Harsh words are the truth though yes? I used to really hate it when people said this to me, until very recently, when I realised that, although well-meaning, the helpers, healers and therapists who have ‘helped’ from a ‘saving’ place over the years – were seeing my experience from a very privileged, comfortable and quite well-off point of view.
I would spend hours (and thousands of pounds!) pushing and cajoling myself from ‘what is’ to their positive, doing very nicely thank you standpoint.
Once there, it would last a while: the apparent stability: then it would fail, flail and catastrophe would hit.
Again.
Back then I thought I had failed.
But actually, now that I feel a different kind of stable beneath my feet (by standing still and, for once, not running from any feeling) – I can now see where I went (horribly) wrong:
I listened to the wrong people.
A year or so ago I started what I call ‘normal therapy’ where the counsellor ‘just listens’.
It changed my life.
For quite some time I was taken aback by how present she was. I was waiting for the ‘but’ I was armoured against the ‘you’re doing it wrong’ – but it never came. The correction. The space was cleared and loaded for something so profound I really wasn’t expecting it:
Complete and absolute genuine acceptance for who I am in this moment without trying to fix criticise judge cajole or project.
Complete and absolute ‘what is’ – ness (excuse my dodgy made up words) that eventually catapulted me into:
Standing still.
Now…. Here’s the punchline: that standing still created a movement towards a more standing still, in that more standing stillness I found someone who had long been lost and feared for dead.
Me.
That’s it, that’s the post.
In Love,
Matt xx
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