This is an essay from one of my teacher training trainees, who wished to remain anonymous. I hope you find her story inspiring and I am grateful that she chose to share. – Rina
This has been a rough few weeks. After an intensive process of application preparation and traveling to 12 different cities for interviews in the span of 3 weeks, I submitted my rankings for predoctoral internship last week. Predoctoral internship is a year-long intensive clinical training program, usually in a hospital or mental health clinic, which serves as a capstone to your graduate training. It is the final step before you get to be called Doctor. Alongside this process, I proposed a dissertation, planned a wedding, re-planned a wedding when the venue was flooded, got married, went on a 2-week honeymoon to a remote locational , collected data for my dissertation, saw individual trauma clients weekly, ran three separate therapy group, and made every attempt to complete yoga teacher training. In addition, I attended the funeral of a close family friend, sat alongside my father-in-law as he navigated chemotherapy, and struggled to prioritize a new marriage. Currently, I am waiting on the results of my internship match. These results have huge implications for my relationship, my living situation, and my psychological training. Needless to say, I’ve been under some stress.
As I turned into my building parking lot yesterday, an elderly person pulling out of a spot missed my car by only a few inches. Channeling my inner 15-year-old girl, I said out loud, “I can’t.” Then I found myself repeating the phrase out loud several times, “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t”. Surprised by my behavior, I suddenly went silent. I was reminded of quote by Henry Ford, “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right”. Behind this behavior was the clear thought: “I can’t handle the stress of my current situation”. The charge of this thought was undeniably negative – all of these stressful life events will occur with or without my consent, so I have no choice but to “handle” them. I realized this affirmation had been repeating in my mind for several days, resulting in a general feeling of anxiety, intermittent panic attacks, irritability, and nightmares. I had been coping with my stress by snacking and drinking alcohol on the weekends and, as a result, I gained back all the weight I lost before the wedding. These methods were violating my commitment to asteya, as I was unhealthily looking for temporary energy. These thoughts were clearly not beneficial, nor were they true; I’ve overcome tremendous obstacles in the past and managed to be relatively successful in maintaining my composure. I decided to change my mind. Out loud, I began to repeat the words, “I can. I can. I can. I can.” The result was immediate: my posture became straighter, my breathing and heart rate slowed down, and I felt a sense of calm. I forgave myself for the self-defeating thoughts and committed to repeating the positive affirmation “I can” whenever I felt defeated. To me, this situation embodies the central thrust of your book Choose Peace.
This book is a systematic approach to internal exploration, or Jnana Yoga. In particular, I was struck by the similarities between many of the approaches we use in therapy and your approach to inner peace. Authentic and non-judgmental communication are at the core of a positive therapeutic relationship. This book encourages the same sort of communication that might occur between a therapist and a client, but brings the dialogue inward, so that the reader is both the guide and the guided. I am not particularly cognitive-behavioral in my therapeutic orientation, but this approach is most similar to CBT, which has a long-standing tradition in the field of psychology. This theory explores the connection between thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. Thoughts are assumed to precede feelings and behaviors, but also to result from them in a similar “Vicious Cycle”. The idea is that we have thoughts that become ingrained in our patterns of thinking, referred to as automatic thoughts. These emerge from a system of core beliefs that have developed through our experience of the world. Sometimes these beliefs, and the thoughts that emerge from them, are “irrational” or “dysfunctional” and lead to negative outcomes. Oftentimes, “dysfunctional thoughts” were helpful at one time. For example, Mia dealt with her parents’ rejection by withdrawing from social interaction. This helped her to feel safe when she was younger, but now it served to keep her isolated and unhappy. Traditional CBT therapists serve as an objective outsider who “challenges dysfunctional thoughts” and “reframes them” in a more functional way. Using the example of Mia, we can see how she reframed her own thought through the use of a positive affirmation: “I love and accept myself therefore I welcome others into my life.”
I found the chapter on Truth to be fascinating. While it seems that you (and most CBT theorists) lean towards the idea that there is an absolute truth, you leave space for relativity. My worldview is extremely relative. I believe that everyone constructs their own world through their experiences and perceptions. As such, no two people can share the same truth. I could feel my ego creeping in as I wanted to push back. I remembered the way you looked at me during yoga teacher training, when I had difficulty swallowing The Fall of the Human Intellect and continued to dissect every minute detail. You calmly looked me in the eyes and said, “you’re only fighting yourself”. When I took a step back, I realized that these statements were not intended to be taken literally, or dissected as a scientific paper would be under peer review. Rather they were meant to be taken in, chewed on, and then integrated in a way that made sense to the reader. Then you brought out chapter 13, “Nothing is Personal”, and I was like “Hell Yeah!” This chapter reiterated my core beliefs, ones that I had explored years ago in The Four Agreements. It also challenged me to think about the distinction between objective and subjective truth. If I whole-heartedly believe that something is the truth for me, doesn’t that make it objective in my world? I can acknowledge that it is not the truth for someone else and still maintain it as my own. Maybe there is space for a middle ground.
Finally, you end with a topic that has always been difficult for me: forgiveness. I told you about the situation with my father during RYTT. I had attempted to forgive him during that process for all the pain he caused my family. I remember leaving the studio and driving directly to his office and said, “Thank you for making me who I am today. I’m sorry for whatever happened in your past that made you unable to connect with your family. I love you.” For several months, I was able to tolerate his presence in a way that I could not do previously. We weren’t close, but I had compassion for his struggle and felt at peace. Unfortunately, since the wedding, we have not spoken. After several more disappointments, my ego got in the way and I once again forgot the virtue of forgiveness. Reading this chapter brought this discrepancy to my attention. I anticipate that I will need to further explore this issue before I can come to a final resolution – we are all works in progress.
