When life just isn't fair
As a therapist I get a front row seat of the inner workings of people’s private worlds, it is a great gift that I don’t take lightly. Being human we have to face the experience of disappointment, desire and longing, grief as well as goodness.
Comparison can be a recipe for anxiety, it activates feelings of envy and at times questions arise that are not always helpful. When it comparison assaults one’s sense of identity and sense of worth then it holds too much power. Life has a way of presenting us with choices and options that create something expansive and liberating or confining and damaging. When curve balls get thrown we have to grapple with how to respond. Whatever the context of circumstance, life brings specific opportunities to hone in on resiliency or resentment. How we tolerate discomfort can be an opportunity for healing and self discovery.
Disappointments can often wear a person down to the bare bones of what they’re made of. The pressures of life force the inner stuff to rise to the surface. When life is turbulent and triggers old stories, it can be difficult not to revert to past coping strategies whether adaptive or maladaptive. Compartmentalization can only keep at bay some elements of what lurks within. Addiction tells a story of the internalized orphan trying to find their way back home, often searching in places that hold shame inducing nostalgia. Albert Einstein puts it eloquently, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” Many times we reinforce the messages we believe on a core level even in the attempt of chasing different answers. Emotional hunger invites vulnerability to be revealed and voice the need and longing for more. Desire invites us to hope however hope is agony, for it forces us to face our own reflections in the mirror but also to trust in something greater than ourselves.
To quote Reinhold Niebuhr’s serenity prayer, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; taking this world as it is and not as I would have it; trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will; so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next.” Complacency doesn’t rise to the occasion, where challenges have the potentiality to grow resiliency elements of strength and courage. Instead it sinks into the sleepy hollow of despair and disillusionment.
Eating disorders many times present a need for healing attachment wounds. The longing to belong and be hemmed into a tribe where there is room for all of your complexity is the ache of returning to shalom after it’s been shattered. Finding internal peace and fulfillment beyond simply our own wants and needs allows us to live more generously. When we intentionally pour into our communities there is an opportunity to receive in return. I have talked to many people that find themselves at rock bottom or on the brink of giving up, only to choose a different option that helps them shift their perspective ever so slightly allows for them to get unstuck and move towards breakthrough. A person’s breakdown is more often than not, the breakthrough they’ve been desperately trying to find. Whatever your heartbreak, there is room for your burdens to be shared, to be seen, to be heard. If you have breath in your lungs this is not the end of your story; maybe it’s the beginning of something really wild and unimaginable, it just needs a little more breathing room to grow into something different and new.