You are not a project
When we seek healing with an approach that mirrors the systems that oppress us, in this case making self-care into a to do list, we are reinforcing the internalization of these narratives that often cause us to feel sick. By approaching self-care or healing as a to do list, I am reflecting a narrative that I am a project, and that if I simply go through the motion of completing a set of tasks that I will be ‘fixed.’ The reason this doesn’t help you to feel better, or perhaps only temporarily, is because you never needed to be ‘fixed,’ in the first place. You are not an object that needs fixing or that can be broken. You were always whole as you are. Always.
This is the work of healing. Remembering our way back to our true nature, remembering that I am whole, that I am alive, that I am the author of my own story. This doesn’t negate the deleterious effects of systems of oppression or poverty, but it serves as a reminder that despite these things you cannot be broken or fragmented from yourself. We may forget this along the way, and this is where our healing, and remembering the way back to our true nature, begins. Much of healing is remembering who we were before we internalized messages and conditioning that tells us who we should be within these systems that surround us. Remembering our way back to our bodies, to our inner child, to the earth that is home.
What I have observed in myself and in my clients when we approach healing from this lens of objectification, is that it keeps us in a cycle of scarcity, of seeking for a fix, for an external marker of being whole, or worthy, or good, but never feeling good enough. This is because this approach is still rooted in a binary model: good or not good, healed or not healed, whole or broken. I have found that this can become the target of anxiety, as if one’s life purpose is now to heal. I see this in terms like ‘optimizing,’ wellness, which is another way to create and internalize a hierarchy of health, defining narrow boxes that categorize our worth according to a set of criteria of what health looks like. This concept of worth tied to health is a slippery slope, easily sliding toward making healing or ‘optimizing wellness,’ a career, and slowly withdrawing from being present with life in all its imperfect, joyful messiness. As this happens, an internal story can develop that one’s purpose is to seek optimal wellness, rather than to live and exist as one’s own authentic self.
The truth is, healing is not linear. We are not linear. You are not linear. In fact, you transcend binaries, hierarchies, and limited concepts of identity. You cannot be contained by any one category. When my clients begin to remember their way back to this truth, they start to feel free. I have learned this the hard way for myself many times over. That healing is about liberation. That even if am suffering, there is nothing wrong with me. And my teachers, my guides, my inner teacher, bring me home.
So what is the work that we do in counseling, or in yoga therapy? Some of it is geared toward alleviating suffering, yes. Some is about connecting through shared humanity, through a reparative relationship. Some is about repairing stored patterns of trauma in the body and nervous system. A lot is about remembering our way back to our true nature, and liberating ourselves from oppressive conditioning that tells us we are not enough, or that it is not okay to feel pain.
Sending you love wherever you are <3.
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