When I started in my career I was focused on knowing the most up to date evidenced based practices necessary for treating --- well all things. I craved to know ALL OF THE THINGS.
It was a tall order. Hindsight and a whole lot of experience has taught me that my thoughts while good intentioned didn't do justice to what the experience in sitting in the joys and suffering of others would teach me.
AND what the ability to sit in the depth of my own pain (on repeat) and eventually joy would teach me about what beautiful corner of the psychotherapy world I needed to sit.
At the core of my work I have found one core common issue:
Somewhere along the way we forgot we entered the world entirely enough, whole and completely enough. The events of our lives, other's unhealed pain and trauma, and above all else fear (our own and others) have doused us with layers and layers of untrue evidence that we are to earn our enough-ness through productivity, ladder climbing, financial gains, or a whole host of other action oriented task items. In other cases these experiences left us with the notion that we never were enough and never will be so there is a constant search for the “bad,” or “wrong,” parts of ourselves. While it is is true that we as human being all have the ability to be dangerous (I will save that for a different post), this is not the same as the constant searching for how we are inherently identifying with our darkest shadow.
I think back to a four-year-old version of me who reveled in the joy of tying random lyrics to strung together notes despite lack of both melody and sensical word choice. It didn’t matter. It didn’t carry the weight of the world on its shoulders. It just was. I just was. It all mattered and none of it mattered at the exact same time.
When peeling back the impact, impressions, and story lines that these events left us with like the layers of onion I find it always reveal one thing. When we KNOW our enough-ness, we live from our enough-ness. It fills us so greatly that it pours out onto others like tea from a kettle, warming our insides and providing a comfort that tethers us to our ability for unconditional love. Here is a secret: once you know this, you get to change the story.
While of course I still practice psychotherapy using evidenced based modalities, over the course of the last 17 years (I just did the math and my jaw dropped), my understanding for the need for spirituality (in no way is my use of this term reflective of a specific religion) for grander more long lasting healing - has become an integral part of my own human experience and in turn my human service.
This quote by Ram Dass does a beautiful job of summing up for me, the "why," behind my treatment of the whole person to include mind, body, and spirit.
I am practicing this today- remembering that no one can take this love away from me, that it will always be here, that I don't have to do anything to earn it. None of my imperfections matter. I am loved just by existing.
I needed the reminder today so I imagine others do to.
The light in me sees the light in you. The pain in me sees the pain in you.
Sitting In love,
Sarah Humphreys