Not a Bird: Finding Our Way with Acceptance

“...2020....If you didn’t know beforehand how you cope with circumstances beyond your control, well, you’ve probably got a pretty good idea by now. ”

I have a little unlined journal I wrote in when I was 8 years old. Amidst pages of unicorn drawings and stutter-start stories, is a page with three simple lines on it:

It is what you are given

and what you must accept.

It is not a bird.

And there it is. The answer to everything. I have chuckled over those lines, scratching my head about what on earth could have prompted my second-grade brain to pen them. It’s going fine until the last line. Life – it is what you are given, and what you must accept. Sounds deep! Also - not a bird. Mmm...undeniable. I have to say, this odd little snippet of wisdom from my younger self has become a bit of a mantra for me, the sober realization of the first two lines comically balanced by the seeming randomness of the last. I didn’t ask for a bird. You get what you get. And, as we say to our kids, you don’t get upset. You accept it.

I still remember the aha-moment I felt as a graduate student training in a hospital setting when my supervisor finally explained to me why he always noted if a patient showed use of acceptance to cope. I was working with patients who had life-changing injuries and illnesses, people who had lost their independence, often unexpectedly and suddenly, and were living through a time in their lives when it was unclear if they would ever recover their previous level of functioning. I could hardly imagine living through a similar experience. Why did my supervisor document a patient’s use of acceptance? In his words, “because it’s the best thing anybody can do in a situation like this.” It is the gold standard of coping when circumstances are beyond one’s control. And it’s not the end of the story. Acceptance is the start. You can’t get very far in your new reality if you can’t accept that it’s the one you’re living in.

Which brings me to 2020 – our new reality, unfolding relentlessly in a series of seemingly endless crises, injustices, tragedies and disasters ranging from the hilariously small-scale (think toilet paper) to the entire future of life on our planet. If you didn’t know beforehand how you cope with circumstances beyond your control, well, you’ve probably got a pretty good idea by now. Reminds me of my favorite mental health meme that went around Facebook: “What doesn’t kill you gives you a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms and a dark sense of humor.”

We are living through collective traumas on a massive scale. How will we get through and be resilient on the other side? Like the patients I worked with in the hospital, we are wondering if our lives will ever get back to normal. Perhaps we have to start by accepting that the world as we know it is changing, and life will not be the same. That we will not be the same. That acceptance is itself a powerful pathway to change. As Carl Rogers famously put it: “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I change.” What if we take 2020 on its terms, even as we all desperately want change on many levels? What if we offer ourselves this kind of radical acceptance? Maybe it’s the best thing anyone can do in a situation like this.

“It [acceptance] is the gold standard of coping when circumstances are beyond one’s control. And it’s not the end of the story. Acceptance is the start. You can’t get very far in your new reality if you can’t accept that it’s the one you’re living in.”

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Monica Green, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist, PSY27391, specializing in depression, anxiety, trauma, relationship issues and psychological aspects of chronic health conditions.

Home: Kailua Beach

This November, MHT is participating in the Miry’s List Friendsgiving Fundraising Drive. The money goes to programs that support refugee families that have been resettled in the United States. In tandem with these efforts, our clinicians are writing posts reflecting on what home means to them.

One of the most frequented places of my childhood and one of my favorite places in the world is to be sitting on the sand staring out at the ocean on Kailua Beach on the island of Oahu. With the trade winds blowing and the steady force of the movement of the Pacific Ocean while sitting on an island that is a bit Eden-like, I experience a sense of knowingness and consolidation. On a concrete level, I am home -- this is the town I grew up in, so it is no surprise I would feel this feeling of being at home when I visit. On a more symbolic level, this external landscape resonates with the dynamic terrain of my internal world as I have come to know it -- the magnitude, the depths, and the beauty. Because of the places I have been able to go inside myself, with the help of my own psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in robust relationships, I have found more solid, peaceful places to stand inside myself, regardless of where I am. This is what home means to me – an at-one-ness or at-home-ness with myself.

“These foreign places did not feel so foreign to me, which I think has been a direct result of getting to know the foreign, unknown parts of myself. I have felt more at home in the world because I have felt more at home in myself.”

