Letting go

This interminable winter in the Intermountain West has found me pensive.  It seems that the more that this frozen wasteland forces me indoors, the more stuck in my own head I become.  Luckily (or regrettably?), that gives me plenty of time to ruminate.

I've been mentally chewing on a particularly troublesome issue recently, that of letting go.  Anyone who knows me knows I'm a hoarder.  I compulsively save receipts, old emails, cards, random documents, etc.  Most of the time, this compulsion serves only to irritate Kayley and provide me with a sense of relief when I will myself to purge the excess from the pockets, drawers, and closets of our home.  However, one thing that to which I've unrelentingly clenched is of the self that I'm supposed to be.

I moved to Utah with many expectations about the counselor I was, the strengths I felt I had honed on the reservation, the unique way I would be able to relate to the most difficult clients.  My years on the reservation had both hardened me and opened me up in ways that most first-year graduate students didn't know.  I was so eager to begin seeing clients and flex my interpersonal muscles.  I was ready to be an expert therapist the day before I began learning about therapy.

Needless to say, after one year of practicum, I'm not an expert.  I've not blossomed and flourished into the unique potential that I felt came with me from home.  Instead, I've been dealt one humbling blow after another that have left me reeling with doubt about what the hell I felt I knew before I started.  Clearly, as seems most obvious now, it was an absurd expectation from the beginning.  What has troubled me the most is not the feelings of insecurity or ineptitude that come with the experience of being a budding therapist.  Rather, what sucks the most is the loss of that sense of who I was.  It wasn't just that I felt like I had some skills that prepared me for grad school.  I felt like there was something about me that would allow me to reach and connect with the people others couldn't.  It seriously sucks to lose that image of myself.

Knowing completely that I am not a special flower, one of God's unique little snowflakes meant to live out my providentially-designed destiny, it seems clear that I would instead embrace that I will have to succeed as a psychologist by virtue of hard work and attentive training and supervision.  But the grief over the loss of myself is really hard to stomach.  Why do we cling so desperately to these imaginary realities, and why do they have so much influence on our daily lives?  My supervisor told me, ever so compassionately, that:

"It seems like you have this image in your head of who you ought to be and what you ought to be able to do.  And you are trying your best to take your reality and stuff it into your dream."  

Why is it so hard to accept reality as it is?  I am a student therapist with zero previous training in formal therapy skills or supervision.  What gets in the way of us seeing the reality of our daily lives and simply embracing it?  I think for myself, I'm the product of a 25 years of innately- and environmentally-driven self-improvement.  The skills that have pushed me academically and personally to improve myself, to see beyond the present and imagine a better future are now working against me.

I think we too often focus on what needs to be different, what parts of our bodies feel too flabby, the areas of our personalities that irritate us and compulsively work to change them.  Self-improvement is a great thing.  Ambition can be very powerful.  But I think we culturally value these ideas to a point of pathology.  Where does acceptance fit?  When is the time to step back and disengage from ambition to simply appreciate the place one finds oneself?  What do we sacrifice by hoarding our imagined selves and stuffing our real selves into them?

Today, I'm going to meditate on releasing the self of my imagination and work on accepting the self of my reality.  I'm a second-year grad student that has a shitload to learn.  I'm in a really great place that deserves both of my feet in the present moment.  I want to systematically and compassionately dig into the nightstands, drawers, and closets of my identity and unclench my fists.  Today I will balance my ambition with surrender and acceptance.  Namaste.