Sunday, January 10, 2010

Still Crazy After All These Years

What does it actually mean to be "doing well" psychologically? To be functioning happily; to be feeling good; to be alright?

The idea that I usually encounter is that to meet the above definitions, you have to be some version of perfect. Perfect in experience; perfect in behavior; perfect in thought and in feelings. This perfection takes on different shapes and sizes according to the individual involved, but there always seems to be a way in which whatever it is that they are doing and being is not it, and this in itself is cause for significant concern and distress.

Try this view on for size: perhaps it's not so much what you are being or doing or thinking or feeling that is the entire problem. Perhaps it is at least equally, and maybe more so,how you are relating with the above. So Paul Simon can sing about how he's still crazy after all these years, while he is perhaps able by now to relate more gently and compassionately with his imperfections and his foibles and even with his problematic ways.

This is not to say that one needn't make changes. It is to say that much unhappiness is the result of the self hatred, or self judgement, or self criticism that we perpetuate, and not the direct result, necessarily, of what we are otherwise doing and feeling.

A corollary to this view is that, by developing this kinder relationship with yourself, you then automatically open the possibility of making desirable changes in other areas of your life. This occurs naturally you might say, because this ability to accept and to nurture yourself creates the context in which the basic and fundamental self that you are can emerge; a self that is responsive to caring and to love, and that is itself caring and loving.

You make changes more easily and more gracefully in an environment of love than in one of judgement and criticism. And in the meantime, you benefit from the kindness of yourself toward yourself.







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