Giving and Receiving
As this holiday season surrounds me, I am confronted with thoughts and images of giving and receiving. What gift should I give my daughter, my girlfriend? What about my parents? My friends? Let me see, I exchange with these but not with those. I am reminded that I am actually very good at figuring out presents, what to give people.
The more difficult question is often, “what do I want?”. What would I like to receive?
Even though we are bombarded with images of greed, headlines about Wall Street corruption, Banking system deceptions, Corporate abuses… It has been my personal experience that most people are better at giving than receiving. Or perhaps more accurately most people are challenged to receive, to take in, and to accept help, warmth, kindness, or love.
I am reminded of a client, we will call her Sarah. She was a single mother of a teenage son. Sarah excelled at a challenging and multifaceted job. She came to me suffering from chronic shoulder and upper back pain. As we worked to unwind the tension in her upper body, I got to know her body and about her life.
We would make some progress, and then Sarah’s shoulders would tighten back up. I often relate shoulders to how we handle responsibility. You know, “shouldering the load”, “carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders”. It turns out that Sarah believed she was alone and had to do it all herself. She was hyper-responsible. She would take on projects at work that were not really her concern and thought it was a weakness to ask for help.
Sarah’s body responded to this belief system by tensing and straining. We talked about the connection between her beliefs and her pain. I gave her the assignment that at least once a week she would ask for help with something. It can be small, and you may not get the help, but you must ask. She was not pleased with her assignment, but she took it on.
As the weeks went on, Sarah was amazed at the response she got. People were actually willing to help her, and it got easier to ask. Work got less stressful, and her son was becoming more responsible. Most telling was that her shoulders began to relax, and her back no longer hurt. She recently told me about having her son’s old bedroom remodeled into a home spa. Sarah said, “It really feels good to receive!”.
How much will you allow yourself to receive this year? How much will you give yourself?