Nurture Yourself First

Chapter 1 Crashing and Crawling into Self-Nurturing I finally asked the right question, “How can I quit pushing and driving myself?” Illness Allowed Self-Nurturing After college I became a child welfare social worker. I loved my work. Periodically, I had to go through court to remove badly neglected or abused children from their parents, which was extremely stressful. Invariably, I developed a chest infection that was obviously related to some emotional grief and my body’s need for rest. I needed antibiotics and two or three days of rest. At home I slept, read, sewed, or embroidered, embracing quiet or mildly creative nurturing activities while my body recovered. Although I was sick several times a year, this program worked fairly well for quite a while. Fast-forward past my two years of social work in London, my writer/editor/publicist career in Las Vegas, and my private practice as a psychotherapist in Tucson. Stress and Chronic Illness I worked once more in children’s services, this time in a large county in California with some of the toughest assignments in the agency. I was responsible for children so emotionally disturbed that they could not live in family foster homes but needed round-the-clock professional supervision in group homes. Many had been in the system for years. It was not easy, but I felt I was making a difference by helping children and families through some incredibly challenging situations. One December morning, I was expecting a promotion to supervisor. Instead, we huddled in an impromptu staff meeting and learned that the county had declared bankruptcy. There would be no promotions. Hiring was frozen. I narrowly missed being laid off. Caseloads went up, but the client visits, case documentation, court reports, and court appearances still had to be completed. And I still got crisis calls in the middle of the night. I did my best to manage it all. I met deadlines, saw my clients, wrote thorough reports to minimize time waiting in court, and juggled multiple crises daily. My health went down the tubes. In the first fifteen months after the county bankruptcy, I took prescribed antibiotics thirteen times. I was never free of chest congestion and sinus infection. A chronic cough ruled my life. Many times a day in my cubicle or in meetings with clients or on the freeway, I doubled over and coughed for minutes. Eventually, I recovered from the spasm and carried on. I seldom took days off even when I was sick because catching up with missed work was impossible, and I could not expect my colleagues, who carried equally heavy workloads, to pick up the slack for me. I continued to have neck pain because of whiplash and bulging discs from an auto accident a few years earlier. I developed carpal tunnel syndrome and wore a wrist brace. Tired and achy all over and never a sound sleeper, I could not get comfortable in bed. I spent hours awake in the dark, flopping around, imagining strategies to help my clients, rehearsing testimony or simply fretting over how to get everything done. Some days I started nodding off in traffic. Scary! Mounting stress undermined my normally calm disposition. Many mornings I sobbed in the shower. There was not enough of me to go around. I felt my energy pouring down a black hole. Then I commuted an hour to my office, checked dozens of phone messages, and coughed my way through another round of calls, meetings, and client visits. Cracking My Cosmic Egg After about a year of this routine, I attended a weekend workshop on individual and world peace and had a revelation. For the first time, I saw how I sabotaged my inner peace by pushing and driving myself to excel. I was relentless, and my health was taking the hit. Although excited by my new perception, I had no idea how to change my approach. Pushing and driving had been a part of me for so many years that I didn’t realize I was doing it until that moment. On a break, I mentioned my stunning self-awareness to my husband, who said, “I’ve been trying to tell you that as long as I’ve known you.” Yikes! Next up in the workshop, a remarkable man named John-Roger, founder of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, educator, and author of more than fifty books, sat on a low stage and chatted with various participants. I raised my hand, eager to ask for suggestions on how I could be kinder to myself. He called on someone else. I laughed with the crowd as he talked with that person. But I really wanted to ask my question. He was looking around for the next person while I kept waving my hand. I was so enthusiastic that I jumped up and started down the aisle. He called on someone else, but he told me I was next. I sat down and enjoyed the discussion as the level of humor stepped up another notch. John-Roger had a gift for speaking to the heart that ranged from the sacred and profound to the hilarious in a moment. At last, I walked to the microphone to ask my question. “How can I quit pushing and driving myself?” “I don’t think you can,” said John-Roger. My heart sank. John-Roger turned to the audience and began cracking jokes. I listened and laughed too, and in a couple of minutes, he turned back to me. “You through with your stuff now?” he asked. My only thought was a moment between my husband and me a few years ago. “All I can think to say is once when we lived in Tucson, Alf and I were having a big argument, and I was upset and crying. So he mooned me!” Uproarious laughter! John-Roger looked around for Alf, found him trying to hide at the back of the room, and led him by the hand to the stage. “Did you really do that?” With a red face, Alf nodded. I added that I couldn’t stay upset after the mooning. I had to laugh. A psychology professor in the second row said, “A new conflict resolution skill.” For the next half an hour, J-R bantered with Alf and the audience about mooning and related silliness. I laughed until tears flowed. Beginnings and Endings Even though John-Roger never said a word directly about my issue, I left the workshop with a new awareness, a lighter heart, and an intention to stop pushing myself. I gradually began to nurture and care for myself. I turned to a well-known holistic chiropractor and naturopath and stopped taking antibiotics. I stayed home for almost two weeks to rest and recover from my ongoing respiratory infection. I found a fabulous massage therapist in a medical doctor’s office. That compassionate doctor referred me to a German-trained holistic doctor who helped assess and treat my fatigue. Then the doctor recommended a pulmonary specialist who diagnosed and began treating my asthmatic cough. After several tests ruled out other possibilities, I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. My doctors recommended a disability leave. I did not think a disability leave was a good idea. What would happen to my clients? Who would do my work? A few months later, still struggling with recurring illness, chronic cough, ongoing fatigue, and pain, I agreed to partial disability status and worked part-time. I carefully orchestrated the transfer of many clients to other social workers. Even with holistic remedies and asthma medication, I was far from well. My Wake-Up Call That August I was still working part-time. My husband was away on business. My brother and his girlfriend were in town and stopped by for lunch. As usual, I felt slightly detached from reality, not connected with my body, just going through the motions. I used my Wedgewood china, a relic from my first marriage, because I had not seen my brother in a long time and had never met his girlfriend. I dropped a plate. It shattered in the sink, but I made light of it. It was just a thing.