There is more to staying positive while chaos, dysfunction, and negativity encircle you. Bloom where you are planted even if you are planted in the muck of life. I have told my clients for twenty-two years, “Be the Duck.”
Mind you, I never had the same client for twenty-two years, but helped many different clients through the years. I do not believe in the approach of spending months and years, going back into your childhood, rehashing old traumas by keeping that vibration alive within you today. Once said is enough, that is necessary.
Spending months and years to recover your mental health, unless you do need a psychiatrist for mental health issues beyond the scope and practice of a holistic health counselor provider, is not necessary.
I offer my guidance here for your benefit. Try it to see if it works for you. It might save you a lot of time and money. The plan I am suggesting here can work whether or not you are seeing any other kind of therapist or doctor.
I am certified by the American Association of Drugless Practitioners Certification and Accreditation Board since 2003. Not everyone needs medications to remedy most mental health issues, including trauma.
It will take some self-discipline. You will need to set a timer and not argue with yourself that you need more time. You will have the opportunity to go over your issue again next week and the week after. This plan works, but only if you do it.
Plan to hold a session with yourself once a week for one hour. Spend the first 15 MINUTES of the hour by setting the timer for 15 MINUTES, to go over the problem at hand. After you shut the timer, spend the next 45 minutes creating a life-affirming action plan involving only yourself. This is not a plan for anyone else. The plan is all life-affirming, no retaliation, gossip, or self-justification, only positive thoughts, considerations, and real-time, step-by-step plans on how you would like to proceed.
Plan to hold this exact template for the next seven weeks, for a total of eight weeks. Only then access where you are and how you are feeling. You will be amazed at your own progress.
Is it a comfortable process?
No.
Change is never easy. Who likes changes?
A breath of fresh air, new concepts and alternatives that never occurred to you can suddenly come to light. This can only happen if you give yourself the necessary time and mental and emotional space to consider alternatives available to you. You do not need anyone else’s permission to start living your plan, as long as you are over the age of eighteen.
Notice what a duck does. It swims along and when it gets hungry, it simply goes down into the muck of the pond where all the nutrients are, takes what it needs, then bounces back up to the top without any of the muck sticking to it.
I never read this short saying anywhere, nor heard it spoken. It seemed that their personal freedom had been usurped or they had simply given it away because in the exhaustion of dealing with the crisis on a daily basis stole whatever energy they had left.
They were in a state of continual fight or flight struggle. I have been in this state myself and recognized exactly what the remedy was by watching what a duck does. Nature is a wonderful teacher.
Also notice that when a duck changes its mind and wants to go in a different direction other than the current it is in, it does not smash its wings down in huge splashes in a fit of rage. Rather, it simply flies off in the direction in which it chooses to go.
The duck does not carry any of the muck with it as it flies off. The muck slides off the duck as it rises up to the surface of the water. After navigating around all the muck to find the tender roots of nutrition, the duck comes back to the surface of the water. I know, this seems like a ridiculous example to use. But it points out the reality of how to heal your mental and emotional quandary.
The duck cannot exist without going down into the muck from time to time. But one bad experience of finding no nutrition does not stop it from trying the next time. Only when nothing good can be found by repeatedly doing what is not working, does the duck decide to move on.
Enough of the duck in the muck. What about you?
Are you running your life, or is your life running you, like an automatic treadmill with no off button?
No one is the boss of you. You are your own boss even if you are employed by a company or corporation. You decide what your parameters are. You have choices. You may not like all of them, but you still have options.
You are not a victim of your life.
You can blame others, or what has happened to you along your life’s journey, but it is what you decide to do next that matters.
Perhaps it’s time to take a deep breath and brainstorm all the positive, life-affirming opportunities that are available to you. You’ve got this.
Namaste