Tiny Buddha

Category: love & relationships

  • Why I Didn’t Love Myself (and All the Suggestions That Didn’t Help)

    Why I Didn’t Love Myself (and All the Suggestions That Didn’t Help)

    “Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving yourself and see what happens.” ~Louise Hay

    There is a lot of hype around self-love these days. The media and marketing world often bombard us with messages insinuating that the key to self-love lies in consumerism. For a long time, I bought into this idea.

    I would see an advertisement urging me to treat myself to a high-end face cream for a dose of self-care. Or a promotional email landing in my inbox might suggest that a calming lavender bubble bath was just what I needed to boost my self-love. Or I would receive a text notifying me of the latest designer bag on sale—isn’t self-love about indulging in what you fancy?

    Despite buying all the things, incorporating self-care routines, and generally doing all the things these mediums recommended for self-love, I still felt unfulfilled.

    I questioned why, despite following all the guidelines, something still felt amiss. I felt that emptiness creeping in, even when I had checked all the boxes these commercial messages prescribed.

    Through navigating this journey, I’ve come to recognize an overlooked issue that often lurks in the shadows of the pursuit of self-love: low self-worth. The belief that I am not worthy of love, exactly as I am. 

    For most of my life, I found my self-worth through doing instead of being because this is what I learned from my church and home life. Serve, give, think of others. And I always got affirmation from my parents when I did something that was helpful to them. I don’t recall ever being asked what I wanted to do, and I really had no idea what I needed.

    I thought that in order to be worthy of my own approval and love, I had to first receive it from others. I thought that by being the helper, the healer, the giver, I would gain the love of others and then be lovable.

    I now realize that developing and believing in my own self-worth and loving myself is an inside job. All the healing, giving, and helping should have started with myself. You know, fill your own cup.

    What I learned does not work is seeking something outside of me for approval and validation. You see, we cannot control how others perceive us, or whether they understand us. We cannot control if someone likes the way we look, the art we create, or the words we say. Nor should we allow their opinions to dictate who we are, what actions we take, what we say, or how we feel about ourselves or our lives.

    For me, low self-worth showed up in very subtle ways that I am only now starting to see and understand because I now have an awareness of it.

    For me, low self-worth showed up as me giving my body to men before I was ready, or not saying anything when they took my body without permission, instead acting as if everything was fine.

    It manifested in me working at a job that had unrealistic expectations of me, that did not provide an environment to learn, grow and flourish—constantly giving my all and feeling it was never enough.

    Low self-worth meant marrying someone because they loved me, not because I loved them.

    It meant silencing my truth, my opinion, my feelings for the sake of not wanting to feel uncomfortable or make anyone else feel uncomfortable.

    It meant giving more than I had to give expecting others would do the same.

    I now know that my worthiness does not lie in what brand I am wearing, how big my house is, or how much money is in my bank account. And it’s not tied to how much I give or do for others, or whether someone likes me or not. 

    My worthiness lies in how I feel about myself. It starts with loving and approving of myself.

    It was amazing to see the changes that occurred when I began to deem myself worthy for simply existing. Suddenly I found myself less interested in getting drunk to escape myself and the world, and less interested in pleasing people.

    I began to ask myself why I was choosing to make a particular decision. Was it because I felt like I should, or was it because I genuinely wanted to? What I found was that many of my choices had a motive—to get approval from others.

    As I navigate this space, I give myself permission to change my mind, to cancel plans, to do my best to lean into the discomfort of change.

    I validate myself daily through mirror work, affirmations, and making choices that are beneficial for me.

    I make an effort to speak kindly to myself and forgive myself for past mistakes, which in turn allows me to forgive others more easily, and to understand that we are all here doing the best we can do, with the awareness that we have.

    If you are on this journey of self-love and find that you are not making the progress you would like, ask yourself the following questions:

    • Where does my self-worth come from?
    • Do I believe that I am worthy of love?
    • If not, why? When did I form this belief, and how can I let it go?
    • What actions can I start taking to show myself that I love and honor myself?
    • What type of thoughts am I thinking about myself?
    • What proof can I find that my negative thoughts are actually untrue?

    On this journey of discovering my worth and loving myself I’ve had my fair share of tripping, face plants, and “oh NOO, not again” moments. There have been ups and downs, good days and bad days, periods of rapid progress followed by times of stagnation or regression.

    This journey will be lifelong for me, but despite the obstacles, I have discovered a deeper sense of peace (at times) than I ever imagined possible, experienced more joy and laughter than I thought could exist, and found more moments filled with gratitude than ever before.

    As I choose to uphold the idea of appreciating progress rather than pursuing perfection, I realize that it is all worthwhile.

  • Navigating Social Anxiety: 10 Powerful NLP Tools for Personal Growth

    Navigating Social Anxiety: 10 Powerful NLP Tools for Personal Growth

    “We need each other, deeper than anyone ever dares to admit even to themselves. I think it is a genetic imperative that we huddle together and hold on to each other.” ~Patch Adams

    A few years ago, I was invited to a work event. When I received the invitation a few months before, the idea seemed fun—a friendly gathering with colleagues, filled with vibrant conversations and laughter, enabling me to create human connections in the workplace.

    As the day approached, a familiar knot tightened in my stomach, I couldn’t breathe deeply, and an overwhelming sense of unease took hold. I was caught in the hand of social anxiety.

    Close to the event, the mere thought of attending sent my mind spiralling into millions of anxious thoughts and self-doubt. The fear of being judged, saying something embarrassing, or feeling awkward became all-consuming. Every scenario played out in my mind, each one more terrifying than the last. My mind went to “making up excuses” mode: from getting sick to imagining the event would be boring—anything to cancel.

    As the day of the event arrived, the intensity of my anxiety escalated. The butterflies in my stomach intensified, my heart raced, and I battled against the urge to retreat into the safety of my home and decline the invitation.

    During the event itself, I found myself on an emotional rollercoaster. Every interaction became a high-stakes performance. My mind raced, searching for the right words, the funny words, the smart words, analyzing every gesture and facial expression.

    My ability to express myself authentically was numbed by a fear of judgment and rejection. I felt like an outsider, trapped in a room filled with people who seemed to effortlessly navigate social situations, which felt utterly foreign to me. This masking left me mentally exhausted and emotionally drained.

    After the event, a wave of relief washed over me as I finally escaped the social arena. I retreated back home, alone, to my safe haven. Unfortunately, my mind was not done racing, as it replayed every conversation and interaction. Self-doubt and self-criticism crept back in, overshadowing any moments of genuine connection or enjoyment I may have experienced.

    Luckily, my story doesn’t end there. This is not me today. I’ve learned to regain control over my inner state and find genuine enjoyment in social interactions with others (even at work). I am also very clear on which social interactions I actually want to join and which are not for me, and I am connected enough to my body that I can choose to say no to fun events on days I need to rest.

    It was through my journey of self-discovery and exploration with the approaches I now coach with, teach, and live by—neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) techniques, yoga, and energy healing—that I began to accept, explore, and then transcend my social (and general) anxiety. Of course, there are still days I have to work harder on it, but overall, I feel in control of my state of being.

    A therapist once gave me this definition of anxiety, which I love and keep using in my life and coaching:

    Anxiety is your level of perceived stress or “danger” over your perceived ability to handle that situation.

    When you perceive a situation as dangerous or stressful and you don’t believe you can handle it, your anxiety will be high and your nervous system in fight-or-flight mode…. potentially chronically.

    Therefore, navigating social anxiety is about lowering your level of perceived stress and strengthening your confidence in your ability to handle life and social interactions, however nourishing or awkward they might be.

    Here are the most important insights I’ve formed, and some practical techniques rooted in NLP and mindfulness that have helped me navigate social anxiety.

    1. Practice self-awareness.

    The first step in overcoming social anxiety is developing self-awareness. Take time to reflect on the situations that trigger your anxiety. Is it speaking in public, meeting new people, or being at work or in general? Or being the center of attention? By clearly identifying these triggers and their contexts, you can begin to understand the underlying thought patterns and beliefs that contribute to your anxiety.

    Practice somatic awareness: Where do you feel those sensations in your body? What colors are they and what texture do they have, if any? Are they warm or cold, stuck or moving? Take a deep breath and allow those feelings to be felt and flow, without judging them.

    Be compassionate with yourself, with your emotions, with the different parts showing up in those moments. Overcoming social anxiety takes time, compassion, and the willingness to change!

    2. Get curious about your habitual thinking patterns and limiting beliefs.

    There are underlying beliefs and habitual thinking patterns underneath the fear of being around people. Ask yourself:

    • What about being around others makes you anxious? Is it a fear of judgment or rejection?
    • Are you imagining the worst that could happen?
    • What beliefs are creating this internal response?
    • What do you think it would it say about you if you could not form a good connection with others during interactions?
    • Do you trust others?
    • Do you trust yourself to be able to handle the situation and whatever comes up? If not, what limiting beliefs underly your mistrust?

    When you recognize that your fear stems from untrue beliefs, it reduces the perceived danger of the social interaction and increases your perceived ability to handle it.

    3. Reframe unhelpful self-talk.

    Unhelpful self-talk can be a relentless companion for individuals with social anxiety. NLP encourages us to challenge and reframe these negative thoughts and limiting beliefs into more empowering ones.

    For instance, instead of thinking, “Everyone will judge me,” reframe it as, “People are just people, looking for real connection just like me.”

    Instead of imagining the worst that could happen, see the interaction’s potential: an opportunity for fun, learning, and connection.

    Transcend your internal dialogue with outward curiosity: What am I interested in learning from this or that person?

    After a social interaction, instead of ruminating about the potential silliness of the things you said or did not say, and how people might have judged you, release the need to be validated by others. And celebrate that you put yourself out there and the moments when you were present and had fun. Replace your inner critic with your inner cheerleader, your inner best friend.

    The next suggestions are approaches to learn to master your state of being and therefore increase your perceived ability to handle the social interactions.

    4. Use mindful awareness and breathing techniques.

    During the social event or interaction, if you feel triggered or overwhelmed, stay tuned in to your body, your breath. If you need a short break, take the time to recharge alone for a few minutes (in an outdoor area, on a patio, maybe in the restroom…). Take a few deep breaths. Remember your reframes, set an intention for joy and connection, remember people are just people, and go back in there!

    5. Access and develop your self-confidence.

    NLP utilizes the concept of anchoring to associate a specific physical or mental state with confidence and calmness.

    Identify a moment when you felt truly confident and at ease. Relive that experience vividly in your mind and body, focusing on the positive emotions and sensations associated with it. Amplify that state by adding colors, sound, and smells to the movie you are creating in your mind. Then, create an anchor, such as touching your thumb and index finger together, to trigger those feelings whenever you need them before or during the social event.

    6. Try mental rehearsal visualization.

    This is a powerful tool in NLP that allows us to mentally rehearse social situations and build confidence. Imagine yourself engaging in a social event with ease, grace, and enjoyment. Visualize positive interactions, with you feeling relaxed and radiating confidence. By repeatedly practicing this visualization exercise, you can train your mind to associate social situations with positive outcomes.

    7. Adopt a powerful body language.

    Our body language communicates more than words ever can. In social situations, pay attention to your posture, breathing, and facial expressions. Stand tall, maintain relaxed breathing, and make eye contact. By adopting a powerful physiology, you not only project confidence to others but also influence your own state of mind.

    8. Gradually increase your exposure to social situations.

    While it may be tempting to avoid social situations altogether, facing your fears is crucial for overcoming social anxiety and living a full life. You want to allow yourself to enjoy the social interactions that you actually deeply want to be part of.

    Gradually expose yourself to increasingly challenging social scenarios. Start with small steps, such as striking up conversations with strangers or attending social gatherings with trusted friends. As you accumulate positive experiences, your confidence will naturally grow.

    9. Be mindful of your language patterns.

    NLP emphasizes the importance of using language patterns that establish rapport and foster positive connections. Practice active listening, ask open-ended questions, and show genuine interest in others. By focusing on the needs and perspectives of those around you, you shift your attention away from your own anxiety and create a supportive social environment.

    10. Nourish your nervous system.

    Remember that anxiety in the body is created by your thought patterns and beliefs, which are creating a chronic fight-and-flight mode within your nervous system. It is paramount that you regulate your nervous system with activities that nourish it on a daily basis: yoga, nature, walks, sleep, nourishing food… Make this a priority if it’s not already. This will make a huge difference in your life and how you manage your perceived stress and, therefore, your anxiety.

    —

    Even the most deeply introverted personalities need social interaction. We are humans. We need others; we need connection to live wholesomely. It is a basis for our well-being and happiness, so it’s important to learn to transcend your social anxiety and balance your need for solitude with social connection.

    This might be hard to do on your own, and that’s okay. You can always find a therapist or coach to support you in your journey to freedom from your limiting beliefs and mind patterns.

    Take a deep breath, implement these strategies, be kind to yourself, and get out there!

  • When the People We Love Shut Us Out: What I Now Understand

    When the People We Love Shut Us Out: What I Now Understand

    “Have patience that is all unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like closed rooms, like books written like a foreign language.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

    I started thinking about a distant relative on a walk in the woods. I had thought about her more often when she suddenly stopped speaking to our family, well over a decade ago. I would reach out to her through email, but after not hearing back over the years, I thought about her less and less and eventually stopped trying to connect with her.

    On this particular walk, I began to think of a common theme in my family where we can go years without talking and wondered how that legacy originated and has been passed on through the generations.

    I thought about Christmas Day, when I was a child watching my mother cry begging her sister on the phone to talk to her. I never did learn the details of why they didn’t talk.

    I’ve heard stories of my grandmother and her sister not talking for decades until the end of their life, when they forgot the past and moved on. Nobody told me why, and from what I understand, they even forgot what transpired to decades lost.

    It reminds me of the time that I stood at my father’s desk as a little girl trying to talk to him, but there was no answer. I thought that I did something wrong, and whatever it was, I told myself that it was my fault.

    I’ve heard stories over the years of my father and his sister not talking and then reuniting years before he passed away. They both loved each other dearly at the time of his death.

    This reminds me of my own familial relationships. When people get mad in my family, or if you make a mistake or go against the norm, they ice you out for weeks, months, and often years. I’ve also learned to go quiet and stop engaging as a way to care for myself and protect myself from the pain, confusion, and heartache. Often there is no avenue to communicate anyway. I’ve learned it is better to keep quiet and keep the pain close and private than to deal with the fallout of trying to communicate.

    So, on this particular day, for no special reason that I knew of other than she came to mind in the quiet and magic of the woods, I texted her to let her know that I was thinking of her.

    She responded immediately.

    “What made you reach out?” she asked.

    “I was thinking of you and wanted you to know that I loved you,” I replied.

    “This means more to me than you know,” she replied. “Would you ever consider talking?” she asked.

    I replied, “Of course.”

    “How should we start?” she asked.

    I said, “Let’s just pick up the phone and start there.”

    We made a date for a few days later to talk.

    I learned in that conversation that she was in a crisis, a full-blown meltdown; the rug had been pulled out from underneath her. She had nowhere to live, and the one person who was center in her life was not well. She hadn’t slept in days and was scared that the place she considered home wasn’t an option any longer, nor safe.

    As I listened to the details of the sad, disappointing, and devastating loss she’d experienced in the past few months, I could hear her panic, fear, and desperation.

