Tiny Buddha

Tag: emotions

  • How I Overcame My Debilitating Gut Issues by Digesting My Emotions

    How I Overcame My Debilitating Gut Issues by Digesting My Emotions

    “I do not fix problems. I fix my thinking. Then problems fix themselves.” ~Louise Hay

    Here’s my secret: In order to fully heal over a decade of debilitating digestive disorders, I had to stop trying to heal. Instead, I had to do nothing. What, do nothing? Yes, that’s exactly right—I had to let go of the search for the perfect cure. Let me explain.

    I developed chronic gut problems at age fourteen—such a precious age! After being dismissed by doctors (“It’s all in your head; it’s a girl problem”), overprescribed antibiotics for years on end, or just given hopelessly ambiguous, catch-all diagnoses like IBS, gastroparesis, candida, h. pylori, and leaky gut (as any sufferer of gut problems can relate to!), I became my own wellness warrior.

    For twelve years, I was on a crusade to find the “right” answer: the right elimination diet, the right supplements, the right doctor, the right healer, the right yoga poses, the right amount of water for my body weight, the right breathing techniques, the right blogger, the right retreat, the right fix that would heal my gut once and for all.

    In truth, I was stuck in a healing loop, and healing became my identity. Sound familiar? I let myself believe that I could never be truly healed, so that I would always be chasing the next popular protocol or promise—paradoxically, it was almost easier that way. “Healing,” which is one of the most profound inner transformations we can undergo, had become a completely disembodied, intellectual exercise.

    I have to be gentle with myself. My quest was not deliberate self-sabotage. You see, I was desperate to get better.

    To not be afraid that any given food, no matter how “healthy,” could set off a land mine of symptoms. To not keep living small so that I could be close to a bathroom and heating pad at a moment’s notice. To stop being defined by my “stomach problems,” and start living fully, or living at all. Until the gut problems led to a cascade of other health problems, and I had to wake up.

    In my healing loop, I was cut off from my inner voice, from my inner guidance, my compass. No wonder I couldn’t get off the loop to a place of true equanimity, balance, and wholeness, in all areas of my life.

    I had no access to my gut intuition.

    Now, I can’t say for sure what came first: suppression of this intuition, which led to gut issues, or the onset of my gut issues themselves, which led to further suppression of my intuition.

    Either way, indigestion, in any form, is literally the inability to let go of the past, of experiences and events that are transient, but that we choose to let define us. Our guts are where our will, personal power, and courage reside. Or, when imbalanced or compromised, our guts are where fear, inaction, and indecision take hold.

    We know this on the same instinctual level that leads us to say, “She’s got guts; trust your gut; I have a bad gut feeling about him; be more gutsy!” But what if we actually listened and trusted our guts? What does that even mean?

    Similarly, we’ve all heard about the mighty microbiome—how we are basically superorganisms composed of trillions of gut bacteria that support everything from immunity to serotonin production. But how does this information translate into the beautiful unification of mind, heart, and belly that leads to quantum healing?

    Sure, we know to take probiotics and eat fermented foods to feed our good gut bugs, but how often do we hear about the metaphysical roots of gut problems—fear, dread, anxiety—and how to weed them out?

    Beginning to Digest My Emotions

    Eventually, when I was twenty-six, I became so depleted from outsourcing my healing powers to “experts,” that the only wounded healer I was left with was myself. Sicker than ever, I realized that no elimination diet would ever work, because there was something else eating away at me.

    What was I not digesting? After twelve years of gut problems, I began to ask myself this question. A wonderful massage therapist told me to start talking to my belly, to ask her what she needed.

    Every day, I lay down with my hands resting on my stomach, and I simply said, “I am willing to feel what is ready to be felt. I am ready to digest my emotions.” That’s all I did. I lay there and waited for my emotions to arise.

    My belly was so tightly contracted, so afraid of herself, that at first, nothing came up at all. I felt completely detached from my entire digestive tract. After all, I’d been beating her up for years, admonishing her for making me sick, feeling completely helpless and victimized in the face of symptoms.

    So I just kept my hands on my belly and trusted. I spoke to her softly. “I am well. What I need to heal is already within. I am willing to feel what is ready to be felt.”

