Spring Cleaning

I’m going to start therapy in a couple of days.  I met my new therapist a couple of weeks ago and since then I’ve been thinking a lot about what I will be working on – what I want to work on, what I should work on.

So I find myself in the midst of a personal spring cleaning project. I’m going deep, opening up the dark scary places and also the rooms where I collect my truths, the trophies of all the battles I’ve fought over the years. Leaving few stones unturned, I’m questioning deeply held assumptions and reevaluating them for fitness.   Internally, it’s a bit like pulling all the stuff off all the shelves and out of all the closets and cupboards and tossing them into a pile in the middle of the room.  I’ve been collecting this stuff for years and years, and the more I look and dig, the more I think there may be no absolutes, no sacred cows that can’t be tipped.

This is at times a scary process. We hold our truths close because they are the core of who we are. We form habits and patterns of response based on those truths. What happens if we decide to abandon or even just rethink those truths? We get a bit of chaos on the side. The ripple effects are huge and not always predictable.

However, I’m finding that it is good work. If my truths cannot withstand close scrutiny, how valuable are they to me? How sturdy is my foundation if my truth are based on assumptions that don’t hold water? Also, when assumptions and truths hold, I am that much stronger.

When they do not stand up under pressure, I am left with an uneasy void. How does one back-fill a long held belief, now abandoned?  I don’t know the answer yet, but I bet it involves developing new truths, which probably involves a lot of work and attention, and, most likely, growing pains.

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