    Underneath the panic, worry, and grief, I heard her sweet and soothing voice that I often turned to in my twenties for guidance. I felt that part of my heart that missed her and wished that she had been a part of my life for the past years. Yet, in those hours of our first conversation, I knew that something had changed; something was different.

    She was fifteen years older, which would now make her seventy-seven years old.

    Between her taking notes of what I said, forgetting words to explain certain details, and seeming generally confused, my intuition told me there was something else happening.

    We began talking every day, and when I saw that she didn’t have anywhere to go and needed in-person support, I reached out to my family and enlisted their help due to proximity of where she lived.

    In just a few weeks, we managed to eventually get her to my mom’s home, where she could settle, feel safe, and get her bearings. We could also get a better sense if my intuition was accurate.

    She arrived at my mom’s home by a sheer miracle and divine interventions: phone calls that served as a map app, hotels with no vacancies, and finally an airplane trip my brother-in-law made to pick her up and drive her to safety.

    After a few days, I learned that what I had sensed was true. Yes, the rug had been pulled out from underneath her and life felt as if it were crumbling, but she was also experiencing early signs of memory loss, confusion, and cognitive delays that were not necessarily symptoms of the stress.

    I received a call from someone that questioned me and challenged me for being so forgiving when she’d just vanished and didn’t want to be a part of our lives for years. I haven’t thought of myself as forgiving, but merely understanding.

    What I have come to understand in my adult years is that people shut down, withdraw, or go quiet as a form of protection. It’s a way to survive, to keep it all together, but most importantly, it’s a way to shield ourselves from pain and hurt that is hard to feel or give language to.

    As a young girl, I internalized that when people didn’t talk to me, I’d done something to cause it; that it must have been me. I can still get paralyzed with the fear of causing a rupture in a relationship with someone that I love.

    Sometimes the pain is so great that it leaves me breathless, unable to speak. I’ve gone quiet with my mother for many years of my adult life, my sisters, and my extended family. I also see it in others in my family who shut down and don’t talk.

    We create stories about the people that don’t talk. They are ice cold; they are punishing and selfish.

    I just don’t see it that way.

    I learned that when my father couldn’t talk, he was in a great deal of pain that stemmed back to losing his mother at a young age with no warning that she was ill, even though his father knew. No one ever spoke about the loss of his mother, and yet he shared that he yearned for motherly love. My dad had a sweet and tender heart that was broken.

    I learned that my dad didn’t have the words to talk, express, and emote because often our families who came before us, that they were born into, didn’t have the privileges of therapy, support groups, psychological books, or any other form of self-help or understanding of child development or the psyche. Often, the generations before us were surviving. There wasn’t space to allow for feelings; they learned to shut down their pain and not talk.

    I learned from my mother’s side of the family that pain and feelings aren’t spoken about. You don’t share or give language to hurt; you shut it down. But when you shut it down, it often comes out sideways and it’s hard to tell what is what.

    When children grow up in environments where they can’t feel, it has long-lasting implications on their hearts. They wonder: Do I have the right to feel? Is something wrong with me? How can I make this go away? Can I trust what I am feeling? What’s the best way to shut this down?

    My mother also lost her dad in high school. All she wanted was to get away and be free from the pain. But when I ask her questions to learn more, she can’t totally remember her motivations except to say she wanted to leave.

    In the little details I have about the other spells of not talking, underneath all of them was hurt, pain, and disappointment that goes back in time through the generations.

    While it hurts when people cut off communication and can feel completely personal, there is often a mixture of causes and conditions that have very little to do with us personally. There is something tender that got touched, that they haven’t had air or space to be with. The person is reacting to that history of pain rather than us completely.

    And when we decide to cut off communication or go quiet, the same is true for us. We, too, have tender places that have been exiled off that haven’t had time and space for the heartbreak to be felt.

    Sometimes it can make all the difference to reach out from a place of care and curiosity, even if it’s just to say, “Thinking of you.” And sometimes we just need to be patient while they work through their pain and get to a place where they’re comfortable opening up again.

    Healing heartbreak is a lifelong process that ebbs and flows. There isn’t a timeline. There isn’t a destination. There are causes and conditions that are seen and unseen that help us along the way.

    I see that love is the cure. I see this with the woman I called in the woods. I see this with my own broken heart.

    Love the causes and conditions that each heart holds that are unseen by the other. Love the complexity of our own hearts that we may not fully understand.

    Simply love the mystery of human beings and all the heart holds from the generations before us that did their best.

  • A Mindfulness Technique to Overcome Perfectionism and Step into Self-Love

    A Mindfulness Technique to Overcome Perfectionism and Step into Self-Love

    “When we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we are not pretending, we are not hiding—we are simply present with whatever is going on inside us. Ironically, it is this very feeling of authenticity that draws people to us, not the brittle effort of perfectionism.” ~Maureen Cooper

    Most of my life I have been really good at following the have-tos and oughts of perfectionism.

    I have to keep the house clean. What will the company think?

    I ought to be pleasant and pleasing. Stop being stubborn. Worse yet, stop being angry.

    I should not have told that long story to my coworker. They looked bored. Oh, yes, they were probably bored.

    Doing what I thought other people wanted and doing it in just the right way was my attempt to use perfectionism to belong.

    We all want to belong, and some of us, myself included, learned that belonging comes with strings attached. If I could control those “strings,” then I wouldn’t have to feel rejected and judged. Perfectionism was a way of exercising that control.

    The intense need to meet my too high expectations filtered into every area of my life: relationships, academics, body image.

    I remember from an early age becoming obsessed with getting straight A’s in school. Anything less than a 100% was not good enough. Anything below an A- was a moral failing.

    I worked out until my BMI was low enough to still be considered “healthy” because I wanted to be pretty enough for other people.

    All the perfectionism in my life was a way to protect myself against the inevitability of being judged. Of being seen as someone less than, flawed, failing—human.

    And if I wasn’t judged, then I might be liked? Accepted? Maybe even loved? Even if I didn’t like, accept, or love myself.

    Perfectionism, at its core, is a drive toward accomplishment, characterized by an internal pressure to avoid harsh criticism and failure.

    The problem with this way of thinking is that you can’t control other people. No matter how perfect you try to be, someone will judge you. You will fail. No matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to maintain the facade of perfection.

    Perfectionism is the armor I have worn through my life to protect myself from what is underneath the judgment and criticism. Perfectionism protects me from the fear that I am not good enough. If I am not good enough, then I am not worthy of belonging.

    I desperately wanted to be loved, but in trying, I stopped loving myself.

    From small details, like what to wear to a party, to big problems, like the realities (and conflicts) of an authentic and healthy relationship, my high expectations made it impossible for me to relax into who I am.

    I was constantly beating myself up. I didn’t wear the right outfit. I look too dressed up/not dressed up enough.

    I was constantly biting my tongue, hesitating to share bits of myself. What will he think? That part of my personality is too weird, too different, too messy to be valued?

    My life was a constant struggle to meet unattainable ideals. The maintenance of which was stressful, all consuming, and riddled with anxiety. Furthermore, no matter how hard I tried, I still didn’t feel like I belonged.

    It was not until I decided that my relationship to myself was the problem that I started to see changes.

    If I wanted to feel connected to other people, belong to a community, a friendship, a partnership, I had to let go of being perfect.

    I had to let people see me authentically, and I had to be willing to let go of the too high expectations that were keeping me from being myself.

    To help me let go of perfectionism, I started practicing the art of mindful self-compassion.

    The tenants of mindful self-compassion are based off of the work of mindfulness teacher Tara Brach. To explain mindful self-compassion, she coined the term RAIN.

    RAIN stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture.

    Recognize and allow your perfectionism to be what it is.

    Based on RAIN, the first two steps of mindful self-compassion are the basis of any mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is the practice of bringing non-judgmental awareness to your present moment experience.

    In other words, you first recognize or bring awareness to your lived experience in the now and then you allow, without judgment, that experience of thoughts and feelings to flow through you.

    When it comes to perfectionism, this means recognizing the need to worry over, hustle through, force, or avoid a particular way of being. It also means allowing those same feelings and thoughts to exist without trying to change them and without trying to act on them.

    For example, if I notice I am feeling the need to write and rewrite, edit and re-edit this essay because isn’t “good enough,” then instead of continuing on the track of perfectionist behavior, I can recognize that I am feeling worried and allow those feelings to exist without doing anything to change them.

    Investigate the deeper why.

    The next step of the RAIN mindfulness technique is investigate. Investigating and the last step of nurture are the two aspects of this technique that have helped me see the biggest changes in my own habit of perfectionism.

    Investigating means you dig a little deeper. You ask yourself, why are these feelings and thoughts here? What is actually at the heart of my need to control?

    Investigating requires you to be vulnerable with yourself. Are you worried about failing? Do you think that if you let go of control people won’t like you?

    In what ways are your perfectionist tendencies guarding your heart?

    If we go back to my writing example, the reason why I am trying to perfect the outcome of this essay is because deep down I really, really want you, dear reader, to like it. If you like it, then that means that I am a “good” writer, and I so desperately want to be a good writer.

    By investigating my feelings around perfectionism, I get to the real reason for my actions, which is that I want to be accepted. I want to be liked. I want to belong.

    Which brings me to the last component of RAIN, nurture.

    Nurture the feelings and thoughts behind the perfectionism.

    The last step of RAIN, nurture, asks you to take all of your feelings and care for them. How can you give love to the person you are today who is worried about being good enough and worried about belonging?

    Maybe this looks like reaffirming you are good enough and that everyone feels like you feel right now from time to time.

    Maybe this looks like journaling about your feelings or talking it out with a good friend.

    Maybe this looks like giving yourself a hug, taking a warm shower, or doing some breath work, then going back to the task when you feel ready.

    Ultimately, nurturing what is underneath the perfectionism means giving yourself a bit of a break. You don’t have to do everything just the right way for it to be enough.

    For me, in the context of perfectionism related to publishing this essay, I would take a break, go for a walk, and remind myself that 80% is good enough.

    Overall, RAIN is an incredible mindfulness technique for letting go of perfectionism.

    By using this technique, perfectionism is less at the forefront of my life. RAIN helps me let go of the big feelings and thoughts associated with perfectionism and tend to the underlying beliefs and assumptions I have about myself that contribute to it.

    Ultimately, I have learned that I don’t have to be perfect to be loved and that being imperfect still makes me worthy of belonging. The RAIN technique helps me see that I am good enough for others and, most importantly, I am good enough for myself.

  • 5 Things to Remember When Heartbreak Feels Too Heavy to Bear

    5 Things to Remember When Heartbreak Feels Too Heavy to Bear

    “If you feel like you’re losing everything, remember that trees lose their leaves every year and they still stand tall and wait for better days to come.” ~Unknown

    For a big lover like me, heartbreak has always gotten the best of me. I have felt heavy pain from the ending of a relationship, the ghosting of a situationship, and the loss of what could have been with someone I never dated. And I’ve experienced the sting of friendships leaving my life.

    It’s all heartbreaking.

    It starts with a crippling, piercing full-body agony. And eventually it grows into a dull ache and lethargy toward anything.

    That’s because heartbreak can throw you into a type of withdrawal. And it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

    When I was going through my last breakup, I felt like I lost a piece of myself. I felt like this person had taken my heart and ripped it apart. I was in a confused state, wanting them badly back in my life and yet wanting nothing to do with them ever again. I had to teach myself how to process my day without communicating with my ex.

    As it turns out, this is all a very normal part of going through heartbreak.

    Breakups, whether romantic or platonic, are like a death. In fact, we process the stages of grief during a breakup similarly to losing someone who dies. And sometimes it feels even more cutting, because we know that person is still living and existing. Just without us.

    While it’s important to feel all the feelings that come with heartbreak, it’s equally crucial to plant seeds of hope, as there is something better waiting for you on the other side.

    Going through a breakup is a transformative experience of shedding old layers and welcoming new ones. You are growing and learning from these emotions.

    While I was going through this particular breakup, I developed deeper emotional resilience and empowerment. The weight on my heart gradually lifted as I alchemized the lessons and self-reflection to remind myself of the following things.

    1. You are not alone.

    When you’re in the heat of heartbreak, it can feel as though everyone else around you is doing just fine and you’re the only one who is suffering. And the sudden absence of someone you cared about heightens the loneliness.

    But I know without a doubt that you are not alone. Everyone has dealt with what you’re going through right now (just take me as an example!). And there are likely people in your networks who are currently going through it. Take some time to reach out to people you trust or seek out events that will help foster connection. It’s okay to ask for help.

    2. You broke up for a good reason.  

    When my heart was aching for my ex and any sign of him coming back, I had to remind myself that we broke up for a good reason.

    He wasn’t prioritizing or respecting me consistently. I had to stop romanticizing the moments of brief happiness and look at the longer-term picture. We were fundamentally incompatible and not bringing out the best in each other. If we continued to try to make it work, it would feel as if we were dragging our feet in the mud.

    All relationships will bring up their own unique challenges, but I want to be with someone who I can feel safe to tackle them with.

    If you feel the urge to get back together or if they are trying to get back into your life right away, write down the positive reasons for this breakup to give you a healthy perspective.

    3. They never completed you. You are whole and complete as you are.

    Even if you don’t feel okay right now, you are still whole and complete. The people that come into our lives, whether as friends or romantic partners, complement us. But they never complete us.

    Thinking that we need someone to complete us or be our better half is a fairy tale misconception. And it convinces us that we’re not enough, especially if someone leaves us behind.

    But the fact is, you are enough. You might want a romantic relationship, and that’s natural because we all need connection to thrive. But you can live a full, satisfying life even if you’re single right now.

    While deep love can be experienced between you and other people, the deepest love will first come from you. Take the driver’s seat of your life and steer it. Anyone else that comes along is joining the road trip.

    4. This relationship was not a waste of time.

    When we’ve invested a lot of time, energy, and resources into relationships, it makes the breakups that much more painful. You might think that you’re back at square one, but it’s the opposite.

    And often this investment makes us stay longer than we should.

    There’s a term in psychology called “sunk-cost fallacy,” which perfectly describes this phenomenon. It’s when you are reluctant to walk away from a course of action after heavily investing in it, so you continue to invest even though there’s a more desirable option.

    Ultimately, the most desirable option in my situation was to walk away so I could stop trying to prove my worth to someone who didn’t see it.

    I could have looked at my relationship as a waste of time, but instead I saw it as an important example of what I didn’t want in my next relationship. I’m now grateful toward my ex for the growth and experiences gained, even though the relationship ended.

    It also helped me look at my relationship with myself so that I can show up for my life with more self-esteem and confidence. And I believe that has gotten me further ahead rather than behind.

    5. You will feel your sparkle again.

    Happiness doesn’t start and end with your past relationship. You can feel happiness after them. As you heal and focus on new things that excite you, your life will become more vibrant and abundant. And I promise, you will feel like yourself again.

    Give it some time and pour back into yourself. Invest in new skills or hobbies, spend time with your community, and reconnect to your future goals.

    Breakups are often a portal for our next highest chapter. Walk through this door believing the best is yet to come—because if you believe amazing possibilities are ahead of you, you’ll do your part to help create them.

    —

    Feeling heavy emotions after a heartbreak is a part of the healing process. And it will ebb and flow. Even though healing isn’t linear, it’s always happening.