    Little by little, tears came. I imagined the pain was dissolving as black smoke and floating out of my body. Days passed, then weeks. My belly began to give in. I began to digest. And when I did, my whole body shook with the emotion I was most afraid of, fear itself.

    Fear—of failure, of success, of my power, of my weaknesses, of not being enough, of being too much, of the future, of the past, of what was not and what would never be.

    I was holding a lifetime of fear in my stomach, and my stomach was contracting around it, protecting that fear like my life depended on it. My life did depend on it—as a defense mechanism from the vulnerability and open-hearted living that lies beyond fear.

    That fear was slowly depleting me of my life force, of my ability to assimilate anything positive, from nutrients to joy.

    At first, facing a fear so elemental and ingrained can literally seem like dying. And a death of sorts is taking place.

    A deeply somatic, cellular release is underway. All the body needs is support to let the process unfold. S/he needs love, rest, and compassion. S/he needs to know she is safe—and s/he will do the rest.

    It was in that space of not trying to heal, of doing nothing, where healing really began. Because ‘nothing’ is where the little voice of gut intuition can take form. That little voice, what I call the Inner Wise Woman (or Man), can emerge—first quiet, wounded, and confused, and then a little more resilient each day.

    Begin to recognize that voice. Listen to its timbre, its intonations. Learn to trust it. S/he is never wrong. And beyond that voice is where true healing, and true living, begins.

    How to Practice Emotional Digestion

    How do you digest fear? How do you sit with a belly full of fearful thoughts long enough to witness and dissolve them?

    This is the process of emotional digestion that healed my gut after twelve years of incessant pain and discomfort. It is a powerful practice of learning to trust yourself and your intuition, and, if done regularly, will transform much more than just physical pain.

    1. Listen

    Each symptom is a sign, a messenger, of an inner imbalance at play. You have to get quiet enough to listen to the messages.

    Lie on your back in a comfortable position where you can fully relax and release. Place your hands on your belly. Don’t do anything—don’t think about the pain, or what could be causing it, or how to fix it.

    Just breathe and be. Trust that the information you need will surface at the perfect moment, when the body is ready to impart his or her wisdom.

    After you have brought your mind-body into a state of peace and coherence, send your body a signal of safety by repeating an affirmation:

    “I am well. I am whole. I love you and I’m listening.”

    You may lie here for half an hour, or for hours. You may be ready to tune in after a few minutes, or you may need to repeat this practice every day.

    Know that wherever you are is perfect, and everything you need to heal is already within. All you have to do is listen.

    2. Ask

    Once you have become comfortable with the practice of simply listening to your body, you are ready to ask him or her what s/he needs. Tell your belly (or whichever part of your GI tract is in pain), either aloud or in your head:

    I am fully ready and willing to feel what needs to be felt.

    And just see what comes up. Breathe into the answer.

    It may be a resounding voice in your head, or a wellspring of emotion, or a very subtle shift in perception. The more you practice, the more refined your intuition will become. Once feelings have begun to arise, ask your belly:

    What messages are you sending me through these symptoms?

    What feelings can I release from my gut, so I can receive what I need in this moment?

    What information do I need to know to heal?

    Meditate on the answers. Again, depending on the duration of your symptoms, this process may take months or years for answers to fully reveal themselves.

    Don’t worry. Everything is unfolding in perfect time.

    3. Shift

    You have listened to your body’s innate wisdom and asked for answers. Now it is time to shift this knowledge into deep healing. You are literally transmuting the pain so you can make space for more beauty, grace, health, harmony, and peace in your life.

    If you have been storing fear in your belly, call upon courage and belief.

    If you have been storing scarcity mindset and inaction, call upon abundance and willingness.

    If you have been storing low self-worth, call upon gratitude and peace.

    There are many ways to shift a physical manifestation of a metaphysical imbalance—both somatic and emotional. Here are some potent and practical ideas.

    Write through whatever answers arose in your emotional digestion, meditation, and self-inquiry practices. Ask your belly to write what s/he really needs to you/through you. Then, do not judge the words—just let them flow. You may be surprised what comes up.

    Repeat a positive, present-tense statement daily for a month. For indigestion, author and healer Louise Hay suggests the following: “I digest and assimilate all new experiences peacefully and joyously.”

    Move the energy through you. Dancing, shaking, and yoga are among the many powerful ways to literally shift your energy by moving it out of your body, and calling in more refreshing, open, and higher vibrations.

    Try energy healing. Sometimes, the support of an intuitive energy healer, reiki practitioner, or bodyworker is fundamental to releasing stored psychospiritual blockages from the body.

    Once you have listened, asked, and shifted the energy of fear, pain, indecision, lack of will, or whatever arises from your gut, you make space for a radical, new capacity: your intuition. Your inner knowing. Your Inner Wise Woman or Man.

    Next time pain arises, instead of trying to heal, ask your intuition: What does my body need to heal?

    And listen as s/he tells you the perfect medicine for your unique body vessel.

  • Where My Depression Really Came From and What Helped Me Heal

    Where My Depression Really Came From and What Helped Me Heal

    “How you do one thing is how you do everything.” ~Unknown

    One afternoon, during a particularly low slump, I was getting out of the shower. Quickly reaching for something on the sink, I knocked an old glass off the counter, shattering it onto the floor.

    In most cases, one might experience stress, frustration, or sadness upon accidentally breaking an object that belongs to them. They might feel agitation on top of their already poor mood. But in the moment the glass shattered, I felt instant relief.

    It was an old item I’d gotten at a thrift store, and the image on the glass was all but worn off. In the back of my mind, I’d wanted to get rid of the whole glass set, and the shattering of one of its pieces served as a firm confirmation it was time to let go.

    In that unexpected moment of relief, I realized I was holding on to the glasses out of some strange obligation and a fear that I wouldn’t have the money to replace things if I gave them away.

    I marveled at this interesting aspect of my consciousness I had not noticed before, wondering, “What else am I doing this with? How many things in my life are subtle burdens that I tolerate out of some vague sense of obligation? Does it really make me a “good person” to tolerate so much, to hold on to so much unwanted baggage from the past?

    Suddenly, I remembered something I had recently learned from one of my mentors about depression: We must stop clinging to people, places, and things that no longer deliver the joy they once did. Even more importantly, release things that never delivered joy, even when we thought they would.

    This sacred practice is all too underrated. We must cut the dead weight in our lives, even if it is unnerving. Whether it is a negative relationship, a job in which you are disrespected, a habit that is draining your health, or even some unwanted items in your home that are taking up too much space.

    It is our stubborn unwillingness, our fear of letting go, that keeps us in low spirits, day after day. In these instances, we are waiting for the impossible. We are waiting for things to miraculously improve without us having to do anything different.

    Even though I was in a bad mood, I thanked the glass and the sudden shattering for its lesson. The humbling realization was that I was a clinger—someone who stuck with people, places, and things long after they’d proven they were not right for me.

    As the saying goes, “How you do one thing is how you do everything.” The glasses that I didn’t really want any more were a small symbol of how I was an energetic hoarder. I kept things until life forcefully yanked them out of my hands.

    Often, I clung to subpar situations out of fear. I was afraid of being left alone, with nothing, so I’d gotten myself into the habit of anxiously settling. And as we all know, settling is no way to live a satisfying, dignified life.

    When we settle, the parts of us that aspire to grow are denied respect. We subconsciously tell ourselves it is not worth it—we are not worth it.

    My habit of settling had gotten me into more binds than I could count—low-paying jobs, incompatible relationships, boring days, and restless nights wondering what I was supposed to be doing. Why weren’t things better?

    The simple answer was, I didn’t choose anything better. I didn’t know how.

    When we don’t know ourselves, we don’t know what we want and need. And when we doubt our worth or our ability to make things happen, we hold ourselves back from what would make us happy. This is where depression breeds, along with burnout, stress, and apathy.

    So how can this painful spiral be prevented? And if you already find yourself in this predicament, how can you climb out of the hole?

    1. Assess everything in your life.

    What just isn’t working, no matter how hard you try, in work, your relationships, your habits? These are the areas where you need to make a decision. Either let something go or make a change that is significant enough to transform how you feel about the situation.

