Fitting out

“I think fitting in is highly overrated. I’d rather just fit out…
Fitting out means
being who you are,
even when people insist that you have to change.
Fitting out means
taking up space,
not apologizing for yourself, and not agreeing with those
who seek to label you with stereotypes.”
~ Golda Poretsky ~

So-called ‘firsts’ happen all the time, we are often just not aware of them. I had a first this week that threw me a bit – well, more than a bit, to be honest. I went to a study group that had been recommended to me, after a full-on day at work. I brought a whole load of un-processed stuff to the group, sitting with it without being able to sort through and make sense of it. Probably not a good start, but hey, life happens, right? ‘It will be fine.’ Well, at least that's what I kept telling myself. ‘It will be fine. You'll find your place.’
Well, I didn't. I sat there, overwhelmed by the day. Overwhelmed by the people, the topic, the pace of the conversation, the flood of emotions that was raising up within me. And I felt that there is no place for me. That I am this type of person who searches and searches and searches and never fully arrives. Fully arriving… What the heck does that mean anyway? What's the goal? I have searched high and low, in the most likely and most unlikely places. There must be a place where I fit in. A place I can call home. There just has to be.

I haven't found it yet. And still, there is a gentle voice that tells me that that's not entirely true. It's just that I have found it in more than one place. I have found in the quiet moments where I meet with a person's soul, without judgements or fears. I have found it in breath of mountains, the energy of beaches, the peace of lakes. I have found it in tears and laughter and silence shared with friends. I have found it in a cup of tea. In a cat curled up on my lap. And I have found it in myself. In the space between spaces, that space that is just mine and yet yearning to be discovered and loved and accepted for who she is. I have found it. It just looks different than I thought it would. And that's OK. Because ultimately, it's OK to fit out. As long as I have places where fitting out means that I am fitting in.

Good-byes

“Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea
comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth.
Go in peace!
I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
~ J.R.R. Tolkien ~

Yesterday, it was time for another good-bye. Together with a group of friends, I drove to the airport in the wee hours of the morning to farewell two precious people. I have known them only for the past six months, but some people you meet and it's love at first sight. So it was with Dave and Greta. And now they're gone. Hopefully I will see them again. But even in this day and age, Indiana (USA)-Auckland (New Zealand) is a long way. There is hope. There will always be hope. But there is also the thing called realistic which sometimes translates to pessimistic.

From a young age, my life has been riddled with good-byes, be it people or places or animals or dreams. There came a time when I became practically numb to it. Where I began to expect good-byes around every corner. As a result, I became cautious, very cautious. Why enter into a relationship with someone: They might leave anyway. Why trust someone: Disappointment was already waiting in the wings.
So, inevitably life became very lonely. Predictable, yes, but also very very lonely. At some point in my life I finally allowed the grief over all these good-byes back in. And in it came. It rushed in, almost drowning me at times. I remember gasping for breath in particular strong waves. I remember learning to surf the waves rather than being constantly swept away by them. I remember fighting the urges to go back to a life without grief. A life that appears to be so much easier to bear at times. And then I remember why I want to feel. Why it's all worth it. Because ultimately, there is no joy without tears.

“Every meeting led to a parting, and so it would, as long as life was mortal.
In every meeting there was some of the sorrow of parting,
but in everything parting there was some of the joy of meeting as well.”
~ Cassandra Clare ~

Quiet silence

“Quiet people have the loudest minds.”
~ Stephen Hawking ~

I am a quiet person. I am married to a quiet person. Some of my friends are quiet people. And so are some of my clients. Being quiet is fine, me thinks. There is nothing wrong with it. Some people are just more quiet than others and that doesn't mean that there is nothing going on in their minds. Far from it. Quiet people have feelings and thoughts just like everybody else. There it is again – quiet people are people, too. They are just a bit more cautious when it comes to sharing what is happening in their busy minds. They wait for the right person, the right moment to come by and then, only then, they might share. Maybe.
This is what I have been doing for most of my life. I might come across quite extroverted at times, easy to be around, talking, laughing, having fun. But (and this is the important part), you won't meet the real me. Or rather, you will meet a part of me, but most of it, the part that sits in the corner, watching life's every move, the part that never takes it chances, that is cautious and shy, THAT you won't meet. It takes a long time until it dares to come out of its corner and it can be gone in an instant, in that brief moment when you laugh about something and look at it in a funny way (or at least that's what the part thinks). And then, the whole cycle starts again.

