June 16, 2022
We have talked a great deal about navigating crises, standing firm in our truth, slowing down, and tuning into what’s alive in our hearts. Our last newsletter was centered on one of the most horrific crises in our country’s recent memory. In support of a healthy, collective nervous system, let’s switch gears and discuss how to integrate a challenging experience on the other side.
For me, I liken some challenges to the stages of a medicine journey: There tends to be a build-up, a peak, a come-down, and a necessary integration afterwards. In such a powerful and dynamic time on the planet as today with so much crisis happening, it can also feel like we are going through each of these stages simultaneously. Many times in the midst of these challenges, it can feel like, in the words of the late great Don Howard, “a white-knuckle sleigh ride” in which you’re holding on for dear life and praying you don’t crash and burn.
Just like with medicine work, integrating a challenge on the other side is crucial. Doing this well ensures that you process the experience, realize the lessons, and put safeguards in place to prevent similar challenges from occuring again, if it’s within your power to do so.
When aspects of your life begin to balance out on the other side of a challenging experience, it’s important to take inventory of the lessons the challenge presented, work through the relevant emotional landscape from anger and rage to grief and despair, and eventually come out on the other side to find meaning and gratitude.
The transition from challenge to gratitude requires us to pause and slow everything down in order to reframe the narrative. Depending on the scale of the challenge, gratitude may still feel out of reach. Sometimes the lessons from a challenge may not present themselves until years later, after time has granted us hindsight and perspective. Notably, when the trauma is so catastrophic and so irrational, the return to peace and harmony may remain elusive for a long, long time. This is where trauma work and support are critical.
*** In this newsletter, I am speaking about integrating mild and moderate challenges. Therefore, some of what is written may not apply to family or friends who are experiencing extreme challenges. If you are currently navigating or integrating an extreme challenge, you can reply to this email and my team would be happy to send over a list of resources that may help support you during this time.
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Even then, a shift in perspective cannot bring a loved one back, change the past, heal abuse, fix a broken heart, or cure acute trauma, illness, injury, or disability. For extreme challenges like these, time and resources tend to be better healers. However, if on the other side of mild challenges, such as family or relationship dynamics, work disagreements, financial issues, etc., practicing gratitude can truly go a long way towards a more complete integration, though it isn’t easy.
On the other side of a challenge, you may still feel pulled in a million different directions by family, work, or personal commitments. However, as we’ve discussed, oftentimes challenge presents itself as a signal to make necessary changes in order to live a more sustainable and happy lifestyle. If you ignore the lessons of your previous challenge, another one will surely present itself, and speaking from experience, the next challenge may be more intense in order to get your undivided attention.
Challenging experiences are uncomfortable, and for that reason, we may not wish to take ownership of the roles we played in landing ourselves in a challenging situation. It may be much more convenient, and therefore, tempting, to point the finger outwards rather than look within ourselves and take inventory of our shortcomings.
Many of us are quick to resort to righteousness and victimhood–myself included at times. Victimhood is like quicksand: Once you step in it, pretty soon you’re ankle-deep and sinking fast. If you don’t grab hold of something to pull you out from that mindset, it can bury you and you’ll be in over your head in the suffering of your own making.
Consider gratitude to be your lifeline if you feel your feet sinking into an old narrative based on victimhood. Most of the time, feelings of victimhood are rooted in one or more past experiences of feeling powerless, whether from something that was in or out of your control. In some instances, feelings of victimhood are completely justifiable, such as in and following extreme challenges and extreme traumas. In mild challenges though, we may very well be making ourselves the victim and giving away our own power.
Of course, even mild challenges can carry trauma, which is why it is so important to properly integrate them with the level of due diligence you would integrate medicine work. Something that has helped me to integrate a mildly traumatic challenge is to look at it as a learning experience, rather than focus solely on the trauma, and to become curious about how the entire experience may grow me into a better version of myself. I see these as “FLAGs” from the Universe–another opportunity for Faith, Love, Acceptance, and Gratitude. Even trauma can become an ally with the right integration, resources, and a healthy perspective.
If life is our school, then challenges are our teachers, guiding us towards further growth, strength, knowledge, and wisdom. Life will continue to test you, and if there are any areas of your life where there is weakness, such as within your values, priorities, lifestyle, actions, etc., you may be given opportunities to strengthen these areas through challenges that appear now and then.
In many cases, life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you, and even with you. This shift in perspective is both the simplest and hardest thing to do at the same time. It’s a simple idea, but it can be so difficult to relax into the pain, take ownership, overcome it, learn from it, and be grateful.
Yet, by overcoming these challenges, integrating the lessons, and finding gratitude on the other side, you can grow in ways you never would have grown otherwise.
When our traumas become our allies and our challenges become our teachers, we can truly become emotionally invincible.
To your health,
Dr. Dan
Get healthy. Stay present. Help out.