    2. Find the hope.

    Hopelessness is a huge aspect of lingering depression. The problem is, people often try to talk themselves into being hopeful about something that actually isn’t going to work (e.g.: a relationship that was meant to end). Instead of clinging, let go and seek out new things that feel truly hopeful instead.

    It’s not always easy to let go, especially when it pertains to relationships, and particularly when you’re not hopeful there’s anything better out there for you. Start by asking yourself, “Why do I believe this is the best I can do, or what I deserve?” And then, “What would I need to believe in order to let go of this thing that isn’t good for me and open myself up to something better?”

    3. Change anything.

    When we are stuck in a rut, it usually means things have been the same way for too long. Routine and consistency can be a poison or a cure, depending on the situation. If you’re feeling stuck, look for how doing the same thing every day isn’t working. Sometimes, making any random change is enough to shake you out of that rut.

    This could mean taking a new route to work or doing something creative when you usually binge watch Netflix. Sometimes little changes can give us a surprising level of new insight and self-understanding.

    4. Lastly, admit to what you really want.

    If you won’t risk being hopeful and taking action toward what you really want, you will default to a life of tragic safety. You will shy away from the truth, clinging to all the things that don’t really resonate with you. Ironically, you have to be willing to risk loss to in order to acquire valuable things in life.

    So start by being brave enough to admit what you really want in all aspects of your life, and perhaps more importantly, what you need. What would make you feel fulfilled and excited about life again?

    —

    We often think of depression as a vengeful disease that robs us of our joy and vitality. But when we begin to look at our lives with more honesty, we can see depression for what it really is: a messenger.

    I like to think of depression as the first phase of enlightenment—a reckoning we must endure to come out the other side with clarity. When we stop pushing negative feelings away, we can discover why they exist and what steps will resolve them.

    For me, this meant letting go of how I thought my life should be and embracing how it was. Rather than lamenting about the past or obsessing about the future, I started taking practical steps to improve the present. This included cleaning up my diet, giving up a job that no longer worked for me, and digging into attachment styles to learn how to improve my relationships. The more action I took, the more hopeful and empowered I felt.

    The road to happiness isn’t nearly as direct as we would like it to be, but this gives us the opportunity to access what we truly wanted all along: self-understanding, self-acceptance, and self-empowerment. Depression isn’t a problem, but a road-sign. The question is, will we ignore it, or let ourselves be guided?

  • 10 Things to Do When You Feel Sad, Hopeless, and Defeated

    10 Things to Do When You Feel Sad, Hopeless, and Defeated

    “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” ~J.K. Rowling

    I’m no stranger to feeling hopeless and defeated. After many failed relationships, physical, sexual and emotional abuse my entire life, two bankruptcies, and the recent loss of my online business (October 2020), you could say I’ve been through enough to last two lifetimes.

    I’ll admit, there were many times I wanted it all to end. There were many days I just didn’t know how much more I could handle. My recent loss has devastated me beyond words. Everything I’ve worked so hard for in the last three years has completely been obliterated. I’m numb and feel defeated almost every day.

    At fifty-eight years old, starting over doesn’t interest me, but I have no choice. I know what to expect. I’ve been here before. It’s ugly, messy, frustrating, stressful, and exhausting. Every day I wake up I don’t really feel like getting to the computer to work.

    I don’t really feel like doing anything, to be honest, but lay in bed and cry. I go through serious waves of anxiety throughout the day. They hit me fast, hard, and without warning. I want to throw up. I want to curl up in a ball and die. I want someone to tell me this is all a bad dream and tomorrow things will be back to normal.

    None of that happens. And I force myself to get to work and start a new day.

    Your Struggles and Pain Are Real

    Pain is pain, chaos is chaos. No matter what it looks like to you. Never let anyone tell you your feelings are ridiculous. Don’t ever think that you’re overreacting. What your feeling is real, and you need to honor your emotions, feel all the feels. Just don’t stay there. The longer you stay down, the harder it is to get back up.

    Here are ten things to do when you are feeling defeated, hopeless, helpless, and sad—all things that have helped me, that I hope help you too.

    1. Cry your eyes out.

    Too many of us hold back our tears because we think it’s a sign of weakness. It is absolutely not, and it’s almost mandatory to get those tears out. Go back to the last time you had a good cry fest and try to remember how you felt afterward. I’m guessing you felt like a ton of bricks was just lifted off your shoulders.

