Articles

Article in Nursing Matters Magazine

USING A MODEL OF WHOLENESS TO FACE LIFE CHALLENGS
Peig Myota, BSN, MSW

We all experience many challenges in the course of a lifetime. Sometimes these challenges reach the level of crisis, requiring immediate resolution to alleviate emotional pain. It is at times like this that individuals are most likely to seek professional help.

A number of therapeutic models can be used to resolve a time of crisis. Most of these models reduce symptoms of pain without addressing the underlying issues that escalated a life event from the level of challenge to crisis. Working from a model of wholeness, however, teaches individuals how to use challenge as an opportunity for genuine growth and lasting change by incorporating the understanding that all life experiences can provide ways to stay in balance physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually.

Responding to challenge from a model of wholeness assists individuals in remaining in balance by increasing their strengths and eliminating their weaknesses. This can be accomplished by establishing daily disciplines for physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual self-care that allow one to appreciate and respond to challenge as an opportunity to reach one’s greatest potential for health and wholeness. Life experiences can then be used as the blueprint for problem resolution and reaching one’s greatest potential as a human being.

This process is not easy to use effectively without professional help. To successfully implement this model, individuals must first learn how not to allow over sensitivity or insensitivity to emotions from blocking the mind’s ability to make choices that produce the potential to achieve health and happiness in all aspects of life.

When difficult challenges are approached from a model of wholeness, the path of love is taken instead of the path of fear. The challenge is then looked at from the perspective that this experience is purposeful in creating an opportunity for growth and change. However, the emotional impact of feeling extreme pain makes it difficult to stay in a place of balance while in the midst of a crisis. The difficulty is enhanced for individuals who do not allow themselves access to feeling their emotions. Preventing the experiencing of emotions is often a learned pattern of survival behavior brought on by severe trauma. In both cases, the key to change is the ability to allow for the experiencing and release of painful emotions. This initiates the process of using the mind to make choices that resolve the underlying cause of the crisis.

Everyone has two built-in mechanisms for working with emotions that assist in maintaining emotional balance. The first is the physical signals that the body sends to assist in defining where in the body the emotion is being sensed or held. Learning to define emotions as represented by physical signals is imperative. Body signals can become symptoms that manifest as illness when emotions are not released in a healthy way. The second mechanism is the use of the mind, which allows the individual to clearly define the basis and solution for the problem that is causing the painful emotions. Being overwhelmed by fear and other negative emotions, or resisting in defining what fears and emotions exist, can block the ability to use emotions as key factors for making choices that can resolve the cause of the challenging problem. The resolution is especially difficult when a family member or loved one is the catalyst for the challenging experience.

By staying in a place of emotional balance and operating from love instead of fear, it is possible to resolve problems involving those closest to us in a respectful way. Because this process is so difficult to learn, a person can best be assisted by a professional therapist who works from a model of wholeness. The model allows the therapist to remain objective and compassionate in supporting the heartfelt efforts of the client to resolve issues involving loved ones with respect and non-judgment, while at the same time teaching the client to use strength and courage as building blocks for demonstrating the process of positive change.

When a challenging life experience is resolved in a loving and respectful way, it becomes a growth experience that leads to the potential for positive permanent change for everyone involved in the problem. Loving choices can then be used as the blueprint for a model of wholeness to respond to life challenges. A model of wholeness for change and growth is only possible by achieving the ability to stay in balanced emotional state of love, instead of fear. This blueprint becomes the formula for using life’s challenging experiences to achieve health and wholeness, and to reach our greatest human potential.