Picking up the pieces after things fall apart
CNN's Todd Leopold has filed a nice piece on something you might not think much about unless it happened to you: what if you were responsible for accidentally taking another human life? How would you ever move on, or ever get whole again?
After all,
...it's not like the clouds suddenly lift after someone like Robin Williams' "Good Will Hunting" shrink utters "It's not your fault" a half-dozen times."Even with an outside release, internally we can't give ourselves the same freedom or the same grace or the same break that even somebody from the outside would," says Richard Shaw, a therapist in the Portland, Oregon, area. "Every time I ask this question, 'Who is your worst critic?', it's always 'me.' I'm always harder on myself than I am on other people. I'm always my worst critic."
...."I honestly, truly believe, at our deepest core, we want to be healed -- and our bodies, for the most part, are designed to heal," ... says [The Rev. Gregory LaDue, a Vietnam veteran, therapist and Methodist minister based in San Diego]. "Our psyches and our souls always want to be whole, but it takes a little more cooperation for our psyches and souls to be healed."
Also, don't count out the value of a healthy spiritual community that loves you for who you are, a prayer life rooted in daily study, and a way of committing yourself to selfless service.
