Nurturance

 I listen to quite a few people on topics related to integrative medicine. My husband is a big believer in an integrative approach for cancer and I instinctively feel that there is so much merit to looking at life style and the mind for a sensible approach to healthy aging and happy living.

Deepak Chopra is on the record saying, 'Emotional trauma is the beginning of disease' and I feel the same way. When we are in turmoil on the inside that's when the body and mind have little choice but to believe that something is seriously wrong with this Being.

Michal Singer said in his podcast series (I listen on Spotify) that when a disregulated feeling occurs, to go away and relax the body and let the feeling release.  

I have noticed within myself for some time a sense that I need to rely on myself. It's not just a need perpetuated by circumstance - the pandemic, for example - but a need for this Being to be quiet; deliberate; self generating.

Some examples of this are the self-hugging I learned in yoga classes; befriending myself (accepting all parts of myself as welcome), walking alone, yoga online (we are in lockdown) and looking to be alone and silent as much as possible.

A thought has been simmering away, and gaining momentum more recently, that my interactions with some people aren't really in any way equal. Equal is a loaded word. It's hard to define equality since relationships have built into them a sense of give and take, with the scales tipped in one direction sometimes and in the other direction at other times. But, I don't mean that sort of 'not equal'.

What I mean is that I began to get a sense that I was there for the other person, not for them to be a source of friendship or comfort as I was for them, not with that empathic desire that is inbuilt in me, but rather as a stable presence for them.

This feeling didn't occur with just one person but with a handful of people. When I first noticed that feeling, and for some time after, I carried on as usual. I did my best to ignore the feeling. Yet, over time, what happened was that the feeling became more pronounced. The feeling became very uncomfortable.

There is intelligence in listening to the messages of the body. I noticed that I might get to the end of an email message and feel this empty feeling in my stomach. There was no nurturance. I hadn't got a jot of a sense that I was being offered anything genuine; heartfelt. The comments felt like such platitudes it left me to feel that what was keeping me in the relationship was a sense of duty.

Last June, I was scheduled to go to a Silent Retreat for a week, and if that had not needed to be cancelled due to lockdowns this would have been a wonderful experience for me. I can try to be as silent as possible in day to day life to create a sort-of Silent Retreat, but it will never match an environment where the expectation is that nobody talks.

For empaths especially, silence is a tonic. People tend to naturally want an empath in their lives. Empaths don't ask for much from people and they often don't get much, either. I don't mean material things. I mean nurturance.

It's true that empaths like to be of service; to give. They do get a lot out of making other people happy and seeing other people happy. In my earlier years I wouldn't have thought the way I am thinking now. I was just there for people; slipped off alone when it got too much, without thought about that behavior.

I don't know if it's a good or bad development. All I can say is that I began to see interactions where I felt that something was being taken without something being given in return as like a rock clinging to my leg. I began to feel I wanted to be freed.