Physical

We are most familiar with the physical aspects of ourselves: our bodies, our looks, our jobs, our surroundings. It is important to ask, are we balanced in this area? Are we taking care of this body we live in? Are our eating habits healthy? Do we stretch and exercise? Are we getting enough sleep? Are we “Petal to the Metal - Go, Go, Go, Push, Push, Push!? Do we give ourselves time to restore, rejuvenate? Do we seem to wander and never have a direction? How about excesses? Do we over indulge to make us feel better, only to feel worse? Do we do geographical cures? Thinking that if we move to a new city, get a new job, get a new partner, a new something, we will feel better. Sometimes a change is necessary, or beneficial, but are we looking for something on the outside to make us feel better on the inside?

Emotional

Here’s often why people seek therapy - they recognize they are in emotional pain. So to pause and look at our emotional selves: do we feel balanced here? Or are we prone to emotional swings? Is life like a roller coaster? “Riding high in April, shot down in May,” (Frank Sinatra). Emotional outbursts can be exhausting, depleting, and damaging. They rob us of the energy we need to live a full life and cope with the stresses that are presented.

Or perhaps you find yourself numb, sealed off from feelings, distant from emotional expression. Does it feel safer to live life at a distance from others, protected, living under layers of armor? My mentor Elizabeth used to say, it’s like living under a wet wool blanket, if you never cry all your tears, you’ll never laugh all your laughter.

Life is an adventure, but do you feel equipped to ride the currents of your life, to handle what comes at you? How do we find our balance, our ability to be buoyant, to endure and ride through storms and so we can enjoy the sunrises?

The goal is to live life as fully and richly as possible and to be grateful for the ride.

Mental

“We are what we think. All that we are, arises with our thoughts.

With our thoughts, we make Our world.” (Buddha, supposedly)

It is critically important to examine our thoughts. A friend said, “What is the prayer without ceasing… What we think all day.” (Jerry Densow, https://mountaininstitute.com/) So, what are we thinking all day? I am sad, I am worried or I am grateful…

What beliefs did we learn early on, that perhaps we’ve never questioned? Things we were told about ourselves and the world around us. Messages we believed, because that’s what kids do, believe adults. Our thoughts control our feelings and our behavior, especially thoughts buried deep in our unconscious.

The brain is an amazing creation. Wonderful work has been done in understanding the working of this incredible part of us. Understanding the workings of the brain can give us insight into why we react in ways we don’t understand or feel we can control.

Looking at a map of the anatomy of the brain, let’s start from the bottom up. The lower, primitive brain (brain stem, amygdala, hypothalamus) sometimes called the “Lizard Brain”, is instrumental in survival - keeping us alive. Here, unconscious, primitive triggers of flight, fight, freeze, food, and procreation are housed. Current research in trauma states that when we are significantly threatened, 16,000 chemical reactions go off in the body and brain - without even our conscious awareness. As we move up the brain, we see the midbrain, home to most of our cognitive memories, our sense of smell, and our limbic brain - home to the cognitive connections to our feelings. Finally, continuing up to the neocortex, we come to our higher-order thinking, our “Wizard” brain: our cognitive ability for problem-solving, language, rational thought, organization, and planning.

So, becoming aware that we may be reacting or driven by primitive, “unconscious” parts of us, can be a huge step towards change. Being able to “pause when agitated or upset” (AA) and observe ourselves, rather than reacting is a powerful strategy. There is much virtue in examining our thinking and our beliefs and how they influence our lives.

Spiritual

Do you believe in/experience something greater than yourself? Do you have something outside yourself that you can lean on, rely on, call on for direction and protection? What are you committed to? What feeds you, restores you? This can be your religious beliefs but certainly does have to. This can be your family, or community, a recovery group, your own version of “your band of brothers/sisters,” or perhaps environmental or global causes.

I think people are afraid to hope that there is something greater than themselves that can be called on for guidance, hope, direction, and protection. I think people often have felt betrayed by religion, or feel, “I tried, I asked, my desperation was ignored.”

I have come to understand a much grander viewpoint of life…

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

Life is a school, we are here to learn lessons for our growth.

Some of the things that happen to us can be incredibly difficult, painful, seemingly unfair, rotten, terrible.

Could we begin to challenge our thinking and look at these terrible things as life lessons?

Could we begin to view others not as horrible villains in our life, but as our teachers, teaching us incredibly difficult lessons?

Now understand I am not excusing or minimizing the terrible things humans are capable of. But instead of being locked into the prison of hatred, resentment, and suffering, can we let go of the notion that THEY are the villains and WE are the victims.

Can we be courageous to ask in the midst of the horror, “What am I supposed to learn from this? What is this teaching me?” And even after acknowledging and honoring our suffering, ask, “I know all that I have lost, but What have I gained from this?”

So the notion of a power greater than yourself full of powerful possibility may be a huge leap. For some it might be their church, for others - their family, still others - their recovery group. For some, they feel they need an extremely spiritual experience to think there is something greater than themselves. For others, they begin to see the subtle coincidences as meaningful and feel they are being directed. If we look back at the tapestry of our life, we can see patterns, or how events and our reactions to events shaped the course of our lives.

Gaining a more expansive view of our life can be helpful to living it fully, without resentments and regrets.