Sometimes people who constantly save others refuse to save themselves. What is behind the unwillingness to help yourself in a difficult situation and can this be changed?
My colleague Tatyana died of cancer. Smart, professional, very reliable, my age… Hard. But it was even harder to find out that she did not want to be treated — she did not even begin to clarify the diagnosis. She only said that her guru (and Tatyana has recently been fond of meditation and Zen Buddhism) said: chemotherapy will destroy her spirituality … Spirituality. That’s what I wanted to talk about.
Tatyana was a giving person. Three own children, adopted children. She taught and healed them, gave herself. I remember how difficult it was for her to love adopted children. And Tatyana was always strict with herself, she was never fully satisfied with herself. This then helped to survive. This life was right for her. This was her spirituality.
When the children grew up, she was able to start studying psychotherapy, became a good coach and psychotherapist. The strength of her personality conquered. She has helped many people, students and clients. Helping her was like breathing. «Spirit» and «breath» are the same root words.
We need an honest look at ourselves. But even more we need to not give up on ourselves in a difficult situation.
And so she did not consider it necessary to help herself. Even try. To take tests, do a biopsy, spend nights on the Internet in search of doctors and medicines. I’m sure she would have done it to help any of us. But for some reason she did not include herself in the list of people worthy of help.
I can stand up for myself, be responsible for myself, and it is important for me to look at myself critically. But are benevolence, a friendly attitude towards oneself added to this critical attitude?
We need an honest look at ourselves. But even more we need to not give up on ourselves in a difficult situation. We must try to understand ourselves, to reconnect with ourselves.
Yes, and repentance itself is also possible only when we can again become close to ourselves (we feel this closeness as a warm lump in the solar plexus or behind the sternum, it rises and breaks through the lump in the throat with tears). This is a source of strength necessary to correct the wrong, to fight for yourself, not to leave yourself in trouble.
In sorrow and in joy, we deserve devotion and friendly participation.
It seems to me that this is the pinnacle of spirituality. Such an attitude towards oneself requires courage. As the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once said: “No war requires from a person such courage, which is required by looking into oneself.”
This is a touch of value — not the value that we have or have lost, but the unconditional value that we were, and are, and will remain, no matter how painful the experience of devaluation of others we carry in ourselves. In sorrow and in joy, we deserve devotion and friendly participation. First of all, from myself — that, perhaps, the only person who has a long-term, deep and lasting relationship with us.
It is very important to live with such an attitude. After all, then there will definitely be someone who will not leave me and will not betray me in trouble, who will look for a doctor, information about new drugs, money, finally.
That someone is ourselves. And if we live like this, there are always other people who wholeheartedly want to help us in our trouble.