At this time of year, I hear various perspectives on motivation. “I know I need to rest, but I feel guilty doing nothing”… “I’m finding it hard to engage my usual conscientiousness”… ”I’m looking for a more meaningful motivation”. This article is an extension on the livestream Rachel and I shared a couple of years ago on why Will-Power doesn’t work. It’s an invitation to see “laziness” or “lack of motivation” not as a rebellion to overcome but a reliable indicator of wellness.
Look to the definition of burnout and you’ll find these symptoms:
Physical symptoms
Headaches
Stomach problems
Fatigue
Frequent illness
Changes in appetite and sleep
Emotional symptoms
Helplessness
Cynicism
Sense of failure/self-doubt
Decreased satisfaction
Feeling detached
Loss of motivation
Behavioral symptoms
Reduced performance in everyday tasks
Withdrawal or isolation
Procrastination
Outbursts
Using substances to cope
Source: www.carepatron.com
While you GP will send for diagnostic testing regarding physiology, some of which may reveal helpful information, your psychologist may use Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to address anxiety and work-related patterns, your yoga class will provide a circuit-breaker and breath for self-regulation, here is a perspective you’re likely only to find in a therapist who is Somatically- and/or Jungian- trained, and has decades of patient-facing experience.
Background
At our Saturday morning Burnout- & Trauma- Care Clinic, we practice inhaling to observe and exhaling to feel.
This is based on an adult-lifetime of observing the inhale heightens mental acuity, and the exhale enables physical release, as well as principles of yin-yang, ha-tha, reaching and grounding.
The goal is to be able to move our attention and ultimately build an empowered relationship between cognisance (mind) and the felt experience (body) eg “When I hear … (cognisant of incoming information) I notice I feel…(sensory response)… because I long for (cognisant of sensory “pull”)… so perhaps I could (cognisant options)…”. Like a dance between a loving couple, the mind and the body...or as this post explores...the adult and the child...respond to each other in a way which builds overall wellness.
Parts of Ourselves
In relational terms, we can see that the body represents the child. S/he has primal (innocent) bottom-up needs for safety, security, nurturance, play, attunement, to be heard and seen, to know she matters.
The mind represents the adult. S/he has cultivated (higher order) top-down needs for co-operation, growth, order, purpose and self-actualisation.
When the mind has taken up more than his/her fair share of the oxygen, the body will tantrum as an attempt to get her needs met. Her tantrum arises as sensation first, building to physical signs and/or symptoms, and ultimately as a physical condition (any of which can be honoured and reversed).
Equally, when we are overly identified with the inner child, we miss opportunities for responsibility, growth and self-respect.
Body-Mind / Child-Parent Relationship
What is the child-parent relationship in your family? The way your caregiver responded to you as a child, is likely to be the way you respond to your own body.
When s/he needs food, how do you respond? Quickly, let’s get this over with, so we can return to the “important” stuff? Or what would be really nourishing, satiating, nutrifying right now? When s/he need to move? That can wait, til I get to it. For now, just pipe-down. Or what would feel just right, to scratch the restless itch right now? When s/he needs to rest? Needs physical closeness? Needs breath?
Equally, what are the adult needs that are being over-ruled. The developmental need for ease and efficacy, for self-respect or self-responsibility. When your inner-adult feels the pull of contribution, do you “soothe” with child-like chocolate binges? When s/he needs self-respect? Ah, c’mon let’s not make a big deal out of it. When s/he needs ease and efficacy? You’ll never get the help you really want. It’s just a pipe-dream.
This can be incredibly helpful information, and explains how somatic practice is the process of Re-Parenting; Re-learning responsiveness and inner-mediation in a way which lets us know the adult and child needs together are what guide us to a more balanced and fruitful existence.
The Rebellious Body
Ah, now this is a topic that’s been pressing me to be write about it for decades.
I remember the moment exactly. I topped the class in our hardest first year subject, Chemistry. Our progressive and somewhat philosophical Chillean lecturer, Alejandro Arellano, had made it even harder, by throwing in a humanities question about the meaning of science, alongside our usual titration equations. I had worked my ass off for it. I was exercising to exhaustion, eating a strict sugar-free, meat-free, dairy-free diet and grinding myself into my books like I had a metal band around my head and an iron fist twisting into my stomach. I told myself that if I were to achieve my life goal of becoming a renowned Practitioner & Lab Researcher, the body was to be brought into line…. The “Rebellious” Body.
Oddly, however, as my cohort and I pressed up to the board, baited to see our positions on the ladder, an indication of our futures in a highly competitive industry, made even more so by the knowledge that no matter how solid our evidence, and due only to our values, would we only ever be considered secondary to our colleagues who were backed by the medical fraternity, I found my name, propped right on top. Expecting I might feel the warm glow of achievement, or the relief of “it was all worthwhile” as I had on receiving my senior OP, I felt the vice in my jaw and the gripe in my gizzard hissing “it’s still not enough, Lexy” “harder…harder”.
I walked away from this experience in a state of shock. I had met my strongest inner critic, and I knew if I were to contend with him/her, I would need an equally powerful inner ally.
My story goes on to how I successfully and permanently resolved advanced cervical dysplasia, through making a commitment from this day forward to practice self-kindness as much as self-discipline. It’s been through this balanced Sadhana that I’ve come to see the body is not at all rebellious, in fact she is working FOR me. Where there are sensations of wrenching, there is strain and constriction. Where there are sensations of clenching, there’s holding in and/or suppression. The body is not a rebellious teenager to be crushed. She’s no wild beast to be over-ridden.
Sensations are the earliest signs of balance or imbalance. Before even the most sensitive of technologies will detect it, the body itself is the most delicately refined, highly attuned, and most reliable indicator of wellness. Where there is wellness, there is contribution, reciprocity, agency, purpose and leadership.
Your body is not the enemy. Your body is the ally.
Dharma
A conversation on Burnout would not be complete without comment on the notion of dharma.
In brief, your dharma is your life’s purpose; the agreement you made with your creator in order that you’d be gifted a body as a vessel for offering it.
Did you agree to a life of observing? of expressing? of educating? of entertaining? of mediating? of ameliorating? Far from esoteric, this information is with you all day, every day. It remains in the part of you that is abiding across time, and it lives the only place you can access it…within your very own body.
Having spent my early career working closely with lawyers, I saw the difference between those who went with the rush of their career as though riding wild white waters, versus those who struggled across the stream, or worse still, dragged under by ominous forces.
I’ve seen some make slow and deliberate moves from their “day jobs” to their “passion projects” while others resigned at a minutes notice to follow their calling.
While unlikely to be covered in a 15 minute consultation, nor broached even by experienced therapists, your dharma is not something that can be “coached” out of you, your dharma lies in the realm of deep listening and spirituality.
The most direct route to your dharma is a constellation, done in the privacy of your very own home. I’m offering constellations via zoom in the early part of this year.
Suffice to say, chronic suppression of your dharma is the quickest way to burnout. Like wading chest-deep through mud every day, or wearing a grippy suit in an atmosphere of velcroe, if you’re out of congruence with your bigger life mission, by mid-life you will be drained to the core of your being.
In Summary
We can see burnout as a series of symptoms to fix, or as the body’s only means of communicating. What the body communicates are the needs of the inner-child and the inner-parent. The need for rest and play. The need for self-respect and self-responsibility.
The body is your closest ally. How do we know? Because anything outside your body is an extrinsic motivator, ie a “should” inherited from cultural or familial conditioning. At the end of the day, somatic sensing is the only reliable indicator of what matters to you. Your body is your only source of intrinsic motivation. Your body itself will lead you beyond burnout to sustainability.
I’m Alexis Dennehy, post-grad trained in trauma and women’s health with 25+ years clinical experience in integrative- & somatically-focused health care.
Join me Saturday mornings in-person at The Burnout- & Trauma- Care Clinic, (Sign-On Day: 18th January) Book in for a Somatic Constellation via Zoom (click Book Now at the top of this page) or Follow my Podcast "In Flow and On Form: The Psycho-Physiology of Somatic Practice" to be notified about future episodes.
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