Integration and Acceptance

Adrian Fry, Principal Dancer with Ballet West, has been sharing some amazing wisdom about mental health on his personal Instagram page. I encourage you to read his posts @fryadrian. Thank you Fry for inspiring me to share some of my own mental health reflections.

We all have parts of ourselves that are challenging to witness. Inner struggles we’d rather not see because they bring us pain. For a long time I felt like there was something wrong with me when difficult emotions would arise. The messages I received externally didn’t add up with my inner world. I’m supposed to be happy, right? I shouldn’t feel like this. I shouldn’t be struggling. Just get over it...

When I was honest about my feelings with others, I was often dismissed, or met with blame, and criticism. In those moments, I felt like I needed to be “fixed”. And I wonder why it’s so hard for some people to hold others space for another’s feelings and emotions. I wonder why it’s so hard to simply listen.

I love this quote from Glennon Doyle’s Untamed:

“If you are uncomfortable - in deep pain, angry, yearning confused - you don’t have a problem, you have a life. Being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong, it’s hard because you’re doing it right. You will never change the fact that being human is hard, so you must change your idea that it was ever supposed to be easy.”

I realized that it is my responsibility to go inward, and fully accept myself, and my struggles. And with the understanding that what we resist persists, perhaps we can simply adopt the belief that there is nothing wrong with us for struggling, and feeling it all.

I believe I’m not alone in receiving messages of judgement from others. Being shamed for my struggles used to send me into spirals that I struggled to break free from. The external criticism, and message that I needed to be different, was more damaging than my inner struggle. And even now, on my bad days, I’m afraid there is something wrong with me, and that I’ll never be happy...but these days pass. Change is the only constant. Our pains, and our joys, are temporary.

I also now understand being vulnerable can bring out into the open what others don’t want to see in themselves. When someone shames you, it’s often because you’re revealing a part of them that has not been integrated. In you, they see the pain they are too afraid to feel themselves.

And so, my relationship with mental health is a practice. I practice existing fully integrated, and try to love all my feelings and emotions.

I practice existing in the discomfort of anxiety.

I practice feeling the pain and numbness of depression.

I practice softening in rigidity of perfectionism.

I practice setting boundaries with people who shame and project onto me.

I am trying to reframe my relationship with my mental health challenges. I try to allow my emotions and feelings space to exist, and to love myself through the experience rather than punish myself for feeling the way I do, or try to make the discomfort go away, or project it onto others.

I don’t cover my eyes anymore. I want to live fully present; to feel and experience all of life. The only way out is through. On the other side of our deepest pain, is our greatest liberation. So let’s give ourselves permission to feel, and accept it all.

Katlyn Addison’s ballet Hidden Voices @katlynaddison

Photo Credit: Beau Pearson @beaupearsonphotography