“What if the soul is like an inner activist, disrupting your status quo, creating imbalance, finding nourishment in illness, moving you not only into light but also the dark, and leaving you unsure of your most cherished beliefs?”
These are the questions asked of me in my first session with David Bedrick, a practitioner of process-oriented psychology. In his compassionate way, David challenged me to fully open my eyes to where I was, to what my soul was telling me about that place, and to what my soul was telling me that I needed to do, in order that it might stop being killed a little more each day, and start to live again.
It has been a little more than a year since then, since the day I deeply committed to bringing my soul back alive. During that time, I had two more sessions with David. Since he is in New Mexico and I am in Virginia, these appointments have been by phone and Skype. This, combined with the powerful impact that David’s help has made on my life, led me to call him my “Wi-Chiatrist.”
David’s perspective is refreshingly different from that of mainstream psychology. Instead of focusing on labeling us with things we supposedly lack, he “encourages a love-based psychology rooted in the belief that there is profound meaning in our struggles, which can be healed when compassionately reframed.”
During that first session, David also helped me recognize not only what my soul was aching for me to hear, the commitment and sacrifice necessary for me to conduct this vitally important re-enlivening. Yes, the tasks have been monumental, the changes dramatic and often surprising, but the gifts are worthwhile and indescribably delicious!
What if your soul is an inner activist, and what is your soul aching for you to hear?