    Crying is very therapeutic. Do it. As often as you have to. Scream and cry into a pillow if you have to but get those tears out.

    2. Call a friend.

    While this almost sounds too simple, most don’t even think about doing this either because they don’t want to burden their friends, or because they’re too stuck on their problems to consider talking about something else.

    Pick one person you absolutely love talking to and just chat your cute little face off. You can talk about your problem if you think it will help, or you can use this as an opportunity to get your mind off of things. Just talk!! About anything, everything, silly things and nothing.

    I remember the day my business crashed, and I was so angry and upset but also embarrassed because I didn’t want anyone to know what happened to me and that my business was gone. After a week I decided to call one of my dear friends, and not only was he great at comforting me but also reassuring me that things were going to be okay. It was such a huge relief to get this confirmation from a friend.

    Sometimes we need to hear comforting words!

    3. Volunteer.

    I tell everyone this. If you’re sad, go volunteer. Like right now. You can’t even imagine the power behind helping someone or something (aka furry critters) in need. Your heart fills up and then explodes, you cry happy tears, and it honestly just gives you so much joy.

    Find an organization that resonates with you and call them. Go spend an hour a week there. This will soon become your happy place and something you will look forward to every week.

    4. Write yourself a love letter.

    I’ll be honest, I haven’t written one in a while, but I think it’s time.

    A love letter to yourself is so powerful and therapeutic. In this letter you tell yourself all the amazing and awesome things about yourself. You list all the reasons you shouldn’t feel like a loser. You tell yourself to brush off your bum and pick yourself back up again.

    You can go on and on about how wonderfully amazing you are. Write out all the things you love about yourself and all your radiant and redeeming qualities.

    Now before you say, “Oh, I don’t love anything about myself,” stop right there.

    Go look in the mirror right now. I bet you have the most beautiful eyes and the most sweet smile ever. Or maybe you are a feisty, determined person. Or maybe you have a heart of gold! I bet there are a million awesome things about you. Find them and write about them.

    5. Put on some loud music and sing and dance.

    Oh yeah. Choose the loudest, thrashiest music you have (and love) and crank up the stereo. Or maybe you love country or jazz or whatever! Turn it up and rip off the knob. Dance, sing, jump around your house like a silly fool.

    Sometimes when I’m feeling down, I put on the saddest music with the hardest hitting lyrics, sing loud, cry my heart out, and remarkably afterward I feel a million times better!!

    Let loose and lose all your cares and woes in your favorite music. You’re gonna feel amazing, you’ll even get a little workout in, and your adrenaline will be pumped up a wee bit, so you’ll maybe even feel unstoppable! Go you!

    6. Go for a walk.

    Another simple thing to do that we often overlook. For many of us, when we’re feeling really sad, we don’t want to get dressed and go out. We want to stay inside and cry and eat junk food (more on that later), but you can’t stay there forever.

    You have to get yourself out of your dark place. You have to take action steps (pardon the pun) to move forward and be happy again.

    Get your shoes on and get outside. You never know who you’re going to run into or what kind of super cool things can happen to you. Be open to surprises and chance meetings. Or maybe you’ll just find and see little things that bring a smile to your face.

    7. Watch funny movies and eat junk food.

    Yes, I said it. Eat junk food, aka comfort food. They call it comfort food for a reason. Because that’s exactly what it does. And yes, I get that we may have a teeny sore belly in the morning, all depending on how much comfort food you consumed the night before, but really, chocolate and chips and donuts and cake really do the soul good.

    A small word of warning here, though: Only do this if you can let yourself enjoy eating and aren’t mindlessly binging to numb your feelings, and please don’t make this a daily habit. We all know eating junk food is bad for us. It’s a nice quick fix on a really sad day but not something you should do all the time. Remember, life is all about balance too. That includes your eating habits.

    So find your fave movies—I usually opt for funny ones or super action thrillers—and lose yourself in it. Forget your cares and woes even if only for two hours or so and let yourself indulge a little.

    8. Write a truth letter.

    Yes, I love writing letters. It’s the best therapy out there, I swear! Much like a love letter to yourself, a truth letter is a letter you will write to someone or something that is causing you grief and sorrow.

