I’ve personally found that trying to change myself actually gets in the way of healing. I am (mostly) okay with acknowledging I am not in control. Sometimes life hands you a crisis where the only way out is coming to accept that reality. For me, what happened to me on psychiatric drugs was one of those situations. In that realization too, there is grace. With grace comes deep healing.
The idea of not being in control, nor ever being able to be in control, isn’t a comfortable thought for a lot of people. For me, though, surrendering to “that which is” is where my healing comes from. No choice anymore, just surrender. I practice letting go and watching. In that process I get out-of-the-way and let life flow through me. We find we have an amazing teacher right within us if we can learn to do that. That has been the way I’ve been able to find the inner guru and thus find some peace and happiness even in the midst of ongoing autonomic nervous system chaos…now I get to watch this body and mind and spirit heal. It’s an amazing ride and I’m grateful to be here to watch it.
A practice to work with the process of acceptance and surrender:
They will remain shut away behind a hedge of thorns. The journey in search of soul is difficult and even dangerous because it requires that we relinquish the certainty of what we think we know and what we have been taught for generations to believe. It means surrendering the desire to be in control and opening ourselves to a quest, a path of discovery. Many myths and fairy tales emphasize the need for surrender and trust in the strange non-rational guidance offered by animals or shamans on the quest. As the hero follows their guidance, so the hedge opens, the way unfolds. Following the guidance and wisdom of the instinct is the royal road into the realm of soul. ~ Anne Baring
More related:
- Waking the Still, Small Voice Within
- The guru is within…
- To see a professional or not
- Crash course in Urban Shamanism
- We have internal guidance. Learn to listen.
It is a natural part of being that our lives sometimes contract before expanding.
Sometimes our lives contract before they expand. We may be working hard on ourselves spiritually, doing good in the world, following our dreams, and wondering why we are still facing constrictions of all kinds—financial, emotional, physical. Perhaps we even feel as if we’ve lost our spirituality and are stuck in a dark room with no windows. We may be confused and discouraged by what appears to be a lack of progress. But sometimes this is the way things work. Like a caterpillar that confines itself to a tiny cocoon before it grows wings and flies, we are experiencing the darkness before the dawn.
When things feel tight, it’s easy to panic or want to act in some way to ease the feeling of constriction. We might also spin our wheels mentally, trying to understand why things are the way they are. However, there is nothing we need to do at this time other than to be patient and persevering. We can cling to the awareness that we are processing the shift from one stage to another, and the more we surrender to the experience, the more quickly we will move through the tightness into the opening on the other side. Just like a baby making its way down the birth canal, we may feel squeezed and pushed and very uncomfortable, but if we remember that we are on our way to being born into a new reality, we will find the strength to carry on.
Even as we endure the contractions, we can find peace within ourselves if we remember to trust the universe. We can look to the natural world for inspiration as we see that all beings surrender to the process of being born. In that surrender, and in the center of our own hearts, is a willingness to trust in the unknown as we make our way through the opening. – by Madisyn Taylor
After meditating for some years, I began to see the patterns of my own behavior. As you quiet your mind, you begin to see the nature of your own resistance more clearly, struggles, inner dialogues, the way in which you procrastinate and develop passive resistance against life. As you cultivate the witness, things change. You don’t have to change them. Things just change. ~ Ram Dass
More related:
- Choice and emotion: a short essay with some musing
- Letting go: the ecstasy of surrender
- We have internal guidance. Learn to listen.
- Waking the Still, Small Voice Within
- To see a professional or not
- You are your own teacher, guru, healer
- Acceptance doesn’t mean acquiescence…
- the light enters us where we’ve been wounded: radical acceptance
- Radical Acceptance is one of the most challenging and liberating of practices
*it is potentially dangerous to come off medications without careful planning. Please be sure to be well educated before undertaking any sort of discontinuation of medications. If your MD agrees to help you do so, do not assume they know how to do it well even if they claim to have experience. They are generally not trained in discontinuation and may not know how to recognize withdrawal issues. A lot of withdrawal issues are misdiagnosed to be psychiatric problems. This is why it’s good to educate oneself and find a doctor who is willing to learn with you as your partner in care. Really all doctors should always be willing to do this as we are all individuals and need to be treated as such. See: Psychiatric drug withdrawal and protracted withdrawal syndrome round-up
For a multitude of ideas about how to create a life filled with safe alternatives to psychiatric drugs visit the drop-down menus at the top of this page.
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