    Get curious and show yourself more love and reverence. You owe it to yourself to heal from this. Because there’s something more painful than a broken heart. And it’s a closed heart. I would rather continue to love big and get hurt at times than not love at all.

  • Caretaking Your Sensitive System for More Love in your Relationship

    Caretaking Your Sensitive System for More Love in your Relationship

    “Sometimes you’ve got to look straight into the tired eyes of the woman staring back at you in the mirror and tell her that she deserves the best kind of love, the best kind of life, and devote yourself to giving it to her all over again.” ~S.C. Lourie

    I learned the hard way that in order to have an intimate relationship (and life) that feels deeply satisfying, nourishing, and fulfilling, highly sensitive people (HSPs) need to attend more to their emotional well-being than non-HSPs.

    Before I knew I was highly sensitive (which is a normal trait found in 20-30% of the population, where we process all stimuli more deeply than others)—or what it took to stay grounded and emotionally well as one—I was married to a good, kind man. Together, we took on a wild pace of life and lots of responsibilities in quick succession over the course of a couple years. We had kids, built a house (by ourselves!), and were both developing our careers.

    There was little to no time for taking care of myself. I was always on—even at night when I was taking care of my two young sons, who were poor sleepers.

    I was overwhelmed, irritable, and stressed out much of the time. I remember thinking something was wrong with me, like I was a “problem person” because I was grumpy and short-tempered so much and couldn’t access that sweet feeling of peace and calm I felt regularly as a younger person.

    I also had trouble feeling connected with my husband and tended to blame it on him a lot—which just drove a wedge between us. (I now know this was due more to my stress levels than anything he did or didn’t do.)

    The toll this took was the loss of our happiness together—and eventually our marriage.

    Later, when I realized I was a highly sensitive person, and how important it was to support my nervous system and learn to work with my big emotions in intentional ways, I realized not knowing or doing this was the downfall of my marriage. 

    Over the years, I’ve taken on big projects, built another house and a business, and had another baby, and I am very happily remarried. But this time I did all of it while truly caretaking and honoring my sensitive system. The difference has been huge.

    After talking with many other HSPs who also experienced shifts in their relationships after learning to support themselves better, I’ve concluded that we HSPs simply require more conscious attention to our sensitive mind-body-heart systems than non-HSPs do.

    If you are an HSP, you may not love hearing this fact. Most of us HSPs living in these busy modern times have trouble with this, including myself. At least I used to. Because it can feel a bit unfair—like, why do I have to put so much effort into feeling well when others don’t?

    I get it. It’s normal to expect yourself to be like non-HSPs because, well, that is the norm. And also, maybe you didn’t know that you are highly sensitive until recently—or just now!

    Also, the message we get left and right is that we all should be able to keep up with the frantic pace of modern life, to push through with few breaks without much more than a yoga class here and there and be FINE.

    But the truth I’ve found is, once we accept that our systems need more loving attention from ourselves—more spaciousness, more quiet and downtime, more emotion-tending—and get to work honoring all of this, magic begins to happen in our relationships.

    But before we are good at that, our love lives can feel hard. Because love can’t flow from stress and fear. Connection can’t come out of a defended, stressed state.

    Because confidence, security, and internal safety (essential for strong, fulfilling relationships) can’t come from overstimulation and a nervous system that’s regularly in a fight, flight, or freeze state.

    Because effective and connecting communication can’t come from the closed-off heart that we have as humans when we’re run down, overwhelmed, and on edge.

    Because we can’t respond effectively to our significant others when challenges arise if we’re coming from a reactive or overloaded nervous system.

    For love to thrive in our lives, as I now know from deep experience, we need to be able to access all of these things (love, connection, security, confidence, responsiveness, and communicating well).

    And this all comes from being in a centered place in ourselves: our heart and higher brain.

    Like my experience in my first marriage shows (and briefer moments here and there still remind me!), we can’t be there steadily as an HSP when we aren’t actually listening to and honoring the needs of our sensitive body, mind, and nervous systems, and guiding them back to “home.”

    So how can we be in that centered place more steadily?

    For me, I had to learn quite a few things and break some old ways of thinking and behaving (like not listening to my brain when it pushed me to just push through, learning to say no, setting boundaries with myself and others, and more),

    For today, I’d love to offer you four things you can get started with right away that were key for me.

    1. Accept you need to attend to your emotional well-being more than most people.

    Just like one person needs to eat more regularly than another to keep blood sugars level or needs more sleep than their friend to be well rested, you simply need to pay more attention to your mind-body-heart system than non-HSPs to be at your best.

    We are all different, and that’s that.

    It can also help to know the benefits you and your relationships will reap. For example, you’ll feel more attracted to your partner and more attractive to them; you’ll feel more secure and be less likely to take things personally; and you’ll be better able to access your intuition, advocate for what you want and need, say no, set healthy boundaries, and more.

    Although it may be inconvenient at the time or make for “achieving” slightly less each day, I now even consider myself lucky to need this extra attention from myself. Because those same things that restore and nourish my sensitive system tend to also feed my heart and soul—like long walks in nature, or a half hour yoga of nidra. And because I know I need them to be well, I weave them into my life regularly, and they truly make my life richer.

    Once I experienced how much of a difference it made in my life and relationships—and how good I felt doing it—it was much easier to give myself the extra attention to emotional regulation I need. It will likely be the same for you!

    2. Use irritability or reactiveness as a signal.

    In fact, when you find yourself on edge, rundown, reactive, or feeling a lot of negative emotion often, it’s a signal from the intelligent wisdom of your mind-body-heart system telling you:“Slow down, my love. Take care of me, my love. I need your attention. I need your caretaking! Please love me. Please listen to me. Please support me.”

    Listen to that wise part of you and get to caretaking your beautiful sensitive self, in one of the many ways you know how to. Or learn new effective ways. Which brings me to…

    3. Learn about your nervous system.

     You don’t have to understand a lot of the science of the nervous system to work with yours, but understanding how your nervous system states affect your life and how to support yourself to shift states is really powerful

    In the most basic sense, your fight-or-flight system and your freeze system should only be activated briefly and fairly rarely.

    You want to spend the majority of your time in the states of calm and connect (that peaceful, engaged state of being that allows you to access to your heart, wisdom, and ability to connect with others, and where oxytocin is produced); and you want to spend some time in rest/digest mode (the state that allows for digestion, as well as healing and regeneration of the physical body) so you can be physically and emotionally at your best.

    To build awareness of your own states, start noticing what state you are in at any given moment. Are you in an agitated, anxious, aggravated state (fight or flight)? Or in an empty, shut down, numb and disconnected state (freeze)? Or are you in calm and connect, which feels like being centered, home in your heart? Or are you in rest /digest, which often feels like a peaceful, cozy almost sleepy state?

    4. Find your favorite ways to support yourself back to or to spend more time in calm and connect. 

    For me, the beginning of real change happened when I started doing daily nervous system practices for twenty minutes or more. Luckily, there are so many to choose from that it’s not hard to find ones you enjoy. Long walks in nature, deep breathing practices, and, a favorite of mine, yoga nidra, are all great. Even dancing counts (movement can really help calm an agitated state or thaw a frozen state).

    Yet, one bigger chunk of regulation alone often isn’t enough to help us stay primarily in our calm and connected selves, so pepper into your day smaller nervous system practices—such as feeling the ground beneath your feet, noticing your breathing without changing it, or slowly scanning the room with a curious noticing of what’s around you.

    Here is one you can try right now that I love:

    • Place your hand on your heart area so that you feel your own warm touch.
    • Breathe softly into that hand and heart area, a bit deeper than normal.
    • As you do, remember one moment when you felt safe and loved by another human being. This could be a partner or child, a friend, therapist, teacher, or even a pet. Don’t think of the entire relationship, just one moment of it.
    • As you remember this moment, let yourself feel the feeling of that moment. Stay with it, allowing the feeling to wash through your body for twenty or thirty seconds.
    • Notice any shifts in your sense of relaxation and calm and how in your heart you now feel.

    The idea is to weave emotional regulation practices into your daily life on an ongoing basis. These practices are not just for when you feel off-kilter or triggered. They are for helping you go into those triggered fight, flight, or freeze spaces less often, and come out of them more easily. So make them part of your regular life, even and especially when you feel fine.

    If you are anything like me, it can be tempting to go on as you always have, the way non-sensitive people can just go on, pushing through without slowing down to learn and do the work of honoring and supporting your sensitive mind-body-heart system.

    But continuing to go on as always isn’t likely to get you the life and love that you want.

    For HSPs, tending to our nervous system states is the basis for all the other mental and emotional skills that make up relational agency—which is our ability to guide ourselves back to a space where we can navigate life well and relate to our significant other in ways that generate deep connection, love, and intimacy.

    It also allows the love-enhancing aspects of our trait of high sensitivity to come out naturally, paving the way for our best possible life and relationship.

    —

    So start caretaking your sensitive system as much as it’s asking for. Learn to listen to it. It wants all the best for you: love, peace, ease, intimacy, and adoration.

  • The Allure of Unhealthy, One-Sided Friendships and How I’ve Let Them Go

    The Allure of Unhealthy, One-Sided Friendships and How I’ve Let Them Go

    “The real test of friendship is can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple?” ~Eugene Kennedy 

    I could not. When I was with them, we had to be doing something. That is why I didn’t see it. I kept myself too busy to see or feel what was happening.

    It was the panic attack during a long-distance drive home that should have been the sign that something was very wrong.

    I didn’t see or expect that my choice of friendships was ruining my mental health and, in turn, my business.

    It was so much fun, you see. To be with them both.

    We’d stay up late into the early hours drinking, eating yummy food, or watching our favorite TV series. In the thick of a global pandemic, when you could only meet with limited people and had nowhere to go, this felt like the perfect escape. We also did healthy things like yoga and meditations together.

    How lucky I was.

    Or was I?

    I’ve since come to learn about trauma bonds through inner child work, and I’ve recognized there was something seriously wrong with my seemingly perfect and fun life.

    The Drama Triangle

    From a young age I took on the role of rescuer within my family. My mother suffered from severe depression following my birth, and she needed her children’s love and care.

    Fast forward to 2020, during a global lockdown, I was playing the role of rescuer with my friends, completely unaware of the inauthenticity I was creating within myself and how I was neglecting my own needs.

    What does the rescuer look like?

    Warning Sign Number 1: People-Pleasing

    I was constantly people-pleasing and offering solutions to anyone around me, even though they never asked for help.

    I never considered how my friendships would be if I were not ‘useful’ or ‘fun.’

    I could see the red flags—for example, not speaking up when I felt something wasn’t right and instead working even harder to justify or understand one of my friend’s behaviors, and trying to help and save her even more by doing household chores.

    When we’re people-pleasing to gain someone else’s approval, we chose behaviors that are not true to ourselves. And we act in ways that negatively impair ourselves because in rescuing others, we’re neglecting ourselves.

    Warning Sign Number 2: Numbing Through Binge-Drinking and/or Eating  

    I was constantly binge-drinking with my friends, and it was damaging to my health. As a result, I experienced:

    • Sleep deprivation from the late nights
    • A dysregulated nervous system due to hangovers
    • Weight gain due to eating junk food

    And like a catch-22, the bad feelings I had after these episodes made me want to do it all over again to feel better, leaving me in a vicious cycle.

    I wanted to be with these women, like an obsession or craving, but I was using substances to numb the fact I didn’t feel safe with them. Eventually, this set off my internal radar telling me this wasn’t right.

    If you are in a cycle of unhealthy behavior with certain people and you’re developing self-destructive habits, it could very well be a way to cope/numb deeper feelings that you don’t want to face.

    Warning Sign Number 3: They Are Unavailable

    I began seeing our meet-ups as booty calls, enjoying the thrill and drama of rushing to meet them.

    I would drop everything to be in one friend’s last-minute plan, or I would try to make future plans if I saw her and I didn’t want it to end.

    These friendships felt like a drug—I felt addicted to seeing them, despite knowing it wasn’t good for me or my health. I would eagerly wait for one of my friends to tell me when she was available.

    The thing is, she wasn’t available. She didn’t want to make plans in advance or prioritize us on weekends when she had other plans. So I made myself more available. I’d drop things if she was free and wanted to meet.

    Being someone’s last resort and being okay with that are clear signs that a relationship isn’t healthy.

    —

    I’ve come to realize that I’ve carried a mother/daughter wound my whole life—because my mother wasn’t available due to her mental health challenges—and I was desperate to be seen, wanted, and accepted by people who weren’t available as a result. It was all I knew. It’s how I became programmed.

    I was seeking out women who replicated the relationship I had with my mother as a child. I was befriending those who seemed confident, unattached, and unavailable.

    However, the issue wasn’t what they were doing. The real work was asking myself why I was making the choice to be around people who made me feel unsafe. So unsafe that I was numbing myself with food and alcohol when I was around them.

    Due to my mother’s depression when I was growing up, I didn’t know what it felt like to be in a safe relationship. Since drama and dysfunction were all I knew, that’s all I was seeking out.

    Through trauma coaching I learned how to listen to my physical body and then connect to my inner child. To find and heal that little Rav who was looking for love by people-pleasing.

    Here’s how I connect to my younger self:

    1. I take a moment to pause and feel. I close my eyes and breathe calmly. I scan my body for any aches/tension or obvious pains. After locating the pain, I ask myself when I felt like this as a child, and I explore that.

    2. I FEEL the feeling in all its depth. This might mean crying, shouting into a pillow, or even punching a pillow for the hurt I felt as a child during a specific incident, or for the pain I’m feeling now.

    3. I journal it all out of my mind and ‘re-parent’ my inner Rav: “It’s okay—I got you. That wasn’t very nice. You’re safe now. You don’t need to speak to mum right now. You can play with your toys or cuddle your teddy. Let’s help you feel better.” It can be in the form of an imagined conversation or even acting it out in the now after writing it out.

    The power of this process and being able to recognize those wounds is immense. You really start to understand and sense your own sense of self and your worth. And your current patterns and issues become so much clearer to see.

    The questions I went on to ask myself:

    • Were my friends asking me to rescue them?
    • Did they know I was withholding my honest feelings, too scared to tell them how I really felt?
    • Was it my choice to stay with them when I felt unsafe or to drink and stay up late?

    After I took an honest look at what was really going on, those friendships came to an end, and I still find myself grieving them but far less than when it first happened. It’s not easy. It hurts. However, I now have the tools to feel safe and to come back to my true self.

    Throughout the day I take my right palm to my heart, close my eyes, and remind myself “you are safe.” I repeat this as many times as necessary as I slow my breathing and connect to the present moment.

    It is so worth the struggle and the commitment to healing in order to break free. It’s actually created space for me to welcome more aligned friends into my life.

    It’s a process to adjust to a less dramatic, chaotic life than I had with them, but I am much more content within myself. I don’t need to hustle or the drama. It’s okay to be safe.

  • I Felt Like I Didn’t Belong: 5 Lessons from a Former Misfit

    I Felt Like I Didn’t Belong: 5 Lessons from a Former Misfit

    “I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.” ~Maya Angelou

    In my final year of high school, I had a horrible breakup. I was heavily attached to my girlfriend because, with her, for the first time in my life, I felt like I belonged. Growing up in Germany, of Arabic roots, made me feel like I belonged nowhere. I didn’t feel German nor Arabic.