    This is where you get to write out all your anger, all your hurt; every damn emotion you feel about this person/thing, get it all out! I know some people who have written truth letters that were thirty pages long. You write until you can’t write anymore!

    This is something you can do every time you have hateful or angry thoughts about this person or thing. Eventually the thoughts won’t show up so often.

    9. Set a timer.

    We already know we can’t stay in this sad dark place for too long, or it will consume us. After a few weeks of feeling like this set a timer for fifteen minutes, twice a day. In this time slot, feel angry, sad, cry, scream, or do whatever else you have to do, but when the timer is up try to compose yourself and shift your attention elsewhere—on your work, a hobby, helping a friend, anything other than your own problems.

    Negative thoughts will arise outside of your time slot. But remember, you can choose whether or not to engage with them. You always have a choice to let your thoughts pass without getting caught up in your mental stories. That’s up to you to do.

    Yes, this is hard to do, but the benefit is that you are allowing yourself time to grieve without allowing your grief to totally consume you and dominate your days.

    10. Have a ‘me’ day.

    Even if you can’t take the whole day, try to take at least a few hours to pamper yourself. Get a manicure or pedicure or do one for yourself at home. Get your hair done, take yourself out on a date. Do something you enjoy, something that gets you into a state of flow.

    Whatever it is that you do, do it in honor of yourself and how amazing you are. Take this time to love yourself, as hard as that may be, and just be present with you and only you.

    —

    As I go through my difficult time, I keep telling myself that this is temporary, I’m gonna be okay, and to keep the faith. I believe everything always works out in the end, exactly the way it’s supposed to, whether we understand it or not, and this brings me comfort.

    But don’t deny your emotions.

    I think the most important thing to remember is that you must honor and feel your feelings, but you can’t stay there. It’s important to take steps to get back to your ‘normal,’ whatever that looks like for you, or to accept that it’s time to create a new normal.

    Baby steps are better than no steps at all. Do one or two little things every day and before you know it, you’ll be smiling and feeling better about yourself and life again.

    You got this, babe!

  • Learning to Honor My Grief When the World Has Become Desensitized to Loss

    Learning to Honor My Grief When the World Has Become Desensitized to Loss

    “The answer to the pain of grief is not how to get yourself out of it, but how to support yourself inside it.” ~Unknown 

    Since losing my husband Matt over eight months ago to cancer at the age of just thirty-nine, I have noticed so many changes happening within me, and one of those changes is a fierce sense of protectiveness that I have over my grief.

    We are living in a unique time in history. The world has turned upside down due to the coronavirus pandemic, and at the time of writing this the UK had just passed 100,000 Covid-related deaths with many more not involving Covid.

    That is an obscene amount of grieving people, and when I also consider the fact that not all loss is related to death, I suspect that everyone in the country is experiencing grief on some level right now.

    But I worry that this universal loss has become so entrenched within our daily lives that it is now considered the norm to be traumatized.

    The news of more deaths no longer seems to shock us. We’ve become detached from each other in order to survive and preserve ourselves, and this is being reinforced daily with messages of staying home and socially distancing.

    Our human need for closeness and connection has become secondary to the very real threat to life we are facing, and so we willingly obey to these new rules—we wear masks and keep away from each other, we retreat, and we don’t complain about the psychological wounds we are facing as a result of this because the alternative is even worse.

    There is a collective sense of numbness, which is a well-known coping mechanism for extreme levels of stress, and I cannot help but tune into this from my own fear response.

    I also feel numb sometimes, and I can certainly see the rationale for adopting this defense mechanism, but this is why my grief feels like a gift to me now: I am thankful that I can connect with and embrace my feelings of pain and anguish. This is my healing; this is me moving through life as I know I was intended to do.

    We weren’t made to deny or repress our emotions, we were made to learn and grow through them, because emotions are energy and energy needs to move. When I refuse to allow my emotions space to be present within me, they become trapped inside. 

    I know this because it has happened to me before. Grief is strange, it is the most painful and intense experience I have ever had, and yet it is also recognizable to me. I know that I have felt it before but in a different form and at a different time.

