The Exit from Exhaustion

It is 3:41 AM and you cannot go back to bed. When you do, by the time your alarm goes off, you are tired. You can barely imagine going back to work, much less eating before you go. Somehow, you get through the day and get home through prime-time commute. When you get home, no dinner is ready. Guess who needs to make it -- for you and/or your loved ones?

I have worked with many working mothers who desire to have the time to really have adequate rest as well as have quality leisure with their families. These mothers don't need more things to do. By the time they come to me, I am often their last resort before a much-needed, reluctantly work-approved, week-long vacation.

Reality is three-fold: thought, word and action. Some people call the interrelatedness of these three-fold items "karma," because these three-fold items often partner together in patterns that are unconscious, subconscious, and conscious. Thus, it is quite difficult many times to tease out, diagnose, and treat appropriately.

In most Western cultures, we get stuck on diagnosis and then using diagnosis as the justification. "Oh, I'm always late because I was delivered late as an infant." "Excuse my clumsiness; I fell on my skateboard as a child." "I'm typically soft-spoken, but my cheerleader friend here made me do it."

So I start by teaching mothers that thoughts informs the words we say to ourselves and others. The words we say inform our actions towards ourselves and others. What we need to do to change our reality, then, is to be vigilant about our thoughts. Thoughts, after all, can be quite insidious.

Just because we notice thoughts does not mean that all thoughts are true. Are thoughts real? Sure, they exist, because they entered your mind. Do you necessarily need to speak them or act upon them, though? That is the crucial question.

Some of the leading thought experts say that a typical person thinks of 60,000 thoughts a day -- at least. Imagine if every one of those thoughts really helped you advance in your life and WIN in your life.

Thoughts carry energy. Oftentimes, I encounter mothers who respond to thoughts in positive and negative ways. Most of the people who come to me tired and exhausted tend to have accumulated thoughts that sparked negative feelings. By "negative," I mean judgments they start inflicting upon themselves and others. Before you know it, thoughts have easily transformed into words they speak about the other person or themselves and the actions that arise from these words perpetuate. These negative feelings are also negative in a different way: people end up feeling depleted, less energized, less vitality, less vigor, less youthful, less movement, less hope, and definitely less happiness.

When we address the realm of feelings, though, we are going beyond thought, word and action. Feelings are an entirely different realm or dimension. They must be treated differently, too. Sure there are different ways people categorize and treat feelings: psychiatry, psychotherapy, somatic/bodywork/massage therapy, energy healing -- just to name a few.

What I have found particularly helpful for those who feel completely depleted and exhausted is the use of flower essences and homeopathy. I have worked with over a hundred people in the last 5 years -- flower essences and homeopathy is definitely one of the most gentle yet effective measures for overworked, underpaid, unappreciated people. I work with people to help release their emotional reactions to thoughts that arise. I work with them to have an independent emotional response. In fact, I work with them to bring out the virtues that already exist within them. I do not go in there and tell them to do even more than they can fit on their plate.

In all the healing work I have facilitated, negative feelings must be transmuted to a neutral charge. However, even better than neutral is eventually coming to sincere yet profound gratitude and appreciation. Does this mean forgiveness? No. You are not excusing anyone or anything from what you have experienced. Every person is still responsible for their own thoughts, words, actions, and of course, feelings. However, in the face of what you are experiencing, you are cultivating compassion and wisdom toward yourself and your environment. "Changing poison into medicine" is what Nichiren Buddhists call this process -- how we can create value from whatever we encounter in life. So make lemonade out of those lemons!