Tiny Buddha

Tag: heal

  • Being Sick Doesn’t Mean You’re Wrong: Enabling Real Healing

    Being Sick Doesn’t Mean You’re Wrong: Enabling Real Healing

    “You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    A lot of people I know who have had chronic illness, including myself, have had a hard time letting go of the feeling of “wrongness” that arises with it, in the mind.

    I sometimes wonder where this comes from. When I look at our culture I get a feeling for where we get these messages. It doesn’t, generally, seem to emmanate non-judgmental compassion!

    In our age of consumerism, photoshopped bodies, and a million-ways-to-look-young-and-feel-great-forever, the body’s propensity to get ill is generally seen as some kind of mistake. This may not be the spoken message, but it’s there in the subtext.

    We are encouraged to believe that we can (and should) control our material universe, including our bodies, to be exactly the way we want.

    When attached to, these beliefs and ideals can lead to misery.

    If you’re sick, for example.

    Why?

    Because when it is taken as an absolute truth, we start to feel an uncomfortable stirring in the heart. A quake in the depths of ego. It usually goes something like this:

    “I’m creating these conditions. It’s my fault. I must be wrong because of this.”

    And if feeling like crap physically wasn’t enough, the ego-mind and the energy body join in on the party. Cue depression, self-hate, and often, a worsening of symptoms.

    With a bit of perspective, it’s easy to see that this is not wisdom. This is self-harm. From the inside though, it can feel absolutely real, especially when we’ve got some teaching or another to back it up. The voice of some guru in our head whispering, “It’s your fault. You just don’t want to be healthy enough.”

    Hmmm…

    Luckily, in deep teachings, and in the presence of beautiful people, you never find this sort of thing.

    What do you find?

    You find real compassion. (more…)

  • 6 Ways to Deepen Your Compassion to Help People Who Are Hurting

    6 Ways to Deepen Your Compassion to Help People Who Are Hurting

    “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” ~Dalai Lama

    I thought I understood compassion. Having spent ten years of my life training to be a psychiatrist, I knew how to define it, describe it, and think about it. I thought I got it.

    A few years ago, my brother was diagnosed with a serious mental illness. Being the mental health professional of the family, I took a long break to be with him as he navigated the initial stages of treatment.

    This experience taught me that compassion is more than being nice to someone for a few minutes or hours.

    True compassion is hard work, but it’s worthwhile. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”

    In trying to help him, I too was changed for the better.

    Among the many things I tried as part of the process, some worked. Here are the top six that have stood the test of time.

    1. Listen.

    Often while listening to someone, we are formulating replies in our mind, waiting for a lull in the conversation so we can interject. Try instead to just listen. Suspend all judgment and give the person your undivided attention.

    There is powerful healing in sharing your darkest secrets and having another person truly hear it and still love you. (more…)

  • Healing Depression by Taking Care of Your Mind, Body, and Spirit

    Healing Depression by Taking Care of Your Mind, Body, and Spirit

    “Suffering is not caused by pain but by resisting pain.”~Unknown

    Prior to my twenty-second birthday I was spiraling down a self-destructive path, partying at all hours of the morning and drinking excessively to numb my pain. I was a rebel with a cause, as the lure of the nightlife kept me away from my dysfunctional home.

    I was searching for love and happiness in all of the wrong places, but the universe stopped me dead in my tracks, both literally and figuratively, when my brother committed suicide.

    Devastated by the loss of his presence in my life and the close bond we once shared, I felt utterly alone. I couldn’t fathom my life without my beloved brother. His death was not something I anticipated.

    I needed answers and some sort of explanation as to how a happy-go-lucky young man had changed into a moody and depressive person.

    In my grief-stricken state, I went to the public library and retrieved books on suicide and mental illness. I needed to categorize his disease. Was it bipolar, schizophrenia?

    Coincidently, I had a medical appointment with a general practitioner. I was a new patient and had never met this doctor before. But I immediately felt at ease with him, and though I went in for a physical reason, I left his office with a plan for self-healing.

    After a few sessions with the doctor, I learned about depression, dysfunction, abuse, and addiction. Initially I didn’t know what those terms had to do with me and my brother’s death.

    I was completely overwhelmed, and as I excavated my past, I plummeted even deeper in my darkness. I remained stuck in stage four of the grieving process—depression.

    My pain was so unbearable I even contemplated my own death. When the doctor offered antidepressants, I declined.

    I chose talk therapy as opposed to antidepressants, not because of any stigma, but because I envisioned myself in a vegetated state for the rest of my life.

    I already had family members in this predicament and I vowed that it was not going to me. So I was quite aware that I was genetically predisposed to manic or bipolar depression.

    After one year of dealing with my issues, I abandoned my own treatment. I was caught up in a whirlwind romance with my prince charming. We got married and built a life that my girlfriends dreamed of.

    Yet, I was still unhappy and, after a nine-year relationship, I found myself divorced, picking up the pieces of my life, and headed back to the doctor’s office.

    I was severely depressed and diagnosed with bipolar tendencies. Still, I stubbornly refused antidepressants. (more…)

  • Finding Beauty in Your Scars

    Finding Beauty in Your Scars

    “Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    Beauty is a concept I struggle with—what it means, why it matters. I struggle because huge chunks of my life have not been beautiful. They have been ugly, marred by trauma, with pain, and anger.

    We think of beauty and often visualize glossy magazine pages and wafer thin models. We see beauty as superficial—eye color, hair texture, and numbers on a scale. We see beauty as something to be measured and weighed.

    I don’t see beauty that way. I see beauty as the grace point between what hurts and what heals, between the shadow of tragedy and the light of joy. I find beauty in my scars.  

    We all have scars, inside and out. We have freckles from sun exposure, emotional trigger points, broken bones, and broken hearts.

    However our scars manifest, we need not feel ashamed but beautiful.

    It is beautiful to have lived, really lived, and to have the marks to prove it. It’s not a competition—as in “My scar is better than your scar”—but it’s a testament of our inner strength.

    It takes nothing to wear a snazzy outfit well, but to wear our scars like diamonds? Now that is beautiful.

    Fifteen years ago, I would have laughed at this assertion.

    “Are you crazy?” I’d say, while applying lipstick before bed. I was that insecure, lips stained, hair fried by a straightening iron, pores clogged by residue foundation, all in an attempt to be different from how I naturally was, to be beautiful for someone else.

    I covered my face to hide because it hurt to look at myself in the mirror. I was afraid my unbeautiful truth would show somehow through my skin—that people would know I had been abused, that I as a result was starving myself, harming myself in an effort to cope. I was afraid people would see that I was clinging to life by a shredding thread.

    Now? I see scars and I see stories. I see a being who has lived, who has depth, who is a survivor. Living is beautiful. Being a part of this world is beautiful, smile-worthy, despite the tears.

    Beauty isn’t a hidden folder full of Kate Moss images for a kid dying to forget and fit in, a lifted face, a fat injected smile, or six-pack abs. It is the smile we are born with, the smile that sources from the divine inside, the smile that can endure, even if we’ve been through a lot.

    Emotional pain is slow to heal, as I have been slow to heal. My healing started with a word I received as a birthday gift. It was a photograph my friend took of a forest, the word “forgive” painted in pink on a stone. I didn’t understand why that word meant something until I really started to think about it.

    I blamed myself for so long for things that weren’t my fault. Life stopped being beautiful to me, I stopped feeling beautiful inside, and my smile stopped shining beauty out into the world.

    I think in order for us to make life beautiful we need to feel our smiles as we feel our frowns.  (more…)