    With her, I finally thought I had a place somewhere. So when this relationship ended, all I wanted was to escape. I hoped a change of location would solve my problems. So, after graduation, I packed my stuff, booked a one-way ticket, and fled to Australia.

    My early days in Australia were anything but idyllic. Arriving there, not knowing anyone and barely able to communicate in English, I felt lost like never before. During the first month, I was constantly battling self-doubt. It seemed as if this was the first time anyone had ever experienced the harshness that can accompany travel. I felt like a loser.

    Everybody around me seemed to enjoy their trips. They seemed to have found their place. Every conversation I had felt so awkward.

    I was deeply ashamed of my English, so I isolated myself. I wanted to go home, but after telling everybody I was planning to leave, I promised myself not to give up. But the truth was, again, like in Germany, I felt like a misfit. The sense of isolation I had felt back home was still with me. It was so alive. It was like living in a nightmarish loop—unable to escape my loneliness and alienation.

    Two months into my stay, I sat on a bench in Sydney, consuming junk food and battling the urge to give up. Nothing had changed. I felt out of place, had made no friends, and was utterly miserable.

    At that low point, I was reflecting on my time in Germany and I had a realization that, looking back at it now, changed my life: I had taken my problems with me. My issues were about more than just a specific location. They were within me. I was responsible for my misery, isolation, and inability to fit in. The problems I had left in Germany had taken a new form in Australia.

    This insight was crushing but made me stand up from this bench with a new sense of resolve.

    The following day I checked into a new hostel. I promised myself to keep trying, push myself to speak English, and make a conscious effort to form connections with fellow travelers. It wasn’t easy at first, but I became more comfortable speaking as time passed. I started to trust myself more. I began to make friends, people started asking me if I wanted to join them on trips, and people were interested in my past.

    Following my realization on this bench, this month was one of my life’s best. In this month, I made deep, lasting friendships that I still have to this day.

    Ultimately, I stayed in Australia for almost a year and had a great time. I left Germany and was homesick, and I left Australia with newly gained confidence and trust in myself. Since then, I’ve traveled to over twenty-five countries. It became my nature to go to new places, and I no longer have the same issues fitting into a new context.

    Also, I changed my relationship with Germany. Every time I go back, I embrace and like it. Ironically, the attempt to escape my roots formed a deeper connection to my German and Arabic origins. I smile when I look back. I was so ready to give up. I was at the lowest point of my life. One realization, one thought on this bench, changed the course of my life.

    Now I want to share with you the key lessons I learned from my time in Australia.

    1. Trust life.

    Life puts us in difficult situations that ultimately lead us to grow. My time in Australia was a gift, particularly those first two challenging months. They forced me to confront my internal struggles, the issues I had been unwilling to face. I believe that life knows what it is doing and is working for us, not against us. This holds true for me to this day.

    2. Take responsibility.

    In Germany, I had a habit of playing the victim, blaming my circumstances and culture clash for my unhappiness. While those issues were real, acknowledging that I was also a part of the problem was liberating. Understanding that I had the power to change my situation was the first step toward actual change.

    3. Be persistent.

    In Australia, I came close to giving up and returning home. Looking back, I realize that would have been a huge mistake. The best year of my life and experiences that changed the course of my life followed that initial struggle, reminding me that persisting through tough times can lead to beautiful outcomes.

    4. Hard times are necessary for growth.

    Those two months in Australia were some of the hardest in my life. The loneliness I felt was crushing. However, looking back, those challenging times were also when I grew the most. I developed resilience and a better understanding of myself, which I wouldn’t trade for anything.

    5. Be a blank sheet.

    One of the most powerful lessons I learned throughout my travels was the power of approaching each new situation like a blank sheet.

    For far too long, I allowed my past experiences and hurts to dictate my present and future. I was constantly recreating my past wherever I went, not giving my life story a chance to change or evolve. I carried heavy, invisible baggage of past failures, rejections, and loneliness that kept me rooted in a narrative no longer serving me.

    It wasn’t about forgetting or denying what had happened but not letting it control my present and future.

    Like a blank sheet, allow yourself to be open, to receive new experiences, change, and learn.

  • How to Heal from Rejection (Without Getting Down on Yourself)

    How to Heal from Rejection (Without Getting Down on Yourself)

    “This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment. May I give myself the compassion I need.” ~Kristen Neff

    The handsome man I was dating sat on the easy chair to tell a difficult story. We were in my loft, and he was avoiding eye contact. I studied the symmetry of his jaw as he spoke.

    “I did something stupid,” he said.

    I thought he was confiding in me. Maybe this intimacy would bring us closer. Maybe his eye had wandered but he was choosing me. I leaned in.

    There was someone else, but not in a way I ever would have guessed. The ugliness of his admission was at odds with my glowing perception of him.

    Adding to my cognitive dissonance, at the end of his tale I was stunned to hear the words, “and that’s why I can’t see you anymore.”

    My hands shook. I set my wine glass down on the coffee table. We’re all flooded with stress hormones during separations because we’re social creatures. My body felt like it was drowning. I had daydreamed this man would be a buoy to reach for and hold me in safety during life’s challenges. Instead, he put on his coat.

    “I’m sorry,” he said, with genuine sentiment. Then he left, slipping away into the night, leaving me alone on my sofa in the riptide of emotion.

    I was at once disappointed, disheartened, sad, betrayed, and scared to be alone. Yet in light of his revelation, I was also relieved.

    I’d been broken up with before, but this time there was no punishing blame put upon me, and the shame was all his. For the first time I could see rejection as impersonal. It had nothing to do with my worth, value, or actions. It was about where he was at in his life, the recognition that I wasn’t in that same place, and the fact he didn’t want to take me.

    Nor did I want to go there. His story was that he lost his cool while DJing a wedding on the weekend. A woman kept pestering him to play a song he’d already played. When she became irate and shouty he spit on her.

    Her friends called the police, who charged him with assault. Spitting on someone is a criminal offense. It’s also disgusting and degrading. Now he was dealing with the legal consequences, something he was taking responsibility for on his own.

    My brain said, “This breakup is for the best,” while my body processed the rejection as a bereavement. Our fun concert dates, record shopping field trips, and song sharing were over. He was gone, and so was the hopeful promise of our budding relationship. The indulgent illusion and fantasy of early-stage dating evaporated in an instant.

    Alone on my sofa I wrapped myself in a fuzzy blanket, sipped wine, and watched a movie. I don’t remember which one. I was numb. But after that my rejection coping veered off the usual script.

    The Old Post-Rejection Story

    There’s a standard RomCom break-up montage—you know the one. The star of the story gets dumped then self-destructive. She gets drunk, sends the messy message she shouldn’t, wallows in her pajamas with unkempt hair, and eats pizza and ice cream until a bestie intervenes. Then she hits the gym, regains confidence, gets a new look, and is all set for a surprising meet cute with someone else.

    But what if after a rejection you could skip the self-sabotage?

    To sail through rejection, you’d have to see it as not personal, as I did with my crush. You’d also need to know it’s not perfect by perceiving people and situations as flawed, the way things really are. And you’d need to accept that nothing’s permanent and not be attached to outcomes. You would go in and out of relationships like a graceful butterfly, with no ego, expectations, fantasy, or old baggage.

    In other words, you’d be a learned Buddhist, or Eckhart Tolle. I don’t know about you, but I’m nowhere near there yet in my conscious evolution.

    But there’s another way to process rejection as an adult that also sidesteps the hapless drunken humiliation and numb hiding. It’s so simple we don’t do it, or if we do, we don’t apply it enough. We have to love ourselves.

    Why Loving Ourselves Heals

    It’s taken me a long time to learn that self-love is not just cheesy sentiment. It’s more than a positive mental attitude or a meme from RuPaul’s Drag Race. Active self-love is self-soothing, and for those of us who’ve ever felt inadequately comforted, seen, heard, or understood (i.e., virtually everyone), this concept can be hard to grasp.

    I didn’t fully appreciate self-soothing until a few years after that breakup with the handsome spitter, when I moved to a new city by myself. In the lead up to the move I was so busy planning and packing I didn’t fully feel my myriad feelings. It wasn’t until I arrived and unpacked that I grieved the loss of my friendships and familiar comforts I’d grown used to. It was like I’d broken up with a whole city.

    Then, facing the pandemic on my own, without my full support network, I took a deep dive into neuroscience, reading everything I could about resilience, anxiety, and burnout. In the process I discovered Kristen Neff’s groundbreaking research on fierce self-compassion.

    I learned the reason rejections and losses are so painful is that the separation triggers all the times we’ve felt bereft before. We feel this in our bodies, which sound alarms. We typically react with fight, flight, freeze, or fawn reactions, and our minds spiral. We might blame or shame ourselves, twisting “this isn’t working,” “things change” or other impersonal reasons into harsh feelings of “I’m bad,” “I’m unworthy,” or “I’m not enough.”

    If we act with self-love and compassion instead, we acknowledge the pain and sadness we’re feeling. We comfort ourselves like we would a sobbing small child—with soothing actions that calm down our activated nervous systems.

    What We Get Wrong About Self-Love

    In adulthood our attempts at self-soothing too often numb the pain instead of healing it. We blanket ourselves in escapist binge watching or video games. We reach for another glass of wine or something stronger. Or we overwork to exhaustion. Sitting with difficult emotions we’d rather avoid is too uncomfortable and scary.

    But the worst thing we can do is to take our raw, unprocessed emotions and lash out at someone else. That’s when feelings turn into reactivity and abusive behavior, like spitting on someone or harassing them with tirades of vitriol. That’s when hurt people lose it and hurt others.

    That means the corollary is also true: the best thing we can do for ourselves, families, friends, partners, communities, and the world is to feel our feelings fully and ride them, surf-like, to shore. To do that we need to be present and aware and know how to take care of our emotions through self-soothing. That’s healing.

    Self-Love Practices That Really Work

    Self-soothing is about being in your body, not checking out or judging yourself harshly. I’m still a novice at self-soothing, but so far, the methods that work for me are:

    -Wrapping myself in a self-hug, or rubbing my upper arms

    -Breathing in quickly and then releasing a long, sigh-like exhale at least three times

    -Standing up and shaking out my hands, shoulders, arms, and legs, or dancing it out

    -Taking a moment to notice as many details as I can about where I am (colors, sounds, smells)

    -Breathing in steam from a hot cup of tea or a warm bath

    -Listening to calming music

    -Lighting a candle to watch it sparkle

    -Going for a walk

    -Doing gentle yin yoga

    When I try to think my way through rejection I either spiral into rumination or shut down. Telling someone what happened can help make sense of it and provide validation. But the only words that truly salve the sting are loving reassurances we tell ourselves, like: “You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re safe.” In this way, repeating positive affirmations can help too.

    Remember It’s a Process!

    One important thing to know about self-soothing is that it takes time! In our rushed, busy-is-better culture we don’t gift ourselves with time-outs enough. That’s why we’re so often on the edge and reactive. But self-soothing in the moment we feel the first sting of rejection completes the stress cycle faster. It takes less time to heal by self-soothing than we’d normally spend ruminating, numbing, or fuming.

    And when you soothe yourself, you might see new ways to connect with others. I didn’t date the handsome spitter again, but by not taking our breakup personally I didn’t build up a wall of shame or blame against him either. We became friends and continued seeing concerts together until I moved to my new city.

    Everything changes. Along with the best, the worst things are always going to happen. Loved ones leave or die. Opportunities are fleeting. Material possessions break or fade. There’s grief in losing the familiarity of a home you once lived in, even when it’s time to move on. Remember you’ve still got yourself to live with.

    Loving yourself is a reason to keep going, find joy wherever you can, and attract more love. Loving yourself is the rescue buoy that’s always there. It’s the soft soothing comfort and calm power you’ve always longed for.

  • How Childhood Bullying Influenced How I Treat Others as an Adult

    How Childhood Bullying Influenced How I Treat Others as an Adult

    “For me, that strong back is grounded confidence and boundaries. The soft front is staying vulnerable and curious. The mark of a wild heart is living out these paradoxes in our lives and not giving into the either/or BS that reduces us. It’s showing up in our vulnerability and our courage, and, above all else, being both fierce and kind.” ~Brené Brown

    Many people have experienced bullying in their lives and have possibly been a bully by association without realizing it at the time.

    While the type of bullying may differ, the emotions are often the same. Bullying is never okay, and the layered pain that bullies usually possess drives how they treat others.

    For me anxiety, shame, and a lack of understanding has always been present. On a regular basis, I experience pings of past bullying in my head reminiscent of the notifications that pop up on my phone.

    When I reflect on my teen years, it’s the cringe-worthy moments that are the headliners. These negative experiences can stick to you like glue throughout your life.

    Like every teenager, I wanted to fit in, and I wanted to feel like I belonged. Unfortunately, I never belonged where I wanted to the most.

    Much of the time I felt or knew I didn’t belong, or the belonging was fake, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. To make it just a little more complicated, I am a highly sensitive person (HSP), and at that age I didn’t understand how that impacted how I made friends and how I was treated by others.

    Most of the bullying I experienced as a teen was emotional, and for a period it was physical. Standing up for myself wasn’t really in the cards as far as solutions went. I was an athlete and I lived for the sports I played. But you don’t get to choose your team, and that proved to be a dangerous reality for me.

    My teammates did and said hurtful things. I’m not sure if they knew it or not, but I could hear them sometimes at practices. To this day I’m not sure if they knew that I knew; I waited on many days until I got home to fall apart. While the emotional toll has been tough, my worst memories pertain to physical bullying.

    Without going into too much detail, I was targeted by teammates I thought were my friends. They picked a part of my body and thought it was funny to hit, slap, and punch me. I didn’t know what to do or how to stop it, but I didn’t stand up for myself or tell anyone that could help me either.

    While the physical contact hurt, gave me headaches, and caused me to throw up, the most harmful part was that their game taught me that something was wrong with my body.

    By eleventh grade, I’d developed body dysmorphia disorder, and I hid my body as much as possible. To this day sometimes my skin still burns if I feel like I’m showing too much of my body. The shame screams at me inside my head, so I cover as much skin as I can.

    Earlier I wrote that it is possible to be a bully by association. Growing up, I hated when my mom said “guilt by association.” I loathe the feeling of those words ringing in my ears to this day. I didn’t stand up for myself, and I certainly didn’t have the strength or understanding that I could walk away instead of worrying about fitting in.

    I can think of countless times when people who bullied me then targeted others. There were times that I didn’t say a word, times I agreed, and times I maybe laughed. I knew it was wrong. I was stuck between wanting to be accepted, not wanting to be targeted, and trying not to draw attention to myself.

    I was like that in my youth, and I would get sick to my stomach about it all the time. I knew it was wrong but lacked the ability to do the right thing because of the emotional weakness that controlled me.

    Knowing that I can’t go back to change those actions has made me passionate about standing up for what I believe is right as an adult. Because when you stand by, injustice just continues in a loop and things don’t change. 

    I don’t know if I could have changed things back then. I don’t know if simply walking away could have helped. But I know the pain from bullying may last well into adulthood and can potentially affect someone for life.

    As someone who was bullied for a lot of my youth, it took me a long time to forgive myself for bullying by association. I was guilty of harming others even if I didn’t mean to.

    Now, as an adult, I am more mindful of how I want to treat others. I have developed skills, become stronger, and worked extremely hard to hold my head high (which will always be a work in progress).

