Tiny Buddha

Tag: controlling

  • The Consequences of Perfectionism and How to Embrace Life’s Messiness

    The Consequences of Perfectionism and How to Embrace Life’s Messiness

    “Perfectionism doesn’t make you feel perfect. It makes you feel inadequate.” ~Maria Shriver

    My name is Steffi, and I am a recovering perfectionist. This might come as a surprise to those who know me because I don´t fit the stereotype. The inside of my bag is as messy as my hair, and I always give off the impression that I left the house five minutes too late (which is usually true). My wardrobe is not color-coordinated, and I haven’t organized a flawless birthday party yet.

    It also goes against how I have always seen myself. My greatest life skill is my ability to freestyle—to think on my feet and go with the flow. Because it goes against everything I believed about myself, it took me a long time to recognize and accept my perfectionism.

    And yet, in the areas that I truly care about, I hold myself to the highest standards. I become rigid and controlling. I feel no joy or flow, just a crippling pressure to be perfect.

    In my work, I am always analyzing where I need to do better. I constantly wonder whether I am a good enough partner, friend, and family member (and the answer is usually no). And I really want to live a sustainable life and feel guilty when I am not meeting my own standards.

    Even in the areas where I seem to have embraced my own messiness, I kind of wish it was different. I judge the inside of my bag and my mediocre event planning skills. I feel judgment about all the parts of my life that don´t feel perfectly put together.

    To my great frustration, my perfectionism has the opposite of the desired effect: I become worse at what I do. I am no longer able to be flexible, experimental, and curious. I notice that when my perfectionist tendencies are at their strongest, my creativity doesn’t flow, and I can’t show up in my relationships the way I want to.

    When my perfectionism feels extra strong, I self-sabotage by just not showing up at all. I choose the disappointment of what could have been over the potential pain of being confronted with my own shortcomings.

    The difference between healthy self-reflection and perfectionism feels very clear to me. When my perfectionist tendencies show up, my body becomes tense, my breathing shallow, and my thoughts scattered. I want to immediately go and fix things and drop whatever else I was doing in that moment.

    Perfectionism can be seen as a positive force for improvement and progress, but it does not come from a positive place. It is a fear-based approach, and underneath it lies a fear that if we are not perfect at what we set out to do, we are not good enough. And because we set the standards impossibly high for ourselves, we will probably not live up to them.

    Underneath it lies a fear of criticism, not just from others but mostly from ourselves. When someone finds fault in what we do, that is the confirmation of what we feared all along: that we simply are not good enough at what we care about the most.

    While, for some people, perfectionism brings them great success in their career, it often comes with a high cost. It can lead to frustration, exhaustion, and burnout. The intense pressure we put on ourselves can rob us of our joy and peace.

    When the pressure gets really intense, it can even lead to procrastination. As we are convinced that we can never live up to the standards we put on ourselves, we stop trying altogether. This way, we avoid criticism from ourselves and others, but it also robs us of the chance of achieving something meaningful.

    Perfectionism is, in essence, the fear of not being good enough. We believe that if only we are perfect in that area, we will finally be worthy of good things: a successful career, money, love from other people, or health and well-being. We subconsciously believe that by giving it our all, we can protect ourselves and our loved ones from the pain of feeling that we are falling short.

    The problem is that, eventually, we do fall short. Because perfectionism means we have set standards for ourselves that we can´t always fulfill. Life and other people and their opinions are simply not always within our control.

    The irony is that perfectionism not only can’t stop us from falling short, but it can also encourage it. Oftentimes, we become so critical of ourselves that we don´t even try, or when we do, it stops us from fully showing up.

    While my perfectionism pops up from time to time, I now know how to recognize it and stop myself from spiraling. I focus on calming my mind and body and making space for the joy and messiness of life. If you recognize this feeling of your perfectionism running the show, here are some things you can do.

    1. Learn to recognize your own critical voice.

    What are the areas of life that you feel most protective of? What are the fears and doubts that come up when you think about those areas of life? What do you believe it says about you when you don´t live up to your standards?

    You can even go back and see if you can remember when you first heard that critical voice. Does it sound like your own, or like the voice of a teacher, parent, or someone else you know?

    Reflecting on what your critical voice sounds like and becoming familiar with it will give you insight into where it comes from. It also helps you recognize your perfectionism when it comes up in your day-to-day life.

