Answers and Expectations

I just realized this morning that my head is full of answers.

For the longest time, and still to this day, I have always asked questions. When I hear someone claim a phenomenon, my first impulse is to ask "Why?" of "What if?" When I was little, my mom even went so far as to limit the amount of "Why"'s I could ask before I had to ask another question. At some point, I must've realized that some questions "don't have answers" (which really means that the person I was asking didn't know the answer) and that some questions were not going to be answered anytime soon. Sometimes questions were answered with more questions.

I was, and still am, simply trying to make sense of this world. Seeking answers. Trying to convince myself that it was safe and worth it to stick around. Looking back on my life, I can see that my entire young adult life was spent seeking answers to the plethora of questions I had about the world I was seeing and what it was telling me about myself. So many questions about what was going on inside of me, inside of my head and my heart. From counseling and psychiatric hospitalizations in high school and college, to a degree in Neuroscience, to working in group homes, to becoming a naturopathic physician.

And the answer always depended on who I was asking.

If it was a psychiatrist, usually the answer was related to a idiopathic biochemical imbalance of neurotransmitters that is likely genetic in origin and can be regulated through the new latest and greatest expensive creation of mankind. This particular one helped me lose a lot of trust and faith in mankind, research, and modern-day society in general. That whole system, from my perspective, is based upon the patient giving up trust in themselves for trust in what's ultimately a higher power, yet its a higher power comprised of the same perfectly fallible human beings that the system's trying to treat. It implies a judgment and a power differential, one that says, "You're more crazy than I am" I say Horse Shit.

If it is a shamanic practitioner, the answer might be that I've lost multiple soul parts during the course of my life and the gaps were filled in by whatever resident spirit or energy was lurking about at the time. I may have also been invaded by other energies in a more forceful manner. Now my soul needs a clearing, some extraction work, and then the soul parts need to be called home and placed back in my body. Then I must parent them and reintegrate these parts into the soul, for they have been gone a long time and aren't familiar with the new older version of me. Again, there's the giving up of power, but it seems much more temporary. This time, there's more emphasis on the patient working towards health. The reintegration process encourages things like counseling, craniosacral and massage therapies, and basic attention and awareness paid to whatever came through for you in a soul retrieval.

If it's a Sacred Contracts counselor, perhaps then the answer is about introducing and integrating the twelve archetypes that agreed to accompany you throughout this lifetime as you carry out your life purpose.

If it's a mental health counselor, it's about tempering the moment into self-reflection, regardless of what happened in the past to whom by whom in whatever fashion.

Despite having all of the aforementioned treatments, I still have moments of tremendous anger, or grief, or giddyness. I still have days of foggy-headedness and irritability. I still can't seem to follow a healthy diet or exercise routine. I have the expectation that somehow I can be fixed; that when I achieve optimal health, these things won't be experienced. I have the expectation that I'm not an endless vat of sorrow, or mania, or unbridled emotion of any sort. I have the expectation that I can be explained.

SO.....what if:

I am not fixable.

I am not broken.

I am in optimal health.

I experience things like anger and grief and giddyness.

I am an endless vat of sorrow.

I am an endless vat of mania.

I am an endless vat of unbridled emotion.

I cannot be explained.

What if I broke these expectations, and loved myself anyway?