On therapy, giraffes, and compassion




After a 6-year break, I returned to therapy a month ago. My goals for therapy this time around are to deal with the stress of chronic illness and cope with the body image issues that are worsened by having a body that feels, for lack of a better word, uncooperative. Three sessions in, I am already confident that we will be addressing some important beliefs and feelings that are holding me back emotionally.
This past session, we did an exercise. When talking about hatred and mistrust of my body, my therapist had me close my eyes and center myself on my core – on the physical sensations I was feeling. I felt anger and hatred toward my body, deep in the pit of my stomach. We then moved outward, and focused on what I was feeling elsewhere. What came out of it was that I felt, oddly, like a giraffe.
What? A giraffe? What does that even mean?
Image result for giraffe and zebraIt was the strangest thing. With my eyes closed, sitting on the couch, focusing on the feelings in my body besides the throbs and aches, I felt the odd sensation of my trunk and neck being elongated, like my head was really far from the rest of me. Like a giraffe.
As one does in therapy, we talked about it. And whether or not the giraffe awareness was related to the emotions, we realized how I separate my mind from my body. I treat myself as having two parts. There’s me. And there’s my body. And the two often feel at odds with one another.
Where I want to hike up mountains, my body wants to lie on the couch. Where I want to flip on silks, my body wants to sleep. Where I want to run around like the energizer bunny, my body wants to be in a constant state of recharging.
This dissonance makes it easy to remove the blame from me, and place it on my body. It makes it very easy to hate my body, because my body is forcing me to slow down and not do the things I want to do.
But there are multiple issues with that thought trap. 1) I am not to blame, and neither is my body. This is not my fault. And 2) My body and my self are not separate. We are one and the same.
So my therapist helped me think about it differently. Maybe, my body is not causing me these issues. Maybe my body and my self are partners, not at odds with one another, but suffering from the same external circumstances.
She had me tune into my core again. I no longer felt like a giraffe. I felt more grounded, more whole. And rather than feel that hatred toward my body in the pit of my stomach, I felt compassion.
My body is not working against me. My body and my self are partners, fighting the circumstances of chronic illness together, with all that we have. My body deserves love, compassion, empathy, care. Not the hatred and anger that overwhelm my interactions with my body.
She asked my to tune it with my body one last time after having this discussion.
“What do you feel?” she asked me.
“Uhhh,” I said, as I often say when trying to focus on my emotions, “uhhh, I think I feel anxious. Like that butterfly feeling in my lower abdomen, versus that woozy feeling higher in my abdomen/chest region of hatred.”
Why? Why did this conversation make me anxious? Honestly, I can only think it’s because it made sense. It made so much sense, and I know I have a lot of work ahead of me to try to accept it.

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