    2. When your perfectionism shows up, pause and take a deep breath.

    This might feel counterintuitive, as your perfectionism probably wants to propel you into action. It can be very tempting to follow the voice and fix what you feel needs fixing. But this only supports your perfectionism.

    Focusing on your breath gets you out of your head and your critical thoughts, even if it is just for a moment. It then gives you a choice: Do you want to act from a place of fear or move forward with more kindness toward yourself?

    3. Notice the sensations in your body and make loving space for them.

    When you have taken a moment to breathe, see if you can notice your physical sensations.

    Perfectionism means your nervous system feels activated, so where do you notice that in your body? Where do you feel tension or contraction?

    Give yourself the space to really experience what you are feeling. It does not need to go away or be any different. Make loving space for your experience. Just breathe and feel.

    As you breathe into the tension, you might feel emotions coming up. Just let them flow. With some loving attention, you will probably feel the tension dissolve, even if it is just a little.

    Your perfectionism is a form of self-protection. It is there to keep you safe from pain, disappointment, and rejection. By giving the experience your gentle care, you are giving it the opposite from the criticism it usually receives.

    4. Implement a calming practice.

    Perfectionism is fear-based, which means you are no longer looking at your situation from a neutral perspective. Calming your nervous system helps you open up to a new perspective, as your mind feels calmer when your body is relaxed.

    It is really helpful to find out what feels calming to you. It could be humming, taking deep breaths, practicing gentle movement, or looking at the clouds. For me personally, it is walking barefoot, feeling soft fabrics around my body, and hearing the sound of the ocean.

    Finding your own calm resources means you will always be able to access them. Over time, this will help you feel triggered for shorter periods of time, and it will be less intense.

    5. Allow yourself to be a little messy.

    Make the conscious choice to be a little messy in the areas that you feel most perfectionist about. Life is a little messy, and so are we. When you choose your messy moments, you become more equipped to handle them when they inevitably happen.

    Now, I am not saying “let everything go and be messy.” Instead, I encourage you to choose flexibility where before you felt rigid. It is like you are gently stretching your resilience for messiness.

    That could mean leaving the laundry for the next day, buying a birthday cake rather than making one, or allowing your unfinished art projects to be seen by your loved ones. Maybe it means giving yourself a day to eat unhealthy food, starting a new hobby that you have no talent for, or freestyling a presentation at work.

    6. Connect with your joy.

    Perfectionism and fear are the opposites of joy. Finding a little bit of joy in the areas you feel perfectionist about changes the narrative that you have about those areas. It can be incredibly liberating to invite in joy where you previously just felt pressure.

    So, whether your source of pressure is parenting, cooking, cleaning, your work, or all of the above, see where you can be a little creative. Try out a new recipe, make cleaning more fun with music, or go crazy with the decorations at the event you are organizing. Do a course that you enjoy, give yourself space to experiment at work, or take your kids to a theme park that you love.

  • How I Knew It Was Emotional Abuse: The Subtle Signs I Almost Missed

    How I Knew It Was Emotional Abuse: The Subtle Signs I Almost Missed

    “I hope you find love, but more importantly, I hope you’re strong enough to walk away from what love isn’t.” ~Tiffany Tomiko

    A few weeks after breaking up from what I thought was a loving relationship that in reality was sliding into an emotionally abusive one, I had a dream.

    In it, I was hiding from a group of dangerous people, but could see the footsteps of one of them coming toward me. Suddenly they saw me, and I pleaded to them, “Please, don’t kill me,” and they turned and left. When I emerged, I could see the victims all around me suffering from a fate I had been spared.

    I believe dreams relay information from our unconscious to our conscious mind, and that they hold huge significance in the processing that occurs while we sleep. I have no doubt at all that this dream signified the narrow escape I had from a man who was being emotionally abusive.

    The Cognitive Dissonance of Emotional Abuse

    I don’t use the term “emotional abuse” lightly, and I have struggled to apply it to the man I shared so much love with. Yet, one of the resources I used to understand what had been happening in my relationship was a podcast called “Love and Abuse,” which sums it all up so perfectly.

    Emotional abuse is a cycle that flips between loving moments and abusive ones, sending you on a rollercoaster ride toward a place you never wanted to end up. A result of the constant highs and lows is a state of mind that is unbalanced, ungrounded, and permanently confused. In this state, it becomes very hard to understand what’s happening.