    At the core, I believe that people are trying their best and do not set out to harm others. While I make mistakes and sometimes need to analyze my own behavior, I live my life with a high level of intention. I use kindness to help others, but also to heal from the harmful experiences in my past.

    After developing a list of practices that reflect how I want to treat people, I now intentionally use my past experiences to do the following…

    1. I pause to cultivate meaningful interactions and relationships. An inner mantra is “people first.” I want to make others feel like they matter and are seen.

    2. I learn about the people around me, and I show my gratitude with acts of kindness.

    3. I’m honest about my past experiences and struggles to help others feel validated.

    4. I openly reflect with others about behaviors, actions, and mistakes that I’ve made that have harmed others. I also share how I work to do better when I make mistakes.

    5. I encourage others to give me feedback and let me know if something I’m doing is hurtful or not helpful.

    6. I practice patience and kindness in the moments when I feel annoyed, angry, or sad.

    7. I speak up if I don’t agree with how someone or a group is being treated.

    8. I exit toxic relationships faster than I used to, realizing that toxic relationships do not just harm me but those around me too.

    9. I take stock of my actions and words on a regular basis to reflect on areas I can improve or how I can be kinder.

    10. I no longer allow being an HSP to shame me into not being my authentic self. I work to use sensitivity as a tool to help myself and others to truly show empathy.

    I know my actions may have harmed others in the past, and I will never arrive at a point where I am magically healed from the ways others hurt me. But I believe in the power of kindness and vulnerability. An important moment in my life was when I decided that I would no longer let my past dictate how I live my life. I decided not to hide who I was anymore. And when I leaned into the discomfort of the painful experiences, I started to grow.

  • How I Found My Worth in Spite of My Father’s Abandonment

    How I Found My Worth in Spite of My Father’s Abandonment

    “Because if I myself saw my worth, I wouldn’t base my worthiness on someone else’s seeing it.” ~Unknown

    I can’t be sure which title I would have preferred. Daddy, Poppa, Pa, Dad. Aren’t these the endearing titles one earns when they live up to all that it means in the role of the first and most important man in a little girl’s life?

    The one who she can count on for love, guidance, comfort, and safety. The one who she adores. The one who teaches her how to play soccer or baseball because she is a tomboy through and through. The one who allows her to put makeup on his face or to have tea parties with him at a table entirely too small for his stature. The one who tells her the best bedtime stories that leave her feeling safe from the boogeyman living under her bed.

    The one who sets the standard when she finds the love of her life.

    From all that I have heard, they are the ones who are something special and to be treasured.

    Mine, on the other hand, not so much. Let us then call him the sperm donor. Fitting since it’s the only role he’s played in my life. When one walks out on his wife and two little girls, the older, age three and the younger, age one (that’s me), offering no support, financial, emotional, or otherwise, he’s earned that title.

    Bless your black little heart.

    Maybe this all makes me sound harsh or bitter. That’s because I was, for a really long time.

    And with that came all the issues: abandonment, people-pleasing, anxiety, lack of confidence and self-esteem. Choosing partners who didn’t respect me because I didn’t respect myself. Drinking and feeling regret over things I may have said or done that could have hurt other people. Always second-guessing myself and my choices because I didn’t trust myself to make my own decisions.

    I became my own worst enemy, consistently and constantly beating myself up for anything and everything, and I filled my head with toxic thoughts about my worth that I believed were truths. Truths I lacked any ability to refute.

    I needed constant validation and approval, and a steady stream of input from others dictating my life. I did not know who the heck I was or how to be true to myself. I spent many years trying to make sense of it all, and the more I tried, the more I suffered.

    I hated the fact that I grew up without a father. I hated everything about it. And for so long, I let it define who I was.

    Fast-forward to the second half of my life. After a series of difficult events, including a devastating breakup around my fiftieth birthday and the more recent unexpected death of my mother, the only parent I had ever known (with whom I shared a tumultuous, roller coaster relationship), I became sick of myself and who I had allowed myself to become.

    How could I expect my own kids to grow into confident, kind, respectful adults if I was not setting the example? “Get it together, Charlene. Do it for them, and once and for all, do it for yourself!”

    That was the pivotal time in my life that triggered the light switch for me. It was as if I was given a second chance and an opportunity to gain the clarity I needed to become exactly who I wanted to be as a person and as a mom.

    I knew three things: it would take work, it would not happen overnight, and it would not feel good. It didn’t matter. I had made up my mind. I knew, first and foremost, I needed to find a way to forgive myself—for allowing my past to define my life, for my holding so much resentment toward my mother, and my own struggles as a mother after my divorce.

    I spent time initially with my three amigos. Me, myself, and I. We got to know each other very well before shortly meeting up with my baggage. We all sat together most days in our group therapy sessions, and we went back. Way back. We rehashed our lives and all the unpleasant and unflattering times. We sat often, in silence and in our stench. We did this for as long as it took until we could look in the mirror and see the person we could love and be proud of. 

    It was not pleasant. It was not easy. And it was most definitely not fun. But it was worth it.

    We, the four amigos (baggage included), were worth it.

    I slowly allowed myself some grace and became kinder and gentler to myself.

    Each day, I drove the short distance home from work on my lunch hour, hopping on my bike and looking for something, anything, to be grateful for… a bird or a butterfly in flight, the sunlight glistening on the water, a stone on the pavement in the shape of a heart, the sound of children laughing in the playground.

    I flooded my email inbox and social media feeds with daily happiness reminders (Tiny Buddha being one of them), and I devoured anything resembling positivity. I committed myself to healing my broken heart and rewiring my broken brain. Rather than focusing on my flaws and perceived imperfections, I uncovered everything wonderful and unique about myself—my courage, my passion, my honesty, my empathy, and my own role as a mother.

    I took my days minute by minute and inched my way forward.

    Baby steps.

    I will turn fifty-nine this year. Far closer to sixty than I am to fifty, back when the “you know what” started hitting the fan for me. When I think back to what my life looked like back then and all the worries and fears I had about what direction I was heading, I feel a sense of sadness.

    Time is this funny thing when you are in the second half of the game (of life). While I don’t dwell too much on regrets, my age, or how much time I have left, I would be lying if I said I have not thought about the time I wasted anguishing over my bruised ego and the hell I put myself through for so long.

    It is time I cannot get back.

    But today, I can say that I am proud of myself, and I give myself some credit…

    For overcoming my feelings of inadequacy and not being enough.

    For realizing that I am not lesser because of my flaws and imperfections, or because I grew up fatherless, in a trailer park, and do not have a four-year college degree.

    For having the courage and strength to walk my own path, even when the steps were terrifying and uncertain.

    Today, I am good.

    Good as in I can wake up and look in the mirror and like who I see. I could use a few less lines on my face, but I continue to learn how to embrace the whole package that is me. I can beat myself up and throw a good pity party once in a while, but I usually catch myself in the process.

    Sometimes it takes a few minutes, sometimes a day or two. Just depends.

    Either way, I have to sit the little girl inside me down and give her a reminder… to relax her shoulders, close her eyes, take a few deep breaths, and remember who the hell she is and just how far she has come.

    Today, I am still under construction, and I have been single and on my own for eight years. I was broken for a very long time, and I knew I needed to work on my inability to love and respect myself and rebuild the shattered parts of myself before I could entertain a relationship again. But I believe there are no mistakes. I think the stars aligned exactly as they needed to for me.

    If you can relate to any part of my story, I hope you find the strength and courage to dig deep and recognize where your lack of self-worth originated and discover all that is so wonderful and valuable about you.

    Regardless of your circumstances or how anyone might have treated you in the past, you are worthy of your own love, just as I am.

  • When You’re Terrified of Conflict: Why True Intimacy Means Speaking Up

    When You’re Terrified of Conflict: Why True Intimacy Means Speaking Up

    “Conflict avoidance is not the hallmark of a good relationship. On the contrary, it is a symptom of serious problems and of poor communication.” ~Harriet B. Braiker

    I walk on eggshells in my relationship. I have for the past ten years.

    I try to design everything out of my mouth to lead to the least amount of friction between my wife and me. And you know what? It’s hurting our relationship.

    You see, I’m afraid of confrontation. For me, confrontation leads to tension and tension can lead to stress and angst.

    When I was a kid, tension, stress, and angst equaled punishment from my father, which usually came in the form of yelling and verbal abuse. As such, I learned to walk on eggshells around my dad.

    It was a defense mechanism. A way to survive my crazy, chaotic childhood.

    Unfortunately, I took this learned behavior out in the world as an adult and perfected it. I tip-toed around people out of fear of someone getting defensive or upset with me. It was exhausting, but in my mind, better than the alternative.

    With my wife, this behavior started innocently at first. For example, if she made a meal that I didn’t particularly like, I wouldn’t tell her the truth out of fear of her getting hurt or defensive about it.

    In my mind, if I was honest with her, she would get upset, and that was something I wasn’t willing to let happen. This seemingly innocent way of interacting led to the deeper core issue in our relationship—not being truthful with how I was really feeling.

    Instead, when I sensed that my wife was getting upset about something, I often shut down emotionally and hid. I was afraid of being my authentic self because I was certain it would lead to conflict, and conflict in my experience, like I said, leads to pain.

    As a child, whenever my dad and someone he was dating had a disagreement or a fight, the relationship would come to an end. Always.

    When one person would leave, another would show up and stay until there was a big fight. Then she would leave and another would be right around the corner and so on. This was the blueprint I witnessed as a child.

    Conflict = pain = endings

    He modeled a behavior for me, a way of being if you will, that I swore to avoid at all costs. Hence shutting down and emotionally hiding around my wife. I didn’t want a big blow up that ended our relationship.

    But here’s the thing, disagreements and conflict are a part of life. They happen over politics, money, and parenting.

    They happen in the workplace, over religion, and in schools. Disagreement and conflict are everywhere, and yes, they even happen in romantic relationships.

    But for those of us with any sort of childhood trauma, we hear a disagreement as a fight. And fights can lead to endings, which is something most of us don’t want. 

    That’s why I designed everything out of my mouth to lead to the least amount of disagreement with my wife. I didn’t want things to end. Little did I know, I was actually hurting things more than helping them.

    When we walk on eggshells in our relationships, we leak without knowing it. Leak meaning our insecurities and fears come out, and they can trigger the other person and give them reason to resent us.

    It’s counterintuitive. There’s no authenticity in it. There’s no connection or vulnerability.

    Intimacy, erroneously for many of us, is only viewed as closeness and feeling good, but that’s not accurate. Intimacy is also discomfort and disagreement and for people to be able to navigate that.

    Being intimate is sharing our reality and accepting the reality of another. When we walk on eggshells, we are not being intimate.

    Unfortunately, this realization is too little too late for me. My wife and I got recently divorced, and according to her this is one of the biggest reasons why. It’s sad and painful but something I felt necessary to share with you in the off chance of it helping someone else.

    The moral of the story? Bring to the relationship what you want your partner to bring to the relationship. Rise above your discomfort and be intimate.

    In tough moments I sometimes turn into a little child who doesn’t know how to articulate things, so I shut down and hide instead. But like I said, that’s not intimacy.

    Everyone is going to disagree or be disappointed in us at some point in time because they are human.  Our work is to be aware that others being disappointed with us does not equate to being in harm’s way.

    Knowing this is the difference between being a functional adult and being in our childhood trauma. It’s the difference between healthy adult pain and the wounded child pain.

    This is where my work is right now. Choosing intimacy and aliveness over people-pleasing and perceived safety. Slowing down in the moment and reminding myself that it’s okay to be scared and, even more so, to express it. The adaptive behavior of closing up and protecting myself doesn’t serve me anymore.

    I imagine there’s an immense freedom that comes with not being afraid of expressing or showing oneself to others. Moving forward, that’s my path (to the best of my ability, of course). Care to join me?

  • How to Give Someone the Gift of Hope and Joy with Just a Few Words

    How to Give Someone the Gift of Hope and Joy with Just a Few Words

    “You will never forget a person who came to you with a torch in the dark.” ~M. Rose

    You never know the impact you might have on someone at any given moment.

    It may be entirely unknown to you.

    While people often look “fine” on the surface and out in public, many aren’t.

    In fact, there are some who spend most of their time sitting curled up in a ball, waiting for the darkness they feel to close in on them, to swallow them whole.

    A simple look, smile, text, or “hello” in the grocery line could be the unknown light that keeps that darkness at bay; a lifeline that tethers these souls to the here and now, preventing them from floating toward the abyss.

    For many of us, we have moments when we feel overwhelmed, underappreciated, and invisible, unseen and unheard in our hardest moments.

    I have struggled with this myself. Weighed down from the heaviness of being a single parent, working several jobs and feeling like I was constantly falling short in every aspect of my life.

    I’d have moments when I felt like a failure, unworthy of anything good or positive.

    Dark and heavy feelings made me want to shut the curtains and hide away from the world in sorrow.

    In each of these dark episodes of time, when I was filled with self-doubt and insecurity, someone would randomly reach out and share a sweet thought.

    They would come completely out of left field, sometimes from people I knew and sometimes from strangers.

    It would be something as simple as “Those are pretty earrings, they look nice on you,” shared by a stranger passing by or “I spoke with your daughters last night. They are such great kids. You’re doing a good job,” passed along by a friend.

    Sometimes it would be something as simple as a note from one of my kids—“Love you, Mom”—that could turn it all around.

    It was as though the kind words would encircle me, fill me with warmth, and then subtly go to those curtains and open them a little, gently, to let some light back into the room.

    Conversely, feeling the random urge to reach out to someone and pay them a compliment, that’s something I know holds power too.

    I shared a memory with a friend once, about a teacher who had spoken some encouraging words to me when I was in middle school. Her words motivated me to not give in to my shyness, but rather look for coping tools that would help me be a better public speaker.

    I ran into that teacher a few weeks after my friend and I had that conversation, at a local bookstore. When I saw her, I felt moved to share with her the story I had told my friend, so I made it a point to go over to her. I told her what a positive impact she’d had on my life, and that I ended up with a career in public speaking because of her encouragement, all those years before.

    I found out later, when her daughter sought me out online after the woman had passed, that her mom had been feeling blue, battling depression and cancer, and felt like she hadn’t made much of an impact in this world when we crossed paths and I shared my story with her. I had no idea this woman had been struggling, as we hadn’t seen each other in years… since school, actually.

    Her daughter said that when they visited each other the evening of our chance encounter, her mom was all aglow with excitement and a renewed sense of optimism and fulfillment. She called my simple words “a gift” to her mom, and ultimately, with the happiness they brought her mom, to herself, as well.

    Those are the little moments of light you share.

    If you feel the instinct to call, or send a note, to smile, even just to say a kind word, perhaps there’s a greater reason for it. You might just be the vehicle by which an important dose of hope or happy is delivered, right in the nick of time.

    Do it. You will never regret speaking a kindness out loud to someone.

    Follow through on that urge.

    Don’t let self-consciousness or professionalism hold you back.

    Genuine kindness, when delivered, will never go to waste. In fact, it will usually multiply, like a ray of light that hits a mirror and scatters every which way; sharing a kind thought and lifting someone up is a powerful tool for turning their day around.

    When you feel the urge to say something kind or reach out to someone you haven’t spoken to in a while, there could be more to it than you know.