Over the years, I have learned to accept myself for who I am and to slowly step out of my comfort zone at the same time. I have had some wonderful experiences and I have also gone back into hiding, licking my wounds, time and time again. And overall, my cave has become less of a prison, but rather something I can dance in and out of, just as I need it. I have come to like my quietness while being able to choose it more freely.
Still, there is also a different type of silence. A silence that slowly sneaks up on you. A silence that is jealous, that isolates you, that wants you all to itself. That promises you that you don't need anything else. Anyone else. That tells you that silence is enough. And before you know it, you are trapped in its web. No way out.

Trapped by silence is where I find myself at the moment. I have no idea when it all started, but here I am, sitting in the spider's web. I have been finding it incredibly hard to share my heart for quite a while now. And not only with people I don't know too well/don't feel too safe with, but increasingly also with the closest people in my life. When I realised that this was happening, I initially tried to prevent the door from closing, but eventually I gave up. It's too hard right now. Too much effort. Where to begin? How to end? No idea, so better leave it as it is. The thing is that it gets very lonely after a while. It separates me from connection with my friends. From entering into a heart space. From meeting myself in others. And the mind? It never stops. It keeps going and going and going. And…

“Silence is so freaking loud.”
~ Sarah Dessen ~

Counsellors are people, too...

It is weird being a counsellor sometimes. People often react in interesting ways when they hear that I belong to this (misunderstood) profession. There are people who swamp me with their life stories at the first opportunity, expecting that I can ‘fix them’ – of course for free. Others almost magically lose their voice, stumble for a bit, and then, clumsily, change the topic. Others again get this haunted look on their face before they suddenly avert any eye contact – for everyone knows that every decent counsellor can analyse another human being within the fraction of second. Because that's what we do for a living, isn't it? Yeah, right.

This is, of course, not true. Well, at least not entirely. Yes, counsellors (and other therapists) ARE trained to notice some cues that other people might miss. They listen differently. They are full of ideas and theories. But (and this is important)… Counsellors are also normal people. Really. People with feelings and thoughts and insecurities and flaws and all that jazz.
The thing is, I sometimes get the impression that I am ‘supposed’ to have it all together. To be calm and at peace with life and myself and others. To be a mature adult. The thing is, I am NOT always calm and at peace with life and myself and others. And I am far off being a mature adult at times (some would say more times than others). Yes, I am working towards it (many counsellors are on a life-long personal journey), but the thing is, I might not ever get there. And I am certainly 'not there yet'. I sometimes want to throw tantrums like a three-year old child (and yes, sometimes I actually do). I can get so very caught up in my emotions that I can't see a way out for a short (or long) time. I can get incredibly stubborn and incredibly insecure – sometimes at the same time. I can deeply love and deeply hate people, including myself. I sometimes have no idea how to do this thing called life. How to survive in this confusing world. A lot of people might go through similar struggles. And the thing is, I am people, too.
So please, whoever you are, be gentle when you meet a counsellor. We have feelings like everyone else. We need breaks like everyone else. We have up and downs like everyone else. We get it right (and wrong) like everyone else. We are people, just like everyone else…

Reaching for the stars

Tomorrow, I will embark on a journey bigger than any journey I have travelled before. I will drive down to Taupo and, as part of a team of four, walk 100km within 36 hours. This slightly crazy endeavour has taken me five months of preparation. Since November last year, I have spent hours and hours and hours of walking to get ready. I have walked up and down numerous hills. More times than I can remember I was ready to throw the towel, to get out, to find a different hobby. I had an injury early on in the training and needed lots of physio and acupuncture to get going again. More than once I questioned my own sanity, my abilities. And still, I kept going…

What kept me going was not only because all of this supports a great cause, but also because of my slightly stubborn streak and my desire to cross something off my bucket list that had been sitting there for a while. And don't get me wrong – there were many times where I absolutely enjoyed myself. The times when my husband and I walked the beaches in our neighbourhood at night. Or when we admired the full moon coming up next to Skytower. It has been a crazy ride, but oh, so worth it.

And you know, this journey is so similar to other goals we have in our life. I facilitate a group for women who have experienced abusive relationships once a week together with a colleague of mine. This week we talked about boundaries and how difficult it can be to set these. I listened for a while, being a witness to the struggles these women go through in their lives. And then something clicked for me.

