I’m committing a cardinal blogging sin here: I’m writing about something that I’m freshly processing. Somehow, writing this post this afternoon feels like a continuation of my recently concluded therapy session. I’m only sharing it, of course, in hopes that it helps you too.
My son is almost two. I’ve been going to therapy about the circumstances of his birth off and on since I was a few weeks postpartum. At first, it was with a social worker my primary care provider connected me to. I got the strange sense that everyone pitied me for what I went through and the trauma responses I was experiencing and didn’t really know how to help. Primarily, it felt like an exercise in handholding to make sure I didn’t slink too far into postpartum mental health oblivion. I didn’t have the space in time from the event to start re-processing any trauma in earnest. I was also preoccupied with keeping a tiny human fed, clean, rested, and clothed.
So, re-processing is what I’ve been doing over the past year with a different trauma-oriented therapist. Don’t ask me about my progress. I don’t know the answer. Some days it feels like I’m almost “over it” and some days it feels like I’m an emotional wreck about to implode.
My therapist always reminds me that when we are re-processing trauma, we’re prone to feeling it in our nervous systems as if we’re going through it again. Appointments are followed by several days of feeling yucky, usually: tired, emotional, incapable.
Today, I logged off my work computer and directly into a therapy appointment. Work today had been objectively fine, but I was feeling extremely stressed about it all the same. I told my therapist I needed to “come down” from the work stress before I could shift into a different mindset.
We talked about coping strategies and ‘windows of tolerance.’ I asked this: “How do I park all the stress that’s important to work through that I don’t have the capacity to deal with right now?” In other words, how do I currently focus on the most urgent and important stressor (work) and set the other problems aside, temporarily (i.e. therapy work, other stresses)?
She reminded me of the technique of visualizing a box and putting all the things that I need a rest from into that box. I told her I was picturing a recipe box. We sat there and put stuff in it, and it helped. I immediately felt calmer. Leaving my appointment, I had a plan: a hypothetical box of stuff to come back to but forget about for now, a mental list lying on top of the box of things to deal with urgently, and a structure for the rest of my day, including embracing this rest time that I’m using partially to write this.
Coming out of my appointment, and upon a few minutes of further reflection, I’ve decided to trade in my mental picture of a recipe box for a mental picture of a tabernacle. For the non-Catholics reading this, a tabernacle is where the Eucharist (consecrated hosts which have become Christ’s Body through consecration at the time of communion during Mass) is stored. If you see a box (usually gold) with an accompanying a red candle or light in a Catholic Church, Catholics believe Christ is physically present there. Praying before a tabernacle is a beautiful gift that makes tangible the Real Presence of Jesus that is also in our hearts.
The thought of putting troubles in a box – on pause – feels passively, but not actively, helpful. Putting my troubles in a container with Jesus (a tabernacle) feels actively helpful, too. Here, God. I don’t have the capacity to deal with some of my problems right now, so I’ll set them down next to You for a little while. If You want to deal with some of them while they are there, I’d be ever grateful.
Maybe this mental image is sacrilegious. I hope not. I don’t think it is. Isn’t that what Christ’s Body did for us? He took on our shame, our sin, and our troubles. I’m sure He’s comfortable with us offering Him our pain and putting it down next to Him.
So, I give myself (and you) permission to park some of your problems in a tabernacle with Him, through visualizing prayer or in prayer in front of a physical tabernacle. It’s alright if we don’t have capacity to deal with all our troubles all at once. I know He’s happy to hold on to some of them for us. I also know His Spirit goes with us while we actively face the troubles that aren’t resting with Jesus in the tabernacle box.
For now, I’m going to close my eyes and start moving my little slips of ‘trouble papers’ from my empty recipe box to a tabernacle that is full of Jesus.
Let the record reflect that this post was drafted and sort-of-edited in less than 40 minutes. So, if it sucks, I seek pardon.
The Heart of Jesus always has a place to contain our most difficult troubles and sufferings. God bless!