Care For The Self

Welcome to Spiritual Psychology.

My name is Renee LaVallee McKenna and I bring my 30-plus years as a recovering addict and ex-crazy person turned therapist and shamanic healer to bring you snackable teachings on spirituality,

Psychology,

And all things personal growth.

And today I want to talk about care for the self,

Which in my opinion is a little different than what's commonly known as self-care.

And I spend a lot of time helping my clients and mentees develop genuine care for themselves and I've had a lot of opportunities over the last few months to look at my own strengths and challenges in caring for myself.

I just returned to Manhattan this week after three months in California recovering from full knee replacement surgery on my left leg.

And although I've been eligible for that surgery for many years because my knee was what's called bone on bone,

Which meant I had no more cartilage between my femur and my tibia.

And although I didn't have a lot of like critical pain,

Manhattan is a walking city and I live in a fourth floor walk up.

It was getting more and more challenging to just get around in daily life.

And participating in healthy change is one of the most important parts of caring for the self.

And often change is quite difficult and even painful.

And I gotta tell you this surgery was no joke.

They cut the ends off two of the biggest bones in your body and they hammer in a replacement joint.

It's pretty radical and also pretty amazing and incredible that they can actually replace stuff in the body now in a way that works.

And of the most potent and powerful self-care that I've needed to do in my life has been like this radical surgery.

Where old structures that are dysfunctional are no longer serving me,

That are actually handicapping my life,

Need to be removed and replaced with stronger more functional systems.

And this kind of deconstruction and reconstruction can be really challenging.

In fact it can push you right to the edge of what you think you can handle.

In fact there's a saying that I've heard many times that God won't give you more than you can handle.

My experience is that that's bullshit because many many times I have been given much more than I could handle by myself and it's forced me to reach out for help to expand my resources so that I could grow to meet those challenges or changes.

And life change can be radical and intense.

Death,

Illness,

Needing to end or leave a dead or toxic relationship,

Find a new job or career path,

Move to a different place,

Let people go out of your life or welcome new ones in.

And the challenge is often the willingness to let go of what we're familiar with because there's a fear that there's nothing new that's gonna come.

But there is a spiritual principle that every death creates a new birth.

The sun sets every night.

It will rise the next day at a slightly different time.

And an enormous part of caring for the self is to willingly participate in this life flow,

A very healthy life flow,

Of letting go of what no longer serves us,

Of deconstructing these old outworn ways of being and relating so that new,

More productive,

Constructive systems,

Relationships,

Experiences can grow and take root in our life.

The apple tree has to let go of its leaves every fall and go through a period of rest in winter to make room for the new leaves and the new growth to produce even more fruit the following year.

And I don't know if an apple tree has feelings as its leaves color and drop to the ground and fall,

But I know for myself the changing careers,

Leaving a marriage.

I actually left two marriages but only one of them really counts.

The first one was kind of like a fake trial run marriage.

Moving to New York from San Francisco,

Watching my son go off to college,

Getting a new knee,

Have all been experiences initially of loss followed by new growth and expansion.

And we're surrounded by cycles of endings followed by new beginnings.

Day and night,

Tides flow in and out,

New humans,

Animals,

And plants are born and they will all die and pass away.

And I believe that's an endless cycle that even on the other side of our own death is a rebirth,

A continuation of the life force through all living things on a soul level.

And when I talk about care for the self,

I am talking about that deeper level,

To take the long view of what's actually healthy and fulfilling and will create the greatest growth.

And that's often at the expense of immediate comfort.

And that's a real challenge because a lot of us have been taught or come to believe that self-care is about comfort.

I had a lot of anxiety as a child.

And so my mom would let me stay home from school and she thought she was caring for me because that's how she cared for herself.

When something was frightening or difficult,

She avoided it.

And the poor thing,

She didn't know any better.

She really thought she was caring for me and herself.

And in her own way she was,

But it was very short-sighted care because it is challenge,

Change,

And dynamic tension that strengthen us.

If you feel really tired,

You need to rest.

If you feel really tired every day and you lay around on the couch,

You will get weak.

Now it can be complicated because I know for myself as a very active person,

Some of the challenge of recovering from surgery was that I needed to lay around and rest for much longer than I thought was necessary or appropriate.

And it was really frustrating because I wanted my leg to heal much faster than the process actually took.

Or is still taking,

I'm still in it.

But I'm finally at a place where it's starting to feel better than before I had the surgery.

And I have to put a lot of work into building new muscles.

I have almost no quadriceps in that leg just because of the way I had a walk and my leg was crooked.

It was all screwed up.

And some of those exercises really hurt actually.

But there's a metaphor here because one of the most dangerous things when we replace something new is to avoid the difficult and often painful work of building new muscles,

Creating new structures,

And knowing the difference between healthy and unhealthy pain.

Because if we overdo it,

Then we can hurt ourselves.

And there's a sweet spot in every aspect of our life just like that.

I over-exercised a couple times early in the recovery process and it put me down for like two or three days,

Unable to sleep with pain.

And I got frustrated because I wasn't in control of the process.

And I had to be reminded again and again to surrender.

That there is a wisdom,

A deep intelligence unfolding within every area of our life if we can align ourself with it and to it.

And can we even come to trust it and allow ourselves to be carried forward by it?

And so the way I cared for my children when they were anxious to go to school was of course to comfort them and try to find out what the deeper anxiety was about and address that fear and do everything I could to help them show up so that they could develop those inner muscles of facing and transcending difficulties that I had to spend thousands of dollars in therapy and 12-step programs to figure out as a grown-up.