    You’re caught between wanting to appease the person whose behavior is so hard to read and staying true to yourself. There is no part of you that wants to connect with your intuition; you only want to fix things and make them go back to the loving part.

    My relationship became a fog of confusion, as my brain struggled to understand how one moment it was loving and another it was abusive. This is a state of mind called “cognitive dissonance.” In the immediate aftermath of the relationship I read something that perfectly resonated with me—cognitive dissonance is when your heart needs time to catch up to what the mind already knows.

    Once I surfaced from the relationship, I could finally see the abusive part, as subtle as it was, and understand that it wasn’t healthy, without my heart getting in the way.

    The Moment I Knew It Was Emotional Abuse

    The realization that something was very wrong in my relationship dawned on me in the most fortunate way. We had been watching a program on Netflix called Maid. The series was about a young woman, isolated with a child and an emotionally abusive partner.

    You never see him hit her, yet the controlling behavior and shouting are there. Even though she doesn’t know that he’s abusive, she knows she needs to leave.

    As we watched, I could feel something shifting in my subconscious. I was seeing something playing out on screen that ran parallel to my life. I wasn’t with someone who was breaking things or yelling in my face, yet I was right on the edge of the cliff and he was about to lead me over the ledge.

    I just know, intuitively, that if I hadn’t gotten out of there, I would have slid downward to a place that would have been much harder to leave.

    The other lucky thing that happened to me was meeting someone who picked up the pieces of what I told her and showed me all the red flags. I had dismissed them before, not wanting to judge him for his choices, yet they were all there.

    He didn’t have any friends, he wasn’t close with his parents, he didn’t like me making plans without him, he got tense and silent, he would raise his voice at me, he was moody, he questioned my beliefs, he spoke badly about my family… all the signs were there.

    The Trauma Bond

    The trouble is, when you’re deep in it with someone, when they’ve love-bombed you so hard and fast that you’ve barely had time to breathe, when they’ve called you their soulmate and moved you in within months of dating and declare they want to marry you, you just can’t see the wood through the trees.

    Being loved feels so good, and that’s dangerous because love can blind you. Worse than that, when you’re in a cycle of love and abuse, whether or not the abuse is emotional or physical, the chemicals in your brain become severely dysregulated. This is called a trauma bond.

    The trauma bond is a chemical concoction made up from the abusive cycle—the bonding phase, where you’re showered with love, promises, and romance; the stress during the abuse; and the making up period afterward.

    It’s why making up feels so good after they’ve been angry or given you the silent treatment, and it’s why leaving someone hurts so very much. You’ve gone into withdrawal from your dopamine fix, and it’s horrific. You’re also stuck in that foggy state of confusion where you’re trying to align the messages you’re getting from your heart and your brain.

    The trouble is, they don’t match, and in this state of cognitive dissonance, which feels so deeply uncomfortable, you reach for the easiest, simplest, and safest answer—you listen to your heart. After all, what the heart wants, it gets.

    It’s this trauma bond that keeps people going back to an abusive partner. To add to this confusing chemistry, the emotional abuser will do everything to win you back, from bombarding you with messages and emails proclaiming their love and inability to live without you, to hurling their hurt and anger at you, guilt-tripping you right back into their arms.

    For someone whose self-esteem has been slowly whittled down in a relationship, this behavior is like a balm to your fragile soul. You feel so loved and needed that you fall right back into their trap. They say you’re their soulmate and you believe them, but after a period of making up, they can then continue the cycle of abuse right where they left off.

    They know you’re fragile, they know what you want to hear, and they are masters of manipulation. They pull at your heartstrings in every way they can, so be ready for it, and stay strong.

    Waking Up and Leaving

    I had no idea that it was emotional abuse, or what emotional abuse even was, until I started sharing my experience and reading about what others had been through. I think I was extremely lucky, because after seven intense months I gradually began to wake up to the spell I’d been under.

    It hasn’t been easy, and the feelings are still fresh and raw, which is why I wanted to write them down so quickly, as it’s powering my resolve to stay away from him.

