Finding Self-Compassion in ICU
Exercising my lungs to breathe deeply again after the 1st operation.
Memories, images, and feelings about my Intensive Care Unit stay continue to trickle into my consciousness and I ask myself, how did I manage that experience and be left with such positive feelings? When your life is stripped down to lying immobile in a bed completely dependent on the care of others, there's only each moment as it passes, thankful to be alive and digging deep to find a place of peace. Embracing self-compassion pulled me through.
ICU is 24 hour care, a nurse assigned to you for their 8 hour shift. This means check-ins at least every hour from your nurse and someone who you can trust to make sure everything is going as it should be. They monitor the pain meds, the IV's and numerous machines that are connected to all of the tubes going into your body.
What really stays with me though are the constant smiles, laughs, the chats we had about what they did in their own time, the lovely touches of lavender in the bathing water, and even kept abreast of the political craziness of the election when the next President was announced. (This was the day after my 1st operation and the first thing my nurse said to me was, 'it's not a good day for the World.') Even in ICU in a Swiss hospital news travels fast!
The compassion that ICU nurses showed 24/7 amazed me. I could often hear them laughing from their staff area and it always warmed my heart that they were enjoying themselves and happy in their job. Just being around this energy in such an intense environment put my heart at ease.
For deeper soul peace, I found myself turning to what I had learned about self-compassion from Kristin Neff's work. Three components make up self-compassion: kindness to self, sharing a common humanity, and mindfulness. I started with common humanity remembering that I am not alone in this experience. Many people have gone before me, had to deal with life threatening illnesses and recover from big surgeries.
I am not alone in this experience.
Bringing Christmas twinkle lights into ICU.
Framing my experience in a larger perspective helped me to not feel sorry for myself, as if I'm the only one suffering here.
It helps me tune into a much larger part of life, that while I am lying on this bed unable to move, it still is only a small aspect of who I am. I focus on reaching into a more vast and expansive quality of my being.
I remember the words from the Self-Compassion break exercise and say them over in my head like a mantra:
This is a moment of suffering
Suffering is part of life
May I be kind to myself
May I give myself the compassion I need
It's amazing how saying these words over and over again can calm down the mind and fill the body with a mixture of gentleness, love, and acceptance. The willingness to meet and soften to whatever is going on in the moment as the body works hard to readjust it's understanding of what just happened to it. Self-compassion gave me the deep internal support I needed to give myself.
Bringing in the Light