Know Thyself

….and to thine own self be true

Getting to know myself has been a long and winding journey. Without realizing it, for decades of my life I absorbed much of my parents’ mental/emotional responses and perspectives, and much of my own naturally innate responses were obscured and suppressed. I am guessing this happens for most of us. Importantly, without knowing myself, it was impossible to be true to myself.

I grew up in the second-born position, in a family with 4 children born in a span of just 6 years. By the tender age of 2 1/2, I had a baby brother and an infant sister. My father was a full-time university professor, bringing home work in the evenings as well, and my mother was home with us, most of the time, until I was about eleven. Looking back as an adult (and myself a parent of 3 children), I can see that my mother really had her hands full, and that I must have had to develop some strong coping mechanisms very early on.

I have always thought of my childhood as a relatively healthy one, with an engaging physical environment, caring parents, and basically hardy physical health. I did suffer early on with recurring ear infections (which led to a tonsillectomy at age 5) and eczema, which I now realize may all have been a result of the dairy foods we consumed daily. Otherwise, I was free of any serious health issues until young adulthood, and I was well supported in my strong athletic, social, musical, creative and artistic abilities.

Perhaps due to the healthy outer layers of my childhood environment, the family tendency toward emotional suppression was less visible, and I did not begin to realize the brewing seriousness of my inner turmoil until my late teens/early twenties, after I had left home for college. It was decades more before I could fathom the full effects on me of the interplay between my personality and personal make-up, and the emotional environment of my family of origin. Both of my parents were raised in the deep south, in a culture with a strong emphasis on social graces and keeping up appearances. Navigating messy emotions and the intricate emotional, psychological and spiritual needs of a sensitive child are understandably not my parents’ strong suits. Also, my mother grew up in a family with alcoholism and abuse, the facts of which my parents tried to protect my siblings and me from. While I know my parents have always done their best to love me well, it was critical for me to unravel the roots of the angst inside me that ultimately grew to an unbearable pitch.

Years in psychotherapy did not actually seem to help me very much with my deepening anxiety and depression, and in the years after a serious downhill skiing accident at age 18, in which I wrecked my left knee and required long rehabilitation, a whole cascade of physical symptoms began to appear in the form of migraine headaches, jaw pain (TMJ), back pain, severe persistent insomnia, and digestive ailments. Other than the original knee trauma, I can see now that these were likely all of mind-body origin. I could see some of the surface sources of my emotional pain, but I couldn’t yet grasp the underlying dynamics.

“And the Great Mother said:
Come my child and give me all that you are.
I am not afraid of your strength and darkness, of your fear and pain.
Give me your tears.
They will be my rushing rivers and roaring oceans.
Give me your rage.
It will erupt into my molten volcanoes and rolling thunder.
Give me your tired spirit.
I will lay it to rest in my soft meadows.
Give me your hopes and dreams.
I will plant a field of sunflowers and arch rainbows in the sky.
You are not too much for me.
My arms and heart welcome your true fullness.
There is room in my world for all of you, all that you are.
I will cradle you in the boughs of my ancient redwoods
and the valleys of my gentle rolling hills.
My soft winds will sing you lullabies and soothe your burdened heart.
Release your deep pain.
You are not alone and you have never been alone.”
~Linda Reuther, Homecoming

Readily recognizing myself in the book, The Highly Sensitive Person, and realizing that I scored very high on the included tests for this type, was an extremely important step in my understanding of myself. I learned that it’s been scientifically verified that 15-30% of the population (in most other species, too) are considered to be ‘highly sensitive.’ It’s a healthy trait that we are born with, and it has to do with how our nervous systems are wired to be especially highly tuned and more alert. Some HSP’s are highly emotionally sensitive as well, and strong empaths, and some are not. Fundamentally, this is a permanent trait in a person, and is best viewed as a true gift to be honored, as well as wisely tended and stewarded.

This information really helped me to make sense of why certain kinds of environments or situations were so physically or emotionally challenging for me, while most other people seemed to glide through them easily, seemingly oblivious to the cues and stresses I perceived. It also gave me important insights into the unique difficulties for me in navigating the dynamics of my family relationships, with my HSP trait. The childhood-me had no tools for this, but now the adult-me did.

Much later, I saw a Ted-Talk presentation about the idea of an ‘ambivert’ – a person who readily traverses the spectrum between introvert and extrovert. The speaker was heralding this as the best of all worlds, since it can foster easier affiliation and camaraderie with all people, but it helped me to see clearly the phenomenon by which the extrovert in me was frequently exhausting the introvert in me! On the ‘Meyers-Briggs’ personality typing spectrum, I was clearly testing as an ‘INFP’ type (Introvert-Intuitive-Feeling-Perceiving). Typical of introverts, I definitely need to be alone to do my deepest recharging, but the idea of ‘ambivert’ helped me to integrate my naturally friendly and gregarious nature into a more comprehensible whole.

I am grateful for all of the challenges in my life, since they have caused me to explore the deeper layers of myself, and getting to know myself more deeply has opened up my ability to recognize what I really want, and what I really need. Because of the complexity of my personal traits, sometimes what I think I want, and what I know I need, appear to be in conflict. My skill in action is to harmonize them, and I have learned that this is usually feasible and in fact is the ‘sweet spot’ I look for these days. An example of this is creating the personal boundaries I need (to tend my sensitive, tuned-up nervous system), within the lively, stimulating surroundings of the live-in community environment that I love. Being an HSP is no longer a problem for me, but rather a gift that helps me intuitively, continuously navigate the nuances of the terrain to co-create the life that I love, and that loves me back. Creative strategies, appropriate personal boundaries, and mindful choices are the keys to fully embracing the uniqueness of me, so that I can keep my focus on living an inspired life.

"All the greatest and most important problems are fundamentally unsolvable. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This out-growing proves on further investigation to be a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appears on the horizon, and the unsolvable problem loses its urgency, fades out when confronted with a new and stronger life urge." - Carl Jung

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” - Gandhi

My trajectory in life has not been simple or straightforward. Un-packing the complexities of me has been a full-time job for decades, with no ‘retirement’ in sight yet. I have become okay with that. My quest to know myself has been fraught with many directional shifts, at times causing dramas for me, and for those closest to me. Yet I have no regrets, and I no longer make apologies for my journey. I own it, I claim it, I love it, and the more I know and honor the inner workings of myself, the more I begin to let go of the fixed idea of Self at all, and the more harmony I experience in life.

A couple of years ago, I traded the wildly creative and explorational life-chapter I co-created from a home-base on some sprawling country land in Michigan, for a simpler, quieter base in a balmy seaside village in southern Florida. My creativity, and my love of community, is very much still central to my life, as I am gaining more finesse in matching my choices in these aspects of life with my true needs and desires. Gradually, over many years of practicing radical honesty in my relationship with myself, I have been able to see my relationship to my family of origin in a new light, too. I can more lovingly hold in my heart our substantial and meaningful common ground, while celebrating my uniqueness and knowing my sovereignty. I am inspired to keep shooting for the day when my understanding will be such that I will no longer be trigger-able, and I will be in full mastery of the art of being always true to myself. I am not attached to reaching this destination, as I am able to enjoy the magic of riding on the inspiration.

Recommended Reading:

The Highly Sensitive Person, by Dr. Elaine Aron
Not Nice, by Dr. Aziz Gazipura