Because I thought pain and discomfort was the problem.

Pain and discomfort is information and it's a symptom.

It gets our attention,

It tells us that something is needed,

And our work is to be present with this idea of our deeper self to take the long view of what's really needed or wanted here.

I could take a bunch of Tylenol or Oxys to take care of the pain in my leg,

But if I didn't do the difficult exercises my leg would never get stronger and that pain would continue.

So self-care on the deepest level is about the relationship that I have with my deeper self.

To be present with pain,

Suffering,

Difficulties and ask what's really called for in the long run.

Long-term good over short-term comfort.

And it's probably the most destructive aspect of any kind of addiction or distraction.

Whether I'm medicating with drugs and alcohol,

Shopping,

Compulsive eating,

Too much porn,

Being obsessed with my relationship or other people's problems.

I'm distracting away from the deeper information of what's needed on a soul level.

Now certainly there are daily or short-term self-care needs.

Having a nutritious and satisfying eating habit keeps my body at the same weight.

Exercising that body so it feels happy and healthy and strong.

Full of energy.

Getting enough rest to recover and replenish.

Having quiet time,

Prayer,

Meditation,

Self-reflection or just presence in nature.

To care for my spirit.

Having engaging mutual relationships where I give and receive from others.

Being aware of the kind of information that I take in or the content that I consume.

Is it fearful,

Distressing or is it hopeful,

Inspiring,

Humorous?

And what are the things I need to be able to do these difficult and challenging things that we all have in our life that will make me grow and progress and really fill my soul?

My goal at the end of my life is to have no regrets.

We need to live as if our life depended on it.

We get to have a life here and it's both long and short at the same time.

And we only get one in this form.

Now part of my self-care was to withdraw from doing any kind of outflow of my energy that might deplete me because I needed all of my resources to participate in this healing and recovery process from the knee surgery.

So I haven't produced any podcasts in the last few months.

Haven't done any lives on Insight Timer.

Now I'm ready to start producing again.

There is a natural timing for things to align ourself with and it can be complicated to know what that timing is.

I have a lot of both friends and professionals that I work with.

I get a lot of advice and supervision and insight to help me navigate complexities of being a fully functioning human.

To be able to align with this larger life force flow that does have our highest good in evolution in mind.

But I've stayed some places too long and I've left other places too early.

And it all comes out in the wash but now I know there is kind of an optimal timing and a lot of my work of self-care is tapping into what that larger system,

That deeper wisdom is.

So I think about my client Suzanne.

Works a very high-powered job in tech and got really burnt out.

Decided to take a sabbatical.

And so she took six months off and has recently returned to work.

And we've been really looking at the difference between exhaustion and anxiety.

And she's been working a lot on trusting the resilience of her own body,

Mind,

Spirit system.

That when she feels challenged and tired that there's a time to work through it and there is a time to rest.

And Suzanne never learned about healthy stress.

We don't talk about healthy stress.

And Suzanne had a pattern of doing too much and exhausting herself and then feeling weak and depleted.

And we've been working to find this sweet spot of healthy stress.

And I don't mean the fear of not getting things done or the stress that's put on by the external system.

I mean healthy stress like weightlifting.

And Suzanne had this experience in exercise as well.

That she would jump in and over exercise and hurt herself.

And it was reinforcing this idea that she was weak.

It's what happened to me when I rode too many miles on the bike early in my recovery.

And then I was laid up for a couple days.

And I felt the same thing like,

Oh my God I'm getting old.

I'm never gonna be able to whatever.

Never ever forever.

Those things don't exist.

Resilience is always available to us.

So some of the change is coming out of these unhealthy feedback loops.

And for her to recognize that just because she's tired doesn't mean she needs to take a day off.

That maybe she can work half steam.

Do good enough.

Push herself a little bit to finish the project.

And then take a nap in the afternoon or rest later.

So it's a new concept for her.

That there's resilience in her body.

And that pushing herself in a moderate way could actually build tolerance and strength.

Again just like weightlifting.

I was bench pressing last night and I'm just getting back to the gym and I got to be careful because I can't do the weights I could do in May.

And if I push too hard I could hurt myself and then I won't be able to work out for a couple weeks or months.

So there's a sweet spot of healthy stress that will make my muscles grow and strengthen me.

And if we do too much or too little it weakens us.

And that is in every area of our life.

And our physical body is a metaphor for our mental,

Emotional,

Spiritual,

Relational,

Professional,

Creative,

Sexual selves.

And I think we need to exercise and care for ourselves that balance of challenge and rest of day and night.

When is it time to let go of my leaves?

When is it time to grow new ones?

And those are deep questions.

Often very complicated.

I left a relationship of 20 years and I have to say I feel like I left at exactly the right time.

It wasn't new information that there were problems.

It became clear that it was time for the leaves to drop.

And if the apple tree holds on to its leaves it won't be able to grow new one.

So how do we participate in the natural unfolding systems and flow of change in our life?

How do we listen to the wisdom of our body,

Grow and evolve emotionally and in our belief and thought patterns?

How do we challenge and expand ourselves creatively,

Relationally,

Sexually?

How do we support ourselves to live fully and deeply this life that we get to live on all these different levels and areas?

And I'm going to tell you if you're paying attention there's always room to grow and work to do.

Thank you so much for listening.

Blessings on your path until we meet again.

This is Renee LaVallee McKenna for Spiritual Psychology.