Choosing Love
By: Claire Crowe LMSW
Embracing how love shows up with our body, with our thoughts, and with those around us.
As a therapist in Midland, I often find myself having conversations about love. This time of year can feel like a lot of pressure to match whatever image of love we’re carrying around in our minds and on our Instagram feeds. In the therapy room, I get to experience the many directions conversations about love can lead. We may talk about zones of influence, a flowery way of saying “work towards what you can change”. This may include how you feel in your body, your thoughts, and the ways you interact with others. This season at Wellrooted, we’re celebrating how love shows up in each of these spaces.
First up, let’s take a minute to name what there is to love about living in a body. For so many of us, we’re too busy doing the math on whether or not our body is good that we overlook all the things our body does so well. Right now, I am enjoying my lifelong love of writing with a mechanical pencil with my right hand, while my left hand is treated to giving my very fluffy cat a few scritch scratches. And while you may not share my love of fluff or 0.7 lead, therapy can be a space to explore what makes you remember the knowledge and joy stored in your particular body. In the spirit of the holiday here’s a Madlib style love note template. If you have a therapist, share it at your next session. There’s nothing we love more than when you see your own lovability.
Next, let’s wonder what there is to love about our thoughts. To avoid being accused of being a toxically positive therapist, a disclaimer: thoughts and behaviors that are working against us are often what lead us to therapy in the first place. But one hill I will die on, is celebrating how changing our relationship to our thoughts can give us so many things to love. I haven’t met anyone who isn’t to some degree under the influence of their own inner critic. They’re the voice telling you what to do (or not do) say (or not say) and why you’re too stupid, weak, bad (pick one) to figure it out on your own. I would not choose love to describe how I feel about the inner critics I have come across as a therapist. But you know what I do love? I love it when someone starts a sentence with “I’m having the thought” as opposed to the thought having them. While there’s not a lot of love for the things the inner critic says, I can respect how fiercely they try to protect, warning of the danger they believe we cannot handle. And there’s nothing I love more than seeing them proven wrong.
Celebrating how changing our
relationship to our thoughts can give us so many things to love.
Lastly, let’s try our best to be curious about what there is to love about sharing life with another person. As a good friend recently shared over coffee at our favorite Midland spot, “living with other people is weird.” This sentiment isn’t exclusive to the people we share a roof with. There’s a whole branch of therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, dedicated to untangling the weirdness that can come with proximity to other people. Even in the heat of couples and family therapy, I can see so much to love about loving another person. Loving another person requires you to see your impact on them, and lovingly adjust without abandoning yourself. It isn’t easy, but when done well, ranks right up there with fluffy cats and defying inner critics. And despite what you may be seeing on your feed, you don’t have to be in a couple to do it. Thanks to our brains that are wired for belonging, being curious about any other person’s perspective will have the same effect. And lucky for us, Midland happens to be full of other people, all inviting us to discover something to love.
If you are looking for help connecting with or exploring your relationship with others or yourself, reach out to us, therapists in Midland, Michigan at Wellrooted Counseling. We’re happy to walk with you as you grow in your awareness of internal cues, embracing meaningful discomfort, and building a more meaningful life.
