starting from acceptance

[liminal_luke]

My mental-health challenged partner told me tonight that if he´s going to heal he needs to start from a place of accepting his disease.  This in direct opposition to my approach which is one of fighting.  I don´t like his problems (and even less how it effects our relationship and me in particular) and am not in any way OK with it.

 

But I was nevertheless impressed with the wisdom of what he had to say.  To heal from an illness do we have to accept it first?  Is the feeling of "wanting to get rid of the illness" a form of hostility?  Is fighting for health contrary to this kind of acceptance or aligned with it?

[Brian]

Coming to terms with one's situation is a big deal. Denial is not always appropriate. Respect him for this brave step.

[liminal_luke]

Thanks Brian -- good advice.  I think mental health problems are particularly tricky that way because it´s "all in their head."  But like his psychiatrist says, he has a "real" problem, every bit as physical as someone with heart disease or diabetes.  It´s just that it´s a problem with his brain chemistry.  I want him to just get over it, or see things logically... but of course it´s not so easy.

[Aetherous]

Really great stuff to ponder...

I would think that getting out of denial and into acceptance causes the disease to become part of who he is. Whereas denial is still a stage of the self being considered healthy, and the disease being an abnormality to oppose...perhaps that is healthier...fighting/worrying about the illness/etc is a huge drain on energy, though, which ultimately is what keeps the disease there. What eradicates disease is the sense of health to permeate at all times, in addition to lifestyle choices that promote healing.

Perhaps a person could accept being diseased if they don't have the energy to fight it anymore, and then later they could cultivate the sense of health. It's probably very challenging to change someone's sense of who they are, though, from being a person with disease to having perfect health.

[thelerner]

There is hope and momentum in taking up a new strategy. 

 

[liminal_luke]

The video made me laugh.  Yes, I think it´s definitely time for a new approach -- or at least a new perspective -- because what we were doing wasn´t working.

[Spotless]

In mental health related diseases it is generally of primary importance to "accept the disease".

 

We are able to say "I have skin cancer" just about as easy as "I have a cold" but admitting to a drinking problem or mental disease is closer to admitting to child molestation and dying yourself blue.

 

Another key issue here is that many skin cancers can simply be removed - and they need little more cooperation from the patient than making it to an appointment on time. Mental health issues are very different - the openness and willing ness of the patient to speak about and work on it with the practitioner is more often than not a critical component.

 

All the very best on this to each of you!

Edited April 27, 2016 by Spotless

[Aeran]

I've just started reading "Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddist Perspective," and it gave this quote from Freud:

 

"As Freud put it, the patient 'must find the courage to direct his attention to the phenomena of his illness. His itself itself must no longer seem contemptible, but must become an enemy worthy of his mettle, a piece of his personality, which has solid ground for it's existence and out of which things of value for his future life have to be derived. The way is thus paved for the reconciliation with the repressed material which is coming to expression in his symptoms, while at the same time place is found for a certain tolerance for the state of being ill.'"

 

I think the bold part is essential because I don't feel that the attitude of accepting an illness is necessarily "in direct opposition" to choosing to fight the illness. It can be the exact opposite - the equivalent to turning around with your head held high, acknowledging an opponent who has been chasing you and taking them head on. 

[doc benway]

My mental-health challenged partner told me tonight that if he´s going to heal he needs to start from a place of accepting his disease.  This in direct opposition to my approach which is one of fighting.  I don´t like his problems (and even less how it effects our relationship and me in particular) and am not in any way OK with it.

 

But I was nevertheless impressed with the wisdom of what he had to say.  To heal from an illness do we have to accept it first?  Is the feeling of "wanting to get rid of the illness" a form of hostility?  Is fighting for health contrary to this kind of acceptance or aligned with it?

 

I agree that your partner is exhibiting courage and wisdom in this insight. Whether or not the insight is correct, it sounds as if this is a big step and, as difficult as that may be, there's probably nothing you can do that would be more helpful than be open, spacious, and supportive. 