Five months ago, I started this journey. At that point, I was nowhere near walking 100km in one go. 20, maybe, just maybe, 30km might have been OK, but that's about it. I would not have been able to walk the whole thing without killing myself. It is the same with the boundaries some of these women struggle to set: They might want to set a boundary with their abusive (ex)partner, but this is just too big a task to do. So, they give up. Just as I could have given up five months ago. I could have said: “This is impossible! I am NEVER going to be able to do this!!!” And that would have been fair enough. But this is how we bury our dreams. Accept the status quo. Stop reaching for the stars. Because we tend to forget that all things need training. Walking 100km needs training. So does setting boundaries. And learning to be gentle with ourselves. And accepting our feelings for what they are. We don't start out with the biggest challenge. We pace ourselves. We have a rest when we get tired or hurt. We experience many up and down moments. We celebrate victories along the way. And then, one day, we are ready to face the biggest challenge. And then, just then, we dare to reach for the stars…

Self-care

It's been a crazycrazycrazy month filled with many a good thing. Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't change anything about it. Or maybe I would. Who knows. Can't do anything about it now anyway. And I thought that I was coping well. At least until last Tuesday…

I ran a group for women in the morning. Everything was fine. Or as fine as can be when the topic of the day is “Impact of domestic violence on children” and when you are also battling a headache that kinda gets worse by the minute. I remember debriefing with my co-facilitator afterwards and she suggested that my workload had increased over the last weeks and that maybe I should think about whether I was getting enough self-care. I told her that I was indeed taking good care of myself. That it was just a headache. Really.
It hit me when I drove back, going from one thing to the next to the next to the next. I realised that I had hardly stopped during the last weeks. That I had not even written another entry for my blog in the last couple of weeks. So, where was my self-care again? When this realisation hit me, I broke into tears. I felt extremely tired and low, fighting to keep the car safely on the road. Eventually, things got a little better when my headache subsided, but the question remained: Was I doing enough self-care…

People generally fall into two categories: Selfish or selfless. People who are selfish find it hard to be selfless and vice versa. The key to self-care is to understand that self-care actually needs both sides of the same coin: Sometimes it means that we are able to give to others and sometimes it means that we need to have firm boundaries. It means that we are able to say both Yes and No. That we understand that they are both valid. That they both have their place and time. I talk to my clients about this and still, I so struggle with it myself at times.

The people I am privileged to see in my clinical work inspire me. They are full of strength, resilience, wisdom. They sometimes lack hope or the ability to see future possibilities. They might need someone who encourages them to put themselves first.But they eventually get there. They learn how to dance with adversity and be in relationship with themselves.
Right now, I need to do the same for myself. In order to be a counsellor, I need to be gentle with myself. I sometimes need to make decision that others might interpret as selfish. And that's actually ok. I have zendoodled my Hand of Self-Care a couple of weeks ago. As an exercise and as a reminder for myself. Maybe I need to look at it more often and then actually put it into practice. For I wholeheartedly love my job. And to do it justice, I need to wholeheartedly love and care for myself…

Zendoodling

I have always said that “I am not much of an artist”. I have always felt inferior to others who just have a particular gift for it. I have also known for a long time that I am something like a writer, but give me a pen or paint or pastels and I will either run away screaming my head off or break down crying because I wouldn't be able to create anything worth looking at anyway.
This of course happened before I joined the online group ”Art Therapy and Happiness” (have a look here: http://www.trauma-informedpractice.com/online-courses/art-therapy-happiness-project/). Initially, I was blown away and utterly intimidated by the quality of work I found in the workshops offered to us. And then, I created my first Zendoodle. And suddenly, I was happy and not so intimidated anymore. This is what I wrote in the group forum when uploading the picture:

Just completed my first Zendoodle. And yes, it was a surprise to me - I actually felt like an artist by the end of it :-)
And yes, I 'cheated' a bit, being a beginner and all - I ran with the idea of tracing my hand to have an outline first and I looked up different ways of filling it in. I did my own thing and I copied some of the stuff I found. And even though it felt a bit like cheating, I realised that what I am doing is actually called 'learning'. And that felt good. I will try and make as many Zendoodles in the next month as possible and I am SO looking forward to the art swap now :-) [where every participant creates 12 Zendoodles, keeps one, sends the remaining 11 to other people, and receives 11 ‘new’ ones] Zendoodles are fun :-)

I was amazed by my positive response to this art activity. I was amazed how quickly I understood that cheating doesn't always equal cheating, that sometimes cheating is actually learning. I allowed myself to be guided by other people's ideas without feeling bad about it – looking for inspiration does NOT equal failure. I have found something I like to create, something other than writing. This has been a wonderful experience for me…