Speaking of mental detoxifying. The definition of the word “toxic”, from the original latin meaning, is “poisoned”.
In our modern day language we say “that’s a toxic relationship” or “this is a toxic food” or “she has a toxic personality”.
Poisoned.
Quite dramatic, right?
And yet I could find in my mind a person I would call “toxic” from my history.
Can you find someone who you’d inwardly refer to as toxic?
You know the one. Picture them now.
I can see it, even though the memory is many years old.
She betrayed me, back-stabbed me, hurt me. A friend who did a weird thing that wound up involving legal issues.
She anonymously reported me to the state government offices which oversee my counseling credential complaining that I didn’t have a master’s degree, that I wasn’t being supervised, and that because I offered retreats at Breitenbush Hotsprings, I was counseling people in the nude.
I still shake my head in disbelief, although I’ve done The Work on it.
I feel like such a modest person. Never would I conduct a counseling session naked. LOL.
Notice the defense arising. The urge to explain what kind of person I am, what a strange accusation it was that surely does not fit.
What happened there? Such a misunderstanding! How could she accuse me of this?
She poisoned our friendship!
Is it true?
Can I absolutely know that it’s true?
YES!
Well. Deep breath. Pause. Answer the question.
I’m not absolutely sure.
We had a wonderful friendship, before she learned about my new retreat-teaching at Breitenbush.
Who made the change? Who brought something forth that was uncomfortable, or new, or….toxic, apparently?
That was me.
I was the one who started presenting retreats at Breitenbush where they have clothing-optional soaking tubs to use on down-time or in between workshop sessions.
How do I react when I believe she poisoned our friendship?
Angry. Sad. Heart-broken. Confused.
I scan the past for clues about how she could have done this to me. I feel like a victim. Shocked.
So who would I be without this dreadful story of toxic poisoning coming from “out there” at me, through my friend?
Noticing how safe I was the whole time. How much I learned about the law and complaints and the legal matters–more than I ever imagined. Noticing how comfortable I feel with the state and government, and how grateful I feel for my degree (yes, that I earned) and my clarity about the law now.
Here’s the funny thing: I had never been sure about what I was supposed to be doing when it came to being supervised or having a consult group as a “certified counselor”, and I found out I wasn’t supposed to be supervised at all–in fact, I was eligible to take a program of accreditation if I wanted to BE a supervisor myself.
I was eligible as a graduate level counselor to offer CEUs to mental health professionals. I would have never known this, if it weren’t for my friend.
So surprised!
Turning the thought around: I poisoned my own friendliness with myself. My thinking poisoned my friendship with this other person. She did NOT poison our friendship.
All she did was make a report, then vanished without speaking to me ever again.
You could say I was spared, but I mean that in the most kind way.
She was soft, non-violent, slipped away silently without confrontation, and the process left me more knowledgeable about ethics in my state than I ever paid attention to before.
My confidence grew 100 times bigger in a good way. I wasn’t so afraid of the authority of the state overseeing department. They felt like real people. I understood that steps are in place if people get frightened or worried about mental health practices.
But oh, my, the poisoned feeling of fear in my mind and heart after I discovered who it was who had reported me.
I was so frightened and shocked that when I opened a letter from the State two whole years later, my heart skipped a beat–that little drive of adrenaline flashed through (it was a normal form letter to renew my license).
My fear and terror would flare up–I’d have a seizure, as Byron Katie sometimes jokes–and pour some toxic energy into my system through images I’d see of the past of being betrayed by a friend, cut off, abandoned.
I see I created it all.
I don’t know exactly what was happening over there with my friend, but I do know we’re cut from the same cloth–because I’m not all that comfortable with naked hot tubs myself.
For me, it was strange, and uncommon, to see naked bodies of all shapes and sizes when I passed closely near the clothing-optional tub area.
Perhaps my mind needed a little openness, a little “clean up”.
In fact, a clean up is just what I got.
My entire career path was cleaned up–I began doing only The Work of Byron Katie with clients, a sense of stability grew within, a trust that what I was doing felt good and sweet and ever-evolving.
Why, now that I think about it, that whole thing that went down was an internal clean up of a toxic dump site in my mind.
Thank you, that friend, for helping me detox my thinking.
The joys of doing The Work.
Much love,
Grace