On finding balance through psychotherapy
Balance. It’s a word that can bring to mind the image of a tightrope, and the challenges of staying upright. We hear it often in the context of wellbeing - are we achieving that tenuous idea of “work-life balance”? Are we “balancing” our responses? Is our diet “balanced”? In many ways, thinking of mental health as well as mental illness through a lens of balance can be a powerful concept. The idea may have roots in Hindu spirituality, but offers an opportunity to think of healing in a way that accentuates our innate strength and resilience for everyone who struggles with the idea of struggling.
In an earlier post, I discussed Ayurveda, and what it has to say about mental health. In essence the idea is that our distress is NOT a personal or moral failure, rather an inability to understand how to achieve balance within ourselves on all the levels of our being. If we can start the process of understanding where we feel imbalance, we can begin to do the work of adjusting our scales. Many of us may have had the experience of having a doctor tell us we’re deficient in iron or some vitamin, and noticed how taking a daily vitamin can lead to renewed energy and vitality. At some point, others among us have discovered that making time to work out has let us feel that it’s easier to process our emotions. Perhaps we’ve realized that while one of the values we hold most dearly is being there for our friends and family, our work has made it impossible for us to have time to spend with them - the solution may not be straightforward in getting that balance back, but often, simply recognizing what it is that we’re missing can lead us to feel more hopeful about addressing our distress.
At our core lies strength and resilience. In the day to day of life, we can feel a constant teeto-taling of imbalance that leads to our distress. When we take the time to recognize this, we can feel more equipped to understand what we need for our healing. Psychotherapy is here to provide the space for us to tap into our resilience. As we talk, we might recognize that it’s important to seek additional support from an MD who can help us use medication to find balance in hormones and neurotransmitters. We might discuss that it’s really important to work through the barriers to connecting authentically with friends and family, so that level of balance can be achieved. Perhaps we’ll explore a sense of loss, and how to feel comfortable enough exploring it to understand how to build back or honor what we’ve lost.
When we can see that our strength is just hidden in the hard moments of our lives, we have the opportunity to find our power to change things. A tightrope requires constant focus and adjustment, and often we can use some help to find these things. It also offers us the chance to move forward, to get from A to B, if we can find our balance. The view is pretty great!