 

The line between accepting and giving up is not nearly as narrow as we sometimes assume. You do not need to like the disease to face the fact that it is there. We essentially punish ourselves with pain and suffering because we don't want to face that fact. Fighting illness generally means fighting ourselves because it is our body which is expressing that illness. And the one doing the fighting is coming from a place of confusion, fear, pain, anger, and the consequent internal conflict is an expression of all of that. We cannot "fight" something with all of our skill when we are coming from a place of pain and confusion. 

 

So I would agree that acceptance is an important foundation. Not giving up but coming to terms with the fact of the illness. Then rather than fighting, perhaps another way to look at it is that of loving one's body for all of the positive qualities, supporting it through its challenges, and using available methods to help restore balance. It is  sometimes counterproductive to view illness as the enemy, I think, as it propagates the internal conflict that comprises our health even further. 

[liminal_luke]

So many wonderful responses, and I´m finding them very helpful this morning.  I like what you had to say, Steve, about the line between acceptance and giving up.  I need to get to that place your post suggests to me, a place of warm acceptance that nevertheless has no giving up in it.

 

I´ll mention a particular area we´ve been struggling with: sleep.  It´s gotten so much better -- and continues to get better -- but I find myself very frustrated just the same.  For a year and a half or so, he literally slept like a vampire: staying up all night playing video games and going to bed at 3am, not getting out of bed again until 6pm.  He rarely ventured outside when the sun was out.  It drove me crazy, and I complained, but I didn´t feel like I had the right to set his sleeping schedule for him.  Maybe I should have, I don´t know.

 

He was in therapy but didn´t want to see a psychiatrist.  Being somewhat opposed to psychoactive drugs myself, I respected his wishes.  Finally, things fell apart to the point where I said either he went to a psychiatrist or I was gone, and so he did.  And the drugs helped -- a lot.  Left to his own devices, he goes to bed now around midnight and gets up around two in the afternoon the next day, a big improvement.

 

It´s not that he´s so physically sick that he really needs the sleep; I´d feel different about it if that was the case.  It´s just that he has paranoid delusions about being kidnapped and killed, and it´s easier to numb himself out in bed then get up and face the day.  He tells me that he wishes I could have his disease for just one day so I would know what it feels like to feel like you are going to be tortured and killed every day.  

 

So things are better but not good.  I want him to get up to 9am and have a productive morning.  It would be different if sleeping actually made him happy but it doesn´t.  He feels like a prisoner in the bedroom because he can´t get out.  His mind is all clouded from the oversleeping.  The few times he has gotten up at nine, he´s had a better day.

 

I can tell him he has to get up and he will, but that´s hard on both of us.  For my part, I don´t really want to constantly monitor him and order him around.  And if I tell him what to do he resents it, like anyone would.  But if I don´t tell him what to do he´ll sleep and sleep.  Errrr!  If you think I´m coming from a place of frustration and pain, you´re right.  My own mental health is suffering.

 

Thanks for reading.  Responses and suggestions welcome though I mostly just wrote to have somewhere to say this, get it off my chest.  Gratitude for the wisdom of the Daobums community.

 

Liminal

Edited April 28, 2016 by liminal_luke

[liminal_luke]

OK, I think I know what I need to do now: get to a place of peace and acceptance.  Stop ranting and feeling like a victim, and find the love.  Gilles Marin, who teaches a form of Taoist bodywork called Chi Nei Tsang, talks about something he calls "peace touch."  Peace touch is a way of touching that doesn´t ask anything of the person being touched: it´s just one person being present with another person.  No agenda.  No hope that the client will change in any way.  Just presence.  

 

The paradox of peace touch, of course, is that it´s profoundly healing.  When you stop asking someone to change, they feel supported and change happens spontaneously and easily. Peace touch creates the conditions necessary for transformation.

 

It occurs to me that what my partner needs from me is the attitude expressed in peace touch.  To get to that place I need to first find my own peace.  This isn´t easy, but it´s something I know how to do.  I have the tools.  

 

Thanks guys.

 

Liminal 

[doc benway]

It's very courageous of you to share this, Liminal.

I don't think I have that sort of courage.

 

I can relate as my partner has had some similar challenges in the past.

There were some very rough times.

In fact, the trauma associated with those experiences has been the primary motivator of me moving in a spiritual direction in my life. 

