Leveraging Spiritual Resources for Renewal

Life has seemed ‘stretched thin’ for us and for many we have encountered these last two years of pandemic and strife. As Bilbo told Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring, “I feel thin, sort of like butter scraped over too much bread.” The perfect storm of diminishing self-care and increasing demand for the services of psychotherapists has left many of us with too much bread for our butter! Compassion fatigue and burn out seem to be growing in all the care providing professions after these prolonged times of being “stretched thin”. Taking time for renewal, for refreshing our beings, has become a need, not just a “best practice.” How do we as psychotherapists, who know what to do for renewal, actually get ourselves to practice what we preach? 

Maybe we just need the nudge of a reminder! Each of us have ways to help ourselves find renewal. Possibly those ways have become less accessible during the pandemic, and as those habits have fallen away, we may have forgotten what helped. Possibly our pace of work has been increased for so long that we have lost our ability to relax and play. As many have worked more at home these last two years, possibly the boundary between work and home has been blurred. Whatever dilemma we face that gets in the way of the self-care we need, it may help to be reminded that engaging our spiritual resources can bring renewal. 

Spiritual resources, broadly defined, encompass all experiences, interactions, and/or engagements which bring a heightened sense of being alive, energized, present, accompanied... An invitation is offered here to spend a few moments taking an inventory of your spiritual resources: remember God-moments, spiritual markers, those people, practices, places, activities which add positive qualities to your life. These are qualities such as energy, light, purpose, joy, freedom, hope, passion, gratitude, expansiveness…the list goes on. As you remember those resources, do any spark your desire for more attention? You might invite the remembering of that positive, life-bringing experience to expand into all five senses. What messages are there for you through those senses? The information may come in an image or emotion before the message. Let yourself stay with it until it brings a lift or a settling in your spirit, whatever you need. Setting an intention and a practice to revisit the well you have found may be one way for you to replenish your being. Deepening an existing spiritual resource, remembering a forgotten one, and developing new spiritual resources are all strategies which can refill the reservoirs of our spirits. As a side note, these interventions are part of ACPE’s Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy Training program. 

Spring itself is often a spiritual resource for many of us. It often brings a swell of fresh hope to our spirits as trees bud and bloom, flowers push their way up through the soil, birds begin to sing and work together to build nests. The Earth awakens from its winter’s sleep, reminding us of Life. Pulling those pesky spring weeds out of the flower beds can become a time to ‘weed’ our souls, making room for new growth. Re-aligning the edging around flower beds can bring to mind a way to adjust our boundaries for self-care.  May the emergence of this Spring remind you that Life can be good—a joyous celebration--even in the midst of intense and heavy work and unsettling life events. Let the squirrel, or the redbird, distract you for a moment…and breathe in Life! And let’s find some more butter for our bread.