Finding The Butterfly in the Cup
As readers of this blog know, like all humans, my emotions seem to be riding a bit of a roller coaster. Fear not, these swings don’t reach nearly the heights and depths of times past. In fact, although emotion regulation problems are indeed a hallmark of damage to the brains’ frontal lobe, I find that things have definitely improved over the more than 16 years since my injury. It would, of course, be misleading to claim that my emotional responses are perfectly in-tune with reality, or that the changes in my emotion occur in direct proportion to my real experiences…after all, I’m a TBI survivor, but still a human being!
I’m sure we would all benefit from help dealing with surfing the emotional waves life can throw our way. Come to think of it, although life can include some pretty epic events or grandiose achievements, and conversely, big challenges or painful losses; the benefit of hindsight usually reveals these hugely emotional events to be of far less consequence than we view them at the time. In my case, as my dear friend Barry once observed, “You’re being a drama queen!” This observation of me after receiving my frantic phone call years ago may have perturbed me that day, but in reflecting was spot on. In fact, I don’t even remember what the self-described crisis I was calling about even entailed!
Far be me an expert on regulating one’s emotions or calming an overloaded nervous system, but this post’s title references a tool emphasized to me by Dr. Shawn Shapiro. A chiropractor who’s also trained in hypnosis, Shawn and I have been working together for some time now. Initially I sought his hypnosis services to address my tendency to self-sabotage, but he’s really helped me to set goals and create strategies to pursue them. Now to that butterfly:
During one of our sessions in the early days after being heartbroken for the first time in my life as I began to go down the trail of self-hatred with full explanations of why I was doomed to a miserable existence, Shawn offered an opinion. At first I was expecting him to point out how fortunate I was and only deepen my shame at an inability to feel gratitude and the guilt I hold for the many blessings in my life. However, I had told him about an early morning round of golf I played and a beautiful moment when a gorgeous butterfly had appeared over the edge of the cup as I stooped to get my ball from the hole. My mother had lost her mom, my Memere, the year before and saw butterflies as a symbol of her sweet mother’s sprit since that time. I was in a state of despair and seemed to have a constant reservoir of tears in my eyes at all times after the abrupt dissolution of my engagement, but found myself actually smiling at the butterfly’s appearance. Seeing the expression on my face and comfort the experience had brought me as I told him, Shawn exclaimed, “You found the Butterfly in the cup!”
I recall being slightly perturbed that he was apparently finding bliss despite my being so downtrodden when Shawn pointed out what should have been obvious to me: In times of duress, maybe the answer is to take it easy and Find the Butterfly in the Cup! Like most people, I tend to be hyper-sensitive to the actual circumstances of any given moment which tends to create bigger emotional swings than may actually be fitting a given situation. Living a life of near constant change coupled with this trait can lead to emotional volatility. So I guess it’s going to be a bumpy ride, Huh?
With some gentle highlighting of its’ meaning from Shaun, “The Butterfly in the Cup” really helped me see that the good, beauty, love, God, whatever a person’s symbol of faith in a benevolent power is; can always be found if I look for it. As I’m sure many readers of More Than a Speed Bump’s posts have noticed, whether through the kindness of others, love of family, companionship of pets, precious niece and nephews, or even a butterfly rising from a golf cup: All I have to do is be alert and the love and beauty all around me always seems to show itself!