    I also want to share the red flags that were there right under my nose that I couldn’t bring myself to examine at the time. I still have trouble believing that what transpired in our relationship wasn’t normal or healthy, which I think is all part of the process when leaving someone abusive. Recovery is starting to trust yourself rather than the person who was the source of your pain.

    Of course, I doubt myself and think I misunderstood it all. Part of me still thinks I’m exaggerating and making a fuss. A part of me also thinks about ways I could have responded to the abuse differently and what might have happened if I had. I also still miss him. Love doesn’t just switch off, but I know that’s my altered brain chemistry rather than true love.

    Then I remember the list I made of all the red flags—all the little incidents that happened, all the uneasy feelings of confusion, sadness, and wariness I felt—and I know I made the right decision to leave.

    Alarm Bells and Red Flags

    One of the main alarm bells that began to ring was how wary I was of what I said. I didn’t know what mood he would be in, so I was always trying to read the signals. If there was a tense silence, I knew it wasn’t good and tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible to avoid triggering him and making his mood worse.

    I also noticed that I was tiptoeing around on eggshells and making myself small and quiet, appeasing him and putting his happiness before mine. Putting someone first through fear of making them angry or upset isn’t love.

    I also began to tune into my mood, which was beginning to feel flat and joyless. At times, I thought I could be immune to his moods, but they affected me whether I was aware of it or not.

    I remember crying as he stormed out of the house, wondering what had gone so wrong. I remember feeling deeply confused when he picked a fight about something that made no sense to me. I remember feeling sad when he would turn from being gentle and loving to short-tempered and passive-aggressive in the flick of a switch.

    Controlling Behavior

    Another sign that slowly crept up on me were signs of control.

    I once told him about an appointment I’d made for the following day, and he became angry because I hadn’t told him sooner. One time, I was meeting a male friend who wanted to give me an acupressure treatment, and he said he felt uncomfortable having another man’s hands on me. He once mentioned how he didn’t like waiting to receive a reply to his messages, so I became nervous to always message him back as soon as possible.

    It got to the point where I felt scared to mention plans to see friends or see my family, and this is very wrong.

    The examples go on and on and, as you can see, they are small things, but added together they make up a very clear picture. We should all have the freedom to see who we choose, when we want, yet he wanted to spend every evening together, as that, in his opinion, was what a ‘proper relationship’ was about. It seemed he wanted me to feel guilty for needing my space.

    The last red flag was speaking badly of my family, who I am very close to. He used my need for independence from my family as a driving wedge between us. When my parents asked me to house-sit, he got angry, said they were using me, and made very subtle putdowns against them.

    Even I noticed how my behavior was changing and how I was spending less and less time seeing my family, a warning sign if ever there was one.

    Making the Decision to Leave

    Whether all his actions were conscious or unconscious, I know I made the right decision to leave. I thought I loved him, but I love myself far too much to ever put myself in a position like that again.

    I have a huge amount of empathy for him and remember the parts of him that are kind and loving, so I feel no anger, just sadness that he’s pushed love away through no fault but his own. I am not here to save or heal anyone, and if anyone places that responsibility on my shoulders or wants me to feel guilty that I am not helping them, then I am walking away.

    So my advice for you is this: If you feel like something isn’t right, it isn’t. This is your intuition talking to you, and it may save your life.

    You need to get away from the emotionally abusive person as soon as you can and surround yourself with friends and family. This gives you time and space to lift the fog that has been clouding your judgment, and to sever the trauma bond.

    Your relationship doesn’t need to contain every sign of emotional abuse for it to be so. Just knowing how you feel—wary, confused, scared, tearful, and all those other emotions—is enough. No one should feel fearful or trapped in a relationship.

    There is nothing more powerful in a situation like this than an outside perspective. In an emotionally abusive relationship, you are on a rollercoaster ride of chemicals, emotions, stress, love, and pain. There is very little chance you’re going to be able to decipher this on your own, so speak out, whether it’s to a friend, family member, therapist, or anyone at all—just speak to someone.

    As soon as you start to share how you’ve been feeling and what you’ve been experiencing, you will start to see the signs of emotional abuse in your relationship, like I did in mine, and hopefully will get away as fast as you can.

  • 4 Things I Learned from Being Possessive and Controlling in a Relationship

    4 Things I Learned from Being Possessive and Controlling in a Relationship

    As she stood there watching the puppet show, our eyes locked. I was instantly attracted.

