is? And then I heard my sweet parts: well of course I want to feel good, why wouldn’t I want to feel good…oh, well I guess sometimes I seek to feel good because I don’t feel like I am allowed to not feel good. I just shouldn’t. Or, it might be because of expectations. Also comparing: so and so feels good and I want to feel good too. Or, so and so feels good and her attitude is perceived as “good” to others, so I want to do that. Or, so and so feels bad and her attitude is perceived as being “bad” by others, so I don’t want to feel bad like him/her. I mean, all of those things are attachment related. Is the desire to race towards feeling good, the desire to shift away from whatever IS, is it commonly an attachment strategy? Or not caring, is that a symptom of dismissiveness? I’m just thinking out loud here. I do think that sometimes allowing yourself to feel the unpleasantness that sometimes flows through us (especially during ED recovery) is the self-compassionate thing to do. To not run away. So, the last thought that rose from my mind, the thought that responded to the question: why is it important for me to feel good right now turned out to be: because I had (have?/had?/have?/had?) an eating disorder. Wow, I felt surprised when this happened. I thought I had moved past my shame for having been in an eating disorder for so long. 

Then I remember: sometimes I experience shame in an incredibly passive way. Mindlessly, I think of the energy that I channeled into avoiding my fears. Sometimes I day dream: what if that energy had been used for something different? What would I be doing right now? Would I be more successful? Would I be happier? This is such a slight and pernicious thought processes. I know it seems like it happens step by step in the way that I am describing it. But it actually simply feels like just me imagining myself as different from who I am and what I am currently doing in my life. Just pictures, sounds, ideas. Can you relate? Me as a painter having a show. Me as a dancer. Me as a writer. Me having my own business. It doesn’t seem powerful, but it is significant because the message is: anything except for 29-year-old me navigating my internal world. Plus, these sorts of thoughts can cause unnecessary jealousy, comparison, self-loathing and dissatisfaction. These things come from shame. The thoughts are day dreams and are passive self-directed resentment that my eating disorder caused other people to feel uncomfortable. The wondering about the parts of me that debilitated me from achieving. But even there, that’s separating me from these aspects. I am them and they are me. And achieving just for the sake of achieving never feels nourishing. As I reflect, I think about how it can be dangerous when imagination takes the form of shame. I wonder how common it is to travel into this sort of mindless state of insidious self-loathing. It’s not an obvious, high-grade, super-intense self-hating voice. It’s just this low-grade: “Oh (sigh), I felt ashamed for so long and what if it had been different, would that have been preferable? I wish it could have been different.” That’s shame. That’s not empowerment. That’s shame. I think it takes something to notice that this is shame. Reminders to hang a question mark on the thoughts that we take for granted. Otherwise they might just float around inside with shame in their bellies. Kernels of shame that are simply not necessary.

So, in terms of shame being unnecessary, I'll digress a bit: I want to talk about disclosing a past disorder at a time that disclosing is appropriate. Here are some thoughts I’ve been having lately. I don’t want to speak out because I feel ashamed and want the shaming to go away. I have been able to find a place of peace even in a world that is shaming. But, I still want our culture to be aware that it stigmatizes mental illness, I still want culture to work on understanding that the stigma is unwarrented. There’s an Us – Them. I’m in grad school for counseling and sometimes I just feel like I’m in this no-mans land. There’s the us and the them and I’ve landed in between. Just tonight a professor was talking about “remembering that they are human beings.” She meant to be compassionate, but what is with this: they? And what kind of graduate student in the counseling sphere would consider a mentally ill person not a human being? I guess this Us-Them its more prevalent than I expected. I’m sure that there are many individuals in no-mans land; still, to vent: I’m sick of exspending my energy avoiding judgmental land-mines. No one’s forcing me to disclose; and feeling judged is often my own stuff and sometimes its not.  It just feels incredibly vulnerable to be willing to not hide in a professional context when you have personal experiencing with mental illness. I mean, I know that bias is inevitable. I don’t think bias is bad. It will always happen because that's the way that the brain works. We’re human, we label things and so brains have bias. But, it seems to me that professional counseling would be a sphere where professionals are self-aware enough that they know that even if they have a bias against mental illness, they know that such a bias is no longer an acceptable perception. Shouldn’t they know that judging a person for a history of mental illness is a failure to witness the individual's beingness, which is no different from the counselor's beingness? The very beingness that all humans share? No person is better than another person. No person is higher or more elevated. I’ve been surprised by professionals in school who state things like: Oh, I wouldn’t be so open about that. I mean, it’s not as though I’m spewing naked details about my family history, my foundational social-emotional hurt, or my adolescent existential angst. I’m just saying in a semi-private and professional arena (and I’m not talking about self-disclosing with clients) that I used to engage in pathological behavior. I used to have (had?/have?) an eating disorder. Shit, man. Often, the feedback message is: watch out, you might be judged. My response: How can you say that I should be careful? Should a divorce lawyer be careful about admitting that s/he had been through a divorce? Should a real estate lawyer be careful about admitting that s/he purchased a home? Why is the latter the most innocuous; could it have to do with the former two alluding to emotional vulnerability? Americans are so scared of emotional vulnerability and loss of control. It makes me very sad. Women are paragons of emotional energy; it’s a part of our beingness and its nothing to be ashamed of. It's inherently creative. It's inherently compassionate. It's inherently Self. Not just emotional women, but all women. Many of us simply are driven by emotions. Ok - Not all, but lots. Moon-children. Cyclic and nurturing. Curvaceous, life giving and EMOTIONAL. There's so much more. You see, I think that on many levels, denying struggles with emotionality is denying aspects of ourselves. Acting on behalf of the fear to admit that we hurt our bodies for attachment and cultural acceptance is denying womanhood, personhood and denying the journey of connecting to innate beingness. I'm not suggesting that we blab or that we speak as an attachment strategy. No, not at all. I promote humbleness! Self is humble. Just not acting on behalf of fear. Just not squashing. Instead: recognizing, compassionately challenging marginalizing forces and at the end of it all, just being...free of shame, just being...free of shaming, breathing...and free of shame, just being, breathing and being.