Masking tape..more from my interview with Patti Digh

Posted by Liz on Nov 9, 2008 in emotions | 7 comments

In the post ‘Go deeper than the symptom‘ I talked about wonderful self-growth that can occur when we allow ourselves to break down the barriers and go below the symptom, shed our egos and reveal our souls. These wonderful thoughts came from Author Patti Digh, whose book, 37 days, continues to inspire.

One of the things we discussed during our interview are the natural transitions that accompany the psychological and emotional aspects of midlife.  Patti noted that there are few essays that are relevant to this process and those transitions that we are going through.

Among the many lessons we learn as we grow older, there’s none more important than realizing how critical it is to better take care of ourselves so that we are better prepared to take care of others. Something Patti aptly refers to as ‘Put on your own mask first.’

“If you don’t put on your own mask first, you’ll be of no use to others who might need your help,” writes Patti. The mask she is referring to is an oxygen mask during emergencies on a plane but the analogy applies to so many aspects of our lives.

Who do you neglect the most when you are taking care of your [fill in the blank]? As life swirls around you and days rush by, whose needs have you forgotten?

“I wrote these chapters because I need to learn the lessons myself,” Patti explains. “I’m a person whose outwardly focused in terms of caretaking for other people and that is both positive and negative sometimes. And there’s a capacity to have a savior complex around that as well. So, I’m not really good at taking care of myself nor am I, until very recently, good at asking for help.”

Sound familiar?

Patti suggests that our generation has the disadvantage of measuring our success, least partially, by how well we take care of people. “I think that the impulse behind the whole of the book [is to] leave some part of your self behind, to pay attention to your own stories.”

But does paying attention to your ‘own stories’ mean that you are doing so at the expense of someone else?

Patti believes that we don’t put ourselves first for fear of being called selfish. And wonders if taking care of or saving others is simply a diversion…from saving ourselves. Pretty intuitive, if you ask me.

I believe that there is room for both – to care for others and to care for ourselves simultaneously. This takes a lot of work and a tremendous amount of energy. And even scarier, what’s left of the savior is we allow her to expose a few less than admirable traits, the dark side? Or allow the soul to relish in its solitude so that it is able to grow and expand and flourish?

Ask yourself. Are you holding it all together with little bits of masking tape while you devote all that energy to doing for others? And is the tape starting to crack with age?

Slow down long enough to put on your own mask, Patti writes. And “while you’re tightening the straps, ponder the wacky possibility that the people you are trying to save don’t need saving. If you lose consciousness, you won’t be any help to them anyway.”

To move this idea forward, take 30 minutes every day to be alone. And try this for 37 days, taking note of how you feel, if you need and cherish it, and if it is making any difference in how you approach yourself and others that you constantly take care of. This exercise, along with a focused free write, can be accessed in Patti’s book.

Today, I challenge your to give yourself the gift of solitude, selflessness and self-love. Put on your own mask and remove the bits of tape that are just barely holding it together while you give give give and run run run and never stop to breathe.