    After what felt like the longest fifteen minutes torn between the desire to talk to her and the fear of rejection, I mustered the courage to introduce myself.

    She gave me a smile, then without saying a word, walked away.

    “What just happened? How can such a beautiful lady be so rude?” I stood there in disbelief, overtaken by embarrassment, pretending nothing had happened.

    Two weeks later, as if by pure serendipity, a mutual friend reconnected us. That was the beginning of a relationship I could only dream of.

    Oh boy, did I misjudge her! Her attractive appearance was an exact expression of the beauty of her soul.

    One year and a half later, we were dating. Yes, I spent one year and half chasing after her. I guarantee a minute spent with her would convince you it was well worth my while.

    They say it takes longer to build a castle than a chicken coop. One and a half years must be the foundation for a skyscraper that not even the worst storm could break.

    For about a year, it felt that way. We were inseparable. Both our parents gave us their blessings. We moved in together. We even made wedding plans.

    It was like a relationship out of a fairy tale. We had every reason to believe we would live happily forever after. Life without each other was inconceivable.

    But there a problem… I was excessively possessive and controlling.

    I couldn’t stand my girl talking to another guy. I had the passwords to all her social media accounts. Whomever she was talking to, I knew. If she had to meet a male friend, I was present.

    Little by little I was withdrawing from her emotional bank account, as Stephen Covey put it. Worst of all, I was taking more than I was putting in.

    As a fervent Buddhist who believes in “letting go,” she was very tolerant. That gave me plenty of room to throw tantrums, ruminate, and blow the littlest issue out of proportion.

    Well, patience has its limits. After three and a half years, she had reached hers. I had emptied her emotional bank account.

    It was over. She had broken up with me.

    I was so clingy that I wouldn’t even accept her decision. I spent eighteen days trying every trick under the blue sky to get her back, to no avail.

    How did that happen? We’d spent so much time building our relationship, cherishing and loving each other. What went wrong?

    The eighteen days that followed were like a living hell. I suffered panic attacks, lost my appetite, and couldn’t sleep. Life became meaningless. I was at a breaking point.

    On the eighteenth day after the breakup, when I realized she wasn’t coming back, I had a reckoning. My desperation suddenly gave way to a wave of frustration, anger, and shame.

    As I was engulfed in deceit and embarrassment, I made a solemn decision to never again get rejected by a girl for being overly possessive, irrational, and intolerant.

    Such a momentous decision! I didn’t know if that was even possible and how I was ever going to reach such a lofty goal.

    That breakup and the three years spent self-examining taught me the big four lessons I am about to share with you.

    Are you in a relationship? Does your overbearingness prevent you from spending quality time with your partner? Are you ready to make changes?

    If you answered yes to all three questions, you are reading the right article. Hopefully, you won’t have to lose a partner and spend three years in self-introspection to find out you need to make changes.

    First thing first, love thyself.

    I know that sounds cliché, but I couldn’t find any fancier way to put it..

    Enjoying the company of your partner starts with you feeling good in your own skin. I’m guessing you would agree that one cannot love if they don’t possess it.

    A lack of self-love will cause you to center your entire being around the other person. And just like any host-parasite relationship, it will eventually fail. Your partner can’t let you feed off them indefinitely.

    Self-love is not selfishness. Loving yourself first doesn’t mean disparaging the other to elevate yourself. It’s acknowledging and embracing yourself while selflessly attuning to your partner’s needs and whims.

    Forget the “other half” mantras. Neither you nor your partner is a half, each of you possess their unique interests, weaknesses, strengths, and aspiration. It’s only when you both commit to each other, while staying true to your individuality, that genuine love happens.

    If I had espoused that idea then, I would never have considered suicide when my ex left me. I had based so much of my life on her I just couldn’t find meaning outsider of her.

    Learn to trust or you lose.

    Trust is the pillar of every human relationship, especially romantic ones.

    My lack of trust in my ex had nothing to do with her but rather with my deep sense of insecurity. I had the recurring thought that she would leave the minute she met someone better than me.

    Not only did my baseless fears cause me my peace of mind, they also created a wedge in our relationship.

    My trust issues caused her to lose all sense of vulnerability and safety around me. The only option she had was to confide in someone else.

    To learn to trust, I had to remind myself of this simple truth: We can’t control someone’s thoughts and actions. The best we can do is to give them the benefit of the doubt.

    Now, I choose to respect and trust my girlfriend unconditionally. Not only is she more willing to open up to me, I also enjoy a dramatic increase in self-esteem.

    Forgive and forget.

    Do you know those people who catastrophize and ruminate long after they got hurt? Well, that’s my past self!

    I did this every time my ex did something that displeased me. It didn’t matter if she apologized, I would internalize it and bring it up every time we were in an argument.

    For the last two years of our relationship, I made her life miserable. Imagine someone who never forgets even your most trivial mishap and uses it to attack you every time you’re wrong.

    Ironically, I learned to forgive and forget during the eighteen-day period while I was trying to get her back out of desperation.

    After flowers, long letters, and constant phone calls failed, I thought I could use religion to get her attention. That idea brought me to Google searching for “Buddha’s quote about forgiveness.”

    I came across this wisdom by Buddha: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”

    As I copied and pasted the quote in a text message, I realized it was more relevant to me than her. I had an instant awakening.

    Instead of sending the quote to her, I decided to internalize it and use it for myself. How many times have I burnt myself by holding to anger? That was a genuine eye opener.

    When I started to remind myself of the danger anger poses to one’s mental health and peace of mind, not to mention its disastrous consequence on our relationships, I became more tolerant and accepting.

    Understand that nothing is guaranteed to last forever.

    I learned the hard way that no matter how well things are going between you and your partner, they may leave you at any time.

    When you accept the temporal nature of everything, you can stop clinging and worrying about the future and simply enjoy what you have in the moment.

    This means we must balance enjoying the company of our partner, while accepting the relationship might not last forever.

    Ironically, accepting that they could leave might decrease the odds of them leaving any time soon because people feel a lot happier when they don’t feel suffocated or controlled.

    —

    Today, I understand my ex breaking up with me was a blessing in disguise.

    Would I change things if I could go back in time? Not for the world! I grew more in the three years following our breakup than I had in the twenty-one years before that. Why would anyone trade that?

    Exactly three years after that breakup, I got into a new a relationship that’s been going strong for almost two years now. I know when to invest in myself and when to give my girlfriend my undivided attention. I respect, trust, and give her all the affection she deserves.

    I don’t know what the future holds, but I don’t worry. I seize the day, prepare for the worst, and hope for best.

    Did I reach my lofty goal to never again get rejected for being overly possessive? Geez, I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. All I know is that if my girlfriend leaves me tomorrow, it won’t be because I was being intolerant, overbearing, and bossy.

  • It’s Not About Controlling

    It’s Not About Controlling

    It's not about controlling

  • The Path to Freedom: Stop Controlling and Defining Yourself

    The Path to Freedom: Stop Controlling and Defining Yourself

    The Path to Freedom

    “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” ~Albert Einstein

    I had drawn a line so deep in the sand about who I was.

    I was certain I was on my way to becoming a better version of me.

    And then.

    Water rushed in, softening that line, revealing that I was part of something much bigger than I saw myself to be.

    Something much bigger than I could control myself into.

    So many children grow up with circumstances far out of their control. Awful circumstances, such as divorce, alcoholism, drugs, and abuse. My home was full of tremendous amounts of love, laughter, and care; yet, I too had my own share of less than ideal circumstances that I longed to make better.

    I never could.

    By the time I was a teenager, I had a fair share of obsessive tendencies, mostly revolving around keeping things perfectly neat and organized.

    Things got profoundly worse when a high school friend began to love me in a way I couldn’t return.

    This situation amped up my need to control greatly.

    I took the organizing, cleaning madness to a neurotic level. This, of no surprise, was also one of the ways how women in my family before me demonstrated how to gain control where we had none.

    Fast forwarding just a short bit, I was in love, married, and making the decision to have our first child.

    Love, adulthood, and motherhood gave me the ability and strength to began to dissolve some of these lingering controls.

    Nonetheless, motherhood also gave me new reasons to gain control.

    I now had a little being to care for, and my lioness self was driven to do it beautifully; perfectly.

    New control took hold.

    I started eating all the right foods, simplifying our life to the basics, and bubble wrapping ourselves in a safety net of health. 

    I began doing all the “right” things and looking down on anything not all natural.

    Fast forward again.

