Pain class note
Jan. 3rd, 2012 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sasha_featherThis is the level 3 class and will be focused on creativity.
We were asked to go through a list of positive characteristics, circle the ones we thought related to us, and star the 3 that we felt the strongest about. I selected 4:
Strong
Intelligent
Trustworthy
Higher Social Interests (I interpreted this as my interests in feminism etc)
The instructors passed around colored pencils and we were asked to draw our pain or our relationship to our pain. This is to try and turn off the left brain and tap into the right brain.
Feel free to list qualities you like about yourself in the comments! Examples to get you started are compassionate, patient, alert, creative, energetic, calm, observant, ethical, adventurous, spiritual! Or things like improving yourself, seeking higher education, having good relationships, helping others!
Apparently there is a body of literature that supports journaling as a coping mechanism; people who journal about their situation use less meds and have fewer doctor appointments or whatever markers they use for these things.
I don't know, Live Journal, do you think I need to work on this? ;)
But actually, the exercise was a bit different than I normally do writing-- it was timed, it was free writing, there was no editing. A good creativity exercise. Still, most of what I wrote was unsurprising, since I write so much about my experience here in this journal. I think the only surprising word I used was "neglected". (Do I feel neglected? Does my body feel neglected?) There were several phrases I felt the need to repeat: "Before I Got Sick" and "What Now?". The writing-for-no-audience was helpful, but I found the drawing of last week to be more helpful, and more surprising, because it turned off my left-brain-robot narrator that I have a hard time turning off, and let all these feelings through. I want to do more of that, even though it was intense.
We also did an exercise with a partner where we said things about ourselves that we liked and loved, for 5 minutes, and the partner wrote them down. This is great! I highly recommend it! Our homework is to read the list every day, preferably out loud in front of a mirror, but just to ourselves if we can't manage that. It was also super nice to hear the good things about other people! What a cool thing. We should all be doing this all the time.
Values are not the same as goals: goals are concrete things we pick up along the way, but values are the road we choose to walk along. Even if our goals are not met, our values remain.
For example, a value might be to be a good friend, and the goals for enacting that value are to do kind things for your friends, send them emails, express your gratitude, buy them coffee, make them gifts. The concrete things are the goals, and even if they change or fall by they wayside, the value stays the same.
Values are highly personal, an internal compass, parts of ourselves that remain intact despite stress, pain, and illness. The are not the same as feelings, because while feelings can change over the course of a day, values will remain the same over a long period of time.
Some actions are very difficult to do but are in line with our values, such as setting boundaries or confronting people. Living in alignment with our values creates congruency; it can be vitalizing and uplifting.
If you lived in a world where you could choose, what would you choose your life to be about?
Living your values means making choices about how you invest your time and energy. It is independent of circumstances.
---
We were given a worksheet that lists "domains" of life: family, marriage/intimate relationships, parenting, friends/social life, work, education/training, recreation/fun, spiriutality, citizenship/community life, physical self care. We were asked to rate each one according to our own personal sense of importance on a 1 to 10 scale. Secondly, we were asked to rate how consistently our actions have matched up with our values over the past week.
We were also given a worksheet on "clarifying values" which honestly, makes my head hurt a little. It is not written very clearly (IRONIC). Or the head hurting may be unrelated. It just looks like a writing exercise to think through your values, goals, thoughts, and emotions. The key part looks like "Write a short paragraph about what it would mean to you to live the value and what it would mean if you didn't."
---
I'm pretty introspective, I doubt I'll have any trouble with this. In fact I'm pretty sure I live most of my values quite well already, except that I value work a lot and I'm not working right now, and that I value animals and nature, and I don't have enough contact with them.
eta Doing the exercise can be uncomfortable, but that's only because you're examining an imbalance that is already uncomfortable. You're just shining a light on an existing discomfort.
We were asked to go through a list of positive characteristics, circle the ones we thought related to us, and star the 3 that we felt the strongest about. I selected 4:
Strong
Intelligent
Trustworthy
Higher Social Interests (I interpreted this as my interests in feminism etc)
The instructors passed around colored pencils and we were asked to draw our pain or our relationship to our pain. This is to try and turn off the left brain and tap into the right brain.
Feel free to list qualities you like about yourself in the comments! Examples to get you started are compassionate, patient, alert, creative, energetic, calm, observant, ethical, adventurous, spiritual! Or things like improving yourself, seeking higher education, having good relationships, helping others!
Apparently there is a body of literature that supports journaling as a coping mechanism; people who journal about their situation use less meds and have fewer doctor appointments or whatever markers they use for these things.
I don't know, Live Journal, do you think I need to work on this? ;)
But actually, the exercise was a bit different than I normally do writing-- it was timed, it was free writing, there was no editing. A good creativity exercise. Still, most of what I wrote was unsurprising, since I write so much about my experience here in this journal. I think the only surprising word I used was "neglected". (Do I feel neglected? Does my body feel neglected?) There were several phrases I felt the need to repeat: "Before I Got Sick" and "What Now?". The writing-for-no-audience was helpful, but I found the drawing of last week to be more helpful, and more surprising, because it turned off my left-brain-robot narrator that I have a hard time turning off, and let all these feelings through. I want to do more of that, even though it was intense.
We also did an exercise with a partner where we said things about ourselves that we liked and loved, for 5 minutes, and the partner wrote them down. This is great! I highly recommend it! Our homework is to read the list every day, preferably out loud in front of a mirror, but just to ourselves if we can't manage that. It was also super nice to hear the good things about other people! What a cool thing. We should all be doing this all the time.
Values are not the same as goals: goals are concrete things we pick up along the way, but values are the road we choose to walk along. Even if our goals are not met, our values remain.
For example, a value might be to be a good friend, and the goals for enacting that value are to do kind things for your friends, send them emails, express your gratitude, buy them coffee, make them gifts. The concrete things are the goals, and even if they change or fall by they wayside, the value stays the same.
Values are highly personal, an internal compass, parts of ourselves that remain intact despite stress, pain, and illness. The are not the same as feelings, because while feelings can change over the course of a day, values will remain the same over a long period of time.
Some actions are very difficult to do but are in line with our values, such as setting boundaries or confronting people. Living in alignment with our values creates congruency; it can be vitalizing and uplifting.
If you lived in a world where you could choose, what would you choose your life to be about?
Living your values means making choices about how you invest your time and energy. It is independent of circumstances.
---
We were given a worksheet that lists "domains" of life: family, marriage/intimate relationships, parenting, friends/social life, work, education/training, recreation/fun, spiriutality, citizenship/community life, physical self care. We were asked to rate each one according to our own personal sense of importance on a 1 to 10 scale. Secondly, we were asked to rate how consistently our actions have matched up with our values over the past week.
We were also given a worksheet on "clarifying values" which honestly, makes my head hurt a little. It is not written very clearly (IRONIC). Or the head hurting may be unrelated. It just looks like a writing exercise to think through your values, goals, thoughts, and emotions. The key part looks like "Write a short paragraph about what it would mean to you to live the value and what it would mean if you didn't."
---
I'm pretty introspective, I doubt I'll have any trouble with this. In fact I'm pretty sure I live most of my values quite well already, except that I value work a lot and I'm not working right now, and that I value animals and nature, and I don't have enough contact with them.
eta Doing the exercise can be uncomfortable, but that's only because you're examining an imbalance that is already uncomfortable. You're just shining a light on an existing discomfort.
