Pure exhaustion. That's where I am. Like I could just close my eyes and sleep for 24 hours straight. A combination of difficult patients, a baby who won't sleep, a kindergartener with a lot of emotional needs, a house to clean, and a husband who it seems I just have enough time to say hello to and get the kid update. And that's it. All this has led me to totally fall off the wagon of spiritual practices, including this blog.
This is not to say I don't see how everything I just listed could be viewed as a spiritual practice in itself, it could. And some of the time I do. But I'm talking about the more obvious and direct spiritual practices like prayer, yoga, meditation, going to church, lectio divina, writing. Practices that I both enjoy and find highly effective for keeping me sane and grounded. But when do you just stop everything you are doing and catch up on sleep?
I only ask because I actually fell asleep during a church service two weeks ago. Not on purpose of course. It just happened. One minute I was listening to really beautiful music (because it was music Sunday at my UU church) and the next minute the minister was asking us to rise to recite our benediction.
Snoozing in church, and not over boredom, led me to reevaluate whether I'm trying to do too much? And since the answer to that question is a reverberating "yes," what do I do about it?
Well, I could cut. Cut what I consider to be nonessentials. But when I look at the list, I notice everything "nonessential" is what nourishes me. Ever the caretaker, I kept the ways I nourish others-whether it be literally with my children or figuratively with my job as a psychotherapist. But why do I put my own nourishment on the chopping block? Because I will tell you, I have no interest in martyrdom.
I think my inclination to turn away from myself in times of stress is a combination of habit perpetuated by two thinking patterns: all or nothing thinking and shoulds. To be sure, a more balanced approach to stress would be to cut back instead of cut out, and do it with some self-compassion and kindness.
I once heard a definition of stress as described by Richard Lazarus as: "a particular relationship between a person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his/her well-being." I like this definition of stress because it takes the importance of perception into the equation. I have a hard time making allowance for perception in regards to stress, at least for myself. The over-achiever that I am, I say to myself "I should be able to do this, that and the other." Even when my body is literally falling asleep on me.
To state the obvious, this is not a balanced, healthy approach to anything, let alone making time for spiritual practices. In fact, the word "should" does not even belong here, and I would like to substitute "should" with "valid."
A couple months ago I had an experience of losing two people in my life to cancer within a week, and someone said to me afterward: "everything is valid." She was referring to my response to the deaths, meaning there is no right or wrong in grief. After she said it, it occurred to me that the phrase "everything is valid" was so contradictory to my own judgment of how I perceive experience including things like meditation and yoga. While this individual was suggesting valid, I was perpetrating the shoulds, and that difference stopped me right in my tracks.
So what if I were to let go of the shoulds with my spiritual practices when I'm exhausted after a sleepless night with my daughter or a challenging day with a suicidal patient? What if I were to let go of my all or nothing thinking playing itself out in my spiritual practices where I do meditation, yoga, spiritual reading and writing for 45-60 minutes a day several days a week or I do absolutely nothing at all and veg in front of the tv? What if I were to say to myself, "everything is valid?"
That black and white, either/ or response to stress is one choice. Or, I could compassionately, radically accept that though I am not able to engage in contemplative practice as I used to, either because I'm falling asleep or I'm strapped for time, I do not have to stop everything.
I could surrender to reality with willingness by letting go of how things "should" be and instead embrace reality as it is.
Now, when I'm less fatigued and not counting every precious minute of sleep, I may go back to my old routine because I enjoyed it and it worked for me. But for now (one of my favorite expressions) I will see what I can do and let go of the rest.
What "should" can you let go of today? Is an all or nothing mindset interfering with your spiritual practice?
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