    You may just be that little bit of light that keeps someone else from staying too long in the dark.

  • How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed by Other People’s Strong Emotions

    How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed by Other People’s Strong Emotions

    “It is not your responsibility to figure out what someone else is feeling and why. Let go of the illusion that ‘fixing’ their bad mood will make you feel better.” ~Sarah Crosby

    Some years ago, I was talking to my husband on the phone. He sounded annoyed about something to do with his work, but I noticed an intense emotional reaction in myself. Immediately, my heart contracted and my stomach lurched. I could feel a runaway train of emotions activate within me.

    My whole body was awash with nausea, and I felt so very uncomfortable. 

    This was a familiar and old pattern for me. My husband had some feelings and expressed them, and I felt totally overwhelmed by them. It then created a loop of reactivity where he would say something in this annoyance, I would respond with fear that he was annoyed, and it would all become a big mess of emotions being thrown all over the place.

    But what felt worse than that moment, when I experienced his feelings as though they were the end of the world, is what came after. I would sink into a familiar space of despair about my husband and how he was feeling. I would try and think of ways to fix the situation, or feel aggrieved by how he’d reacted.

    This response is something that I experienced not just with my husband, but with most people in my life to a greater or lesser degree. My real or imagined noticing of someone having feelings, and how horrible that felt for me, in my body.

    It was totally instinctive, that someone would seem upset and I would jump in and try to fix, reassure, help, or soothe. And in that process, I would totally subjugate my needs and feelings because of how much I didn’t like how it felt to be around people and their emotions. 

    Sometimes it would feel that people close to me were trying to upset me with their emotions on purpose. When a family member got angry it would totally overwhelm me, and I would end up resenting them for days or weeks. It felt like they were punishing me with their anger.

    When my kids felt disappointment or sadness, I found it unbearable to see them feeling so bad, and I would endeavor to help them by changing their plans, getting them a cookie, or trying to talk them out of how they were feeling.

    The problem here is that, of course, when we are human beings around other human beings, we are going to encounter people having feelings—about us or themselves, or anything else we humans have feelings about.

    When we find other people’s feelings challenging, we aren’t giving them the space they need to have feelings. There is an element of Your feelings are making me uncomfortable! Can you please shut them down because I don’t like them.

    Which is understandable when we don’t know how to deal with our own emotions. If we don’t feel okay around our feelings, of course we struggle with other people’s.

    So how do we learn how to not get intertwined with other people and their emotions? How do we stop having such intense reactions to people having feelings, regardless of what they are about?

    How can we stop letting other people’s emotional responses completely distract us, and throw us off our day—consuming vast amounts of time and activating intensely uncomfortable feelings of our own?

    For me, the first step was learning how to identify what was happening. I felt like other people’s feelings were happening to me, but really, they were having feelings and I was having feelings.

    My feelings are separate from your feelings. 

    One of the reasons why it feels that we get so intertwined and things get so messy in relationships is that we don’t recognize that we all have separate feelings. In so many relationships we don’t give each other space to have feelings, because of the patterns of how we respond to emotions.

    We often think it’s like this:

    Stop being scared! It’s making me scared!

    Stop being irritable! It’s making me anxious!

    But really no one is making us have feelings. Our emotions arise on their own, as do someone else’s. But we can learn how to stop reacting to their emotions as our own.

    If we can see Oh, I am having my own feelings here! we can then use this awareness to create some space and start to pay attention to ourselves and our emotions instead.

    Recognize that no one is having feelings on purpose.  

    Once I had been coaching for a few years and had radically changed how I worked with both my own emotions and how I responded to those of the other people around me, I asked my husband what he loved the most about my work. He said that now he no longer feels tortured by my feelings. And I thought, Wow! That is so fascinating.

    I was so used to feeling overwhelmed by his feelings that I never considered that he was feeling the same way.

    Because my emotional reactions are so different from his, it didn’t occur to me that he was also uncomfortable around my feelings. And it’s the difference in our responses that can provide so much confusion in relationships.

    My go-to strategy when overwhelmed by my husband’s emotions was to chase him down and try to discuss and fix everything straight away. His strategy was to try to disconnect from me and run away.

    Essentially, we both felt challenged by the other’s emotions, and by working to create some space to support ourselves in our own emotions, we created such a big shift in how we now respond to each other.

    People can’t be truly empathetic when they are emotionally activated. 

    What I now know about emotions is that we can’t truly access empathy when we are emotionally activated, so if I am with someone who is having feelings, I don’t expect empathy and understanding from them.

    In order to gain full access to our empathy, we need to move through the emotions, so part of working with other people is letting them move through the anger/fear/sadness or whatever it is they are feeling.

    I don’t engage them in things I am not happy about or talk about their behavior or what they’ve said—until after they have moved through that feeling.

    When we feel any emotion, we see the whole world through the lens of that emotion. Anger sees upsetting things everywhere. Fear sees scary things everywhere. So it doesn’t benefit us to get too involved in what someone might say when they are in the thick of emotional activation.

    Knowing this helps us work on not reacting to what they are saying, doing, or feeling.

    Feelings activate feelings.  

    If we are feeling super calm and someone comes along and is expressing a lot of anger, it can easily activate our own feelings. That’s natural. Maybe we feel fear around anger, or maybe we feel anger at their anger. It’s natural for our feelings to activate around others.

    With all emotions, we want to work on supporting ourselves through emotional activation. When we can do this, when we can sit with ourselves and provide support, we can move through the emotions with more ease and confidence, and not get stuck in the loop of that emotion.

    By noticing and naming your experience, you are offering yourself some support.

    We can say to ourselves, The best thing I can do right now is support myself in feeling my feelings, and not engage in their feelings. 

    We can acknowledge how challenging this is for us. We can offer ourselves the gift of understanding, and that can help us move with the discomfort of the emotions that have activated.

    Offer yourself some empathy, understanding, and validation.

    Empathy is a very powerful resource when we are in the thick of emotions. Giving ourselves some tender, kind, loving support is a real gift to ourselves when we feel activated.

    Maybe we say to ourselves:

    This is hard for me because…

    I understand why this is so challenging.

    It makes sense that this is tough for me since…

    It’s hard seeing someone feel so disappointed or angry. It’s hard to hold these feelings. 

    If it feels good, offer yourself some physical support.

    Put your hand on your heart, or stroke your arms, giving yourself a hug, while you stay with yourself in this experience of sitting with your feelings.

    Of course, this isn’t always easy! When we have spent a lifetime responding to people’s emotions in a certain way, it takes some effort and focus to start responding differently.

    Other people’s emotional activations are some of the hardest things we deal with, but with awareness and intention, we can learn to see these experiences differently, and then learn to respond differently.

    Now when I hear disappointment or irritation from my husband, or sadness or despair from my kids, or anger or shame from my family, I can recognize that these are their feelings! I don’t need to jump into their pool of emotions and get immersed in their experiences. 

    I can instead stand back and support myself, which in turn supports them because I am not adding to the emotional load they are experiencing.

    I can help by being responsible for my feelings so we aren’t creating a big chaotic mix of messy emotions.

    This is how anyone can create some space and peace in the emotional experiences around them.

  • Overcoming Codependency: Breaking the Cycle of Unhealthy Relationships

    Overcoming Codependency: Breaking the Cycle of Unhealthy Relationships

    “A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior.” ~Melody Beattie

    From a young age, I felt insecure in my own skin. I was a highly sensitive child and, subsequently, struggled with low self-worth for most of my life.

    Although I had many friends and a good family, I consistently looked for approval outside of myself. I grew up believing that the opinions of others were the only accurate representations of my core worth.

    As a teenager, I witnessed the crumbling and eventual demise of my parents’ marriage. During these years, I felt a lot like an island.

    I was often plagued with a dark, mysterious unhappiness. The standard teenage growing pains conglomerated with the trauma of losing my familial identity. In a desperate attempt to counter these negative feelings, I sought the approval of others; when it was not provided, I felt like a failure.

    I was caught up in vicious cycle of seeking outside confirmation that I was good enough.

    At school, I adopted the role of boy-crazy-funny-girl. I wanted to be adored and nurtured and cherished.

    I kept a list of all the cute boys at my school and spent hours daydreaming about a blissful, fairy tale love.

    I consistently focused on seeking happiness outside of myself. This habitual practice, over time, led to an inability to be content unless something or someone was providing validation. Most of the time, I felt like I was not good enough.

    This falsely instilled belief led me into a decade-long struggle with codependency.

    The first codependent relationship I was involved in began when I was nineteen. He was ten years older than I was, and, unbeknownst to me at the time, a cocaine addict.

    Our routine was unhealthy and unproductive. We would spend our weekends drinking and gambling at a local pool hall. More often than not, I spent my entire weekly paycheck by the end of Saturday night.

    He belittled me, called me names, and consistently criticized my appearance and weight. He compared me to his previous girlfriends. I began to see myself as an incomplete person, one who was in need of major repairs and upgrades. I was so emotionally fragile that the wind could’ve knocked me over.

    In a frantic effort to self-preserve, I adopted several fear-based behaviors. I became obsessed with him. I was controlling and jealous. I needed to know everything about his past. I wanted desperately for him to accept me.

    Over the ten months we spent together, I neglected my body and mind. My weight dropped a staggering thirty pounds. I was completely disconnected from my family and friends. I developed severe anxiety and suffered crippling panic attacks. I knew something had to change, so I gathered the courage and left him behind.

    I thought that I was rid of this unhealthy and unsatisfying lifestyle, but the bad habits carried into my next two relationships.

    I spent four years with a person that I loved very much; however, his alcohol dependency brought all of my insecurities and controlling behavior back into play.

    We spent four years flip-flopping between wonderful loving moments and horrific physical fights that left us both numb and depressed.

    When this relationship ended, I sought comfort in yet another unavailable partner, one that could not provide me with the stability that I so badly needed.

    Such is the nature of the codependent person. We seek out what is familiar to us, but not necessarily what is good for us.

    After logging close to a decade-worth of codependent hours, I finally faced myself. I knew that if I didn’t make significant changes, I would be forever trapped in a life that was unconducive to my spiritual and emotional growth.

    In a scene eerily similar to Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love bathroom breakdown, I faced the music. I got myself a small apartment and started my recovery.

    The first few days spent alone were absolutely torturous. I cried and cried. I had trouble doing basic tasks, like walking my dog or getting groceries. I had completely turned inward, nurturing my turmoil like an old friend. Anxiety-ridden and lonely, I did the only thing I could think of: I asked for help.

    The first step I took was ordering Melody Beattie’s book Codependent No More. This is probably the most significant self-improvement book I have ever read. I felt a weight being lifted as I read, page by page.

    Finally, I was able to understand all of the behaviors, feelings, and emotions I had struggled with for so long. I was a textbook case, my highlighter affirmed as I completed the “codependency checklist.” Perhaps some of these questions will speak to you, as well.

    • Do you feel responsible for other people—their feelings, thoughts, actions, choices, wants, needs, well-being, and destiny?
    • Do you feel compelled to help people solve their problems or try to take care of their feelings?
    • Do you find it easier to feel and express anger about injustices done to others than about injustices done to you?
    • Do you feel safest and most comfortable when you are giving to others?
    • Do you feel insecure and guilty when someone gives to you?
    • Do you feel empty, bored, and worthless if you don’t have someone else to take care of, a problem to solve, or a crisis to deal with?
    • Are you often unable to stop talking, thinking, and worrying about other people and their problems?
    • Do you lose interest in your own life when you are in love?
    • Do you stay in relationships that don’t work and tolerate abuse in order to keep people loving you?
    • Do you leave bad relationships only to form new ones that don’t work, either?

    (You can read more about the habits and patterns of codependent people here.)

    After acknowleding my codependency, I connected with an online support group for family members of addicts/alcoholics. This gave me a platform to share my story, without judgment, and little by little, I healed my aching heart.

    The most significant things I learned on this journey are:

    1. Without change, nothing changes.

    This is such a simple yet profound truth. It’s reminiscent of Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The cycle of codependency can only be overcome by establishing and nurturing a super-loving relationship with yourself. Otherwise, you will continually find yourself in unhealthy, codependent relationships.

    2. We can’t control others, and it is not our job to do so.

    Over the years, I was constantly trying to control and micromanage other people’s behavior, in an effort to escape my own negative feelings.

    I chose partners with alcohol and drug dependencies. Often, I chose angry and avoidant men. By focusing on what was wrong with them, I could ignore what was empty and unfulfilled in me.

    I thought, naively, that this would give me a feeling of stability. In fact, it did the opposite. Surrendering the need to control other people provides us the necessary space to connect with ourselves.

    3. Love and obsessions are not the same.

    I falsely believed for many years that love and obsession were one and the same. I gave so much of myself to my partners, naively thinking that this was the road to happiness.

    I’ve learned that healthy love requires both partners to have unique, individual identities outside of the romantic relationship. Time alone, time with friends, and time to work on personal projects allows you to really connect when you are together, without feeling suffocated. We build trust when we afford ourselves, and our partners, some breathing room.

    For many years I neglected my own needs. I now prioritize personal time to do individual activities: reading, writing, walking, reflecting. I started to heal once I learned to incorporate self-love rituals into my life. One of my favorite things to do is spend the evening in a warm bubble bath, light some candles and listen to Alan Watts lectures.

    4. Life is not an emergency.

    This is a biggie! I consistently lived in a high-stress vortex—terrified of people, abandonment, and life itself.

    I worried so much about all of the things that were outside of my control—often, other people. I realize now that life is meant to be enjoyed and savored. Good and bad things will happen, but with a centered and balanced heart, we can get over any obstacles.

    The key to balance, for me, is to live fully in every moment, accepting life for what it is. Even when I’m feeling down, I know that the Universe has my back and everything in life is unfolding as it should.

    If you don’t hold this belief, it might help to remember that you have your own back, and you can handle whatever is coming. When you trust in yourself, and focus on yourself instead of others, it’s much easier to enjoy life and stop living in fear.

    —

    I have assembled a group of super-hero coaches and teachers that have helped me significantly over the years in my quest for self-improvement. I have loving support and encouragement from so many sources. It’s my dream to be able to give some of that back to the world. I hope I have done that with this post.

  • Why Forgiveness Is the Ultimate Act of Self-Love and 3 Lessons That Might Help

    Why Forgiveness Is the Ultimate Act of Self-Love and 3 Lessons That Might Help

    “The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.” ~Marianne Williamson 

    When you hear the word “forgiveness,” what do you feel?

    Forgiveness used to make me feel uncomfortable. I would physically contract when I thought about forgiving someone who hurt me. I felt like forgiving meant letting them off the hook while I was the one paying for their hurtful words and actions.

    I would play a scene in my head about what it would look like for someone to apologize and admit to their wrongs… and only then would I be ready and able to forgive. I put a moment that hadn’t happened on a pedestal. And in doing so, I outsourced my power to another person.

    This kept me in a prolonged state of anxiousness, resentment, and heartache. I thought that I could bypass forgiveness because there was never an apology.

    While apologies are helpful in healing, they aren’t always guaranteed. You can’t control what other people do or don’t do.

    When you wait for an apology or project high expectations on what it should look like, you’re letting another person’s actions have too much control over your healing. And even if an apology is given, it can never fully take back what happened.

    When I grew the courage to walk away from my partner last year, I felt so much anger for how I’d been treated throughout our relationship. He admitted to emotional cheating, he’d talked down to me, and he’d disrespected my time and energy.

    The last text that I received from him was an apology, and yet I still didn’t feel like it was satisfactory. That’s because the ego will never be fully satisfied. True forgiveness has little to do with what the other person does for you; nobody can truly give you closure but yourself.

    My path to forgiveness began when I received his text. In my final text to him, I was loving and wished him the best. It didn’t involve me trying to say one more piece to gain a reaction or salvage the relationship again.

    It was me listening to the wisdom of my highest self that whispered in the depths of my pain: 

    “I am loving and loved.” 

    “It is for you, future you, and the people that love you that you take this experience of heartbreak and alchemize it into love, acceptance, and peace.”

    My old story of forgiveness was that it was naive and unrealistic.

    But my new story? Forgiveness is empowering and healing. And my future health, well-being, and relationships depend on it.

    Here are three lessons about forgiveness that my breakup taught me.

    1. Forgiveness is a process.

    Forgiveness is not like following the exact route on your GPS to spend a Saturday at the beach. It ebbs and flows. We can’t rush or force it, but we can be willing to welcome its healing effects over time.

    It didn’t feel right to jump right from my breakup into a place of forgiveness. I needed to process the sacred anger, rage, sadness, and bitterness that I was feeling. Because I let myself move through these emotions in healthy ways, I was able to release a lot of energy.

    I then decided I was ready to forgive. I made a conscious choice to forgive internally every time I was triggered or reminded of something painful. At first, it felt nearly impossible. But I reminded myself that it was going to feel hard, and I loved myself where I was at.

    I started with small moments of putting my hand on my heart and wishing peace for my ex. Then I began writing about my forgiveness in my journal. One day, I wrote a forgiveness letter to my ex (not to send) and then burnt it.

    Over time, forgiveness feels more natural and reflexive, but it still requires intention. Be gentle with yourself in the process.

    2. Forgiveness is for you.

    Forgiveness is not about condoning, excusing, or minimizing someone’s behavior and actions. And it’s not about forgetting what happened or giving someone more chances.

    Unlike reconciliation, forgiveness does not necessarily mean letting someone back into your life, although some people may choose that path to rebuild something stronger. But that requires conscious commitment from both parties involved.

    When we resist forgiveness and harbor resentment, the only person we hurt is ourselves. In my case, forgiveness was an act of self-love and acceptance.

    First, I had to forgive myself for staying longer than I should have. Then it was easier to energetically extend forgiveness to my ex and let go of uncomfortable emotions, like anxiety and resentment, which were keeping me stuck in a victim mindset.

    I took my power back through forgiveness because it gave me permission to move on and created space for something more aligned with the highest version of myself.

    When I welcomed the feelings of forgiveness, my energy had a ripple effect. Once I forgave my ex, I saw the best in other people and situations instead of projecting resentful, negative energy, which had previously kept me in a lack mentality.

    Since I started to forgive and love myself more, I have attracted more abundance, love, and success.

    Gratitude now radiates from me and has helped me align with connections, business opportunities, and experiences that have been for my highest good.

    3. Forgiveness invites compassion for all.

    The by-product of forgiveness is an equally healing expression: compassion. When you forgive, you welcome full, compassionate presence as you’re releasing the chains of judgment, blame, and shame. You begin to see the situation or person with a more loving lens.

    As I started forgiving my ex-partner in my heart, I could clearly see that his behaviors were a reflection of his own internal struggles and pain. This gave me pause.

    The feelings of anger and resentment slowly melted away as I saw a side of myself—someone who has also struggled, suffered, and made mistakes. And I couldn’t help but feel compassion for him, myself, and everyone who has felt pain because of pain caused by others.

    Compassion is the antidote to the judgment that poisons our world and creates more suffering. It’s the greatest gift we can give and receive.

    —

    Forgiveness isn’t easy, but neither is carrying the pain in the long run. See forgiveness as a non-negotiable act of healing, empowerment, and self-love. It is the ultimate closure you seek, and it will radically change your life and the lives around you.

  • Why It Can Feel Lonely When You Stop Overgiving in Relationships

    Why It Can Feel Lonely When You Stop Overgiving in Relationships

    “After you give so much of yourself to people over the years, one day you wake up and realize that you need someone to give to you too.” ~Sylvester McNutt

    One of the biggest surprises I found on my self-care journey was how lonely I started to feel in the process, especially when I started to set boundaries with toxic people. At first, this loneliness had me questioning myself. I thought there must be something wrong with me, because I thought I was supposed to feel good and strong instead of scared and lonely when I did “the right thing.”

    Honestly, most days the loneliness was so big it felt like healing wasn’t really worth it. After digging a little deeper and doing some research, I discovered I wasn’t alone in this feeling, and there is a key reason why loneliness is so profound at the beginning of a self-care journey.

    Due to a variety of childhood circumstances, I had developed a personal identity that revolved around making others feel seen, heard, understood, and wanted. My whole sense of self was tied into how others felt about themselves.

    I was really good at showing up for people, listening to them, meeting their needs, and ensuring they felt seen, heard, and comfortable. It initially never felt like a sacrifice to me to do this, and when it did, I was proud and honored to sacrifice my own needs and wants to make others happy.

    While developing this ability to “see” and love on others isn’t inherently bad, it does become a problem when this is not balanced with the ability to also allow others to “see” me. It honestly never even crossed my mind to allow someone else to do something for me. When people would offer to do me a favor or help in some way, I would always decline their support.

    Accepting was way outside my comfort zone, and I would make up all kinds of excuses to be sure I didn’t need anyone else’s help or support.

    Over time, these one-sided relationships always break down. We aren’t meant to only give or only receive, so when these relationships start, resentment, frustration, and jealousy always develop too. Sometimes it takes years and sometimes it takes days, but it always ends with both parties feeling taken advantage of and frustrated. 

    If you are someone, like me, who tends to show up in relationships to give and not receive, then when you set boundaries and try to create healthy relationship dynamics, it will feel lonely and boring initially.

    This is because we have developed an identity based on how we can make others feel. If we can make them feel happy, accepted, wanted, loved, and taken care of, then we feel happy, accepted, wanted, loved, and taken care of. We convinced ourselves (subconsciously) long ago that we didn’t actually need to feel all those feelings for ourselves; we just needed to help others feel them.

    When the lie that we don’t need to be seen, loved, taken care of, or wanted is taken away, we will feel a strong sense of loneliness and boredom initially.

    Why? Because you can’t develop a new, healthier sense of self without taking away the old first. If you don’t take it away, there’s no room for the new, healthier version of you to grow. We have to step away from the pattern of over-giving and only give in order to make room for the receiving part of us to grow.

    It is in the space between not repeating old patterns but before our new patterns have developed that we feel lonely, and often bored. Being aware of where we are in the healing cycle is critical because most people feel that loneliness and go right back to their old patterns, saying, “It didn’t work.” 

    My challenge to you is to stick with it. This concept applies to all change, really.

    Have you ever tried to lose weight? How do you feel in the first month? Bored, frustrated, lonely, tired, and all in your head about how much it sucked.

    Most people then quit. Most people decide it isn’t worth it because they can’t stay focused on the long-term gain. Those who stick with it start to feel good. They start to see the scale drop, clothes fit better, and friends comment on how good they look. Once they start experiencing the rewards for the pattern change, they’re motivated to stick with it.

    It’s the same concept here. Knowing that you are done with unhealthy relationship patterns where you are constantly taken advantage of, where you’re over-giving, exhausted, and feel invisible all the time, means you are ready for a change.

    Keep this why in the forefront of your mind as you navigate the first steps of change that will be tough. You are dropping the old pattern of just giving, but you don’t yet have the new pattern of receiving in place. When you develop your ability to receive from others, loneliness is gone. Not just that, but life is far better than you ever could have imagined. 

    Allowing people to truly see you, know you, and love you is an incredible gift. It also means you will attract other people operating on a much higher vibration.

    You will no longer attract people who only want to take from you. You will attract people with an equal balance of giving and receiving, and life will feel good. Relationships will feel good, and they will stand the test of time because they will be healthy and balanced.

    If you are doing the right thing and feel lonely and bored, keep going. There is so much life on the other side.

  • How I Gained Self-Confidence and Self-Love Through Nude Yoga

    How I Gained Self-Confidence and Self-Love Through Nude Yoga

    “Growth is uncomfortable; you have to embrace the discomfort if you want to expand.” ~Jonathan Majors

    Click, the camera lens shutters as I stand barefoot in mud, waist deep in cold river water with lilies all around me, wearing nothing but a lace cloth draped across my body. I’ll never forget how nervous I was the first time I was professionally photographed nearly naked. Something greater than my fear had called me to do it.

    When I was growing up, my father was determined for me to model or act. I went to several model castings and auditions and was even in a beauty pageant. But those paths led me nowhere. It was as if I was completely unnoticed.

    I remember several times, after having photos taken for agencies, my father wouldn’t let me see the pictures. He would say, “They didn’t turn out good,” and I believe, to this day, that he was right and was protecting me. I was not photogenic in my youth. I was definitely a “late bloomer.”

    Those experiences gave me the belief that I clearly was not the girl people were looking for. That I couldn’t model, and I wasn’t pretty enough (no blame here on my father; it was the entire experience as a whole).

    In my adolescence I was far from confident; in fact, I was extremely judgmental of myself and engrossed in comparing my life to the popular girls. This made me feel and act even more awkward, and I really grew to dislike myself.

    Fast-forward a decade later, when I was avidly practicing and teaching yoga. Over several years I started to learn to be in my body, to accept my body for how it was that day, in that moment. I also started to heavily meditate and learn to detach from my judgments and harsh critical thoughts.

    During this time, I heard a woman talking about doing naked yoga. I couldn’t believe this… what?! Naked yoga!? It sounded so intriguing. I had to try it!

    So, one day in my own home, completely alone, I undressed and stepped onto my mat. Seeing my naked body in the poses I had practiced hundreds of times, but now naked, was so intimate. It was like seeing my naked body for the first time. I’ll never forget how much I cried while moving from pose to pose and reciting the words “I love you” to the different parts of my body.

    From there it all unraveled. During this time, several girlfriends who were photographers asked me to model for them. It was then that I really started to come face to face with all the parts of myself that I was so insecure about seeing, let alone someone else seeing!

    I remember the day I was asked to pose nude for the first time, I rose to the occasion. It really added a deeper layer, or actually, it took all the layers off in my self-love journey!

    I felt shy, timid, judgmental, and quite frankly, I had no idea what I was doing. But this feeling of awkwardness forced me to get grounded, to breathe, and to tap into the environment around me. I had to let go of what I looked like, and then I started to be playful and have fun!

    When I first saw the photos, I was so embarrassed. It made me want to shrink and fade away. In time, as I continued to model, it became an ongoing journey of building confidence and learning to accept and love myself. I was drawn like a moth to a flame because I was embarking on something beyond my past experiences of fear, and it was transformative.

    I went on to model nude several more times, in various settings: the forest, the lake, the desert, the hot springs, and indoor studios. It became an act of freedom to have my body turned into art. A wild woman was born!

    I felt so free while modeling nude that it became a literal quest to overcome my insecurities and radically step into self-acceptance. To love my imperfections, to expose the raw and the unpolished parts of me.

    Now, all these years later, I see that these photoshoots are much bigger than just me being naked. It’s alchemizing shame into confidence, hatred into self-love. It’s about being a seed of inspiration for others to express freedom and the power that’s found through vulnerability.

    Naturally, we humans are creatures of comfort, but we do not grow and evolve when we stay in these zones. The power and healing that is on the other side of the familiar is immeasurable.

    If you feel the burning heart’s desire to step into greater leadership, share your talents with the world, take the leap in your life, and step into the best ever evolving version of you. You can extract what I have talked about above and implement it into your life. This doesn’t mean you have to get naked too, although that’s one way to get radical about it!

    Here are seven practices that you can implement into your self-care routines, morning or evening, to create greater self-love and boost your confidence.

    6 Self-Love and Confidence Boosting Tools

    1. Do mirror work with affirmations.

    Speak affirmations—positive “I am” statements”—into the mirror. I am joy. I am fierce. I am beautiful. I am ready.Notice and allow. What emotions, thoughts, physical sensations, or memories come up? Tuning into what these statements trigger inside you can help you identify areas for healing.

    For example, if you don’t believe you’re beautiful, why? What does beauty mean to you? When did you first start believing this? What happened, and who else was involved? What proof do you have that this is just a belief, not fact?

    2. Practice naked yoga.

    Roll out your mat at home, turn on music, light candles, and enjoy!

    You might feel uncomfortable doing this. You might focus on all the parts of your body you dislike and how you imagine you look while doing the poses. Embrace the fact that it’s just you—there’s no one to impress or please—so you truly can just be in your body, without judging it. Connecting with your body is the first step to accepting it, and accepting it is the first step to loving it.

    3. Seek discomfort.

    Do things that feel (just a little) scary, intimidating, and unfamiliar to you. If you’re naturally shy, start a conversation with a stranger. If you don’t usually speak in meetings, offer a suggestion. Put yourself in situations to stretch and impress yourself. There’s nothing that will create confidence faster.

    4. Try something new.

    Take a class, join a club, try a new hobby. Do something you’ve always dreamed of trying, or something you envy other people for doing.  Even if you’re not “good at it,” the fact that you tried builds courage.

    5. Pamper yourself.

    Get your hair/nails done, have a spa day, wine and dine yourself. Every time you take care of yourself or do something nice for yourself, you reinforce that you deserve it.

    6. Try a nude photoshoot.

    This can be done completely privately, photographed by you, or it can be as adventurous as you want. The choice is yours! Just be sure to choose a photographer you trust, someone who understands you’re doing this for self-empowerment and won’t pressure you into doing anything that you don’t feel comfortable with.

    Not only have these steps helped me cultivate a lifetime partnership of love with myself, but they are also proven practices of transformation!

    I could have easily stayed in my comfort zone instead of stepping into that muddy, cold river naked, but I was so inspired it beckoned me to step into the unknown, because I knew it meant stepping into greater power.

    This is your sign to lean into those juicy discomforts, to find power in vulnerability, to say yes and live fearlessly!

  • 5 Painful Effects of Parentification Trauma and How I’ve Overcome Them

    5 Painful Effects of Parentification Trauma and How I’ve Overcome Them

    “Sometimes people wound us because they’re wounded and tell us we’re broken because that’s how they feel, but we don’t have to believe them.” ~Lori Deschene

    I’ve always been proud of how I can handle life so well. I’m great at managing responsibilities and taking care of others, but I’m not so great at being aware of my own needs. It’s part of being a highly sensitive individual and growing up with parentification trauma.

    Overcoming parentification can take years. If you’re like me, you might not even realize it’s something you experienced until you’re well into adulthood. More people should know about this form of trauma to process it and thrive beyond its reach.

    What Is a Highly Sensitive Person?

    Knowing how our brains process interpersonal relationships is essential to understanding how we can heal from things.

    I grew up with a mom who was quick to remind me that I felt things very deeply. I was always the first member of my family to cry when I was happy and get sad about upsetting events.

    Certain textures, light sources, and noise levels also made me uncomfortable, even when others were fine. Feeling a suede couch under my legs made my skin crawl. Ceiling lights gave me anxiety, and the microwave beeping triggered my flight-or-fight instinct.

    I learned about highly sensitive individuals when I started going to therapy after college. They’re people like me—we’re more easily stimulated by our environment and perceive things more deeply on instinct. Emotions become magnified in our hearts, and we may have more empathy for others than our relatives.

    Although researchers can identify some genetic markers in highly sensitive people (HSPs), environmental factors also play a role in our emotional processing.

    What does parentification have to do with HSPs? Let’s dive into what that specific trauma is before connecting it to our more sensitive minds.

    What Is Parentification?

    Parentification is a toxic family dynamic.

    I experienced the instrumental version of it when my younger brother was born. When my mom needed more help around the house, our family roles reversed. She asked me to clean, cook meals, and do yard work while she watched my brother or went to work.

    I was only eight years old.

    There’s also the emotional side of parentification. Emotionally immature parents might treat their child as a confidant or counselor. Sharing too much information or burdening their kid with heavy emotions may be challenging for them to process.

    We live with the effects of either or both types of parentification in adulthood, even if we don’t realize it. I dealt with the impacts before I even knew there was anything to overcome, but getting professional help made starting the hard work possible.

    What Can Cause Parentification?

    Numerous home videos on chunky VHS tapes in my basement prove that my parents were so excited to have me. How can parents go from desperately wanting to love a baby to raising them in a traumatic family dynamic?

    Unfortunately, there are numerous reasons why parentification happens. Our parents may have grown up in households where they didn’t learn tools to process their emotions healthily. Their parents might have demonstrated emotional parentification and unknowingly taught them a future parenting style.

    They might have been in an abusive relationship once, lost a loved one to an illness, or cared for someone with an addiction.

    They could also have experienced trauma that they never processed. Instead of talking with a therapist or accepting their feelings, they could have repressed their emotions and taught themselves an unhealthy way to model emotional intelligence.

    We might not always get answers, either. My parents don’t talk about their lives before my brother and I arrived. I might never know what caused their emotional parentification, which takes work to accept.

    What Is Adaptive vs. Destructive Parentification?

    Adaptive parentification is a short-term form of this dynamic. If you live with your dad and he’s injured in a car accident, he might be unable to walk for a week. During that time, you cook for your siblings and help them with their homework.

    In that case, you’d take on parental responsibilities that are inappropriate for your age, but it would be for a limited time.

    Destructive parentification is when this dynamic happens long term. The violation of your childhood and emotional boundaries remains constant, leading to adverse effects that can last a lifetime.

    What Are the Effects of Parentification?

    Although I highly recommend finding a therapist specializing in trauma and family dynamics, you don’t have to wait for an appointment to reflect on your past. These are a few signs you were parentified as a child that you might never have considered.

    1. Being Overly Attentive to Responsibilities

    Becoming responsible for someone else at a young age can make us overly attentive to survival needs. When I started caring for my mom and brother at eight years old, I learned that if I didn’t keep up with meals and laundry, my family wouldn’t eat or have clean clothes.

    Our HSP minds start becoming anxious about the ramifications when we fall short, have a bad day, or forget something on our to-do list. As a result, one of the effects of parentification for me was never snapping out of survival mode.

    I struggle to reserve time to relax in the evenings. Sometimes it’s even hard to recognize my own physical or mental needs. If my college roommates weren’t keeping up with our apartment chores, I’d vacuum and do dishes even if my bladder was painfully full or I hadn’t eaten all day.

    Putting others’ needs before your own at all times isn’t a healthy way to live. It’s also never fun to feel annoyed when someone tells me to relax or get anxious when I have free time. We deserve to care for ourselves and unwind just like everyone else.

    2. Living with One or More Addictions

    People raising kids with an unhealthy parentification style may say, “That’s not what you feel” when their child expresses anger at an upsetting situation. They may accuse the kid of getting angry for no reason and not respond until they let things go.

    I lived through those experiences for years. The saddest part is how my anger, justified or not, had nowhere to go. It turned inward, creating a never-ending cycle of self-criticism and hatred.

    As I got older, the self-hatred developed into an eating disorder. Other people start self-harming or using addictive substances. Sometimes the coping mechanisms help release negative emotions, but they’re ultimately only self-destructive.

    Overcoming parentification might mean recognizing unhealthy coping styles and learning to recognize the scary emotions waiting underneath them. Guidance from a licensed therapist makes processing and healing possible.

    3. Dissociating for Varying Periods

    Parentification comes with triggers. My mom became passive-aggressive when I failed to predict what she wanted me to do, so now signs like sarcasm and subtle digs can make my mind freeze. When my thoughts stop and my body goes numb, dissociation begins.

    Dissociating is a way our minds cope with traumatic stress. It allows us to disconnect from uncomfortable feelings or situations because our brain wants to protect itself. People don’t always develop dissociative tendencies while living with parentification, but it’s a potential effect.

    When I lived at home, sometimes these dissociative periods would last a few hours or an entire day. I couldn’t recall getting home from school or doing anything until I went to bed, even though I had finished everything for the day.

    Now that I’m out of that environment, my mind starts dissociating when I’m triggered by the mannerisms my mom had. I can also experience it before or during a visit with her.

    4. Living with Anxiety

    Whether you dealt with instrumental or emotional parentification, you could have resulting social anxiety. I get anxious in certain settings because I instinctively try to predict others’ needs. I’m constantly evaluating what’s safest to discuss or changing environmental factors, like closing blinds by the dinner table before the sun sets so it doesn’t shine in my friend’s eyes.

    We could fear retribution based on how our parents responded during childhood or worry about causing even a minor upset in a relationship. Eventually, that anxiety can also direct inward and affect our self-worth.

    Anxiety can also cause us to push our feelings away. Being good at compartmentalizing is one of the signs you were parentified as a child. Becoming anxious about feelings can result in years of ignoring the pain we need to process.

    5. Repeatedly Getting into Unhealthy Relationships

    Kids learn social skills from interacting with their parents. One of the effects of parentification is developing unhealthy future relationships based on those formed with parents.

    This has affected my connections with friends and partners. I’ve unknowingly formed unhealthy attachments that can start in a positive place, but eventually, it always feels like I exist to fix their problems. They’re always using me as an advice machine or to care for them like a pseudo-parent.

    Here’s an example if you’re not sure this applies to you.

    I met a friend in high school, and we became close. Later, we went to the same college and became roommates. We’d been friends for so long, it felt smarter than rooming with strangers.

    About a month after moving in with her, I noticed her behavior changed in ways that violated my boundaries. She expected me to do the dishes, clean up after her boyfriends, and pay all the bills for our apartment. There was always an excuse that sounded legitimate, but it made me feel like I had become her mom.

    However, I put up with it for a year. I could never enforce my boundaries because the parentification stress of not perfectly caring for my family kept me in silent fear. I felt unseen and worthless, so I had to rebuild my self-worth when we moved out the following summer.

    My friend had never treated me like that before we were roommates. While there were things we both could have done differently after moving into that apartment, I couldn’t get myself out of that unhealthy relationship due to parentification trauma. It can trap us in toxic dynamics with friends and partners, even when we can recognize an unjust situation.

    Is Parentification Abuse?

    Parentification might not result in physical beatings, but it’s still abuse. It mentally and emotionally takes advantage of kids.

    It violates our boundaries by removing our right to have childhoods and handle responsibilities appropriate for our ages. Parentification may override our boundaries in ways that make us feel unable to say no to certain requests.

    Parentification can also cause neglect, which is another form of abuse. Our parents fail to provide for our basic needs as children with no power or autonomy.

    The psychological wounds can last through adulthood. They did for me. The effects harm our future relationships and self-worth, ultimately deteriorating our quality of life if we don’t get help to process our history.

    Tips for Overcoming Parentification

    The good news is that parentification doesn’t have to influence your mind and relationships forever. Here’s what I did to start reversing the damage.

    1. Find a licensed therapist.

    People experience the effects of parentification in adulthood in various ways. If we could reverse those effects ourselves, very few of us would even be talking about that kind of trauma.

    I found a licensed therapist specializing in family trauma when I came to peace with the idea that I couldn’t repair the damage through sheer willpower. She knew how toxic dynamics like parentification affect a child’s development and therapeutic ways to process my past.

    Talk therapy helped me get comfortable discussing my traumas. When I was ready, we started eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy through tapping and bilateral stimulation noises. Although EMDR recalled specific emotional pain, giving myself space to finally feel my compartmentalized feelings and deconstruct them with a therapist allowed me to heal.

    Connect with a therapist to talk about how they can help you. They may recommend a similar treatment path or resources like dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). It depends on their training and your specific experiences.

    2. Listen to your physiological needs.

    My therapist also showed me how I don’t listen to or honor my mental and physical needs. I don’t let myself feel sad when I’m hurt or rest when I’m tired.

    We developed strategies so I know how to recognize those feelings. I also have resources at home for self-care, like asking my partner for help and doing evening activities that don’t center around a survival responsibility. I enjoy embroidery and baths with lavender bath bombs because I learned to invest time in myself.

    Not feeling worthy of tending to your needs is one of the effects of parentification. Therapy and journaling help reverse that. They become essential stress management tools that ultimately build your self-worth and self-esteem.

    You may also work with a doctor or nutritionist to get assistance with coping mechanisms like recovering from an eating disorder or addiction if those are part of your history.

    3. Prioritize your self-care.

    I used to fully support the idea of self-care for other people, but I never thought it applied to me. My therapist taught me how to give myself the freedom to relax, have fun, try new hobbies, and move on to other ones.

    Overcoming parentification requires believing in yourself, which may call for processing specific traumas. When you start recognizing how your brain works, you can use self-care habits to support your healing from those unhealthy inner dynamics.

    My experience with parentification taught me that I existed to take care of others. Therapy showed me that I’m on this planet to experience joy and that I experienced a childhood injustice. Accepting that made giving myself breaks in the evenings or leaving responsibilities for another day easier.

    If I deserve to thrive, I deserve to rest. This was processing that had to happen before I could enjoy self-care activities without guilt or anxiety.

    You can reach the same point with help from a therapist. You’ll learn to support yourself and become your biggest cheerleader as you determine how you like to relax and have fun.

    Defeat Parentification in Adulthood

    Parentification can make us feel erased and worthless. It’s a childhood trauma that people don’t often realize is harmful, but it doesn’t have to influence your quality of life forever.

    Connect with a therapist and they’ll show you how to rebuild yourself. You’ll start overcoming parentification by processing your past. Remember that even when it hurts, you can make things better.

    You don’t have to earn your healing. You only have to take the first step forward by asking for help.

  • Riding the Wave of Rage: How Mindfulness Became My Lifesaver

    Riding the Wave of Rage: How Mindfulness Became My Lifesaver

    “Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything—anger, anxiety, or possessions—we cannot be free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    My anger has gotten the best of me more than I care to admit. I’ve smashed windows, broken chairs, had movie-worthy brawls on the beach, and said gut-wrenching stuff that has brought people I care about to tears.

    I grew up when mental health was not taken seriously, nor was it even on my radar. I just took my wild nature to mean I was screwed up and hopeless. And sadly, the thought of seeking support only brought up more anger. It felt like I was weak, pathetic, and a loser for being unable to sort my life out.

    So, without understanding why my emotions were such a rollercoaster (undiagnosed depression and type II  bipolar disorder), I didn’t know where else to turn except to my dear ole friend Sailor Jerry, the purveyor of fine spiced rum. Alcohol only fueled my emotional outbursts, exacerbating the problem.

    Knowing that kind of anger lived inside me brings on an emotional blubbering mess of a show. Because overcoming the guilt that came from identifying with those actions and feeling like that’s who I was as a man took years of therapy.

    It feels so different than the person I am now.

    I understood in therapy that it’s not my fault per se, but it is my responsibility to do something about it.

    Nothing has driven that lesson home more than being a dad.

    And if my daughter is anything like my wife and me, we got ourselves a wild child ready to test our limits.

    Living with Canadian winters means it’s inevitable that, at some point, you’ll lose control of your car. I once did a complete 360 on the highway on the way to work as I lost control on black ice. I didn’t think; I just acted based on what I learned in driving school.

    If you’re driving your car and it starts to skid, you go with the flow of your vehicle and move in the direction of the skid, not against it. That’s how you regain control, even if it seems counterintuitive.

    Anger is the black ice of emotions. You’re often thrown into a spiral of anger before you even have the chance to mindfully be aware that you’re losing control. That’s why I’ve found the practice of mindfulness and daily meditation life transforming.

    The anger never goes away because you never stop experiencing the emotions of life, but through the practice of mindfulness, you create space between the stimulus (my wife and I fighting, exhausted from a sleepless toddler, and businesses to run) and the response (thinking it’s time to end the marriage).

    You can choose to respond and act differently because you see the trigger for what it is for you.

    Think of it like a gigantic pause button that allows you to slip into Matrix mode. You see the stimulus, pause for presence, and respond with intention. My daughter is not purposely trying to throw our lives into chaos. My wife and I aren’t fighting because we no longer love each other. We’re dealing with the tornado nature of a toddler, running businesses, and being pushed to our limits.

    It’s better to respectfully and constructively communicate your feelings with your partner if you plan to stay married. I get it. Easier said than done, but we need to believe that we’re not inherently flawed and beyond help.

    My previous relationships all had their fair share of fights (stimulus), resulting in my doom spiralling into believing it was time to burn it all down (response). Without a pause between stimulus and response, the middle became a breeding ground for an unconscious poison cocktail of guilt, shame, and a need to escape the uncomfortable reality of what I was facing.

    Let’s be honest. I wasn’t making any effort to change. Repairing a relationship without tools is damn near impossible. Through therapy, I gained a deeper understanding of my emotional struggles and the root causes of my anger. Now, I have a fully stocked toolbelt that I feel comfortable using.

    And that’s where the power of mindfulness comes in. You learn to know and trust yourself well enough to tap into a greater energy around you, and you become calm in any situation. You see the black ice, grip the wheel, and control the situation by keeping yourself present with the stimulus.

    When faced with a challenge, do you possess the mental flexibility and self-awareness to remain centered and connected with that space between stimulus and response, and move forward in a way you can be proud of?

    Or do you struggle against challenges, only to give up because negative self-talk and conditioned thinking compel you to repeat the same destructive pattern, leaving you guilty and ashamed?

    I’m not saying I never get angry anymore. But I sure as hell try my best not to throw rocket fuel on the fire. Addressing the root of the problem—undiagnosed depression and type II bipolar disorder—helped me better understand how to cope with a rollercoaster of emotions and feelings that previously felt beyond my control.

    Life is a lot like being in a high-stress athletic event. The ability to react to another player’s actions without emotional triggers often makes the difference between making a wise or a poor decision and ultimately winning or losing the game.

    The only difference is that the game of life truly never ends. We will only lose if we stop improving and holding ourselves to a higher standard for how we show up in the world. Taking full responsibility for our lives can be terrifying, but it also creates a sense of personal freedom. This is because it allows us to take action toward becoming the people we know we’re capable of being.

    To thrive, you must mindfully choose to go with the flow of your emotions and drive toward anger, shame, and guilt, not away from them. You must sit with these feelings, pause to recognize how you’ve been triggered, and consciously choose a response you’ll feel good about. This way, you regain control of your life by releasing yourself from a pattern of actions that no longer serves you. Remember, practice makes progress.