A long, soft talk after a long, cold walk
A swift breath denotates the rhythm of my feet. Steadfast and even joyful do I bounce over these streets. Winters cold does not seduce me inside a warm home. Instead, I feel the rush of a refreshing wind and the luck this brings after moments of demanding despair. Just yesterday I was unconscious of anything stroking my skin so precisely and awakening, ever.
Life is teaching me a thing or two here. How much space I need, I am accustomed to, to attune autonomously. In the middle of family life, the pull towards energetic out-thereness is enormous. For now, I rest my case and walk alone, absorbing the flip side of complexly attuned sensitivity. It is okay to surrender to all the psychological limitations, this pause of participation in social life will me bring me back to a home much broader than my conditioned eye tends to disentangle from the primordial sea. The embracement of the natural beauty surrounding me, and the recognition of the loudest silence possible to affirm the transcendent source of it all. It’s just 50 meters away from home, every day. Or is it?
A couple of days ago I noticed myself thinking, at the end of an angered state of mind, "How nice would that be, having myself as a coach". Of course, this made me giggle internally. Was this self-aggrandizement, or a truthful invitation my mind and heart might want to listen to? Can I transform this potentially unilevel approach to frustration into a multilevel understanding of what is unfolding this inner winter? Dear mind, you are in need for your own attunement, do you know?
With concentrated effort, rooted in the practice of coaching, journaling and introspecting, I imagine myself sitting at the other side of the couch, attuning to myself, and creating a holding space as I do in my work as an emotional guide.
This feels nice. I tend to type ‘actually’ at the end of the previous sentence, but I find it important to leave that vague nuance out of the sensorial picture.
At some point in the connection, apparently perfectly adjusted to what my body and mind need, I pose the first question, listen to my own response and yet again finetune mutual understanding by reflecting authentic experience and embodied associations. Clearly, my self is receptive towards this kind of internal reciprocity. "Aaaah", I concluded with the release of someone finally entering the front door of their home after a long, almost freezing walk in rather steep mountains, "…how nice". A deep “nice”, not some “nice” to appeal to another’s approvement, but an embodied “nice”, stemming from every bone, muscle and longed for and relaxing end-of-the-searching. “Here we are now.”
I now see our couch as a vivid invitation to tune into myself.
And I imagine this to be part of “autopsychotherapy”, a dynamism of personality growth Dabrowski referred to:
“Autopsychotherapy: Psychotherapy, preventive measures, or changes in living conditions applied to oneself in order to control possible mental disequilibrium. Autopsychotherapy is the process of education-of-oneself under conditions of increased stress, as in developmental crises, in critical moments of life, in neuroses and psychoneuroses. […] Conscious selfhealing is an example of this process at work; it is, however, more crucial in the mental and emotional than in the physical realm. Solitude and concentration play a very important role in this process.”
‘Multilevelness of emotional and instinctive functions’, p. 40, Dabrowski.
The cold, hardened spots inside of me are in need for unrelentless care. Softening coaching with an equally sharp mind and testable practices. So that during and after all that has been disintegrating, I find truth in processes yet unsaid, in between the lines or in need for fierce perception and differentiation, continuously moving and often times, without solitude (and a couch in the middle of my emotional living space), in the periphery of my awareness.
A strong personal pull towards humbleness is often counterbalanced with proud and persona’s, due to the bitter self-rejection that got me stuck in loops of denial. In my self-on-self coaching session, we encounter a gentler version. I appreciate humbleness, there is no survival need for self-rejection anymore, and who knows how being humble may be the right guide to appreciate what is truly of value but often dismissed as such. The vulnerable, the suppressed, the in-between the power structures. The emotional gift.
An unrealized potential is guiding the way. Let my own feet carry me forward by doing what is needed right now to heal humbly, and to heal humbleness. Slowing down my pace, I turn inwards and find a wonderful coach to team up with.