Perhaps you have a friend who has gone through crisis and has an epiphany that alters the course of her life. After her father’s death, Julie realized she no longer wanted to practice law; she took herself off the type-A track and now makes and sells gorgeous pottery. After Phil lost his high-paying job, he found, to his astonishment, that “temporary” work in the local coffee shop not only allowed his family to remain in their home but renewed his spirits, his energy, and his health.
One term for this life-altering experience is metanoia, which comes from the Greek word for changing one’s mind, but is often defined as changing one’s heart after a life-altering event. Metanoia is also a psychological term; Carl Jung defined it as the spontaneous attempt of the pysche to heal itself after conflict and the process of being reborn in a more adaptive form. For others, particularly those in the spiritual community, metanoia connotes our ability to turn ourselves around after a period of hardship, to face a new direction, to find new light and put old shadows behind us.
For caregivers, metanoia is the process and promise of finding deeper meaning and a new way of being even as we care for another in desperate need. This process is a fundamental part of healing and renewing ourselves.
When we become full-time caregivers, we must recognize that life as we know it has changed, almost from the moment our loved one is diagnosed. We will be faced with tough decisions, anxiety, fatigue, stress, and financial hardship. Many family caregivers find their lives changing beyond recognition: they no longer have the time, the independence, the energy, or the means to spend a casual Saturday at the mall or on the golf course. A spontaneous weekend away is unthinkable. Dinner or a long bath without interruption is a luxury of the past. And always, there is the gnawing uncertainty: “How will this turn out? How much more will be required of me? What will be left of me when this part of my life ends? Will I be alone? Will I ever know what normal feels like?”
These are not selfish or pointless thoughts. These are the very ways our psyche and our hearts are trying to adapt to life-altering circumstances.
Dr. Joan Boysenko, a licensed clinical psychologist who has written extensively on the mind-body connection, tells us that the change process we go through at times like these is very much a form of dying to who we once were. We must acknowledge that we can never really return to the old way of life. Even if our loved one heals completely, our inner beings – our very hearts – have been dramatically transformed by what we have gone through.
Dr. Boysenko and other noted physicians and psychologists tell us that we can learn to transform our lives even while we are going through periods of deep uncertainty. They tell us that we must begin by looking clearly at who we are now; what we need now; what we need to learn from this very experience; what we must do to survive and thrive; and what the meaning and purpose of our current suffering is about
Our ability to accept our new reality, to find meaning even in the darkest hours of our lives, and to be committed to a new way of being is key to our resilience. These factors separate those who renew themselves after crisis from those who simply cannot. From resilience springs resourcefulness, new life goals, and new ways of living.
If we think that metanoia is pop psychology, we would do well to think about Holocaust survivors. Those who flourished -- like Viktor Frankl, the noted Austrian psychiatrist and survivor of four Nazi death camps -- were determined to make something positive out of the hard lessons they were learning as they were experiencing them. They did not deny their circumstances; they did not immerse themselves in self-deluding optimism that all that was lost would be restored; they did not retreat into a past they could never again recreate. Even in the hellish nightmare of Auschwitz , Frankl began writing seminars on resilience. He lived to write give many such seminars and write many books, including the classic Man’s Search for Meaning.
The best we can do for ourselves each day is to accept the fact that our lives have changed; as a consequence and necessity, our hearts and minds are changing too. Who will we be at the other end of this journey? If we allow ourselves, we will be wiser, more resilient, more ready to find new ways of living, and more open to experiencing joy in simple things we had once taken for granted.
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” (Richard Bach)
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