Therapy is Political: the Power of Connecting with Your Own True Nature

(Content Warning: Genocide, violence)

While I hope you are well, I also understand if you are not. It has been over four months and more than 11,000 Palestinian children have been killed in the name of fighting terrorism. As a human being, this is disturbing. As a therapist, I have been struggling to navigate how to hold this violence with my clients. Many of my clients have brought up the impacts of this violence. We struggle to hold and accept it together. 

Therapy is political because the dominant systems that operate today do not support the existence of our emotional and embodied beings. 

And so while I hope that you are well in this ever changing world, I also understand if you are in the midst of emotional upheaval. A climate of global violence will no doubt impact interpersonal realms, the shared energy field, and how it is to exist on this shared home planet. 

Witnessing

As we witness this violence, we are also being asked to reflect upon our reaction to witnessing catastrophe. What is true for us as humans as it relates to how we want to exist on this planet?

For me, as a hopeful carrier of light, I cannot accept this violence.

I cannot understand it. There is no room for this way of treating others in the world that I want to live in.

Unprocessed Trauma and Violence

Violence is often the result of untended or unprocessed trauma. It is my belief that this level of violence that we are witnessing is only possible when people are traumatized generation after generation, and as a result, are disconnected from their capacity to experience our shared humanity.

We now understand that unprocessed trauma is passed down from generation to generation. It has been said in Native American and Eastern traditions that when we heal ourselves, we heal seven generations ahead and behind us.

Correspondingly, atrocious trauma and violence endured and untended has impacted and will continue to impact generations to come. Healing, becoming whole, integrating light and dark, returning to loving ourselves (which can happen inside therapy or through a myriad of other ways) is then also ending the cycle of trauma for generations to come.

Do not underestimate the power of showing up in love, of having found the beauty and perfection of your own self and your own nature.

Healing a.k.a Connecting with Your Own True Nature 

What has guided me through the last couple of months is to connect with my own nature and to find that my own nature is love. 

My own nature is joyful. My own nature is contentment.

These are things that you would not have caught me saying three or four years ago because they didn't feel true for me.

But they do feel true now.

More of us are waking up to our own true nature. Many spiritual and religious teachings including Buddhism and Hinduism assert that our own true nature is bliss, joy, and is free from suffering. 

I offer that waking up to our own true nature is also a form of activism. 

And I want to be very clear that I support activism. I support activists. I support the brave people who put their lives and bodies on the line for justice. It is important to tend to the physical world and the spiritual. 

In the moments when I cannot stand this world I live in, or I cannot stand my emotional experience, I am humbled to get curious about my experience. I get curious about what I can and cannot change. I tend to the underlying pain. I hold my experience with love and know that this clears the path for new ways of existing.

For me, finding a sense of wellness and remembering my own true nature is an ongoing effort. I wish I could tell you otherwise, that if we put the time in for a week, our lives become easy. For most of us, wellness requires ongoing attention. For me, it’s meditating, exercising, journaling, showering, sleeping, feeling my feelings, crying, feeling overjoyed, being in nature, connecting with community, being alone, finding spiritual nourishment…mostly it’s acknowledging my experience at any given moment and responding with care. I am convinced that tending to the self is non-negotiable in a distressing world, as this is the pathway to know the self. I can’t know my Self if I’m running from how it is to be me.

As you bravely walk towards your own healing on this planet, know that the care of yourself, the acknowledgment of your experience, including what enlivens you and what you find unacceptable, is beautiful and necessary.  A vedanta teacher shared with me recently, “You cannot stop [participating in] the terrible war until you know who you are.” I can do my best to stop the war outside, and I must also tend to the wars inside myself. 

I will leave you with the words of Audre Lorde: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

May you get to know, care for, and love your own true nature. Connecting with your own true nature is political.

With hope,
Natasha