Self-Care and the Wise Codependent

“The meditation room is within. Decorate that.”

Richard from Texas, Eat Pray Love

Apparently during my trip to Los Angeles, someone was gracious enough to share their nasty little cold germs with me. This week, I’ve found that nursing a cold is a good test of how well we take care of ourselves. It’s also taught me a lot about the inner-critic in my head.

In terms of self-care, I decided last Sunday that I would stay away from the office. Then I made sure I had all of the necessary cold medications, including cough drops. I immediately began drowning my body with chicken noodle soup/chicken broth to get the old electrolytes back in balance again. I’ve also downed a lot of green tea and I’ve allowed myself to lie around and watch movies. All of this has helped me reduce the severity of the cold. The cold I had last year took me through three boxes of tissues. This cold has only required one box.

On the down side, I’ve heard a lot from my inner-critic. In particular, he has been whining constantly about getting my ass back into the office. He (the inner-critic) has created scenarios where my coworkers are criticizing me for being a wimp with statements like “Who stays home for a cold? What a baby!” or “He sure is milking this little cold thing. Work has to come first.” Yes, I’ve heard that VOICE a lot rumbling around through my head, but I’ve chosen to ignore it. That’s not to say it hasn’t bothered me. It has, but so has the cold. Just because something is bothering us we don’t have to be controlled by it. We can allow it to whine and whimper without taking it too seriously.

Today, I’m definitely on the upswing in terms of getting healthier. I’ve stopped taking most of the cold remedies. And for some reason I’ve had a resistance to noise. I thought about putting a movie in the Blue Ray player this morning, but then said “No” to the idea. Next I thought about turning on the stereo and listening to some Wolf-Ferrari, but then said “No” to that idea, too. This is really unusual for me because I love my background noise. It keeps me from feeling alone, I guess; like it’s another person in the room with me.

So I sat down and a line from the movie Eat Pray Love came back to me: “The meditation room is within. Decorate that.” Richard from Texas speaks the line to Liz when she is at her wits end trying to understand meditation. Meditation isn’t about quieting the voices in our heads (not even the Inner-Critic). It’s about taking our attention and our power back from those voices. We do this by simply allowing the voices within us to be. We give them space, refrain from trying to control them and just allow them to speak. We don’t have to pay attention to what they have to say, however. And by accepting them and allowing them to be, we are no longer frustrated by hopelessly trying to control them.

Sometimes we need to robe ourselves in silence and allow all of the little voices to wise-crack and chatter as we tend to the meditation room that is inside of us. Understanding this has helped me to take better care of myself this week. Sitting and allowing my Inner-Critic to pop-off, while not taking anything he says too seriously, has helped me to resist running to the office—and thus running myself physically further into the ground. I think I am getting well faster, and with a lot less pain, because I have placed my own well-being first. This is a great lesson for any codependent.