By Debbie Devine, Licensed Professional Counselor

Click here to contact Debbie and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

”Soften your eyes. Relax your face,” I instruct my clients when we are working on deep relaxation in session. And the change is immediate and visible as the lines of tension fall away and a peaceful expression steals over them. When conducting this exercise with a roomful of people, the whole mood of the group changes. You can almost see everyone’s blood pressure go down! For you see, no matter how skillful the face lift, how costly the wrinkle cream, nothing can erase the look of stress, anger, sadness or chronic anxiety from a face when the soul inside is tense and troubled.

Most of us have known people with all the right clothes, makeup, hair, etc. but when they opened their mouth, negativity and anger poured out. How does negativity detract from outer beauty? Bitterness, stress and unresolved hurt often manifest themselves in tense facial muscles especially around the lips and eyes. This leads to fine lines around the lips and wrinkles in the eye area.

And so, we must seek peace as the ultimate beautifier—peace with ourselves, with God and with others (which is not necessarily the same as having everybody pleased with you.) All world religions teach us that true beauty comes from within, from finding stillness and acceptance. Sayings such as: “accept the things you cannot change” (prayer from Alcoholics Anonymous), “that which you would change, must first be accepted as is” (Buddhist saying) and, “see to it that the light within you is not darkness” (Jesus) attest that there must be inner calmness and peace for true outer beauty to exist.

And, just as it’s impossible to do our own liposuction or facelift, so we must have help to seek inner beauty–through counseling, and getting still to connect deep within ourselves in solitude. We must decide to measure and cherish our worth by more than numbers on a scale or how well we hide our aging. This changing of our mental health, like the changing of our physical health, requires a deliberate effort and investment of time and resources. It means sitting down with paper and pen and asking ourselves hard questions, like “what do I believe makes me worthy, happy, successful or attractive? Why do I believe that? Who taught me that belief?”

The practical things help too. Consider this list of ideas:

1) Get Enough Sleep—clients often enter “depression” by way of “exhaustion.”
2) Adding healthy foods so we don’t have sugar highs and lows.
3) Choosing to stop work early enough to make the yoga class or fitness appointment
4) Scheduling a massage
5) Committing to counseling
6) Getting annual checkups

All of these are ways to “maintain the vehicle”—our bodies—to get us where we want to go in life.

None of this comes easy for us, especially women. We are taught to give and give, and often made to feel guilty if we “take” for ourselves—time, money, effort. As far as my recommendation of sitting and doing nothing, to allow your soul to rest and examine itself? Please! Not a concept we embrace in the Western world.

And yet, our inner self begs to be given its own beauty treatment, its own “spa day” of quiet, self examination, as we investigate our own beliefs by asking hard questions of ourselves.

Try this prescription for just a few minutes a day—sitting quietly, without words, without thoughts, without agenda. Listen. Feel the stress drain out as you do so.

And rest. And find peace.

And be beautiful.

©Copyright 2009 by Debbie Devine, Licensed Professional Counselor. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Debbie and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile