Tiny Buddha

Tag: anxiety

  • How I’ve Navigated My Grief and Guilt Since Losing My Narcissistic Father

    How I’ve Navigated My Grief and Guilt Since Losing My Narcissistic Father

    “One of the greatest awakenings comes when you realize that not everybody changes.  Some people never change.  And that’s their journey.  It’s not yours to try and fix it for them.” ~Unknown

    In 2021 my father died. Cancer of… so many things.

    Most of the events during that time are a blur, but the emotions that came with them are vivid and unrelenting.

    I was the first in my family to find out.

    My mother and sister had gone on an off-grid week-long getaway up the West Coast of South Africa, where there’s nothing but sand, shore, and shrubs.

    I was living in China (where I continue to live today), and we were under Covid lockdown.

    He called me on WhatsApp (which was rare) from the Middle East, where he lived with his new wife. Asian and half his age.

    The cliche of the aging white man in a full-blown-late-midlife crisis. Gaudy bling and all.

    He looked gaunt and ashen-faced. That’s what people look like when they’re delivering bad news. He dropped the bomb.

    “I have cancer.”

    What I am about to admit haunts me to this day: I cared about him in the way one human cares for the well-being of any other human. But at the time, I never cared at the level that a son should care for a father. I had built a fortress around myself that protected me from him over the years.

    He’d never really been a parent to me. He wasn’t estranged physically, but emotionally, he’d never been there.

    He was emotionally absent. He always had been.

    I was the weird gay kid with piercings, tattoos, and performance art pieces.

    He was a military man. The rugby-watching, beer-drinking, logically minded man’s man.

    We were polar opposites—opposite sides of completely different currencies.

    I sat with the bomb that had just been delivered so hastily into my arms and ears. Information that I didn’t know what to do with. It felt empty. I didn’t know how to feel or how to respond. 

    Six years earlier, in 2015, I had flown back to South Africa to sit with my mother on her sofa for two weeks while she grappled with the complexity of the emotions of being recently divorced after forty-something years of marriage.

    My mother and I always had been close. She had spent her life dedicated to a narcissistic man who had cheated on her more than once, who was absent a lot of the time during our childhood because of his job in the Navy, and from whom she had shielded my sister and me.

    He had hurt her again. And I hated him for it.

    She had been devoted to him. Committed to their marriage. Gave him the freedom to work abroad while she kept the home fires burning. She’d faithfully maintained those home fires for over a decade already. She had planned their whole future together since she was sixteen years old and pregnant with my sister, who’s five years old than me.

    And this is how he repaid her.

    He’d taken it all away from her and left her alone in the house they’d built together before I was born.  Haunted by the shadows of future plans abandoned in the corners.

    She descended into a spiral of anxiety and depression, resulting in two weeks of inpatient care at a recovery clinic with a dual diagnosis of depression and addiction (alcoholism) that wasn’t entirely her fault.

    He caused that.

    I remember lying in bed when I was about six or seven years old; I was meant to be asleep, the room in deep blue darkness. Hearing my father in the living room say, “That boy has the brains of a gnat.”

    I assume I hadn’t grasped some primary math homework or forgotten to tidy something away. Things that I was prone to. Things that annoyed him to the point of frustrated outbursts and anger.

    “Ssh! He can hear you,” my mother replied. I still hear the remorseful tone of her voice.

    He was logical and mechanical. I am not.

    I don’t remember my crime that day, but I still suffer the penalty of negative self-talk, a lack of confidence, and a fear of being considered “less than” by others.

    It’s one of my earliest memories.

    And there, in 2021, I sat with the news of his diagnosis. I didn’t know what to feel.

    Guilty for not having the emotional response I knew I was meant to be having?

    Shouldn’t I be crying? Shouldn’t I be distraught?

    How do other people react to this kind of news?

    I’ve always been a highly sensitive person. It’s my superpower. The power of extreme empathy. But there I sat, empty.

    I felt trapped.

    I was in China in 2021, and we were under Covid lockdown. There were zero flights.

    I was emotionally and physically trapped.

    Gradually, more feelings started surfacing.

    At first, I felt compassion for a fellow human facing something utterly devastating.

    Then I started to feel fear for my mom, who had held onto the idea that maybe, one day, they’d get back together.

    I was terrified about how she would take this news when she returned from her holiday.

    Within a few weeks, a “family” Facebook group was set up—cousins, uncles, people I’d never met before, myself, my sister, and my mother.

    And the “other woman” and her kids from previous relationships, none of whom we’d ever met.

    Phrases like “no matter how far apart we are, family always sticks together” were pinging in the group chat.

    I didn’t know how to absorb those sentiments.

    Family always sticks together? Didn’t you tear our family apart? Where were you when I was lying in a hospital bed in 2011 with a massive abdominal tumor?  Family always sticks together? What a convenient idea in your hour of need.  

    More guilt. How could I be so jaded?

    A month later, in January 2021, he passed away.

    It happened so quickly, and for that, I am grateful. No human should ever suffer if there is no hope of survival.

    That’s when the floodgates of emotions opened.

    I cried for weeks.

    I cried for the misery and suffering he caused my family, my mother’s despair, and my sister’s loss. I shed tears for my grandfather, who had lost two of his three sons and wife. I wept for my uncle, who had lost another brother.

    I cried for the future my mom had planned but would never have.

    And I cried for the father I never had and the hope of a relationship that would never be.

    I sobbed from the guilt of not crying for him.

    Then I got angry. Really, really angry.

    I got angry with him for never being the father I needed. I got mad for the hurt he caused my mom. I blamed him for never accepting me for me. I was angry with him because I was the child, and he was the adult.

    Being accepted by him was never my responsibility.

    In the weeks and months that followed, the wounds got deeper. My mother’s drinking got worse, to the point of (a very emotional and ugly) intervention.

    We found out that my father had left his military pension (to the tune of millions) to his new, younger wife of less than a year and her four children from different men. 

    While I want to take the moral high ground and tell you it’s not about the money—it’s solely about the final message of not caring for his biological children in life or death—I’d be lying.

    My sister and I have been struggling financially for years, and that extra monthly money would’ve offered us peace of mind, good medical insurance, or just a sense that he did care about our well-being after all.

    But there’s no use ruminating on it.

    Accept the things you cannot change.

    It’s been two years since he passed away.

    I’ve bounced between grief, anger, and acceptance, like that little white ball rocketing chaotically around a pinball machine, piercing my emotions with soul-blinding lights and sound.

    The word “dad” never meant anything to me. To me, it was a verb, not a noun. It never translated into the tangible world.

    My mother once said, “Now I know you were a child who needed more hugs.”

    She hugged me often.

    But I also needed his hugs.

    I’ve found a way to accept that he would never have been the father I needed. I will never have a relationship with my father. Even if he were still alive, he would never have been capable of loving us the way we needed him to.

    You cannot give what you don’t have.

    He was a narcissist. Confirmed by a therapist in the weeks and months after their sudden divorce.

    He was never going to change. He didn’t know how to.

    Using NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) techniques, I’ve been able to reframe the childhood memories I have about my father.

    That fateful night all those years ago, lying in bed, hearing those words that have undermined my confidence and self-worth for thirty-four years: “That boy has the brains of a gnat.”

    Through visualization and mental imagery, I’ve found a pathway to healing.

    Through NLP, I became the observer in the room of that memory. I could give that little boy lying in bed, his head under the sheets, the comfort, protection, and acceptance he needed.

    I wrapped golden wings around that little boy and protected him.

    I became my own guardian angel.

    During the same session, my NLP coach gently encouraged me to look into the living room where my father sat that night.

    What I saw in my mind’s eye took my breath away.

    I saw a broken and withered man. His legs were drawn up close to his chest. I saw the pain inside him. I saw a man who didn’t know how to love or be loved.

    I saw a man who was scared, confused, and deprived.

    In that moment of being the observer, the guardian angel in the next room, a brilliant light forcefully rushed from me and coiled around him. A luminous cord of golden energy.

    I don’t know if the surge of energy wrapped around him was to heal or restrain him. Frankly, it doesn’t matter. It was pure love, compassion, and light. And it was coming from me: I was my own Guardian Angel.

    At that moment, all the past yearning for his love, acceptance, and approval dissipated. I didn’t need it from him; I needed to give it to him—filled with empathy and compassion. I needed to release him from the anger, hurt, and pain he had caused.

    I needed to do it for myself, but I also needed to do it for him.

    I’ve accepted him for who he was.

    It took a lot of journaling, visualization, mindfulness and meditation, listening to Buddhist teachings (Thich Nhat Hanh in particular), and sitting with the emotions.

    It took the desire to heal myself and him—to be happy and whole again.

    He was painfully human. But aren’t we all?

    He was a narcissist. He drank too much, cheated on his wife, never took the time to have any meaningful connection with his kids, and loved Sudoku.

    He caused my mother pain that still haunts her to this day.

    She still dreams about him.

    I like to think that if he had one more chance to reach out from The Great Beyond, he might say something along the lines of what Teresa Shanti once said:

    “To my children,  I’m sorry for the unhealed parts of me that in turn hurt you.  It was never my lack of love for you.  Only a lack of love for myself.”

    He was a deeply flawed man—but he was my father.

  • 3 Life-Changing Insights for Control Freaks (Lessons from an Ant Infestation)

    3 Life-Changing Insights for Control Freaks (Lessons from an Ant Infestation)

    “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.”  ~Jean-Paul Sartre

    “So did you figure out what your shadow totem is?”

    This was the first thing out of my husband’s friend’s mouth as I sat down to dinner at a local downtown restaurant, across from my husband and a couple friends we were meeting up with.

    I laughed at the choice of question but then paused with wide eyes and replied, “YES, I DID! Oh my gosh. It’s an ant!”

    The backstory is that we had previously had a conversation about animal symbolism, and how figuring out what we identify with (spirit animal) or most fear (shadow totem) can help us gain deep insights into ourselves. I had no trouble with identifying my spirit animal—an eagle—but could not for the life of me pin down my shadow totem.

    As he asked that question that evening, a light bulb in my head went off. I had been battling a multi-week-long ant infestation in my home and it had become the bane of my existence. Every time I saw one of those suckers, I got triggered all over again. It ruined many days. So this made perfect sense! Ants are my shadow totem. But why??

    Upon reflection about this realization, I mulled over the meaning of this and was able to come away with some pretty incredible nuggets. Put simply, the ants struck me at my weakest point: my need for control.

    I know I’m not alone in this quirk—“control issues,” as a lot of us jokingly refer to them. But the truth is, if you’re saddled with this deep urge then you know you live your life on a high wire, trying to balance everything and keep it perfectly just so. And when you are thrown off, you take a pretty deep dive into mental chaos until you right the ship again. Okay, too many metaphors, but the point is, it sucks.

    Back to the ants. Days after the dinner I took time to think about the true meaning of them as my shadow totem. The insights I had about my control issues were not only helpful to me, but I bet will be the same for you!

    I was even able to identify three mindset adjustments as an accompaniment. I noticed they tend toward the Buddhist way of thinking but are just truly solid ways to approach life. So here we go!

    1. The ants were coming out of nowhere. And FROM ANYWHERE. It drove me nuts since I couldn’t identify the source of the problem.

    Insight:

    Upon reflection, I connected this to how I often feel like a sitting duck in life, just waiting for the next blow to come. The unpredictable nature of things feels like a constant threat. Also, I notice I often doggedly search for the “why” of things, but sadly am not always able to come up with an answer.

    I’ve felt this sentiment in many situations, ranging from the trivial to the most profound, with the latter being when I had a miscarriage. It was (as many of them are) not possible to tie to a definitive reason. In this case, my only true course of action (one easier said than done) was to accept and move forward.

    Mindset adjustment:

    Acceptance, though not a sexy response to the above, is really the best one. You’re gonna get ants in your house (especially when it’s in a green community built in 1936!).

    In life, you’re gonna get surprises. And not always happy ones. I once heard that if you can expect the unexpected, when it comes, you will accept it as an “old friend.” Sounds much better than treating life’s downs (the “ups” are more easily handled, right?!) as a monster under the bed.

    2. The dang ants were ruining my days. What a waste! But true.

    I felt silly with my outbursts, exclaiming expletives each time I came across one of those evil little things. My poor husband (who has the patience of a saint, zen master, and probably Jesus, combined!) hearing me from the next room. I didn’t want this for me (or him).

    Insight:

    Just like in my larger life, small things going wrong can really mess me up. The feeling of having a bad day rather than just keeping it a bad moment is one I am familiar with, unfortunately.

    Mindset adjustment:

    Enter mindfulness. This handy strategy allows for a sort of compartmentalization so we can fully be in the reality that is in front of us in the present moment. The truth is, the ants were really only in a couple rooms of the house, and I only encountered them for maybe a couple minutes out of my day. But MAN, you wouldn’t have known it!

    Attaching to our day being or staying a specific way is certain death. Okay, that’s extreme, but it’s cause for certain anxiety. And that’s no way to live this short life. Key principle: impermanence. Funnily enough, I have that word tattooed on me! In permanent ink… but is it “permanent”? I digress.

    3. I chose a treatment option for the ants, but still I walked around in a huff about it. I had done all I could do—why couldn’t I let it go?

    Insight:

    I frequently find myself ruminating on other things in life long after I had chosen a course of action. Sounds like a waste of mental, emotional, and even physical (if you’re pacing!) energy to me.

    Like when I made the decision to switch careers from business to education. Questions lingered, swirling in my head for quite some time after: “Is this a mistake?” “What if I want to change my mind again?” “Did I just waste my bachelor’s degree?” This made the path forward foggy and uncertain when what I needed was clarity and smooth sailing—which would have been afforded to me had I had self-trust at the time.

    Mindset adjustment:

    Hard as it is, the practice—keyword, PRACTICE—must be letting go with the knowledge that you can only do so much. There are so many sources of inspiration for this concept. Take your pick: The famous quote “Let go and let God” or  “Let it goooo” a la Frozen (any other parents in the house?). You get the idea.

    Also, add to the mantra list that nature will always win. This is true with the ants (spoiler alert, they came back) and with life in general, the universe on a broader scale. Think entropy. It’s everywhere in all ways. The sooner we align ourselves with the concept, the better!

    —

    I felt oddly grateful to the ants for the opportunity to reflect. It gave me a chance to gain insights that I (and maybe you!) otherwise would not have had. If you’re worried about us forgetting this wisdom, don’t be. Those little reminders (aka the ants) are always around the corner.

    Post-writing edit: Funny thing is, right after writing this, I walked into my bathroom and saw an ant making its way up the side of my mirror! Poetic, huh?

  • How I Claimed My Right to Belong While Dealing with Imposter Syndrome

    How I Claimed My Right to Belong While Dealing with Imposter Syndrome

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post briefly references sexual abuse.

    “Never hold yourself back from trying something new just because you’re afraid you won’t be good enough. You’ll never get the opportunity to do your best work if you’re not willing to first do your worst and then let yourself learn and grow.” ~Lori Deschene

    The year 2022 was the hardest of my life. And I survived a brain tumor before that.

    My thirtieth year started off innocently enough. I was living with my then-boyfriend in Long Beach and had a nice ring on my finger. The relationship had developed quickly, but it seemed like kismet. Unfortunately, we broke up around June. And that’s when the madness began.

    I believe it to be the extreme heat of the summer that somehow wrought this buried pain from underneath my pores to come up. Except the pain didn’t evaporate. It stayed stagnant, and I felt suffocated.

    There were excruciating memories of being sexually abused as a child. Feelings of intense helplessness came along. I had nightmares every night, and worse, a feeling of horrendous shame when I woke up. All of this made me suicidal.

    Before I knew it, every two weeks I was being hospitalized for powerful bouts of depression, PTSD, and the most severe anxiety that riddled my bones.

    This intense, almost trance-like experience of going in and out of hospitals seemed like the only way to cope with life. I felt broken, beyond repair. I gained a lot of weight and shaved my head and then regretted it. My self-esteem plummeted.

    I felt like I didn’t belong to society anymore. I’d had superficial thoughts like this before, growing up in the punk scene, but the experience of constantly being in and out of mental hospitals was beyond being “fringe.” I felt extremely alienated.

    With many hospitalizations in 2022, I was losing myself. Conservatorship was now on the table. I was terrified and angry at the circumstances fate had bestowed upon me.

    In my final hospitalization in December, I suffered tortuously. I was taken off most of the benzos I was on, and I was withdrawing terribly, alone in a room at the psych ward. My hands and feet were constantly glazed in a cold sweat.

    I was so on-edge that every sound outside my door jerked my head up. The girl next door would sob super loud, in real “boo-hoos,” and do so for hours on end. It eroded me. I would scream at her to stop, but she would then cry louder.

    If there was a hell on earth, this was it. I told myself, with gritted teeth, staring out the window, that this would be my last time in a psych ward. No matter how miserable I was, I would just cope with it. I didn’t want to deal with this anymore.

    So I made a commitment to myself to really try to get better. Hope was hatched by that intense amount of pain. I knew I had a long journey ahead to heal, but that there was no other way but up.

    After that final hospitalization, I joined a residential program that helped me form new habits. There was a sense of healing and community there. I felt a mentorship connection with one of the workers, who was a recovered drug addict.

    I was glad I was finally doing a little better. I realized I shouldn’t have gone to the hospital so much and perhaps should have plugged into one of the residential places first.

    This year has been easier as a result of sticking to treatment and addressing some of the issues that were plaguing me. I now have better coping mechanisms to deal with symptoms of PTSD, as well as some better grounding techniques.

    As a result, I’ve been able to go back to work, despite still dealing with intense anxiety. For the first time in a while, I feel hopeful for my life. But I can’t help but getting hit with a barrage of thoughts before I go to work.

    This whole thing I’m going through is commonly known as “imposter syndrome.” Basically, it feels like I don’t belong where I’m going in order to make the quality of my life better. I feel like a fake or a phony, afraid my coworkers will understand who I really am—someone who has struggled with PTSD and depression.

    As a result, some days are more difficult than others when it comes to showing up at work. I’ll have mini panic attacks in the restroom. There’s an overwhelming feeling of surrealness.

    Although I’m glad to have gotten out of the merry-go-round of doom, putting on a happy face and attempting to appear as a healthy, well-adjusted person is too much sometimes.

    And I know it’s not just in my situation that people experience imposter syndrome. Some people that were once extremely overweight feel out of place once they’ve lost their extra pounds. Others who are the minority in race or gender where they work can also feel like they don’t belong.

    I’ve come to realize this is a universal experience, the feeling of “not belonging.” It’s also a syndrome of lack of self-worth. I try to tackle this in baby steps every day.

    Here are some things I try to live by to feel more secure where I’m trying to thrive.

    I ask myself, “Why NOT me?”

    There’s a Buddhist quote that suggests, when you’re suffering, instead of asking, “Why me?”, you’re supposed to humble yourself by asking, “Why NOT me?” But I think this is also relevant to feelings of belonging.

    When you feel like you don’t belong, ask yourself, “Why NOT me?” Why wouldn’t you deserve to belong, when everyone else does, despite their varied challenges? This sort of thinking levels the playing field.

    I remind myself of my worth.

    I could spend hours thinking about why I’m not adequate or deserving. But I try to think about why I do have a right to be there. I deserve to get a paycheck like everyone else. I deserve to work, no matter what I’ve been through, and to value the sense of belonging offered through my coworkers.

    I try to power through my inner resistance.

    Many days this is more difficult than others, but I know if my greater goal is improving my life and feeling like I belong to society again, its worth challenging all the mental resistance I feel. I also know that my feelings will change over time if I keep pushing through them.

    Cherish the times of connection.

    There are times at work where I feel really connected to my coworkers, even though I doubt we have the same psychiatric history. I try to savor those times of connection because they keep me going. Since we are social beings, it is important to us to feel connected.

    Take comfort in knowing this will fade.

    Already, having just worked a few weeks at this job, my feelings of imposter syndrome are starting to fade. If I had known this would happen in the beginning, I wouldn’t have put so much anxiety on myself. If you’re going through this too in any capacity, just remember that the feelings are only temporary and will pass as you find your footing.

    Make peace with your past.

    Everyone has a past, some that may feel more shameful than others. But don’t conflate that with your right to belong and be a contributing member of society. Sure, some things are harder to rebound from than others, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get past them. And that doesn’t mean you need to be defined or limited by your past challenges.

    Validate your feelings of struggle.

    Although it would be nice to just use denial to move forward, that’s not possible since you know the truth. You know what you’ve been through and how it’s affected you. I validate my experience in the struggle by going to support groups after work. That way I’m not gaslighting myself, pretending I’m fine. It’s just about knowing there’s a time and place for that unheard, marginalized part of yourself.

    —

    We all put on a brave face to be accepted, but we all deserve to belong, regardless of how we’ve struggled.

    Don’t let your struggles define you. Instead, validate the fact that they have given you the strength to get where you are now.

  • Why Life Felt Hard for Me for Years (and 7 Lessons That Have Helped)

    Why Life Felt Hard for Me for Years (and 7 Lessons That Have Helped)

    “You’re so hard on yourself. But remember, everybody has a chapter they don’t read out loud. Take a moment. Sit back. Marvel at your life; at the mistakes that gave you wisdom, at the suffering that gave you strength. Despite everything, you still move forward, be proud of this. Continue to endure. Continue to persevere. And remember, no matter how dark it gets, the sun will rise again.” ~Unknown

    All my life I knew I was different. If I didn’t look so much like my mom, I would have believed the jokes my brother told me about how I was adopted. I just couldn’t relate to everyone else in my family—or the rest of my world.

    I was a little black girl that often got called an oreo because, well, you can imagine.

    I didn’t talk a lot, spent a lot of time writing, and a lot of time alone. Going to parties gave me headaches, and being forced to mingle made me want to hide.

    Although I didn’t know it had a name for it, I was introverted even as a child.

    As I grew up, those things didn’t change much. And I found life to be hard. Exhausting even.
    But no one ever said that life was easy, right? I kept that thought at the forefront of my mind and pushed on like the rest of the world.

    I did what everyone did.

    I got pregnant and found not just pregnancy to be a challenge but parenting as well. Moved out of my parents’ house and was met with more challenges. Got married and felt as if I was literally losing my mind.

    The responsibility of it all had become so much. Too much.

    Everyone else made it look so easy. Why was this proving to be so hard for me? My mind wouldn’t let me rest.

    I was never suicidal, but I was waking up wishing I hadn’t. I needed help. And not just prayerful thoughts or a comforting word.

    I needed professional help. And I needed it fast.

    So I sought out a doctor and made an appointment. Turns out I was suffering from depression and anxiety.

    Well, that explained a lot. Things made a lot more sense now.

    I adjusted my lifestyle to support my mental health by doing things like journaling, eating healthier, and exercising. I even took the medication that I was prescribed.

    But something still wasn’t quite adding up. As hard as it was, I brushed it off as anxiety and carried on with my life.

    It wasn’t until my baby, who was now twelve years old, confided his own life struggles to me that I had to revisit the whole mental health issue.

    After finding a psychologist for him, she suggested we do some testing to see what was really going on.

    Those tests revealed a few different things, including depression and anxiety. And also, autism spectrum disorder.

    I hurt for my baby. And honestly, I didn’t know how to relate to him anymore with this whole autism thing. It forced me to do a deep dive into research because I needed to understand how I could best help him.

    That’s how I found my missing piece.

    The way I identified with the characteristics of autism was shocking. The relatability was unreal. I scored so high on an online assessment that I knew I had to share this with a doctor.

    The results were in, and it was clear that I had autism spectrum disorder as well.

    For thirty-seven years and nine months of my life, I thought I was just like everyone else. I thought that life was just supposed to be this hard.

    Turns out there was a reason I couldn’t relate to how everyone else was getting on.

    It felt so good, knowing that I had a valid reason for thinking it was harder on me than those around me.

    I was so relieved to discover that I wasn’t a bad mother because of the times I would have preferred to be working on my ‘special interests,’ like jewelry-making and crocheting, rather than parenting. It was eye-opening to find out that my executive functioning skills were behind what formerly seemed like laziness and a lack of motivation. I was thrilled to know that I wasn’t the only one with conversational issues.

    What I learned brought my son and I so much closer together. And we’re learning how to get through life with this newfound knowledge. It has also taught me some valuable lessons about life.

    1. Don’t worry about what everyone else is doing.

    We are all born differently, and everyone has their own purpose in life. You can’t spend your life trying to copy someone else because their life seems so great.

    I never wanted to be like anyone else. But because the world has a way of making you feel like you’re not enough as you are, I tried to be like everybody else.

    I went to college even though I had no interest in it. I worked at jobs that ate away at my soul. And I got married before I understood what marriage was even about.

    I did these things because my dreams were dismissed by people who had professional careers, high social standings, and a successful family life.

    But what I didn’t know then is that we weren’t made the same. Just because it worked for them, doesn’t mean it was supposed to work for me.

    They have talents and skills that make it easier for them to appear effortlessly awesome at what they do.

    But they also have struggles behind the scenes that I didn’t see.

    Following traditions and trends is not mandatory. Do what’s best and easiest for you and you will create a life worth living.

    2. Pay attention to your feelings.

    What you feel is valid. If there is something going on with you, don’t dismiss it right away. Lean into those feelings and ask yourself why you’re feeling that way so that you can figure out what you need to do to feel better.

    Just because the people around you don’t understand how you feel, it doesn’t mean what you feel is wrong.

    3. Be gentle with yourself.

    It’s so easy to be rude and disrespectful to ourselves, often without even realizing it.

    I used to beat myself up because I couldn’t keep a job. I would get depressed because I didn’t know how to be social with other people. And I always put myself down because I felt like such a flake.

    But I know now we are each the one person we have to be around all day, every day. We can’t just cut ourselves out of our lives.

    So treat yourself how you would treat a good friend. Lift yourself up even when you mess up. Be honest but gentle.

    Pay yourself compliments. Treat yourself. And don’t let anyone else treat you poorly.

    4. Know that you aren’t the only one going through difficult times.

    Life does come with some hardships. Even though you have your own things that you’re going through, there is someone out there rocking a big ole smile every day that is going through something too.

    Had my son not been so open with his feelings, it would have been much more of a struggle for him to just live.

    Pay attention to your loved ones. Notice changes that are going on. And ask others how they’re doing.

    5. Get help when you need it.

    Pride can keep you from getting the help you need. So can denial and believing you’re unworthy. It takes strength to admit that you need support for your mental health, but your mind is just as important as your body.

    When you know what’s going on, you can better address the situation.

    Discovering that I have depression, anxiety, and autism has led me to learn about the differences in my brain. Because of that, I’ve been able to find ways to get things done that work for me so that life isn’t quite as hard as it’s been.

    6. Know who you are.

    Take time to get to know yourself. The more you know about who you are, the better prepared you’ll be for whatever comes your way.

    Knowing what you like and want out of life will keep you from going after things that will not make you happy. Knowing what you don’t stand for will keep people from running over you and make it easier to see when you need to remove yourself from certain situations.

    It will also give you the confidence to go after your dreams and believe in yourself.

    7. Know your limitations.

    Some things are hard to do just because they’re uncomfortable. Others are hard to do because you have mental or physical limits that, when reached, can lead to serious ramifications.

    One of the hardest things for me to do is socialize. Even the simplest conversations can stump me. And sometimes, I physically and mentally freeze and simply can’t do it.

    An example of this is when I take my son to therapy every week. He goes in with the therapists without me and comes out with the last therapist he’s seen, and it’s her job to inform me of how the sessions went.

    It’s the most stressful two minutes of my week. The other moms seem to have it all figured out. They go back and forth with lots of lively conversation, laughter, and other body language that they throw into the mix.

    But when it comes to me, my eye contact is sporadic, I’m full of one-word answers, and I typically have no follow-up questions. I’m sure I do more head-nodding than speaking.

    I used to walk away feeling so lame and defeated. The truth is, I still feel defeated at times because I’d like to be able to socialize successfully, but I’ve accepted that it’s just not for me. I’m okay with that. I definitely don’t feel lame because of it anymore.

    Know how far you’re willing to step outside of your comfort zone. If you want to try new things, find out what you can do to work around your limitations, but know that it’s okay to stay comfortable as long as you’re in a good place for you.

    —

    The truth is life isn’t easy. It’s full of uncertainty, trials, and craziness. So much craziness.

    Even though life may deal you a hand that doesn’t seem fair, there is always a way to get through even the darkest moments. Keep hope alive and search for a way to push through.

  • How Yoga Helped Heal My Anxiety and Quiet My Overactive Mind

    How Yoga Helped Heal My Anxiety and Quiet My Overactive Mind

    “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you really are” ~Carl Jung

    Yoga is often celebrated for its physical benefits: greater flexibility, increased strength, improved circulation, and so on. But nothing could have prepared me for the transformational effect that yoga has had on my mental health and well-being.

    I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression when I was fourteen, and I have struggled with both for most of my life. My mind was my worst enemy, constantly worrying and criticizing to the point where it became hard to do anything. Even the things I really wanted to do became too overwhelming.

    I knew about the positive impact of exercise and healthy living on mental health, and I had dabbled in yoga classes at the gym for years in an attempt to drag myself out of this hole I was in.

    I did notice some small changes in my mood and energy levels. I couldn’t explain it, but I would always feel a certain buzz after a great yoga class.

    So, in 2022, I decided to take this yoga thing seriously. I began practicing daily and even studied for a yoga teacher training qualification.

    Since then, I have noticed significant changes in not only my physical body and well-being but in my mental health too. Most notably, my anxiety levels have significantly decreased. Of course, I still have moments of anxiety, but I feel better equipped to cope with them and less likely to allow them to pull me into a downward spiral.

    Disclaimer: This is not medical health advice; it is simply my own experience. If you are struggling with your mental health, please seek a medical health professional.

    How Yoga Can Help with Anxiety

    Yoga helps you recognize your emotions and triggers.

    The first thing to know about yoga is that it is not a series of complicated poses used to make you look a certain way or increase your flexibility.

    Instead, it is an inner practice where we unite our body, mind, and spirit and become one with the universal life force energy that sustains all of life.

    Meditation and breathwork are just as important parts of yoga as the poses (known as asana).

    With this knowledge, yoga has the power to transform your mental state from a place of stress and anxiety to complete peace with yourself and the world around you.

    It allows you to notice how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking without judging yourself. It allows you to understand your body, how it works, and what messages it’s trying to communicate to you about your health and your needs.

    By learning to recognize when I felt anxious and why, yoga provided a safe space to release those triggers and emotions that I would ordinarily suppress.

    Yoga regulates your nervous system.

    When we experience high levels of anxiety, we are constantly living in fight-or-flight mode. The fight-or-flight response is designed to switch on in moments of danger and stress to protect you and then return to homeostasis once the threat has gone.

    However, in this day and age, many people are experiencing an overactive fight-or-flight response due to an increasingly stressful lifestyle. And many live in a constant state of hypervigilance as a result of trauma or abuse.

    Living in fight-or-flight mode takes up an enormous amount of energy, and our bodies cannot keep up with the demands long term. Over time, the body and mind begin to shut down and we get illness and disease as a result.

    This is what happened to me. My body could not cope with the pressure I was putting it under daily, so my mental health suffered.

    Practicing yoga allows you to calm your nervous system and creates a space where the mind and body feel safe to exit fight-or-flight mode and actually relax.

    One way to do this is through practicing breathwork, also known as pranayama.

    Yogic philosophy believes that the breath is how we can harness our energy and the energy of the universe. We can alter our emotions, energy levels, and even physiological responses, such as the fight-or-flight response, with just the breath.

    When I notice I am starting to feel anxious, I breathe deeply into my stomach for the count of four, hold it for four, and then slowly exhale for the count of four, also known as belly breathing.

    While this may sound trivial, it really helps me to feel calm in moments of stress and anxiety.

    Breathing slowly and deeply activates our parasympathetic nervous system. This sends signals to the brain that there is no danger here and the fight-or-flight response does not need to be activated.

    Yoga teaches you new coping mechanisms.

    Yoga taught me different techniques to cope with my anxiety and panic attacks.

    Firstly, yoga teaches that you are not your mind. You are not your thoughts, your beliefs, or even your body.

    When we study the five koshas (layers of the self) we can see our physical being is just a vehicle to navigate this world in; it is not who we are as a whole. For example, the koshas teach us that our essence cannot be entirely in our physical body because physical bodies are subject to change, yet who we are remains.

    This mindset applies to our thoughts too. Once I started acknowledging that my thoughts did not always come from me, they began to hold less weight. Most of our thoughts are just ‘re-runs’ of things we are told as a child or things we repeatedly hear from society that get internalized. They are not necessarily representative of who we truly are.

    This knowledge allowed me to distance myself from my anxious thoughts instead of letting them consume me.

    Secondly, through pranayama and meditation, both essential aspects of yoga, I learned to recognize how I was feeling and allow those feelings to exist within me, without trying to change them or distract myself from them.

    When we don’t allow our emotions space to be there, we are instead rejecting that aspect of ourselves. We push these feelings deeper and deeper down as a way to avoid dealing with them, without realizing we are actually ingraining them deeper into our psyche.

    By giving our emotions space to be felt, we can release them from our mind and body so we don’t have to carry them with us through our life.

    Yoga helps you be more present.

    To practice yoga, you need to be focused and in the present moment. To hold balance poses like tree pose or to get into the correct alignment of warrior 1, you need to be paying attention to what is happening around you right now.

    If your mind drifts while you’re holding a balance pose, you can bet your body will lose all balance too.

    Yoga forces you to be in the present moment, to be fully engaged in what you are doing, and doesn’t allow room to think about anything else.

    For me, this is exactly what I needed to get out of my anxiety-ridden head. One of my main struggles with anxiety was that I could not stop myself from thinking. The incessant noise of my own mind was exhausting to live with.

    However, when I am in a yoga flow, the noise stops. The mind chatter about future scenarios that will probably never happen is no longer there, as I am using all my focus to get into the proper alignment of the pose.

    The more you practice focusing, the easier it is to apply this in your daily life. I can now notice when my mind is overactive and instead re-direct it to the task at hand. By giving our full attention to the thing we are doing, we can quieten that anxious voice within and begin to enjoy the present moment.

    —

    Yoga has so many incredible benefits physically, mentally, and spiritually. Since sticking to a consistent yoga practice, I have noticed my anxiety decrease dramatically and I am able to live a full and happy life without my mind controlling me.

  • How I’m Accepting the Uncertain Future (with Less Worry and More Joy)

    How I’m Accepting the Uncertain Future (with Less Worry and More Joy)

    “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” ~Ferris Bueller

    For as long as I can remember, my life has consisted of change.

    I grew up moving around the world. I went from Canada to Pakistan, Egypt to Jamaica, Ghana to Ukraine, and then finally China to Australia.

    Moving to new countries and adapting to new cultures is like a cold plunge to your entire system and way of being. I felt I had no choice but to fit in as quickly as possible.

    By the age of six or seven years old, I pre-empted every move by being constantly prepared. I thought about every possible scenario and planned in detail how I would survive. This technique served me well as I bounced around the world, saying goodbye to my best friends and immersing myself in a whole new culture, time and time again.

    However, when I became an adult and had control over my life, I no longer needed to plan and prepare for my next move. I could live where I wanted. I could stay where I wanted. Yet my overthinking and planning continued.

    Even if I had no intention of moving to another country, my body prepared me for it anyway. It served me up a million scenarios; it prepared me for the heartbreaking goodbyes and the awkward hellos.

    I became addicted to thinking, and not the kind of thinking that earns you academic achievements. It was the kind of thinking that was built by years of worry. But the thing about worry is that it feels like productivity when in reality it’s a depleting sense of anxiety.

    It feels like I’m doing the right thing by planning ahead, and for many years I felt like this was a very good, honest way to spend my time. It seemed very normal to plan every little part of my life in infinite detail and would-be scenarios. I mean, doesn’t everyone do that?

    Apparently not. Apparently, some people deal with every situation as it comes. They don’t spend any time preemptively worrying about things before they happen or imagining all the possible scenarios that could unfold.

    Instead, these particular people go about their daily life, and once they encounter a challenge, they deal with it in the moment. They just handle the situation and then move on. I can’t even imagine how calm and pleasant it must feel to have a mind like that.

    Right now, we are in the middle of a crossroads, yet again. We are expats living in a country far away from any family and raising our young daughter on our own.

    We’re debating whether to move closer to my husband’s family or closer to mine. We’re trying to figure out what jobs we could get and how much they could pay and if we need to go back to school. We want to do what’s best for our daughter, but also for us. We want to stick to our values, but we know we can’t have it all. We’re aware we need to compromise and sacrifice something.

    My old self is rearing to plan, prepare, and organize my potential new life. It’s constantly on overdrive waiting to pounce and dive down a rabbit hole of overthinking. It hates living in uncertainty. But with this many potential scenarios, my head will explode if I sit down and think about every single one of them. Not to mention the life I will miss out on now by thinking about the life that awaits me.

    Right now, it’s summer in Australia. The days are long and warm and humid, just the way I like it. As much as I feel like I need to spend every single waking moment planning and worrying, I also want to enjoy my life now.

    The other day I went to the beach with my husband and one-year-old daughter. It was a sunny, hot day, and as we were getting ready to go, I began worrying if we’d ever find parking. “It’s okay. If there’s no parking, then we’ll just go home,” I told myself reassuringly.

    We drove to the beach, and miraculously we found parking extremely close to the water. I found a little, tiny spot under a rock with shade to ensure no one would get burned. My husband took my daughter, and off they went in the water.

    I stood back under the shade with my long-sleeved shirt and responsible hat, taking photos of them as I always do. A cheerful voice inside of me said, “Go swimming. Let’s enjoy the sun!” For the first time in a long time, I decided to go into the water.

    The water was a bit cold; I prefer when it’s very warm, but I paddled around anyway. I disregarded any fear of sharks, any fears of getting burned, and just enjoyed the water.

    My husband wanted to do a few laps, so I took my daughter and sat on the shore with her. Gentle waves crashed at our feet, and she looked up at me and smiled.

    I grabbed a fistful of wet sand, and my daughter stared in amazement as it formed into intricate blobs on my bare legs. I normally hate the feeling of sand on my body, but in that moment I didn’t even notice. She squealed in delight as I started to build little sandcastles on her legs.

    I remembered that I hadn’t put sunscreen on my back, and I’m very pedantic about sunscreen. I wondered if we should move to the little shady spot I found up on dry sand. But we were having so much fun there I didn’t want to leave. I could tell my daughter didn’t either. So we stayed.

    The waves came again and again, washing away the sandcastles we built. My husband came out of the water and joined us. I felt so much love and happiness in that moment. I wanted to run to my purse and get a photo of how happy we were. But instead, I sat there continuing to build sandcastles.

    When we finally got home, my back was burnt. Normally this would really concern me. I have known people who have died of skin cancer, and I do everything I possibly can to avoid a burn. But on this very day, I let myself be sunburnt. I let it be okay.

    I had so much fun at the beach that reflecting on it left me with tears in my eyes. I cannot remember the last time I was so fully present, alive, and engaged.

    So often the voice of anxiety is pulling me away from my life and trying to protect me by forcing me to think about all the things that could go wrong and how best to avoid them. For once, I didn’t let that voice win, and it wasn’t a battle. It was a natural feeling of allowing another voice, the one of calm, to take center stage.

    I know I can’t plan for everything. But I’m trying to take confident strides in the direction of what feels right, moment by moment. Believing that whatever comes, I can handle it. Life happens fast, and I don’t want to miss these many special moments building castles in the sand with my little family.

  • Abandonment Wounds: How to Heal Them and Feel More at Ease in Relationships

    Abandonment Wounds: How to Heal Them and Feel More at Ease in Relationships

    “I always wondered why it was so easy for people to leave. What I should have questioned was why I wanted so badly for them to stay.” ~Samantha King

    Do you feel afraid to speak your truth or ask for what you want?

    Do you tend to neglect your needs and people-please?

    Do you have a hard time being alone?

    Have you ever felt panic and/or anxiety when someone significant to you left your life or you felt like they were going to?

    If so, please don’t blame yourself for being this way. Most likely it’s coming from an abandonment wound—some type of trauma that happened when you were a child.

    Even though relationships can be painful and challenging at times, your difficult feelings likely stem from something deeper; it’s like a part of you got “frozen in time” when you were first wounded and still feels and acts the same way.

    When we have abandonment wounds, we may have consistent challenges in relationships, especially significant ones. We may be afraid of conflict, rejection, or being unwanted; because of this, we people-please and self-abandon as a survival strategy.

    When we’re in a situation that activates an abandonment wound, we’re not able to think clearly; our fearful and painful emotions flood our system and filter our perceptions, and our old narratives start playing and dictate how we act. We may feel panic, or we may kick, cry, or scream or hold in our feelings like we needed to do when we were children.

    When our abandonment wound gets triggered, we automatically fall into a regression, back to the original hurt/wound and ways of reacting, thinking, and feeling. We also default to the meanings we created at the time, when we formed a belief that we weren’t safe if love was taken away.

    Abandonment wounds from childhood can stem from physical or emotional abandonment, being ignored or given the silent treatment, having emotionally unavailable parents, or being screamed at or punished for no reason.

    When we have abandonment wounds, we may feel that we need to earn love and approval; we may not feel good enough; and we may have our walls up and be unable to receive love because we don’t trust it, which keeps us from being intimate.

    We may try to numb our hurt and pain with drugs, alcohol, overeating, or workaholism. We may also hide certain aspects of ourselves that weren’t acceptable when we were young, which creates inner conflict.

    So how do our abandonment wounds get started? Let me paint a picture from my personal experience.

    When I was in third grade a lady came into our classroom to check our hair for lice. When she entered, my heart raced, and I went into a panic because I was afraid that if I had it and I got sent home, I would be screamed at and punished.

    Where did this fear come from? My father would get mad at me if I cried, got angry, got hurt and needed to go to the doctor, or if I accidentally broke anything in the house. Did I do it purposely? No, but I was punished, screamed at, and sent to my room many times, which made me feel abandoned, hurt, and unloved.

    When I was ten years old, my parents sent me away to summer camp. I kicked and screamed and told them I didn’t want to go. I was terrified of being away from them.

    When I got there, I cried all night and got into fights with the other girls. My third day there, I woke up early and ran away. My counselor found me and tried to hold me, but I kicked, hit her, and tried to get away from her.

    I was sent to the director’s office, and he got mad at me. He picked me up, took me out of his office, and put me in front of a flagpole, where I had to stay for six hours until my parents came to get me. When they got there, they put me in the car, screamed at me, and punished me for the rest of the week.

    When I was fifteen, I was diagnosed with anorexia, depression, and anxiety and put in my first treatment center.

    When my parents dropped me off, I was in a panic. I was so afraid, and I cried for days. Then, my worst nightmare came true—my doctor told me he was putting me on separation from my parents. I wasn’t allowed to talk to them or see them for a month. All I could think about was how I could get out of there and get home to be with them.

    I didn’t understand what was happening. I just wanted my parents to love me, to want to be with me, to treat me like I mattered, but instead I was sent away and locked up.

    I started to believe there was something wrong with me, that I was a worthless human being, and I felt a lot of shame. These experiences and many others created a negative self-image and fears of being abandoned.

    For over twenty-three years I was in and out of hospitals and treatment centers. I was acting in self-destructive ways and living in a hypervigilant, anxious state. I was constantly focused on what other people thought about me. I replayed conversations in my mind and noticed when someone’s emotional state changed, which made me afraid.

    It was a very exhausting way to be. I was depressed, lonely, confused, and suicidal.

    There are many experiences that trigger our abandonment wounds, but the one that I’ve found to be the most activating is a breakup.

    When we’re in a relationship with someone, we invest part of ourselves in them. When they leave, we feel like that part of ourselves is gone/abandoned. So the real pain is a part of us that’s “missing.” We may believe they’re the source of our love, and when they’re gone, we feel that we lost it.

    So the real abandonment wound stems from a disconnection from the love within, which most likely happened when we abandoned ourselves as children attempting to get love and attention from our parents and/or when our parents abandoned us.

    When I went through a breakup with someone I was really in love with, it was intense. I went into a panic. I was emotionally attached, and I did everything I could to try to get her back. When she left, I was devastated. I cried for weeks. There were days when I didn’t even get out of bed.

    Instead of trying to change how I was feeling, I allowed myself to feel it. I recognized that the feelings were intense not because of the situation only, but because it activated my deeper wounding from childhood. Even though I’ve done years of healing, there were more layers and more parts of me to be seen, heard, cared for, and loved.

    The “triggering event” of the breakup wasn’t easy, but it was necessary for me to experience a deeper healing and a deeper and more loving connection with myself.

    When we’re caught in a trauma response, like I was, there is no logic. We’re flooded with intense emotions. Sure, we can do deep breathing, and that may help us feel better and relax our nervous system in the moment. But we need to address the original source of our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs in order to experience a sense of ease internally and a new way of seeing and being.

    Healing our abandonment wound is noticing how the past may still be playing in our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It’s noticing the narratives and patterns that make us want to protect, defend, or run away. It’s helping our inner child feel acknowledged, seen, heard, safe, and loved.

    Healing the abandonment wound is not a quick fix; it does take self-awareness and lots of compassion and love. It’s a process of finding and embracing our authenticity, experiencing a sense of ease, and coming home.

    Healing doesn’t mean we’ll never be triggered. In fact, our triggers help us see what inside is asking for our love and attention. When we’re triggered, we need to take the focus off the other person or situation and notice what’s going on internally. This helps us understand the beliefs that are creating our feelings.

    Beliefs like: I don’t matter, I’m unlovable, I’m afraid, I don’t feel important. These underlying beliefs get masked when we focus on our anger toward the person or what’s happening. By bringing to the light how we’re truly feeling, we can then start working with these parts and help them feel loved and safe.

    Those of us with abandonment wounds often become people-pleasers, and some people may say people-pleasing is manipulation. Can we have a little more compassion? People-pleasing is a survival mechanism; it’s something we felt we needed to do as children in order to be loved and safe, and it’s not such an easy pattern to break.

    Our system gets “trained,” and when we try to do something new, like honoring our needs or speaking our truth, that fearful part inside gets afraid and puts on the brakes.

    Healing is a process of kindness and compassion. Our parts that have been hurt and traumatized, they’re fragile; they need to be cared for, loved, and nurtured.

    Healing is also about allowing ourselves to have fun, create from our authentic expression, follow what feels right to us, honor our heartfelt desires and needs, and find and do what makes us happy.

    There are many paths to healing. Find what works for you. For me, talk therapy and cognitive work never helped because the energy of anxiety and abandonment was held in my body.

    I was only able to heal my deepest wound when I began working with my inner child and helping the parts of myself that were in conflict for survival reasons make peace with each other. As a result, I became more kind, compassionate, and loving and started to feel at peace internally.

    Healing takes time, and you are so worth it, but please know that you are beautiful, valuable, and lovable as you are, even with your wounds and scars.

  • 8 Things Not to Say to Someone Who’s Struggling with Anxiety

    8 Things Not to Say to Someone Who’s Struggling with Anxiety

    Anxiety

    “Sometimes just being there is enough.” ~Unknown

    It felt like I couldn’t breathe. Like someone was holding me by the neck, against a wall, and the floor might drop beneath us at any moment.

    I’m describing a panic attack, but this has actually happened to me before—being held by the neck against a wall, that is, not the other part. Growing up I experienced many moments like that, moments when I felt unsafe, physically and emotionally.

    There were countless experiences that reinforced to me, over the years, that I couldn’t let my guard down, because at any moment I could be hurt.

    So I learned to be constantly anxious, eternally on guard, ever ready for a threat. I learned to be tightly wound, my fight-or-flight response permanently triggered.

    And I learned to see minor threats as major problems, because that’s another thing I learned as a kid: Sometimes seemingly small things could make other people snap.

    Unsurprisingly, I grew into an adult who snapped over small things all the time.

    Got bleach on my interview outfit? No one will ever hire me now!

    She doesn’t want to be my friend? Why doesn’t anyone love me?

    Found a suspicious lump? I’m going to die!

    Okay, so that last one isn’t actually a “small thing,” but the point is I was constantly scared. Life was a string of lions to tame, and I lived in a land without chairs.

    I believe my early experiences, being mistreated in varied environments, led to my years of depression and anxiety. For you or your loved one, there may be other causes.

    Some people are genetically predisposed to anxiety, some struggle because of stressful circumstances, and for some, physical conditions play a role.

    But this isn’t a post about what causes anxiety. This is a post about what not to say when someone’s panicking.

    Anxiety can completely overwhelm your mind and body, and we often exacerbate our pain by being cruel to ourselves in our head.

    “Get it together!” we scream at ourselves. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you such a mess?”

    But none of these thoughts are helpful. Though the people who love us are generally not as cruel, they sometimes say less than helpful things, as well, solely because they don’t know any better.

    Even as someone who has experienced anxiety, I have said some of the things below to others because it feels powerless to see someone struggling. And when you feel powerless, it’s hard to think straight.

    All you know is that you want to fix it for them. You want to have answers. But sometimes when we’re in fix-it mode, despite our best intentions, we inadvertently add fuel to the fire.

    So, as someone who’s been on both sides of the coin, I’d like to share some phrases to avoid when someone is dealing with anxiety, and offer a little insight into what actually helps.

    Things Not to Say to Someone Who’s Struggling with Anxiety

    1. What you’re stressing about won’t even matter in a year.

    In many cases, this is true. If someone’s worrying about a minor car accident, it’s entirely likely what they’re stressing about won’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. But this isn’t a universally true statement.

    A minor accident could lead to major car trouble, which could lead to missing work, which could lead to lost pay, which could lead to getting evicted. And that could very well matter in a year. Is this chain of events likely? No, but it’s still possible.

    It’s not reassuring to tell someone the worst-case scenario won’t happen because sometimes, it does. But more importantly, in that moment when someone is in the midst of anxiety, it feels catastrophic, and you can’t rationalize those feelings away—at least not immediately.

    When someone is panicking, they don’t need logic; they need validation. They need validation that yes, life is uncertain and “bad” things do happen, and validation that it’s okay to feel scared.

    They also need a reminder that in this moment, they are safe. And that’s all they need to think about right now: breathing and grounding themselves in this moment in time.

    2. Life’s too short to worry. 

    All this does is create more anxiety, because in addition to whatever that person was initially stressing about, they now have to worry that they’re missing out on life because of an emotional response that feels beyond their control.

    Yes, life is short. And we all naturally want to make the most of it. But you wouldn’t tell a diabetic “Life is too short to have too much sugar in your blood.” Sure, you’d encourage them to make healthy food choices, but you’d realize this phrasing would vastly oversimplify the effort required from them to manage their condition and maintain healthy habits.

    The same is true of anxiety. Anyone who’s struggled with it understands there are far better ways to live, and this knowledge pains them. What they may not know is how to help themselves.

    3. Calm down.

    “Calm down” is the goal, not the action step. It’s what we all want to do when we’re panicking. It’s the shore in the distance, and it can feel miles away as we gasp for air in the undertow of emotion and struggle to stay afloat.

    If you know any good methods that help you calm yourself—deep breathing exercises, for example—by all means, share them. But it’s probably best not to get into much detail in the moment when someone is panicking.

    Imagine someone hanging off a cliff, about to fall into a pit full of tigers. That’s what anxiety can feel like.

    If you were to stand at the edge and scream, “COME TO YOGA WITH ME TOMORROW! DID YOU KNOW THAT YOGA CAN HELP YOU…” that person would likely be too consumed by their terror to hear you your convincing argument.

    What they need to hear in that moment is “Take my hand!” And the same is true of anxiety. Hold their hand. Help them breathe. Help them come back into the moment. Then, when they feel safe, that’s a good time to tell them what’s helped you.

    That’s another important thing to remember: We all want to hear what’s helped other people deal, not what someone who’s never experienced our struggles has read about. Share your experience, not your expertise. None of us need a guru; we need friends who aren’t afraid to be vulnerable.

    4. It’s no big deal. 

    This comes back to the first point: In that moment, it feels like a big deal. A very big deal. It feels like the biggest, scariest, worst thing that could happen, and you can’t turn that fear off like a switch.

    When someone says, “It’s not a big deal,” the anxious mind translates this as “You’re overreacting—which is further proof that you’re broken.”

    Instead, try, “I know it’s hard. And scary. But you’re not alone. I’m here to help you get through this.”

    It’s amazing how much it helps when someone reinforces that it’s okay to be scared—it’s human, even—but we don’t have to face it alone.

    5. It’s all in your head. 

    Yes, thoughts and fears all originate in our head, but that doesn’t make our feelings any less real. The anxious mind translates “It’s all in your head” as “Your head is defective,” because knowing that thoughts fuel anxiety doesn’t make it any easier to stop thinking anxious thoughts.

    When we’re thinking anxious thoughts, what we need is a reminder that they often arise naturally—for all of us. We don’t need to worry about changing them. We just need to practice accepting them when they arise and disengaging from them.

    So try this instead: “I can understand why you’re thinking those thoughts. I’d probably think some of the same things if I were in your shoes. If you want, you can tell me all your anxious thoughts. They’re trying to protect you in their own way, so maybe they just need to be heard and then they’ll quiet a bit.”

    6. Let it go.

    I have, over the years, written many posts with advice on letting go. I believe it’s healthy to strive to let go of anger, resentment, fears, the past, and anything else that compromises our ability to be happy and loving in the present.

    I think, though, letting go is something we may need to do repeatedly. It’s a practice, not a one-time decision, and certainly not something we’re well equipped to do in a moment when we’re gripped by fear.

    Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote, “It’s not a matter of letting go—you would if you could. Instead of ‘Let it go’ we should probably say ‘Let it be’.”

    That’s what we need in the moment when we’re panicking: We need to give those feelings permission to exist. We need to give ourselves permissions to be a human being experiencing those feelings. And we need to know the people around us love us enough to accept us as we are—even if it might make them feel more comfortable if we were better able to just “let it go.”

    7. Things could be so much worse.

    Yes, things could always be worse, we all know this. Like many statements on this list, this phrase does little other than evoke guilt. And for the anxious mind, guilt can lead to more anxiety.

    Now, on top of their initial fears, they’re worrying that they’re not a good person because they can’t rationalize their anxiety away with gratitude.

    I’m not suggesting that it never helps to put things in perspective, but coming from someone else, this almost always sounds condescending. Condescension leads most of us to feel inferior, and it’s even worse when we’re already feeling ashamed because of our struggle, as many of us do.

    8. Be positive. 

    Anxiety isn’t just about negativity. For many of us, like me, it’s a learned response from a traumatic past in which we felt persistently unsafe. You can train your brain to be more optimistic, and in doing so, minimize anxious thoughts. But this involves far more time, effort, and support than the phrase “be positive” conveys.

    Also, “be positive” suggests that “positive” is something one can become—permanently—which ignores the reality that lows are inevitable in life. No one is positive all the time, and often the people who seem to be are actually being passive-aggressive.

    Phrases like “Look on the bright side” and “See the glass as half full” can seem incredibly patronizing when you’re hurting. They minimize just how hard it can be to see the world optimistically, especially when you’ve experienced trauma.

    So instead, show them what it looks like to be positive. Be loving and open and calm and accepting and supportive and present. This probably won’t heal them of their struggle or banish their anxiety in the moment when they’re panicking, but it’s amazing how you can affect someone for the better by being a healthy mirror.

    —

    After reading this list, you might think I’m suggesting there is no way to heal from anxiety; we just need to help people accept it and get through it. But that’s not actually my point.

    There are tools out there to help people. You can find some of them here. (I personally recommend therapy, yoga, and meditation, as these three tools combined have helped me learn to better regulate my emotions.)

    My point is that even when someone is making the efforts to help themselves, it takes time, they may still struggle, and in those moments, they simply need love, acceptance, and, support.

    We all do—even you, loved one who tries your best and has only the best intentions.

    If you’ve said some of these things in the past, know that we recognize you’re imperfect, just like us, but we still appreciate all that you do. We also appreciate that you read articles like this to better understand and support us.

    The world can be a scary place, but knowing that people, like you, care enough to help us makes it feel a whole lot safer.

  • How I Stopped Worrying About Running Out of Time to Achieve My Goals

    How I Stopped Worrying About Running Out of Time to Achieve My Goals

    “The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. That’s all there ever is.” ~Alan Watts

    One thing that is promised to each one of us in life is death. No one will avoid dying or feeling the pain of losing others. From a young age I remember being aware of this fact, and it scared me.

    As I got older, I began to feel a sense of pressure that I was running out of time and loss was imminent. The thought of losing my loved ones and the uncertainty of what may happen worried me. I wanted to avoid the feelings of loss and limitation, so I unconsciously began to move faster.

    There was a deep fear that if things didn’t happen fast, they would not happen at all and that I wouldn’t have enough time.

    Faster became better, and I started the hamster race of working hard to achieve my dreams. Whether that was finishing school, starting a career, being in a healthy relationship, starting a family, being fit… even my spiritual journey became a race to happiness that only existed in the future!

    I realized later in life that this mindset was born out of fear—the fear of loss, the fear of the unknown—and protection from these fears was a quick accomplishment. It created an immense amount of stress and suffering because all goals and dreams take time to build.

    I believed sooner was better, and if it wasn’t fast then it wasn’t happening at all. I began to find reasons for why it wasn’t happening—that I was not good enough, life was unfair and hard, and it was not possible for me. Each time I repeated these limiting beliefs, I took one step away from my dreams and developed more anxiety.

    This led to a cycle of starting, quitting, and then searching for something different. I would garner the courage to start something new only to fall flat on my face when it didn’t happen. The cycle of shame would repeat, impacting my mental health and my ability to move forward.

    I wanted to see proof that I was achieving my goals and searched for tangible evidence to feel good while simultaneously ignoring all the wonderful things that were right before my eyes. Like living near the ocean, spending time with my loved ones, talking walks along the coast, having meaningful conversations with friends, and enjoying moments of quiet with my favorite cup of coffee. These mean so much to me now.

    I wanted the degree, the paycheck, the happy photo of me surrounded by friends, rather than the silence of uncertainty and the impatience I felt in the present. My fear of time took away the only real time that existed, the now.

    When I slowed down and paused, I realized that I had experienced so much growth and expansion in all the years I’d thought I was wasting time. Every roadblock had challenged me to change. In fact, my anxiety, fear, and disappointment around my slow progress led me inward to heal my relationship with time.

    Though many of my dreams did come true, I was only able to recognize them when I slowed down and let go of the “when.”

    I was able to achieve this by practicing meditation, breathwork, and awareness. With time and consistency, the present moment became filled with color, and its beauty swept me away from the ticking time bomb of the future. I began to enjoy each step of my journey, whether it was the beginning or end.

    With the gift of hindsight, I can see that it is not about the “when” but about the “what.” What I’m doing right now in the present. The number of negative and limiting beliefs I placed upon myself and the shame I felt were due to an emphasis on always “thinking forward,” and a lack of being with myself in the present.

    The truth is when we let go of our misconceptions of time and follow our dreams patiently, we see that time is not against us; the process is a necessary part of our journey.

    The time it takes to reach our goals is not empty; it is filled with learning and unlearning so that we find ourselves. In the end it is not the achievement that leads to freedom, but the wisdom that comes from living life.

    If we make the present moment our friend rather than our foe, we can experience and appreciate our present journey rather than focusing on our arrival.

  • How to Make Things Better When It Seems Like Everything Is Going Wrong

    How to Make Things Better When It Seems Like Everything Is Going Wrong

    “You can never be happy if you’re trapped in the past and fearful of the future. Living in the present is the only way to be happy.” ~Unknown

    Have you found that the local and world events of the last couple of years have taken their toll on you and your family and friends? With fires, floods, shortages of food, fuel, and medicine, illnesses, job losses, and more, all occurring in a short space of time, it can be hard to find anyone who has not been affected in some way.

    Many people are experiencing feelings of hopelessness and living in constant fear about the future. And unfortunately, if not managed, over time these feelings can lead to depression, anxiety, and numerous other health conditions.

    We’ve all heard that a build-up of stress hormones in our body contributes to illness, but how can we possibly improve our health when we are living in survival mode and feel like the situation is hopeless?

    I lived this way for most of my life, wishing I could clone myself a million times so I could get on with changing the world, but feeling sad and frustrated knowing that I could not, no matter how hard I tried.

    I was also in my own little bubble of survival, working way too many hours to prove to myself I could be a mum and have a career and save the world, all while my health was deteriorating.

    From time to time I found myself thinking, why is it that no matter how hard I try to make things better for myself and my family, something else always comes along and makes everything worse? I was always striving, not even for perfection, but to make things better.

    I really wanted a different way, to live a life without the stress, struggle, fear, and health issues.

    Fortunately, a friend introduced me to the benefits of guided meditation and how to shift your mindset, and once I understood how powerful these practices could be in helping me to improve my quality of life, I didn’t look back.

    Even though it was a struggle for a while, as I made the changes I needed to make—which included restructuring my business, moving three times in twelve months, managing my chronic health issues, and working through the trauma—I have now found a place where I can notice and find joy in the small things, and I have hope for the future.

    I learned that, if we can keep a positive outlook and focus on ourselves and how we respond in any situation, we can change how we feel about everything. But how can we do this when we are feeling stuck?

    The first thing to realize is that you can’t change others. You can only change yourself and the way that you respond or react.

    You can only alter the choices you make in your life and how you can make the world a better place. And the good news is you don’t need to do anything big to do that.

    What if you can find small ways to improve:

    • Your relationships with family and friends. (For example, by being more present and listening to their interests and needs.)
    • Your kindness and care in relating to people you meet. (For example, by questioning your judgements rather than reacting immediately.)
    • The way you feel about yourself. (For example, by expressing gratitude for everything you’re doing right.)

    What if you can change the way that you look after your environment in your home and community?

    What if doing these things has a flow-on effect to everyone else you meet?

    What if you say or do something, even a seemingly small thing, that makes others feel more love and joy?

    What if they then go on to change something about themselves that gives them more joy and happiness in their lives?

    What if each person pays it forward a little more?

    We are so much more powerful than we think. Just by changing our perceptions and our actions we have an exponential effect on the people around us.

    Did you know that your thoughts and memories are just perceptions of your reality, based on your own life experiences, with some unconscious conditioning thrown in? Every single person in this world experiences life in a different way based on their past, as well as patterns of behavior that developed from a need to feel loved, nurtured, or a sense of belonging as a young child.

    Studies have even shown that people who witness an event, e.g., a crime, will always have a different interpretation of what happened compared with anyone else, because we all have our own biases. Often, our memories, when compared with actual video footage of the crime, will be completely inaccurate.

    How does this relate to you and lowering your stress and anxiety?

    It means that in any given moment you can choose how to perceive the events going in your life, in the community, and world around you.

    You can choose to wallow in fear and frustration about things that are outside of your control, or you can choose to empower yourself by focusing on the good and all the things within your control. Like the things that make you feel better. Because when you feel better, you do better, for everyone and everything around you.

    Ask yourself, what do I need to do to feel more joy and happiness and hope?

    Be consciously aware of your thoughts and notice what comes to you. What do you want to keep and what does not serve your own happiness and joy?

    For me, I decided to stop spending as much time looking at news feeds and social media. Most of it is not positive or just made me feel like I was inadequate, so I cut it right back.

    I actively sought to change conversations with family and friends that were fear-driven, by changing the subject. Unless the person really wanted help or advice that was going to support them in moving forward.

    I also made the decision to stop working so hard and enjoy whatever time I have left on this earth. I decided to focus on things that bring me health and happiness.

    Here are some of the things I like to do to feel happier, healthier, and more hopeful. Feel free to take what works for you and leave the rest. If none of these resonate, then take some time to sit and ask yourself, what can you do differently? What makes you feel good?

    • Take a bath.
    • Call a friend.
    • Play a musical instrument or create some art.
    • Listen to music.
    • Find a space on your own, even for just a few minutes, and use some gentle background music to soothe your mind and help you gather your thoughts. Doing this can often help us release the tension, even just a little, and give us some space to work out what is important to us.
    • Spend some time creating a dream board, a bucket list, or even a list of things you’d love to have or do in your life. Even though it might seem like some of those things are impossible to achieve, writing down our dreams and desires can lift our mood and gives us hope and something to look forward to.
    • Plan a treat for yourself or your family—go out for ice cream and sit by a river, lake, or beach; find a recipe that you and your family would love and work together to make it; or take a bike ride.
    • Find a spot to sit outside and observe nature and the world around you. Notice something you’ve never looked at properly before. Observe and appreciate its beauty. Look at it like a child might, with wonder and curiosity.
    • Don’t be afraid to ask someone to support you or to help out, whether it’s for a chat or some physical assistance. Most often, people are more than willing and enjoy helping. You just need to ask.

    Choose just one thing that you can do differently to improve your mood and outlook and commit to making it happen. Trust the ripple effect will happen and be proud that you are making a difference for yourself and others.

  • 7 False Beliefs That Will Keep You Trapped in Your Head Forever

    7 False Beliefs That Will Keep You Trapped in Your Head Forever

    “There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them.” ~Anthony de Mello

    When people come to me suffering from anxiety, fear, anger, self-judgment etc., there are five things they invariably believe to be true.

    Let’s take anxiety as an example. Most (if not all) people with anxiety believe that:

    1. It’s bad or wrong to feel anxious.
    2. It shouldn’t be there.
    3. There’s something wrong with me (for being anxious).
    4. My mind should be peaceful.
    5. I can’t experience peace until my anxiety is gone.

    Pretty much everyone nods in agreement as I take them through this list.

    Few people, if any, would question the truth of these statements.

    They are, as the spiritual teacher Anthony de Mello says:

    “Beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them.”

    And I’d say that these beliefs alone produce 98% (if not more) of the unnecessary suffering that most people experience.

    Maybe you’ve heard the expression “pain is inevitable, suffering is a choice”?

    Experiencing anxiety is unpleasant. There’s no denying it’s a painful experience.

    But it’s our beliefs and mental commentary about anxiety that cause most of the suffering.

    “Anxiety is awful. I hate it. I can’t go on like this. What’s wrong with me? I shouldn’t be feeling this way. I’m so screwed up. I’ll never be happy again.”

    The mind’s commentary about the anxiety adds fuel to the fire and turns a painful experience into full-blown suffering.

    Lasting peace can never be found on the level of thinking. The mind is restless by nature. It’s not wrong. It’s simply how the mind is.

    To end suffering, we need to change the way we relate to the mind.

    And to do this, we need to see through the false beliefs that hold us captive.

    As long as you believe that certain thoughts are bad or wrong, that they shouldn’t be there, and that there’s something wrong with you for having them, you will continue to suffer… not so much from the thoughts themselves but because of your beliefs about them.

    The solution is so simple that most people overlook it completely.

    Getting to Know the Mind Better

    There’s a quote from Abraham Lincoln I like to use:

     “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”

    Exactly the same logic applies to your anxiety, depression, fear, or critical inner voice.

    If you don’t like your anxious thoughts, resisting them won’t help.

    The answer is to get to know them better.

    The Two Approaches to Becoming Free of the Mind

    There are two approaches we can take to find more inner peace.

    The first is to try to fix or change our thoughts through “working on ourselves.”

    I tried this approach for years and discovered that change comes painfully slowly… if at all.

    After years of effort, I had very little to show for it.

    Then I had a breakthrough.

    On a six-month meditation retreat, I stumbled upon a completely different approach to dealing with the mind—a way that was much easier, much more effective, and far quicker, immediate in fact.

    Through getting to know my thoughts (and feelings and emotions) better, I came to a completely different understanding about myself, my mind… and the path to peace.

    I saw that:

    It’s not your thoughts, feelings, or emotions that cause you to suffer. Suffering is self-created through the way you relate to them.

    See through the false beliefs that hold you captive, and your troublesome thoughts will no longer have the same power to affect your peace.

    Since then, I’ve outlined 7 false beliefs that keep most people trapped in their heads for life.

    The 7 False Beliefs That Will Keep You Trapped in Your Head Forever

    “Demand is born out of duality: ‘I am unhappy and I must be happy.’ In the very demand that I must be happy is unhappiness.”  ~Jiddu Krishnamurti

    The beautiful thing about beliefs is that the moment you see through them, they lose their grip on you. You become liberated in the seeing alone. It requires no time.

    False Belief #1: The mind should be quiet and peaceful; otherwise, there’s something wrong.

    I love the following quote from the Indian spiritual teacher Nisargadatta:

    “There is no such thing as peace of mind. Mind means disturbance; restlessness itself is mind.”

    Restlessness is the nature of the mind. Expecting it to be quiet and peaceful is like expecting water to be dry or expecting the grass to be pink.

    It’s not the restless nature of the mind that disturbs your peace. It’s the belief that there’s something wrong and that it should be different.

    You don’t suffer because the mind is restless. You suffer because you believe it shouldn’t be.

    Expect the mind to be messed up, crazy, confused, and anxious. Don’t be surprised. There’s nothing ‘wrong.’ It’s called being human.

    False Belief #2: Suffering is caused by negative thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

    What if it were possible to feel down, sad, concerned, anxious even—and to remain perfectly at peace throughout?

    Negative thoughts, feelings, and emotions, although unpleasant, are not the primary cause of suffering. We suffer because we reject them, think there’s something wrong, and believe they shouldn’t be there.

    If you don’t mind feeling sad, don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, and don’t think the feeling needs to go for you to be okay, you can be sad and peaceful at the same time.

    Most people confuse peace with feeling good. It’s not the same.

    Our thoughts and emotions are like clouds passing across the sky. It’s inevitable that there will be dark ones as well as light ones.

    The key to ongoing peace is to embrace them all. Even if they don’t feel good.

    And anyway, what makes a thought negative? Another thought that says so.

    False Belief #3: It’s bad/wrong to be anxious, down, and depressed, or feel unworthy.

    This belief definitely falls under the category of “beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that nobody thinks to question them.”

    Most of us enjoy warm sunny days more than dark cloudy ones.

    But it doesn’t make cloudy days bad or wrong—less pleasant perhaps, but not wrong.

    In the same way, the challenging thoughts and emotions that cloud our inner sky are not inherently good or bad, right or wrong. Like the weather, they are neutral events—part of the human condition.

    The real problem (or only problem, in fact) is the notion that unpleasant = wrong.

    And this belief, in turn, triggers the mental commentary: “It shouldn’t be there, there’s something wrong with me that needs fixing, I’m unacceptable as I am, I can’t be happy until it’s gone,” etc.—in other words, suffering.

    False Belief #4: I can’t experience peace until this/that pattern is resolved.

    I talk to many people who have been waiting for twenty years for their anxiety to be healed so they can start living again.

    And I’ve seen lifelong anxiety sufferers experience deep peace within a minute or two through seeing through certain beliefs.

    I call it the path of understanding, as opposed to the path of self-improvement.

    Peace is your nature. And it’s ever-present, no matter what is going on in the mind.

    People wait, often for years, for the dark clouds of anxiety, sadness, or self-doubt to move on, before they can get back to living life to the full.

    There’s a powerful meditation called the “Noticing Exercise” that I like to share with people who believe they can’t experience peace just as they are.

    Without going into too much detail here, I ask people to bring a difficulty to mind, and then, through directing their attention to what’s happening right here, right now, I guide them to become fully present in the moment.

    When I ask them afterwards how their experience was, they usually use words like “peaceful,” “still,” or “expansive.”

    And when I then ask what happened to their difficulty during the exercise, people invariably say, “Oh, I totally forgot about it.” More evidence that you don’t have to wait for your issues to be healed before you can live fully.

    Peace is available right here, right now—no matter what is going on in your mind or in your life.

    False Belief #5: Engaging with the mind is mandatory.

    If you had told me years ago, when I was a chronic overthinker struggling to find any peace at all, that engaging with the mind is not mandatory, I would have said you were nuts.

    When thinking is unconscious and running on autopilot, as is the case with most people, it feels like it’s something that’s happening to you—as if you are an innocent victim being bombarded by an unrelenting torrent of thoughts, and that you have no choice but to listen.

    You’re not so much thinking as being thunk!

    But here’s the truth. You are the one in charge, and the mind only has as much power as you give it. It may not seem this way, but it’s true.

    As we saw previously in the “Noticing Exercise,” you are free to withdraw your attention from the mind in any moment. Thinking is a choice. It’s not mandatory.

    Mooji, a teacher I like a lot, says that we suffer because we are open for business. If you choose to close up shop, the mind becomes powerless to affect your peace.

    When you learn to step back and watch the mind objectively, you can choose whether to get involved or not. Overthinking is an unconscious habit you can learn to let go of.

    False Belief #6: I’m responsible for the thoughts in my head.

    Try closing your eyes for a moment and, like a cat intently watching a mouse hole, watch to see what your next thought will be.

    You’ll discover that you have no idea what’s going to appear.

    Thoughts are self-arising. You play no part in their appearance.

    Thinking is a different matter.

    For years, I used to judge myself harshly for the thoughts that appeared in my head. I used to think there was something wrong with me for having angry thoughts, jealous thoughts, sad thoughts, etc.

    The mind is a lot like a computer. It spits out thoughts in accordance with your programming—the cultural impressions you picked up as a child and through your unique life experiences.

    Your thoughts are not who you are.

    Which brings us to the final false belief:

    False Belief #7: I am my thoughts.

    For much of my life, I was compulsively preoccupied with the content of my mind. My thoughts were like a tight ski mask glued to my face, and they pretty much filled up my entire inner space.

    Through meditation, I was gradually able to create more and more space between myself and the thoughts and learn to observe them objectively and non-judgmentally—to see the thoughts, not be the thoughts.

    I discovered that there was another dimension of my being that was untouched and unaffected by the passing traffic of thoughts.

    The analogy of the sky and the clouds is often used in meditation practice.

    All types of cloud pass across the sky—dark ones, light ones, big ones, small ones, fast moving clouds, slow moving clouds—but the sky has no preference and always remains the same.

    I discovered that thoughts are not “me” and that, through learning to remain as the witnessing presence, they lost their power to affect my peace.

    When you leave the mind in peace to do its thing, it will leave you in peace to do yours.

    Peace is your nature; not the peace that comes and goes as passing clouds, interspersed with restless thoughts, but the unchanging peace of your true nature.

    You are not your thoughts. And knowing this is real peace.

  • My Dying Friend’s Woke Wake and Why We Need to Talk About Death

    My Dying Friend’s Woke Wake and Why We Need to Talk About Death

    “Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back.” ~Marcus Aurelius

    Recently, on a beautiful blue-sky Saturday, I attended my first “woke wake.”

    My dear friend has welcomed in the love and care of hospice, and she and her family wanted to host a celebration.

    The meaning of “woke” signals an awareness of social action, with a focus on racism and bias in our culture. She also wanted to be “awoke” to the experience of her wake. More importantly, her party was an honest expression that she will die soon. Her acknowledgement was courageous.

    We share so openly about birth, and yes, there is deep sorrow with death, but doesn’t it deserve as much open acknowledgement? Silence only makes the journey that much more difficult. 

    In her rose-rimmed glasses, moving about the party with such grace, she held her truth with pride. Her heart is full yet has become so weak.

    There were plates of delicacies with brie decorating beets, fall fruit bowls adorned with persimmons and pomegranate, plates of pumpkin brownies and breads, chips finding dips, laughter finding tears.

    She preferred we didn’t clink cups and share stories. Instead, it was both a “Bon Voyage” and “Welcome Home” celebration. The voyage is universal for all of us. Home becomes the outstretched arms of loving community and, as Ram Dass wrote, “We are all just walking each other home.”

    The morning my father passed away just shy of ninety-five, I spoke with him by phone as he lay in his hospital bed. The last thing he said in his forever strong but raspy voice, before hanging up the phone, was “Well, gotta go honey.”

    We all “gotta go,” but the privilege some of us have to plan for how we go is a gift. Many do not have that luxury due to economic, social, and possible cultural differences.

    But for many, there are concrete plans we can make as we compose our wills, designating our medical power of attorney, our financial executor, DNR, and life support decisions. We can designate who will inherit our wares and heirlooms. We can decide specifics in regard to a traditional burial, cremation, or even body composting, which is a process that transforms the body into soil to be then returned to the earth.

    Getting our affairs in order in concrete ways seems easier than having a conversation about our own death or that of our friends, family, and aging parents.

    Melanie Klein, a well-known British psychologist, believes the fear of death is the crux of anxiety. Whether one believes in this premise or not isn’t that important. But the truth is that often our feelings about death are kept deep inside. Yet discussion can ease our anxiety as we face the existential concerns about our mortality.

    I’m in an intimate group with six other women where we discuss aging, living, and dying. Sometimes we discuss the book we are reading, but more often than not, we share our hopes, dreams, and fears about the future. As our skin softens with age, our “thin skin” makes us more sensitive to issues around death.

    Often, there are concerns about being dependent and a wish to not burden those who care for us. And who will care for us? Will we be okay financially? How will our bodies and minds hold up in the years to come? We also discuss worry about those we’ll leave behind. How will children cope?

    These are difficult topics. But being in community while voicing our feelings and asking these questions can make us feel less alone. If possible, opening up the discussion with loved ones is important. And the hope is that when our time comes, we will all be better prepared and have had some of our questions answered.

    Those who die before us often become our teachers. As we attend memorials and wakes, we face that we will continue to say farewell to loved ones and inevitably ourselves. How those before us handle the farewell often educates us as to how we would like to end our journey in both similar and dissimilar ways. But this takes conversation, something too often avoided.

    My friend has taught me so much and especially about her devotion to and her honesty with her grown children. I will want my children to know they are going to be just fine in the world no matter the twists and turns in their life. And that I promise I will never be far away.

    It is said that accepting the inevitability of death helps us accept we are all just visiting for a short while. That recognition reminds us to appreciate life and make it a good visit.

    I hugged my friend goodbye and thanked her for hosting a lovely celebration. It was a good visit with a table of bounty. Maybe that is what we can all hope for as the party ends and the lights go out.

  • How to Let Go of Your Need to Be Informed at all Times

    How to Let Go of Your Need to Be Informed at all Times

    “Don’t mistake being informed by trusting what you hear or read in the news. The most trusted information is what you feel in your gut.” ~Charles F Glassman

    I was in my kitchen enjoying breakfast when a report about a murder was mentioned as one of the headlines on the radio news.

    One of my boys started to ask me questions, none of which I could answer. They were questions about a detail of the murder, which I didn’t know, and also about bigger life issues, which at 7 a.m., I was struggling to get my head around.

    I chose to turn the radio off, told the boys that we would chat about it later, and then removed the radio from the kitchen. This was in 2019, and I haven’t missed the radio since.

    I’ve always had a radio in my kitchen and always listened to a talk-based radio station, so it felt a bit awkward for the first week or so, but over time, we began chatting more as a family in the mornings because we didn’t all have one ear tuned into the news.

    A mentor and friend of mine told me a while ago she no longer watches the news. This gave me the permission I felt I needed to embrace this no-news new way of living. I never questioned her decision or asked for more details about the choice she had made. I knew something in me had flipped; I was no longer going to consume the news. This was going to mean radio, television, paper, and social media for me.

    I had to form a few new habits around my news consumption. The next time I was driving my car I took a selection of my old CDs and a charger cable to plug my phone in so I could listen to audiobooks or podcasts. I always used to watch the 10:00 p.m. news headlines, but I decided to leave the sofa at 9:59 and hop straight up to bed at that time. I also stopped buying my weekend newspapers and turned off all news notifications on my phone.

    My husband will occasionally say, “Oh, did you hear such and such on the news?” And I reply, “Nope, remember, I don’t get the news anymore” and then we start talking about something else.

    I understand that the news highlights human interest stories, and part of the need to feel connected to each other might be fulfilled by taking in news stories, but I had to turn away when it all got too much.

    When COVID hit, I questioned my decision. Was I being willfully ignorant? Well, no, actually. I don’t think so.

    I was working in local government at the time, and all my work was face to face with very vulnerable people. My line manager was masterful at protecting his staff team and giving us all the information we needed to do our jobs as safely as possible. There was no way the media, local or national, could have helped me out on that one. I was aware of what was going on because, of course, people told me. Sometimes I was willing to listen to a bit of detail, but mostly not.

    I don’t feel like I’m missing out by not keeping up with the news. I’m acutely aware of what I can control in my life. And I know most of what I would see, hear, or read on the news wouldn’t directly affect me. I came to the conclusion that the news always made me feel worse than before I’d heard or seen it.

    I also recognized that I was not taking the time to see a variety of news sources or get differing viewpoints, so what I was getting was incredibly biased. It seemed to be debt, disaster, or some kind of controversy on repeat. I was not being uplifted in any way shape or form.

    I realized that my life is going to be short enough. I sometimes don’t have enough time for the stuff I really want. So why was I wasting a precious second on something I had no control or influence over?

    I spend a morning a week volunteering with refugees and asylum seekers who tell me their stories. I’d far rather hear first-hand realities from people who are in the same room as me.

    Since turning off all the news channels in my house I have been able to tune in to my intuition and gut feelings more. The less I have consumed other people’s opinions on world events, the more I can hear the whispers of my soul.

    If I need to know something, of course, I can go and look it up. My own research is tailored to what I want or need. I don’t feel like I’m missing out in any way. I feel like everything in my life is slightly better without consuming the news in the way that I used to. I save some money and time and experience far less anxiety. All good things in my opinion.

    I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to watching, listening to, or reading the news in the future. I haven’t missed it in three years (apparently a lot has happened), and I’m doing just fine without it.

    If you’re also considering giving up the news, it might help to start by asking yourself why you’ve felt the need to be informed at all times. Does it stem from fear and the desire to feel safe or in control? Or is it simply that you don’t want to be ignorant about something everyone else might know about and discuss? Then ask yourself what you’re really gaining and what you’re losing—time, energy, or peace, for example.

    Once you understand why you’re constantly tuning in it will be a lot easier to tune out.

    If the idea of eliminating all news feels too much at the moment, perhaps you could try reducing it in one area of your life. Go back to reading a novel instead of a paper on a Sunday. Watch the headlines at 6 p.m. but not the whole program. Listen to a podcast on a subject you feel passionate about and not on a topic you think you should know about.

    We’re bombarded with information these days, but we get to decide what we take in based on what feels best for us.

  • If You Stuff Your Emotions Down: You Gotta Feel It to Heal It

    If You Stuff Your Emotions Down: You Gotta Feel It to Heal It

    “Sit with it. Sit with it. Sit with it. Sit with it. Even though you want to run. Even when it’s heavy and difficult. Even though you’re not quite sure of the way through. Healing happens by feeling.” ~Dr. Rebecca Ray

    I’ve spent much of my life resisting my true feelings.

    Anger made me feel wrong. Sadness made me feel weak. Neediness made me feel “girly.” Love made me feel scared.

    I became an expert at hiding when I was feeling any of the above.

    Some people numb their feelings with alcohol, drugs, shopping, or sex. I numb with control. Being in control. Exerting control. Maintaining iron-will control over everything in my life, including my emotions.

    The thing about the  illusion of being in control is that it really only works for so long before emotions bubble up to the surface, erupt like a dormant volcano, and explode onto someone or something unintended. And trust me when I tell you, that ain’t pretty.

    One of the most famous quotes of every twelve-step program is: “You gotta feel it to heal it.” As someone who absolutely hated feeling anything that made me uncomfortable, this was the best advice I’d ever heard and the single most important tool I started using over the years to heal from anything in my life that was hard.

    It was in that twelve-step program for an eating disorder I had many years ago where I learned that all my ‘self-control’ tactics were an illusion.  If I would just allow myself to feel “it,” whatever “it” was, I could make peace with a lot of things, including myself.

    My mom was the role model I grew up with. Strong. Resilient. Positive and always in control. I strived to be like her. Positive and happy no matter what life threw my way.

    We were raised to not be weak, negative, or ungrateful because (we were told) somebody out there had it worse than us. The way through life was to remain positive. I mean, if she could do it, why couldn’t I?

    But I was different. More sensitive. Overly sensitive. A tad too empathetic. A chronic people-pleaser who didn’t like to rock the boat or risk anyone not liking me. When I had big feelings, I thought it best to push those feelings right down.

    Anger got me into trouble and cost me my childhood best friend. Sadness and tears (especially if, God forbid, they happened in the workplace) were “unprofessional,” I was told. And being anything but positive cramped my Supergirl vibe because people had gushed to me my entire life how “strong and resilient” I was, and I wanted to live up to their perception of me.

    But pushing down my feelings led to things that, for periods of time, wrecked my life: Depression. Anxiety. Secrets. Migraines. Illness. Chronic fatigue. Binging. Purging. Lies. And ultimately, not feeling I could be who I truly was and still be loved.

    And like every human being that walks this earth, I wanted to be able to be me and still be loved.

    So I started to do work on myself. And that work, let me tell you, was hard. But as one of my very favorite authors, Glennon Doyle, likes to say, “We can do hard things.”

    The hard thing for me was surrendering to the discomfort, the judgment of others, the judgments I had about myself, and owning the truth of who I was and how I actually felt about things.

    So I went to therapy. I signed up for yoga/meditation retreats. I dove deep into spirituality. I prayed and sat in silence for hours listening for God and then writing what I heard Him say.

    I traveled to Peru and then Costa Rica, where I was introduced to sacred plant medicine, and purged out all the feelings I didn’t realize I had been carrying for years in ceremonies that literally changed my life. Wisdom and visions guided me to make changes I don’t think I would have had the courage to make on my own.

    If you’re brave enough to step outside your comfort zone and try different things to open your heart and hold a mirror up to yourself, you’ll uncover one simple truth: You’ve got to feel whatever it is you’re running from to heal that thing for good.

    For those people who think I have it all together all the time, I want to set the record straight…

    None of us has it together all of the time. And to believe that you should, that there is anybody in this world who has “it”—whatever “it” is—together all the time, well that’s the very thing that’s causing any of us to feel sad, angry, overwhelmed, depressed, anxious, (fill in the blank with whatever emotion you think you shouldn’t be feeling today).

    I have it together most days. And others I’m completely overwhelmed.

    I’m sometimes sad for no reason at all.  But still, I allow myself to cry.

    I feel sorry for myself some days, knowing that somebody out there has it worse than me. But I no longer try to shut that feeling down. I let it come. Feel it. Let it pass.

    We all have something in our lives that makes us feel sorry for ourselves. Let’s stop declaring to the world “I’m fine” when we really aren’t and, instead, accept it’s just a feeling—and feeling anything other than fine is not admitting we’re weak or pathetic, but human.

    I get angry. And when I do, I  don’t make myself out to be a villain because of that anger. I just ask it what it’s trying to show me about myself or someone else and then I listen to it. I approach it with compassion instead of judgment. Maybe I have a right to be angry. Maybe someone is doing something hurtful, and the anger is inviting me to stand up for myself, or walk away, or learn how to set a boundary.

    Every feeling we have is trying to teach us something. I’ve learned to listen to the teacher and ask, “What are you trying to show me?”

    I’ve been through loss. Betrayal. Divorce. Depression. An eating disorder. All things that others have been through. We all have our things we need to heal from. Mine aren’t any harder or less hard than yours.

    But you can heal. You can be happy even if you’ve been through something sad. You can be you and still be loved. But you’ve gotta feel it to heal it if you want to get there.

    I’m grateful for all of my life. Not just the good stuff.

    I’m grateful for the hard things. The hard things are what have shown me who I am, what I’m made of, and pushed me to create the best life possible for myself and my children. The hard things pushed me to heal things that needed to be healed for decades.

    If sharing my story encourages just one person to find the courage to do the hard things to help them heal… well then, the hard things, in my opinion, have been totally worth it.

  • The Major Aha Moment That Helped Me Stop Fixating on Fixing Myself

    The Major Aha Moment That Helped Me Stop Fixating on Fixing Myself

    “The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself.” ~Maya Angelou

    My newest friend ended our three-month-long friendship on a July day when I’d just returned from a dreadful summer vacation. Her Dear Jane email read, “It’s not you, it’s me.” The lever had been pulled, I was dumped, and I thought, “Ha!” I’d spent the last three months trying to help her fix her problems. I knew she had more problems than me.

    But then an anxious, obsessive thought loop began. What did it really mean? How could it not be about me?

    This wasn’t the first time I’d lost a friend, so of course, I needed to diagnose, dissect, and determine the origin of this unhappy pattern. My anxieties were ramping up, and I needed to fix something before this reoccurred. So I made an appointment with a therapist named Dr. Mary.

    After an hour’s drive through big city traffic, I arrived late and shaken to that first therapy session.

    Within fifteen minutes, Dr. Mary helped me recognize the parallel between my friendships and my relationship with my mother and and pointed out I didn’t have to parent my mom, a lifelong project due to her unsteady mental health. I was disappointed but relieved to find I wasn’t there to fix my mom’s narcissistic behavior. I was there just to fix myself. I paid her the ninety-five out-of-pocket dollars I owed and left feeling slightly better.

    Two weeks later, I drove that same hour for my second therapy session. I was not prepared for what I would take away this time.

    When I brought up my mother again, Dr. Mary asked me why I needed to change my mother. Couldn’t I allow her to just be?

    I was confused. Weren’t my mother issues the cause of everything? “If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother,” my friends and I always joked. And why wouldn’t my mom want to gain from my knowledge, love, and insight?

    Dr. Mary fed this next concept to me slowly. “Maybe you need to fix people so you can feel powerful, and then no one will be paying attention to your flaws. Maybe you want to distract others from seeing how unlovable you think you are.”

    This concept slowly hummed in my head until tears seeped from my face.

    Eventually I found tissues near my couch spot. And then our time was up.

    “Do you have any books you can suggest reading on raising self-esteem?” I asked as I paid her, needing something more to help process this information. “No,” she said, and then she opened the door and let a different version of me out into the world than the me who’d entered.

    As I drove to meet my friend for a lunch date, my mind screamed, “I’m freaking forty-five years old, and I have low self-esteem!!??” Over our Cuban pork sandwiches with mojo sauce, my friend Terry said, “Who doesn’t have low self-esteem?”

    Apparently, my discovery of my buried dysfunction was the new trendy life hiccup I was now living. When had low self-esteem become the in thing?

    My head was filled with angry bees as I journeyed the hour-plus back home. I didn’t feel good enough to be my kid’s parent that night. I fumed over Dr. Mary’s edict about my sentence of low self-esteem and not okay-ness.

    I had worked hard all my adult life on my self-awareness and self-love with therapy, self-help books, and humility! How dare she rob me of my self-definition and my purpose of showing others how to be okay. Who was I supposed to be now?

    A week and many journal pages later, I wanted to be done marinating in my indignation, so I crossed the grassy field to the library, intending to check out any and all books on self-esteem. When I explained what had happened, the librarians agreed that it’s hard to fill your self-esteem cup up if you don’t know what that cup or its contents looks like. Wise souls those women.

    At home, I read and thought and sat with my low self-esteem verdict. And then unexpectedly, I began to feel a new peacefulness. My anxiety was diminishing. Dissipating. Disappearing.

    If I was off the hook to fix the faults I saw in others, I would no longer have to fix the faults I saw in myself. My low self-esteem and anxieties were allowed. I could be just where I was until I was somewhere else. I was in a new place where I was okay with me, you could just be you, and where judgments no longer served a purpose. By naming the inner beast, I had somehow released it too.

    I am still attracted to people who self-admittedly need a little life tune-up, but I don’t obsess over “their” recipe for success or what “they” could do to be fixed. I make every day count toward my own healing.

    Eventually, with the help of medication, my anxiety felt like a phantom limb, a memory of a part of me that was no longer there, though I also need an occasional therapy tune-up.

    All I had to do was admit and own who and where I was to stop fixating on the fixing. If I saw her today, I’d thank Dr. Mary for the gift of my freedom. And I’d mention a couple of very good books on self-esteem I’d read.

  • Mindful Forgiveness: 4 Steps to Unlock the Healing Power of Your Mind

    Mindful Forgiveness: 4 Steps to Unlock the Healing Power of Your Mind

    “The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.” ~Steve Maraboli

    The key to healing is learning to let go of negative thoughts and feelings. Mindfulness will allow you to be aware of your thoughts and feelings; forgiveness will help in letting them go.

    Simple as it is in theory, putting it into practice may be harder.

    Mindfulness, being aware of your thoughts and feelings in the present moment, is not that difficult. But the trick is to do it amidst the chaos of our modern way of living.

    Forgiveness is even harder. Our mind sees the events of the past as lessons that are beneficial for our survival and wants to hold on to painful and irritating memories.

    But in the modern world, we rarely need this primal safety mechanism, and the grudges we hold hurt us more than they do good.

    What’s worse, the things we have done, or others have done to us, often make us angry. Anger can be a severely damaging mental condition; not only damaging to our minds but also to our bodies.

    However, taking the time to consciously combine mindfulness with forgiveness will open the way to profound emotional and physical healing, and will eventually lead to a joyful and healthy life.

    Being mindful of your thoughts and feelings will allow you to confront them instead of repressing them. Once confronted, the events that cause those thoughts and feelings can be examined and forgiven.

    I learned this the hard way, but now I want to share what I know so that you can skip the painful part.

    Pain is Often a Prompt to Grow

    Just a few years ago, I thought I had life figured out. I had done everything ‘right,’ succeeded in achieving my goals, and therefore, I expected to be happy.

    After years of rigorous studying, I landed a job at a corporate bank. It was everything I had ever dreamed of. I could finally afford a fancy car. I was surrounded by amazing people. I went to parties, traveled, and had fun. Life was (supposed to be) pretty sweet.

    As fun as it was, it was not healthy in any way. My health started to deteriorate quickly. I gained over thirty pounds, started to have pains in my back and legs, and was always tired.

    What’s worse is that no matter what I did, I could not be happy. I was constantly irritated or anxious and had no idea what was causing these feelings.

    Then one day a realization hit me: I was completely miserable.

    Why was I not feeling any joy in life? I could not understand what the matter was. There was no reason for me to feel how I did. I was doing everything that I had learned was supposed to bring me happiness, yet I still wasn’t happy.

    So there I was: a young man in my mid-thirties, gaining weight, feeling miserable, and losing my mental and physical health in the process.

    I had no idea how to deal with any of this. How was I supposed to deal with my anxious and angry mind when I had never learned to deal with my emotions, let alone express them in a healthy way? The only solution for me was to not confront my feelings at all.

    Before long, I developed a heart arrhythmia, which felt really uncomfortable, especially when trying to sleep. My pulse rate went up to 120 bpm and did not come down no matter how I tried to relax. Sometimes it felt like my heart would stop beating for brief periods of time.

    So I went to a hospital, but the doctor who examined me told me that he couldn’t determine the cause. Physically I was fine, and my EKG was perfect. Like taken from the pages of an anatomy textbook.

    This was, of course, very puzzling. How could my heart seem to be healthy when I was clearly suffering from arrhythmias?

    Lying there in the hospital bed, I had time to think deeply about life. And after some pondering, the answer became obvious.

    Illness Is Created First in the Mind

    My condition was psychosomatic. I understood that my inability to deal with my emotions was piling up negative thoughts and beliefs in my mind, which caused my body to react in a negative way. I had refused to be mindful of my thoughts and feelings, thus being unable to let go of them.

    Only when I was forced to stop and listen to how I truly felt could I find this answer. It was a hard and mandatory lesson in mindfulness, one that still sticks with me today.

    So I decided to confront my negative thoughts and emotions. The process was simple: Stop and take a deep breath. Be still and focus on breathing in and out slowly. Then tune in to how I feel. What are these feelings? Why am I feeling them? What are they trying to tell me?

    I noticed that under the surface, my most dominant feeling was anger.

    I was angry with myself. Why was I not able to deal with my emotions? Why hadn’t I listened to how I felt and tried to repress my emotions instead? Why did I let the situation get so bad?

    I was angry with my parents and teachers. Why didn’t they show me how to express emotions in a healthy way? All I was ever told was “crying is weakness,” and “being angry is not okay; go to your room until you calm down.” Sometimes it was not even okay to show love or affection. So I learned to repress my emotions.

    I was also angry with society. I felt that the only thing I had ever heard about how to be happy was wrong. I did not find happiness by achieving goals or getting material wealth, as is so often taught by society (and everyone else around us for that matter). I had the education, the career, the money, the car, and so on. Yet I was miserable.

    But I knew that it was not necessary to be angry with myself or others. I was only doing what I had learned was right. Likewise, what others had taught me about life, feelings, and happiness was what they had learned themselves. They did not know any better, and their intentions were good.

    So I decided to start forgiving. I used mindfulness meditation to connect to my thoughts and feelings.

    And when I was deeply immersed in my mindfulness meditation and focused on a feeling, often a memory popped into my mind. It was something that someone had said or done that had made me feel angry or afraid.

    I then “healed the memory” through an exercise where I forgave the people involved.

    And wouldn’t you know it, when I started to forgive the things that I or others had done in the past, I healed almost instantly.

    I got rid of all the pain in my mind and body, and there was no sign of arrhythmia anymore. I almost couldn’t believe it. With this simple combination of mindfully identifying thoughts and feelings, then forgiving the people that caused them, I healed my body in two days.

    Two days. That’s all it took to heal over ten years of neglect.

    I also found my mental well-being improving by leaps and bounds. I felt peaceful and happy. I started to see the joy in everyday moments, which I hadn’t for years. I realized that the opportunity to feel joyful was always there, but I’d been so occupied with the past and the future that I was unable to see it.

    The 4 Levels of Forgiveness

    This is what I did, and you can try this too.

    1. Forgive yourself for what you did to yourself.
    2. Forgive yourself for what you did to someone else.
    3. Forgive others for what they did to you.
    4. Forgive others for everything they have done.

    Start with level one and work your way through the levels. With this exercise, you will start to feel better in a matter of days.

    For levels one and two, forgiving yourself, try this simple exercise:

    Think about something you regret. Stand in front of a mirror, look yourself in the eyes, and say, “I forgive you. You did the best you could at the moment. You didn’t know any better.” Repeat this in your mind, or even better, say it out loud. Do it at least five times. After you are done, close your eyes and take a deep breath. Relax.

    This might be the hardest one of the exercises. For some reason, we tend to hold a grudge against our past selves. But it doesn’t do any good to be unforgiving. For a long time, I was guilty of thinking, “I’ll never forgive myself for what I did!” But as I started to do this exercise just once a day, I quickly started to feel like a weight was being lifted off my shoulders.

    For levels three and four, forgiving others, try this quick meditation:

    Close your eyes and relax. Breathe in and out slowly three times. Think about a memory that’s bothering you. Imagine the situation as vividly as possible and pay close attention to the person that’s the cause of your negative feeling.

    Then, imagine the scene you are in starts to fill with bright, warm light. Like the midday sun on a beautiful summer day. Imagine yourself approaching the person that’s causing the suffering and saying to them, “I forgive you. You did the best you could at the moment. You didn’t know any better.” Then imagine giving them a warm, loving, forgiving hug.

    If you feel like you need help with this, you can imagine anyone you want, even multiple people, there with you to give their support. If you so choose, you may even bring to the scene a higher power to help you.

    Done! Open your eyes and take a deep breath. Relax. You may already feel a little lighter, but don’t worry if this takes several tries. It may not be instantaneous or easy, but it’s definitely worth it.

    Everyone Is Doing Their Best (Including You)

    Forgive yourself for not knowing any better at the time. Forgive others for acting the only way they knew how. You acted the way you had learned, and so did everyone else. Please don’t blame yourself and try to forgive others for their behavior. By holding on to fear, anger, or hate, you will ultimately hurt yourself.

    Forgiveness will give you peace of mind. It will allow you to live mindfully and enjoy the moment, which you now understand as a perfect opportunity to express who you are. You will be able to let go of the past and stop worrying about the future, and your life will start to fill with peace and joy.

  • The Agony of Anxious Attachment and How to Attract Better Relationships

    The Agony of Anxious Attachment and How to Attract Better Relationships

    “If you don’t love yourself, you’ll always be looking for someone else to fill the void inside you, but no one will ever be able to do it.” ~Lori Deschene

    There are four attachment styles including anxious, avoidant, anxious/avoidant, and secure.

    Attachment theory teaches us that the way in which we attach ourselves to our romantic partner mimics the relationship we had with our primary caregivers growing up.

    So, if you were like me and had parents who were not physically or emotionally present, you grew up feeling a void within yourself and always worrying if you were lovable. Because of this void, you feel unlovable and unworthy of love, which causes you to be drawn to partners who are considered avoidant.

    An avoidant partner is someone who believes their independence is more important than being in any relationship. They feel uncomfortable opening up to others. They prefer a casual hook up over an intimate relationship. And the moment they begin to feel vulnerable or like they like you too much, they ghost.

    Suddenly that super cute date you both planned gets canceled or pushed back with no explanation, and you are left questioning your worth and what you possibly did wrong. I know because I have been there before.

    In a way, your subconscious is trying to recreate the experiences you had growing up. If, for example, you told your parents you loved them and tried to hug them, and they responded with “Stop being so touchy” and “Get off of me,” you began to normalize being rejected when you expressed love. So now, your subconscious is drawn to avoidant partners who react in the same way your primary caregivers did.

    Our attachment styles play a huge role in our relationships, and our relationships impact our mental health. If you are a person with an anxious attachment style and you’re subconsciously drawn to avoidant partners, you will go from one toxic relationship to the next.

    If you are someone who is anxious, you tend to:

    • Quickly attach; you go from 0 to 100 when you like someone.
    • Worry constantly if they will stop loving/liking you.
    • Worry they don’t feel as deeply for you as you do for them.
    • Fear if they get to know the real you, they will no longer love you and will leave.
    • Think “I will never ever find anyone else” or “This is as good as it gets” when thinking about your relationship, even though you know deep down inside you’re not getting your needs met.

    Back in 2018, I decided to seek out therapy for the first time. I was a young grad student with a bright academic future ahead of me, but this was also the time I decided I was ready to date—and oh boy, did that open a can of worms.

    I went from being this super cool, calm, and collected young woman to constantly feeling anxious. “Why hasn’t my date texted me yet?” “It’s been four hours since I texted him.” “Does he not like me anymore?” These were just some of the ruminating thoughts that kept echoing in my head. I was losing it.

    I didn’t know it at the time, but I kept attracting men who were avoidant, and the more I felt them trying to put distance between us, the more obsessed I became with closing the gap. I wanted to feel close to them; I wanted them to love me because if they didn’t, it meant something was wrong with me.

    You know how people say, “If they’re not into you, it’s their loss?” To me, it didn’t feel that way. To me, it felt that I had to win their love, and if I didn’t win it, it meant I wasn’t worthy of their time and attention. I began to hyperfocus on every detail of our interactions. I began to notice if they texted me back with a period at the end of a sentence or if they added an emoji.

    I would even time how long it took for them to reply to me. If I was dating someone and they usually responded to my texts within two hours, that meant that I was able to feel safe and relaxed for that first hour, but as soon as it was getting closer to hitting that two-hour mark, I would feel the anxiety creep up.

    I could feel the anxiety in my body, starting with my stomach. It would feel tense and tender, then my shoulders would feel tense and my appetite would disappear. I lost about twenty pounds during this time in my life from the stress and anxiety I couldn’t get under control.

    I even developed a bald spot at the top of my head. I was baffled at the quick deterioration of my mental and physical health. A few months ago, I had been a new grad student, excited about life and building a successful career, and now I was barely holding on and smiling to seem sane.

    I have an anxious attachment style, so I become hypersensitive to the tiniest of shifts within somebody’s tone, body, facial movements, the words they use, etc. If my date said, “I love you” one day and the next “I like you a lot,” that was enough for me to ruminate on for the rest of the week.

    I knew that something was wrong and that I needed to get my emotions back under control, so I began to look for help online. I landed on Tiny Buddha many times, and it was extremely helpful to read other people’s experiences so I could better navigate my situation.

    Since I couldn’t force my romantic partners to meet my needs, I thought, It must be me. I need to chill out and not expect so much from them. I can change. And change, I tried. I read countless articles on how to let go of expectations.

    I convinced myself that I was the problem, that I was expecting too much from a boyfriend. I thought that men were just incapable of meeting my needs and showing up for me the way I did for them. Because up to this point in my life, I had never experienced a man being consistently loving. At one point, I even tried to cleanse myself of my “bad energy” by doing a Limpia (cleansing).

    I really wanted to be the issue, because if I was the issue, I could be in control and fix it. But the harder I tried to change and loosen my expectations, the more deeply I fell into a depression.

    As you can see, the way we attach ourselves to romantic partners can affect our mental health, and if we’re not aware of the type of partners we are attracting, we can fall into a cycle of going from one toxic relationship to the next.

    Going to therapy and seeking help was the best decision I made for myself. I was able to have someone point out to me the toxic cycle I found myself in. If you find yourself in this same toxic cycle and are ready to break out of it, there are a few things you can do.

    1. Admit to yourself that you are ready to break the cycle.

    Be honest with yourself. Identify the ways in which you have betrayed yourself by choosing partners that only hurt you. Be committed to ending this cycle.

    2. Begin to do inner child work.

    When you feel hurt and lonely and want to reach out to those toxic partners, instead, visualize the you that you were at five to seven years old and connect with the little you. Write them a letter. What would you tell little you if you were feeling hurt and lonely? I would tell myself  I love you. You are safe. I will always be here for you.

    3. Write a list of all the negative feelings and emotions your partner triggered within you.

    Write a list of all the reasons why you need to stay away from this person and reference it anytime you feel like you want to reach out to them.

    4. Regulate your nervous system.

    When our sympathetic nervous system becomes activated, our fight-or-flight response turns on and that makes it so hard for us to tolerate the discomfort of separation from the person we’re anxiously attached to. A breakup can feel like imminent danger, so we begin to panic and go back to our comfort zone, staying in a toxic relationship.

    Some simple ways to regulate your nervous system include taking a barefoot walk in nature, doing a moderate to intense workout, practicing breathing exercises, and/or listening to music that soothes you.

    5. Begin to develop a self-love and self-care routine.

    You can begin to journal daily for ten minutes as a way to reconnect with yourself, work through your feelings, and identify thought and behavior patterns. You can make a list of your physical, mental, and emotional needs and identify small ways to meet them each day. You can go on weekly dates with yourself; go out to eat and watch a movie.

    Do whatever it is that will make you feel happy and full. When you feel better about yourself and more comfortable being alone with yourself, you’ll be less apt to turn to another person to fill a void inside yourself.

    You get to create the life and experiences you want to live. And while it may feel like you will never find the right partner for you because of your anxious attachment style, that is simply not true. When you begin to fill yourself up with love, even if you attract an avoidant partner, you will leave at the first sign of trouble rather than staying and trying to fix it.

    Eventually, you will meet a partner who is secure and/or willing to become securely attached to you.

    You will find someone to whom you can voice your anxiety, and instead of them dismissing you and telling you to “stop being so sensitive,” they will respond with “What can I do to ease some of the anxiety you’re feeling?” or “What can I do to help you feel safe?” Remember that you are always in control of creating the reality you want to live in.

  • 10 Ways to Calm Anxious Thoughts and Soothe Your Nervous System

    10 Ways to Calm Anxious Thoughts and Soothe Your Nervous System

    “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” ~Jack Canfield

    Freezing in fear is something I have done since I was a child.

    My first home was an unsafe one, living with my alcoholic granddad. Once upon a time, I didn’t know life without fear.

    I learned young to scan for danger. How were everyone’s moods? Were the adults okay today? I would freeze and be still and quiet in an attempt to keep myself safe and control an eruption.

    Unknown to me, between the ages of conception and seven years old, my nervous system was being programmed. The house I grew up in was shaping how safe I felt in my body.

    Living in a house with domestic abuse and alcoholism and losing my beautiful grandmother, who cared for me at five, was enough to make that foundation within me shaky.

    I learned to be on high alert, scanning for danger always, and became incredibly hypervigilant and super sensitive to the moods of others.

    Sometimes this superpower of mine kept me safe as a child. My dad wouldn’t always lose his temper if I was quiet enough. My mum would be available to me if I sensed her mood and provided her with comfort.

    As I grew, this superpower of mine caused me issues.

    I would worry all of the time about the thousand different ways something could go wrong.

    I couldn’t enjoy the moment and what I had right now, as my brain would be scanning for the next problem.

    I couldn’t sleep.

    My anxiety was like this monster in my mind, consumed by all the what-if scenarios, and as a result, I just couldn’t move forward.

    Life didn’t feel safe. Even though I no longer lived in an unsafe environment, my body and my brain were still there.

    This anxiety stopped me from applying for new jobs, challenging myself, dating, healing from the past, changing, and growing.

    I would be frozen by the fear of all that could go wrong. I felt stuck, frustrated with myself, and full of self-hate for living a life that made me miserable.

    The penny dropped one day. I finally realized that this fear was all in my head—99% of the things I worried about didn’t manifest into reality. My anxious thoughts didn’t make anything any better, but they were ruining what I had right now.

    Here are the ten steps that have helped reduce anxiety, fear, and overwhelm and help foster a life of happiness.

    1. Give that anxious, worrying voice in your head a name.

    This creates separation between you and the voice. You are not your thoughts. This is a voice from your ego concerned with survival, and you have the choice to listen or choose a more empowering thought. However, this voice could be sensing real danger, so listen to see if it is a risk to you right now or a potential risk that could happen.

    If real, then of course take action after some deep breaths. Otherwise, continue with the steps.

    2. The minute you hear the voice, recognize it is a sign that your nervous system is dysregulated and moving into fight-or-flight mode.

    Then choose to pause and take a few deep breaths. Coherent breathing can help calm down this response. This means take deep breaths in through your nose, inflating your belly for five seconds, and exhale while deflating your belly for five.

    3. Create a list of tools you can use when your mind and body are about to go down the what-if train.

    This might mean lying on the grass, dancing to your favorite song, EFT (emotional freedom technique) tapping, doing a yoga pose, or journaling to discharge fear. The minute you notice the voice, do something off the list.

    4. Repeat a mantra to calm your nervous system.

    Find a statement that helps calm you down and repeat it when the anxiety voice is back. My favorite is “If X happens, then I will deal with it.”

    5. Get in the present moment.

    What can you hear? What can you see? What can you smell? What can you feel? I like to get outside when I do this. Feel my feet on the grass and take in the moment.

    6. Place your hand on your heart and remind yourself you are safe.

    It probably doesn’t feel that way. But feelings aren’t facts, and your thoughts can only hurt you if you let them.

    7. Notice if you have moved into a freeze state.

    When we first start to worry, our nervous systems go into fight-or-flight mode, and adrenaline and stress hormones pump into our bodies. Then when it all feels too much, we freeze. We’re literally not able to do anything and go into despair.

    You can find the tools that work for you to move from freeze and slowly back up to fight or flight and then up to your calm state. It is a ladder with freeze at the bottom and calm at the top. (It’s called the polyvagal ladder.)

    You can split the list in point three into what helps you through freeze and what helps you out of fight/flight. A great way out of freezing is movement. Even five minutes of jumping jacks will get those stress hormones pumping. Then do something to calm you down, like deep breathing.

    8. Choose to trash the thought.

    Is this something that is a worry for another day? Imagine putting it in a trash bin. Or you can even write it down and put it in the bin physically.

    9. Start to notice your mental state throughout the day.

    Are you calm or triggered by worry? Are you frozen? Or is your heart pumping so your stress response is turned on and you are in fight-or-flight mode? What tool can bring you back to calm or move you up the ladder?

    10. Write what you are grateful for in this moment.

    Noticing what’s going well right now can disarm fear.

    Slowly, these steps can help you to regulate, discharge fear, and allow your nervous system to heal. You may not have been safe as a child, but you have the power to feel safe now.

    You have the power to change your circumstances and remove triggers that are recreating that feeling of unsafety.

    Your fear in your body could be very real and giving you information that maybe a particular relationship, job, or environment is not safe for you. Take notice and make baby steps to create a life that makes you feel safe, as this is the foundation for happiness. Give yourself what you longed for as a child.

    Yes, hypervigilance may be something that got programmed into your nervous system young to help you survive, but you don’t have to let it hold you back now.

    Changing, growing, and healing can feel scary and unsafe, but as you take those baby steps to create a healthier you, your confidence and self-esteem will grow. Your brain will get new evidence that you are safe, and those worrying thoughts will slowly disappear. A new worry may come, but then you can just repeat the process.

    These steps helped me stop living life small and in fear and allowed me to go after my big dreams—finding love, progressing in my career, and even buying a house.

    Anxious thoughts no longer hold me back. I just watch them with curiosity and know the steps I need to take to move through them. I took back the power I lost as a child, and I know you can too!

  • My Deepest, Darkest Secret: Why I Never Felt Good Enough

    My Deepest, Darkest Secret: Why I Never Felt Good Enough

    “Loving ourselves through the process of owning our story is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.” ~Brené Brown

    Lunge, turn, reverse, jump, land and rebound, push, pull, cut, run, double turn, fling, pause…

    Not good enough! Smooth the transitions, make it cleaner, find more ease!

    Heart pounds, ragged breath, muscles burn…

    You need more weight on the lunge and point your damn feet when you jump. Do it again.

    Repeat. Lunge, turn, reverse, jump, land and rebound, push, pull, cut, run, double turn, fling, pause…

    What is your problem? Why is it so sloppy? Clean it up! Do it again.

    Not good enough, do it again carved a deep groove into my brain, branding it like a wild bull by a hot iron. Not good enough. My mind, not my teacher, was brutalizing me, taunting me, teaching me “discipline” to improve my dancing.

    I improved—enough to become a professional dancer—but I couldn’t internalize or recognize any of my accomplishments. 

    Even after being asked to join a dance company before I graduated college, I continued to struggle with “not being good enough.” Despite the many compliments I received for my performance and choreography, I brushed them away thinking that they were lying to me, just placating me with false praise.

    I faltered in my performance, felt paralyzed by fear that would not always fade away once the performance began, distrusted my ability to remember the choreography, always fought the anxiety of being in front of an audience, and cried oceans of tears because I could never reach the bar I had set for myself. My confidence and faith in my ability to perform to the level that I wanted to plummeted.

    I loved dancing so much. I loved moving my body through space, the creative process, and working with a group of talented dancers to create shows. I loved rehearsals because I felt relaxed and at ease, like I could perform with the freedom that I couldn’t feel onstage. I loved refining and smoothing transitions and was described as a “liquid” dancer. I loved expressing my style through my movement.

    But the tension between my passion and my insecurity created an internal trip cord. I didn’t trust myself. In rehearsal I was militant about practicing the steps over and over, even when everyone was exhausted, because I still didn’t trust that I knew the choreography.

    I had made mistakes before, blanked out onstage, and felt deep humiliation and shame for not performing someone else’s choreography as well as I should have or meeting a paying audience’s expectations. I was proud that I had so much stamina to rehearse twice as hard as I needed to. If I rehearsed extra. then maybe it would finally quiet the critical voice in my head.

    It didn’t quiet the critic and the cycle continued.

    The shame of being a mediocre dancer led to working harder, but fear of making mistakes or not reaching the goal led to fear of being seen as mediocre, which led, once again, to shame. Shame is dark, subtle, slippery. Over and over, I went through this cycle, the shame cave becoming deeper and darker, until I was lost in it, burned out from so much effort and so little reward.  

    After ten years of pushing myself to learn, pushing against my fears, pushing myself to excel, and beating myself up along the way, I couldn’t push through any longer. I had nothing left to give. The trickling current of anxiety and depression became a flood and swallowed me up into a profound depression. Everything felt arduous, even the simplest daily tasks.

    I looked at people in the streets around me and thought, “How is everybody not depressed? How is anybody smiling?” But they were—smiling, laughing, moving through their days effortlessly, accomplishing wonderful things—and I was not. I was depleted of all vitality.

    I quit performing and turned to my yoga practice to help heal from the burnout. I learned therapeutic yogic principles about balancing effort and ease, surrender, non-grasping, contentment, non-violence (even toward oneself).

    It seemed only natural to become certified as a yoga teacher and, as I began to teach, I encountered the same insecurities. The same thoughts arose—I need to be an excellent yoga teacher, need to create excellent sequences, have excellent pacing, use excellent language to help guide students into an excellent experience. I felt the same performance anxiety—debilitating self-consciousness. 

    What are they thinking about me? Am I giving them what they need? There are so many different people in my class. They are different ages with different bodies and different life experiences. What do I know to teach other people?  I have only ever been a dancer so how do I know what other people need for their bodies?  

    I didn’t want to harm anyone because I didn’t know enough or have enough information and, once again, I quit after a couple of years.

    My deepest darkest secret, feeling inherently flawed and chronically inadequate, took up space in my heart and my throat. Rent-free. In fact, I was paying for its unwelcome residence. 

    My next strategy was simply to take the pressure off myself. I chose low-pressure jobs that didn’t require a big performance from me. I was lucky and these were jobs that I liked that suited me well as I slowly healed from years of chronic self-abuse.

    In my early forties I came across a term that I identified with—imposter syndrome.

    High achievers’ fear of being exposed as a fraud or imposter. Unable to accept accolades or compliments or awards for one’s talent, skill, or experience.

    Imposters suffer from chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraudulence that override any feelings of success or external proof of their competence.

    I thought, “That sounds like something I can relate to,” but I wasn’t ready to face it head on. I was finally feeling contented in a job that I liked, without the pressures of performing in ways that touched that deep insecurity, and I wanted to soak that contentment in.

    And then Covid-19 happened, and I lost that job.

    Midway through the pandemic, in an effort to be proactive about the next phase of my life, I turned my attention to developing a yoga therapy practice. Create a mission and vision. Come up with content and language. Identify my audience. Create a website and so on. And again, I came up against the deepest darkest secret that had been so blissfully dormant for several years. I was surprised at its potency, but I decided I was ready to face it head on.

    I remembered imposter syndrome and started researching again. Again, I checked all the boxes—except one. In so many articles that I read, examples were given of well-known people who struggled with imposter syndrome. These are people who have achieved extraordinary things, are in the public eye, and have either overcome or pushed through their demons to go on to incredible accomplishments.

    Naturally, I thought, “Well, I’m no celebrity, have no major awards or accomplishments to speak of, and I haven’t achieved that much in my career, so this probably doesn’t actually apply to me.”  

    Such is imposter syndrome.

    Comparison to others (who we deem higher achieving than we are) will trigger a cascade of shame and doubt. 

    Few people actually talk about imposter syndrome—either they don’t know about it or don’t want to discuss it because of the deep feelings of shame or insecurity that accompany it.

    I want you who silently struggle with imposter syndrome or dysmorphia or profound shame and insecurity to know that I, too, have struggled, but it’s getting better.

    Drop by drop, my cup fills as I take every opportunity to be kind to myself where in the past I would have criticized.

    Having studied positive neuroplasticity, I now understand our brains’ negativity bias and the protective role of the inner critic. I have a newfound appreciation for our natural protective mechanisms and gratitude for the ability of the brain to learn and grow new skills.

    I’m starting small, taking small steps to create an inner garden of welcome. A beautiful nurturing place where I invite one or two for tea and laugh and share experiences and stories.

    And after some time, I hope the garden will expand and the walls begin to crumble a little and I can have a small group for tea, stories, and dancing. And then gradually over time, the garden will expand further so that I can host more people in for tea, stories, dancing, and games.

    I can imagine that remnants of the walls will remain as a reminder of where I’ve been, and I can look at them with gratitude for keeping me safe for a while as I softened and settled and tended to the garden within.

  • The Exhausted Extrovert: How I Stopped Worrying About How People See Me

    The Exhausted Extrovert: How I Stopped Worrying About How People See Me

    “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 people in my life would call me an extrovert, and I often refer to myself with that label as well. On the surface, I appear friendly, talkative, and enthusiastic, and those characteristics became part of my identity at an early age. I enjoy being around other people and value my interpersonal relationships.

    I also participate in a variety of social groups and remain connected to friends near and far despite our busy schedules. I have often attributed my love of people to the fact that I am an only child who always wanted to spend more time with kids my own age.

    Despite my friendly nature, I usually felt drained after social interactions, especially when they involved large groups of people. I dreaded small talk, mingling at parties, and attending events where I was the only new person in the group.

    For example, my anxiety was sky high when I met my husband’s large group of close friends for the first time. I felt intimidated because they had all known each other since preschool, which automatically made me feel like an outsider. As a child and young adult, I tended to avoid situations where I felt uncomfortable, preferring to focus on the environments and people that I already knew.

    Even in familiar social situations, I still often came home feeling depleted. I enjoyed myself during these events but required a lot of downtime to fully recover and feel like myself again. This reaction confused me because I thought extroverts craved and felt energized by social interactions. 

    I struggled to classify myself because neither introvert nor extrovert truly matched my personal experience. I often felt torn between wanting to attend social events and worrying that I would feel exhausted afterward. These conflicting desires prompted me to explore the reasons why being social fed and depleted my soul at the same time.

    This journey would hopefully allow me to develop a deeper level of self-awareness and learn how to take better care of myself. As I paid more attention to my thoughts, feelings, and behavior at social events, I noticed that I was hyper focused on how I came across to others. I wanted to be liked, make a good impression, and be viewed as fun.

    I frequently wondered what people genuinely thought of me, including friends that I had known for years. I also worried a great deal about others’ feelings and wanted to make sure that everyone was having a good time. As the host of parties or gatherings, I went out of my way to ensure that the house was spotless, the food options were plentiful, and the environment was comfortable.

    I avoided choosing group activities out of fear that people would not like my decisions and from a desire to be known as the “easy-going, chill friend.” Even when I wasn’t the host, I found myself studying everyone’s reactions to see if they were happy and had their needs met fully. I made it my responsibility to take care of everyone even though no one asked me to be the superhero.

    If someone wasn’t in a good mood or a conflict arose, I immediately intervened to be the peacemaker or crack a joke to lighten the mood. I also did my best to keep the focus and attention away from me. I acted like an interviewer, asking other people endless questions and rarely sharing about my own life.

    I hated any silence within the conversation and would quickly fill it by bringing up a new topic or giving compliments. I began to realize that even my closest friends didn’t know much about me because I was so guarded with them. My fear of boring others, seeming conceited, or talking too much prevented me from being honest and authentic.

    For most of my life, I thought these behaviors were typical and even smart ways to be a good friend. I wanted others to accept me and enjoy being around me, but my ways of accomplishing these goals left me exhausted at the end of the day. Upon realizing how I navigated social interactions, I chose to examine why I needed these techniques and how they affected my view of interpersonal relationships.

    Up until this point, I believed that my behaviors were simply proof of my strong social skills, compassion, and emotional intelligence. I also assumed that most people thought and acted similarly to me because it was so natural and automatic in my life. In reality, my behavior involved coping strategies that I had developed from an early age due to an intense fear of being left out, disliked, and alone.  

    I came to learn that as an empath, I needed to set emotional boundaries to prevent myself from becoming depleted. A healthy empath holds space for another person’s emotions and experiences without making it their responsibility to fix, save, or protect the person. In order to be accepted and liked, I became a chameleon who adapted to any environment, didn’t speak up, and focused on pleasing everyone else at my own expense.

    In doing so, I didn’t allow people to get close or learn about the real me. My outward focus on how everyone else was thinking, feeling, and acting left me exhausted and overwhelmed because I took on their problems as my own. I remained fearful to share my true opinions, make any decisions, or take up space in social settings.

    Fading into the background felt safer, easier, and more comfortable to me, but it didn’t allow me to relax and be fully present. I constantly scanned the environment for any issues, working to please others and control what people thought of me. On top of that, I made it a priority to appear easy, effortless, and relaxed so that no one would see my internal struggles.

    I didn’t want to appear stressed, tired, or unhappy because I could possibly be viewed as “needy” or “too much.” My hypervigilance only intensified when I was around new people because I desperately wanted to make a good first impression and earn their validation. After a social gathering lasting only a few hours, it was no wonder that I felt so drained and needed to recharge.

    I began to realize that while I do love people and enjoy interacting with others, these situations would be more fun if I slowed down, checked in with myself, and focused on being truly present. I needed to practice turning the spotlight on myself for the first time, making choices and doing activities that worked for me. 

    When I allowed other people to manage their own feelings rather than jumping in to fix, save, and protect them, it freed up more time and energy for me. I also allowed myself to open up and engage fully in conversations, sharing small details at first and allowing other people to carry the conversation. These behaviors showed me that it was safe to take up space and let people get to know me.

    Instead of blending in and always going with the flow, I could practice offering my opinion, choosing a restaurant or a movie for the group, and turning down social opportunities when I was tired or uninterested in the outing.

    I knew that I needed to take these steps slowly because they would require courage, and I didn’t want to give up out of overwhelm. I also begin learning to trust that people wouldn’t abandon or reject me for speaking up and setting boundaries.

    And if I did lose friendships or people didn’t love everything about me, I could handle that reality and survive. My mantra became “I am not for everyone, and that is okay.”  

    Since that time, I have made strides toward relaxing, being present, and releasing control, allowing myself to “just be.” Some days and situations are easier than others to practice this new mindset. But now that I have self-awareness and understanding, I can more easily catch myself when I engage in people pleasing behaviors to earn love, praise, and acceptance.

    I pause, take a deep breath, and remember that I am allowed to take up space, that I deserve to have fun and be myself, and that my needs, feelings, and opinions matter. In doing so, I enjoy social interactions, even with new people, more than I ever did. And that has made all the difference for a social butterfly like me.