What's Wrong with Me?

What is wrong with me? I have been aware of the fact that there are more people now, than maybe ever who are typing in "symptoms" they have into Google and looking for the name, the label, the Tik Tok explanation that perfectly encapsulates everything that isn't right about them. As a therapist I get it. There is a long standing tradition and history of finding out what is wrong with people. We have been trained to use other people as a measuring stick for normal, and trust that they have it right.

What if every difference, every anxiety, every procrastination, every emotional outburst wasn't the result of some acute or chronic wrongness? What if it didn't work to consider that if you could just chop off your difference, and make it go away, it would return you to your normal, just like everyone else, factory settings? I KNOW right?! Now, some of you may stop reading after this, and that's okay. I know that we have sucessfully created a system of treatment based on the judgement of ourselves and others that is sometimes too enticing to let go of, and the best news is you don't have to.

So, what is wrong with you? It's a great opening line right? Then you get to turn all of your attention away from your greatness, your power, and your potency to explain to other people, and convince yourself, that you are in fact none of those things. Isn't that fun? I mean when you really peel back the layers that is what we are all taught. Our method of "fixing", "embracing", "empowering", is to actually create a problem from the judgement of not being like everyone else; and then find a way to shape ourselves back into the socially acceptable mold we were never in to begin with.

I want to go back to something I said in the paragraph above. The part where I said we create our problems. I know it sounds insane, and for those of you who feel that your problems are not a creation of your own making I get it. However, if you are willing to consider this with me. How often do you look at what everybody else is doing, and then look at what you do, and then decide that what you do isn't like what everyone else does, and therefore it must be a problem, wrong, not normal etc? If that is true for you AT ALL maybe read the next paragraph before you close out of this article.

What if I told you there is no one on this planet like you? Out of 8 billion or more people there is No One like YOU! So when you look at you, and then look at everyone else to see if they are like you, they aren't, and you aren't like them, which is actually a gift, and a greateness! We love to look at ourselves, then look at other people and decide that because we don't see anyone else like us, that we must be wrong. What if, my dear sweet friend, this was actually what is strong about you?

ADD Interlude

I want you to think about a place you have been or something you have seen that you had never seen before.

For me I was in the Shenandoah Mountains and I was struck by the beauty of the sunrise. I stopped my car, got out, snapped a million (okay 5) photos and cried at the sheer amount of beauty being expressed. I was witnessing something I had never seen before. There was no other sunrise I had ever seen like this one, and even now when I look at the photo it just doesn't do it justice.

There is no one that is like you. Out of everyone on the entire planet, there is no one like you. What if you are, what this sunrise is to me, to everyone around you? Sure everyone has a body, but no one has YOUR body the way that YOU do. No one knows exactly what you know the way you know it, no one else laughs, walks, runs, sings, plays the way that you do, and no one is brilliant, creative, generative, and beautiful the way that you are.

Forward Into Possibilities!

The next time you launch into a never ending festival of self loathing consider the following:

-What if there was nothing wrong with you?

-What is right about you, that you're not getting?

-If it wasn't a diagnosis, what power, potency, and greatness is underneath?

-What is different about you that you haven't ever acknowledged?

-What if you woke up everyday, and looked at yourself in the mirror with the same wonder, joy, and excitement that you have when you witness something truly unique?

-You are a unique gift on this planet, what if you could see you the way I saw the sunrise?