    I miscarried with my third pregnancy.

    This came as a ridiculous surprise, as I believed I was doing it all “right,” and took much pride in my first two conceptions, pregnancies, and births.

    After I went on to have a third child, I began to look around and realize how many labels I had given myself: stay-at-home attachment mother, homebirthing, homeschooling, breastfeeding, vegetarian, yogi, all natural, simple living.

    I began to look around my beautiful, crunchy, progressive town we were now calling home and taking a look at how many labels others had given themselves.

    How we were defining ourselves by what we did, not who we really were.

    These labels help(ed) to the extent that they give us an identity that informs our choices and invites our surroundings.

    Yet, I couldn’t help but notice that they also gave us limits and set us firmly in the center of a vortex, where we were in and others were out.

    With these realizations, I began to unravel and dissolve this need to control myself to perfection. I began to realize that I was being held hostage. By myself.

    I began to peel away the hardened layers that I had built and began to allow the light that lived beneath to come out, intuiting my way back to the sacredness and simpleness of who I am.

    I traded eating perfectly for eating good enough. I traded practicing yoga for enlightenment for practicing yoga for movement and connection with my body. (Lately I don’t practice yoga at all.)

    I quit the relentless worry that nearly everything had a horrible consequence, including chlorinated pools, birthday parties without organic homemade cakes, sugar, reusable diapers, and cell phones.

    I quit judging myself for falling short, and started understanding that joy, memories, and a damn good time fills you with something that the “right/healthy” choice can kill in you.

    Because, you see, when you decide to no longer be a person defined by all the conscious and mindful choices you make, you gain something remarkable.

    You gain access back to your intuition that can only get lost when you are always trying to lead the way.

    You gain access to the ability to stand with the shadow parts of yourself instead of running away from them.

    You gain access back to presence and the ability to be in the moment, in the joy of experiencing the moments in front of you, without worrying if you are somehow failing yourself.

    You gain an understanding that these things that you are labeled by are choices, not definitions.

    And you gain access to the freedom to live this life fully, undefined.

    Traveler walking image via Shutterstock

  • A Simple Way to Avoid Hurting Other People

    A Simple Way to Avoid Hurting Other People

    “Don’t let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” ~Dalai Lama

    The most straightforward advice I can suggest to make real concrete changes in your life is to practice causing no harm to anyone—yourself or others.

    Try it for a day. Or two. How about a week? You will probably find that it’s harder than you think. Before you know it, someone has triggered you, and either directly or indirectly, you’ve caused harm.

    I am a successful psychotherapist and conscious woman, and I’m also committed to transparency. No more hiding behind the therapist’s veil for me. The one that projects enlightenment and hides the truths of being human.

    With that said, I happen to be a bit controlling. Take a moment and imagine yourself at a Twelve Step meeting. “Hello. My name is Carrie Dinow, and I am addicted to control.”

    It’s really helpful to get to know the ways you cause harm, much like you would a lover in the early stages of a romance when every part of you wants to know the other. You definitely want to get to know your own inner ‘others,’ the pained shadow parts of yourself that can live buried below the surface.

    The ways we cause harm can show up like fifty shades of grey, so the more intimate you can be with your own particular expression, the greater chance you have to let go. Like being overly invested in how many men join my husband’s camping weekend.

    The most obvious expressions, of course, appear as control, blame, withdrawal, and lashing out. With a little gossip and lying on the side.

    What is your harm of no choice?

    You’ve heard the fairy tale about the toads. It involves a princess who, when angered, would start to say mean words, and toads would actually come out of her mouth.

    How many times I have said to myself, “Do not say a word. Keep your mouth shut. It will only cause harm.” Despite our good and sincere intentions, most of us wrestle with our own toads. I know I have.

    I find that I am just like the Buddha—as long as I’m alone. It’s a lot easier to keep my mouth shut when it’s just me, myself, and I. Add a husband (even one of the best ones on the planet) and highly persistent daughter (the love of my loves), and all bets are off.

    The other night my daughter was extremely persistent, keen on getting her way. My husband, who is a revered psychotherapist—adolescents being his specialty—wrestles with his own blaming toads. In the past, his toads would trigger my toads. And faster than you can say Jackie Robinson, we are consumed by a plague of harm.