As I have gotten older, I discovered that I could feel connected to myself, wherever I was on the planet, regardless of differences in ethnicity and language, culture and religious traditions. I have traveled to many places around the world, all over the US during different seasons – harsh New England winters and unforgiving heat in desert Summers. I’ve walked amidst the beauty of the dramatic edges of Western Ireland and through the rolling hills that surround quaint towns in Southern Spain, to name a few. In all of my travels, I have learned that I could easily fall in love with the beauty of the natural world and ancient history of our human experience, in all its unique expression, and still feel at home. These foreign places did not feel so foreign to me, which I think has been a direct result of getting to know the foreign, unknown parts of myself. I have felt more at home in the world because I have felt more at home in myself. Through my own growth and development, which has truly been a pursuit of my own sense of feeling whole, I have grown sturdier and more at peace in my own mind and heart. This has made risking my vulnerability in relationship a truly meaningful encounter, offering me a sense of love and connection to all of life.

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HERE'S HOW YOU CAN PARTICIPATE IN FRIENDSGIVING WITH US:

Give! Visit our Miry’s List campaign page and make a donation. It's that simple and no sum is too small. Truly.

Follow! Be sure to follow us on Instagram and our blog throughout the month of November. We will be reflecting on what it means to be welcomed, received, and known.

Share!  Help us spread the word. You can do this by sharing our social media posts or links to our Miry’s List Friendsgiving Fundraiser page.

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A little about Miry’s List:
Refugee families come to the United States seeking a safe haven from violence and persecution in their home countries. They leave behind family and friends, as well as virtually everything they own. Many Americans, seeing these families in their communities, wonder: What can I do to help? Miry's List provides a mechanism for people to directly help new arrival refugee families with the things that they need to get started in their new lives – from diapers to beds to cleaning supplies and toiletries. To learn more, visit miryslist.org.

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Dr. Gabrielle Taylor is a licensed clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst who serves as Clinical Director at Michelle Harwell Therapy.

Shadow Self

Here it comes….duck and cover!

...This is the part where MHT gets a bit too real and talks about the things we all hate to talk about: Those parts of our self that are thorny, contentious, ugly, and shameful. Ugh. There it is. Shame. I feel myself grimace as I write it.

Why is it that we have a panicked desire to hide parts of ourselves, while at the same time longing to have our ugliest, most hidden parts named and seen? It is a curious, if universal, paradox. When we hide, we feel relief. We are somehow safe, while also perilously insecure, able to be known in relationship, and yet so alone.

“Some of our most powerful relational experiences occur when our deepest-hidden parts come to light in the eyes of another - when we find that we are not rejected, criticized, and shamed but rather recognized, related to, and accepted as we are.”

The shadow self, as Jung termed it, is a universal feature of being human. We all have a dark side which the vast majority of us try madly to remove from consciousness. Our unconscious defenses are primary, but we also consciously reject our shadow. Many or most of us are in the business of self-surgery, frantically trying to excise our unacceptable parts, our envy, hatred, rage, aggression, and malice. To the extent that we are “successful” in this, we determine how much we are aware of and how much operates outside our conscious control. We can no more escape these parts of ourselves than we can cut off our actual, physical shadow.

To suggest that we accept our shadow side runs counter to our strong, ingrained reflex to reject it. The idea that we turn and meet our shadow self, hold out open hands and get to know it probably sounds, at least at first, dubious, distasteful, dangerous, or downright impossible.

 At rock bottom, it comes down to wholeness. When we reject a part of ourselves, we are necessarily internally divided. And that cannot stand. Literally. Our search for self is essentially a search for wholeness. And here we are in a serious bind. We cannot integrate our darker impulses with our conscious values. They are inherently at odds. And yet when we reject our dark side, we are only more divided.

As a consummate rejecter of my own dark side, I have found that the more I am able to accept my unacceptable parts, the more I am able to keep them in the realm of my conscious awareness, where I can exert more influence over them. And that might be the best we can do on our own. Allow them to be visible so that we can keep an eye on them. We can’t be rid of them, so they might as well be as whole as we can, recognizing that we are all both upstanding citizen and outlaw.

But in relationship, we find that a deeper wholeness is possible. Some of our most powerful relational experiences occur when our deepest-hidden parts come to light in the eyes of another - when we find that we are not rejected, criticized, and shamed but rather recognized, related to, and accepted as we are. We see that our worst self is all-too-familiar territory in the eyes of the other, and a bond forms. Our hated self is part of the beloved. If we can love it as part of someone we love, then we create the possibility of loving it in ourselves. Can we love our most unlovable parts and allow them to be loved? Wouldn’t they take over and do all manner of unspeakable harm? Or would we find instead that the same love that can unite people, is able to unite us internally, as well. Our unlovable self might come into the light of Love and be transformed.

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Monica Green, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist, PSY 27391, specializing in depression, anxiety, trauma, relationship issues and psychological aspects of chronic health conditions.