Sunday, May 7, 2023

Who Are You beyond Your Suffering?

Learning to let the damaged part of your being trust its wise self will help you to take responsibility for your reactions and improve your mental health

By Quentin Steen, Representative/BC Member Education Coordinator

It’s hard to sit and listen to how your actions, inactions, behaviours, choices, and decisions have damaged others and to recognize that one of these individuals is also your self.

What’s even more challenging is to own your damage with no excuses. To say sorry and mean it. To change what you don’t like about how you respond or react in situations that trigger you and erode your mental health.

What you need to create is the growing capacity to own your stuff, not with excuses and contempt for yourself, but with empathy and compassion.

I have and am prone to ignore my reality, but I cannot ignore the consequences of neglecting my current reality. For every action, there is a reaction that’s on its way. It’s science. It’s reality. It’s life.

Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to explore psychedelic-assisted therapy in conjunction with therapeutic modalities. Under these clinicians’ supervision, I hope to take some of the internal and emotional pressure off day-to-day situations.

Integrating psychedelic therapy into my therapeutic journey is nothing less than a profoundly deep and freeing integration.

I recognize that what I said will attract its fair share of critics and stigma. It’s not for everyone, but for me, it unlocked several pain-filled sticking points that I have been trying to get ahead of most of my life. I’m 53.

As I continue to face and heal from my trauma in these safe, professionally moderated spaces, I’m still left with the question, who am I beyond that? What is my true nature that isn’t my suffering?

I have this very fierce and intense part of me that is a warrior for justice, for what is right and wrong. That’s a deeply embedded part of my true nature.

But unfortunately, I was also bullied. This is where some of my damaged parts rub up against my true authentic nature. How do these damaged parts land in my life when I face something that, in my eyes, is wrong, unfair, and unjust, a seemingly regular occurrence for me?

Whenever I encounter an unjust situation, the energy I bring to it (unconsciously) is usually disproportional. As a result, from time to time, I experience episodes of adrenaline surging through my bloodstream.

This chemical-induced concoction is not only extremely toxic, but it should not be in my bloodstream to those levels unless my life is in danger. The last time I checked, my life wasn’t in danger.

But my brain thought it was. And that’s the work of a dysregulated brain and nervous system.

Learning to connect to the parts of me that have been damaged whenever I feel that rising energy of injustice welling inside me has been a difficult challenge at times but not impossible.

Instead of ignoring it, I’m learning to comfort those parts of me and gently remind them that it is 2023. I’m an adult now. I know how to take care of myself. I can let the damaged part know that it can trust my wise self.

This is how I must start taking responsibility for my reactions, or my quality of life can only rise to a certain point.

Who are you beyond your suffering?

What would it look like to increase your resilience to be better prepared to face the consequences as they come? What would it take? What do you need to happen to make it happen?

A good starting point is knowing who makes up your internal family, and that’s the subject for the next Monthly Mental Health Moment.

Quentin Steen is a certified mental health first aid instructor for the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

Get your BRAIN right and your MIND will follow!

4 Mental Health Resources to Help You

If you or someone you know is struggling with a mental health issue, CLAC has a number of resources and interactive tools available to help you at My Health and Wellness.
Stronger Minds features videos and quick reads from mental health experts, activities to help you gain resilience, and ask-an-expert videos in response to questions.
WellCan offers free well-being resources to help Canadians develop coping strategies and build resilience to help deal with uncertainty, mental health, and substance abuse concerns.
Wellness Together Canada: Mental Health and Substance Use Support provides free online resources, tools, apps, and connections to trained volunteers and qualified mental health professionals.

Who Are You beyond Your Suffering?

4 Mental Health Resources to Help You

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