    So what are the ways for holding our seat, and for making sure the toads of control and blame don’t fly out of our mouths? The one I have found most impactful of all is to just shut up. No matter what, don’t scratch the itch. That’s all! Mmmm….

    That’s one reason I meditate. To court my inner toads and free me from my learned drug of no choice—control. It’s profoundly humbling to sit with my own thoughts, and to sit with an itch and not scratch it, without an escape clause.

    The practice of returning over and over to my breath allows me the choice of whether or not I stay attached to this addiction. When conflict arises or tones don’t meet my approval rating, I have more of a choice of how I want to react.

    Letting go of this lifelong relationship to control allows me to tolerate others’ behavior. No longer a feather in the wind at the mercy of someone else’s emotional breath, my need to escape the scene when things don’t go my way seems to be calming, mostly.

    After many years, meditation has become my new drug of choice. It offers me a chance to pause so I can actively engage in letting go of my control which, in my household, reduces the harm. The benefits are a lot like cooking with Teflon; things don’t seem to stick as much.

    What does it take to change the habitual response and to keep your mouth from spewing poisonous toads? To begin a different practice with yourself? One that honors letting the moment pass without responding to it?

    Most of us could use some basic tips on on how to loosen the grip on our well-ingrained habits of striking out and blaming.
 Each time we lash out with aggressive words and actions, we are strengthening the toad pool. And, the internal scoreboard can start to look like Anger 10, Patience 2.

    In the game of life, we can become easily irritated by the reactions of others. However, each time someone provokes us, we have a chance to do something different, to tend to our own reactions. Either we can strengthen old habits or we can take a moment to pause.
 That’s what it takes, a big fat pause.

    Did you know that patience is the antidote to anger? Learning to pause can help us develop our patience. When we begin to pause instead of retaliating, even if it’s only briefly, we are starting to loosen the pattern of causing harm.

    Have you ever noticed that much of the suffering comes from the escalation from that one moment when someone comes at you with a tone or says something that hurts your feelings, or has an opinion you absolutely don’t agree with? It’s what we do with that one moment to the next that can imprison or free us.

    Each time the toads escape us, we escalate our aggression and solidify our harm habit, which makes it a bit more difficult to calm the waters. If we learn to sit still with the restlessness and the sensations of anger, we can begin to tame and strengthen our mind.

    If only we could pause. Give it a try. No harm done.

  • Letting Go of Stress Around Your Goals: 4 Tips to Help You Relax

    Letting Go of Stress Around Your Goals: 4 Tips to Help You Relax

    “Control is never achieved when sought after directly. It is the surprising consequence of letting go.” ~James Arthur Ray

    I have always been a bit of a control freak, and if I’m not mindful, it can suck the joy out of my work and my passion.

    I like tasks done a certain way, which means I don’t always do well when it comes to delegating to others and can end up overextending myself.

    I want things to be done on my timeline, which means I may feel a need to micromanage tasks I have delegated to decrease the potential for delay.

    And I sometimes feel a need to know where things are going, which means I often need to remind myself to stay open to new possibilities.

    In short, I like to feel that everything is going according to plan—my plan—so that I leave very little to chance.

    Chance can be a scary place. It’s the realm where things could go wrong because you didn’t steer, compel, or manipulate them to ensure that they went right.

    It’s the place where anything could happen because you weren’t clear or pushy enough to make things happen as you visualized them.

    It’s a space where things are unpredictable, random even, where you don’t feel you have a say or a choice.

    These are things I’ve thought before.

    If you have a controlling instinct like I do, it can be difficult to ascertain when you’re being too heavy-handed, causing yourself stress in the process, and when you’re simply being proactive and taking responsibility for your life.

    It’s a thin line between empowering yourself and taking your power away.

    On one side, you know you’ve done your best but accept that other factors contribute to your outcome; on the other side, you cause yourself immense anxiety trying to foresee and eliminate those factors.

    It can feel terrifying to simply let things happen, particularly when the stakes are high—when you care about something so deeply that it feels like a piece of you.

    But ironically, trying to control things can actually limit their potential.

    Imagine you stood in front of a flower all day, trying all kinds of fertilizer to push it to grow faster. In addition to trying too many things, minimizing the effectiveness of any one, you’d essentially rob it of sunlight while casting your overbearing shadow.

    The fear that it might not grow would all but ensure that outcome.  (more…)