In a previous article, I talked about how we can feel worried that we’re betraying our values if we ask ourselves to make changes or lose weight.
This can be especially sticky if we value things like gentleness, compassion, tolerance, and acceptance. Asking ourselves to change can feel like we’re not accepting ourselves as we are.
This can be especially true if we were harsh towards our bodies or towards ourselves in the past – or if others were harsh with us, like shaming our bodies when we were young. Asking ourselves to make changes can feel like we’re colluding with these past places of harshness or abuse.
When we get hurt by something, we understandably label it as ‘bad’ or ‘wrong.’ We may try to avoid this ‘bad’ thing or go to the other extreme. Or we may find ourselves feeling confused, swinging from pole to pole.
For example, in my own life, I was hurt and frightened by the anger of the adults around me as a child. I internalized that anger was ‘wrong,’ ‘bad’ and ‘scary,’ and made a vow that I wouldn’t hurt others with my anger.
Of course, this didn’t work, and caused its own problems. I went from one pole to the other – where anger went from ‘anything goes’ to ‘anger is wrong and should be avoided.’
My healing journey has meant opening to, accepting, and integrating anger rather than polarizing against or for it. I’ve had to come into relationship with anger – with my own, with others’, and with my beliefs about it.
You may have your own areas of stickiness, where you were hurt and either polarized against or for something. If your body was criticized harshly, you may be strongly allied with body acceptance. If you had harsh, frightening, or rigid limits as a child, limits in your mind might be ‘bad.’
If you felt harshly overpowered or powered over, you may feel strongly that ‘no one can tell you what to do’ and it may be hard for you to take in other people’s perspectives or wisdom.
This polarization against the places where we get hurt is our human conundrum, and we all journey through it. And this polarization shows up as an inner conflict, worry, or prohibitions (“I can’t do that!”) when we try to make changes.
We can help ourselves move through this polarization by noticing it – to come into awareness that it’s there. As our awareness deepens, we can get to know it. We can compassionately wonder, what’s underneath this strong ‘for’ or ‘against’ stance?
As we come into awareness, we come into a relationship with it. Whether we’re polarized against anger, power, limits, sadness, authority, or our bodies, we’re being asked to move out of the either/or space and to come into a place of both/and: where we can see all the sides of an issue, all the grey.
In the spaciousness of both/and, there’s more room to make changes, and more freedom. This isn’t the freedom to do whatever we want, but the freedom to respond, to choose what’s ripe in the moment – to choose how we wisely relate to what’s here before us.
Sometimes love arises in the form of firmness, limits or strong boundaries. That there’s firmness does not mean that there also isn’t compassion, softness, mercy or understanding. Sometimes love arises in ease, levity, and letting go.
When we aren’t polarized into either/or, we can respond with this flow with ripeness. We can allow all the flavors of love to flow through and in us as we come into a relationship with everything in life. It’s the yin, and the yang.
And through this relationship, sometimes we find surprising things. After decades of working with anger, I can feel some inklings of change, where I can see how anger has it’s own fierce love and beauty. That surprised the hell out of me!
I wonder what you might find in these places, for you?