 

One thing that can be helpful is to do exactly what your partner says - see if you're able to imagine or feel something like what he experiences in his head. Let him describe it to you and be with it, open to it, feel it. Spend some time contemplating the feelings that he describes and really imagine being in that place, all the time, unable to get rid of it. This can be very powerful stuff so please only do it if you feel strong enough and supported enough to do so! 

 

Opening up to his pain can perhaps make it a bit easier to return love, openness, and support for the difficulties the relationship presents. It has helped me to deal with my own partner in that way.

 

I'll also point you to a beautiful post you made about a month ago that I serendipitously (is that a word?) came across just this morning. 

 

http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/40673-could-someone-do-me-a-favor-just-tell-me-everything-will-be-ok/?p=679377

 

PS - I was writing as you were and just read your last post, the Inner Refuge practices can be helpful with what you are looking to accomplish if you can relate to those.

Edited April 28, 2016 by steve

[Jim D.]

Acceptance has always worked for me. Getting there is the problem. I want it my way and I want it now. I think that mental illness is the inability to accept what is. When I stop fighting it and take a look at my part of the issue I am holding onto and giving power to, it goes away. The issue is usually resentment and fear of loosing control for me. 

[silent thunder]

On 4/26/2016 at 6:52 PM, liminal_luke said:

My mental-health challenged partner told me tonight that if he´s going to heal he needs to start from a place of accepting his disease.  This in direct opposition to my approach which is one of fighting.  I don´t like his problems (and even less how it effects our relationship and me in particular) and am not in any way OK with it.

 

But I was nevertheless impressed with the wisdom of what he had to say.  To heal from an illness do we have to accept it first?  Is the feeling of "wanting to get rid of the illness" a form of hostility?  Is fighting for health contrary to this kind of acceptance or aligned with it?

Boy do I resonate with you Brother.  For yeeeears it was resist!

 

Acceptance was not possible.  Acknowledgement though, that was already happening and became, rather welcome, became my bridge to acceptance eventually.

 

For long years, from myriad books, lectures, satsangs, my mind knew acceptance was the process to my freedom.

 

And for those long years, while the flea was screaming 'this is is!', the elephant wasn't listening.  Void of any but random happenstance responses from time to time.  There was no practical method of application in my life in the present moment, day to day, when i needed it to impact my life.

 

Simply Couldn't 'manufacture it'.  Some things were inherently beyond accepting, no matter the passion or certainty of my intention, or how much my logical, conscious mind appreciated the simple truth of it.  How to live it?  How to manufacture what one was not?

 

How to feel acceptance?  for the inherently unacceptable? 

this koan has roasted my awareness most of my conscious life.

 

Acknowledgement arrived instead of acceptance.

After years of yearning for a method.

 

Acknowledge came naturally.

Eventually it revealed itself as a deeply appreciated inroad into presence.  To engagin in the now.

The most practical.  Always available and utterly natural to me.  I could acknowledge whatever occured.

And then I could acknowledge my response.  It was a cycle that gathered inertia and minimalized the incessant need to conjure stories of judgement that used to spin in my mind for days, weeks, yeeears in some cases.

Acknowledging and not feeding became a natural method.

 

Resulted in all this 'letting go' I spew nonstop lol.

 

Now, rather than dance away in denial, or rise up in fierce resistance, or wither in despair, or wallow in sadness, or thrill in manic happiness, i acknowledge.  And when my response arises, i acknowledge this as well.  Both are utterly natural occurances.  Unpleasant or joyous.

 

Many expressions.  One face.

[liminal_luke]

21 minutes ago, silent thunder said:

 

Acceptance was not possible.  Acknowledgement though, that was already happening and became, rather welcome, became my bridge to acceptance eventually.

 

 

Thanks for this!  This is an old thread but eerily relevent to where I am just now.  I´m still with my partner, he´s still struggling, I´m still struggling with his struggle.  I like the idea of acknowledgement.  It feels so much more doable than acceptance to me too.  My mind sometimes rails against the very idea of acceptance; part of me is not at all sure that it´s a good idea.  But acknowledgement?  How could acknowledging the truth of whatever situation I (we) find ourselves in be bad?  It´s not.  

 

OK, acknowledgement it is then.