Tuesday, October 13, 2009

The thing about restructuring...

Have you read those books about dreams…the ones that tell you, when your dream has to do with you being naked it’s a sure sign anxiety dream…and so on? Sometimes those books hit the nail on the head, they give that ah-ha moment we all want when we wake up wondering, “Whoa, what was that all about?” But by far my favorite dream “symbol” … a house.

The house represents, well, our home. And if you’ve been reading SoapBox like I know you have, you know that according to me, our real home isn’t actually the house we live in, it’s our bodies and our selves… it’s our gorgeous fabulous juicy unbelievable sparkling selves to be exact… and our emotions, experiences, stories, pasts, and everything in between.

Just like a in a house, we have emotional upkeep. But when we begin to notice changes we need to make in our lives, habits we want to break, reality we want to face, and shifts we want to make… it’s kinda’ like restructuring an already built home. Which is a ridiculous amount of work.

We often just paint, patch, seal, and cover up. The task of fixing the crack in the foundation is often too difficult to bare. So we leave it. And we build on top of it. We decorate. We accessorize. We even invite others in, we entertain, and we build relationships under our roof. All the while, there are cracks beneath our well intentioned feet…

It’s not like the cracks aren’t workable, fixable if you will. But we have to be willing to do the work. Covering it up only lasts so long. This is why reaching out, asking for help, or going to therapy is so hard…and so amazing. Because therapy, for example, asks you to do the housework you’ve been putting off for as long as you can remember. It asks you to go to the ground floor, way back when your inner self was being built, to find where it’s all coming from.

The thing about restructuring is that it’s challenging-for sure, but if you don’t do it, things can begin to fall apart in front of your pretty little face. One of the hardest things to do in life is admit that there’s an issue beneath it all, admit that change needs to happen… or consider that the way you've been doing things aint working. Money, relationships, career... no one wants to scream from the rooftops... "I’ve been going about this all wrong!"

The first step. Come clean. Admit that there may be a crack in the foundation, in the structure of things. Admit that your behaviors aren’t bringing your most authentic self to the table.

Breaking down walls is no easy feat. You built those walls around you, over you and under you for a reason damn it! To keep yourself and everyone else from knowing your stuff. Sometimes the issues lie so deeply that we need someone to help us scoop them out. And that is the most OK thing ever. Beautiful.

So, moral of the story… if you have a dream about a house-any house. It’s really about you my love. Restructuring is hard and ugly sometimes but so worth it. And reaching out and asking for help. Delicious.

And that’s the thing about restructuring.

Love,
Brooke.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Brooke,

    I loved your analogy of the house being the true self, and I think you are hitting the nail on the head, literally. I often talk with my clients about their dreams about houses, as well as the dream for their literal house. We often unravel that their "out of no where" desire to reorganize their basement parallels our work in therapy of digging into their deeper needs and desires as people and not just surface level wanting. You have inspired me to continue to look into doing reamwork. Thank you. For more info on the type of work I do, feel free to visit my website at www.HealingLLC.com or you can email me at AnotherLook@HealingLLC.com. Take Good Care, Amy

    ReplyDelete