    Deep down I also have an inner knowing that I am meant to feel it. In the past, I was scared of the enormity and intensity of my emotions, and so was everyone I was close to. They would recoil when I expressed them, so I would repress them instead and do everything I could to push them down.

    The result? Years of suffering with anxiety, depression, and unexplained physical illness and ailments, which I now understand to be a manifestation of my trapped trauma.

    Bessel Van der Kolk defines trauma as “not being seen or known.” To be truly seen is to risk vulnerability, but we are continuously shamed for being truly vulnerable in our society, a society which rewards busyness and productivity above our human needs.

    Unfortunately, this mutual denial can prevent us from healing. In our culture there is a lack of tolerance for the emotional vulnerability that traumatized people experience. Little time is allotted for the working through of emotional events. We are routinely pressured into adjusting too quickly in the aftermath of an overwhelming situation.

    So, we have a problem. At a time when more of us than ever need to embrace vulnerability to avoid retraumatizing ourselves with a lack of connection to others, we are simultaneously battling with a sense of internalized capitalism. Which do we choose? Authenticity or attachment?

    I believe that we need both, but I also believe that it must start with authenticity, and here’s why.

    My grief feels sacred to me, like it’s the last bit of my love for Matt that I have left, and for that reason I refuse to let it pass me by without really experiencing and cherishing it.

    I recognize that the authentic, broken me is just as important as the joyful, whole me, and that I cannot expect to experience one without the other.

    I do not wish to drift into a false identity where I am always “okay” or “fine” or “not too bad” when anybody asks because really that is all I am permitted to say in those moments. I cannot speak the truth because the truth is unspeakable. There is an unspoken rule that we must never expose our pain in too much depth, we must keep it contained within a quick text message or a five-minute chat in order to help keep up the illusion that we have time for compassion within our culture.

    But we all know that’s not the truth if you live as we are subliminally told to live—with a full-time, demanding, and challenging career and a mortgage to pay, with a family to look after and a social life to uphold, with a strict routine that includes time for exercise, meal planning, and keeping your appearance aligned with what is currently deemed socially attractive, and with just enough spare time to mindlessly consume the latest Netflix drama.

    It really leaves little to no time or the emotional energy it would take to fully witness another person’s pain. So, we turn away from it instead, because we know that if we dare to look a grieving person in the eye, we can locate the universal phenomenon of grief within ourselves and find some affinity to it. And that throws up all sorts of questions that go against our busy lifestyles we are grappling to keep hold of.

    When I have too many superficial exchanges, however well-meaning they are, I end up feeling more disconnected and lonelier than if I hadn’t had an exchange at all, so I choose solitude instead. 

    Some pain cannot be spoken of, it can only be felt, and for me, that can only happen when I have the space and time to intentionally tune into the feelings, without having to cognitively bypass them at every opportunity. However, without a witness to my pain, I never truly feel seen or known either.

    The more time that passes, the harder it is to bring Matt up in the brief conversations I am still able to have or to express my true feelings.

    I’m aware that with time my grief becomes less relevant as more and more people are experiencing their own losses. But I have barely even begun to process Matt’s death. He died during the pandemic, and I am still living in that same pandemic eight months on. I have been locked away for my own safety and for the safety of others, so the true effects of my loss and the trauma attached to it won’t be fully felt until the threat has lifted.

    My brain has been wired for survival for almost a year now—what must the effects be of that?

    I am afraid that the rawness of my pain has a time limit to it, and if I do not fit into the cultural narrative of grief, then I will be rejected, and it’s that fear of rejection that continues to pull me away from sitting with my pain. I have become hypersensitive to other people’s reactions, and I can sense when my pain is too raw and uncomfortable for them, so I avoid the loudest and most consuming part of me to enter the conversation in order to make them more comfortable

    But… I’ve noticed a pattern happening when I prioritize others’ comfort over my authenticity.

    I begin to suffer. I experience emotions like fear, anger, and guilt, and these pull me away from the pure-ness that is my grief. Pain and suffering are not the same thing. Pain is a necessary component to healing and growth, but suffering is a bypassing of the raw pain underneath.

    I believe that the key to healing is to embrace the sorrow of loss throughout life. Loss happens continuously, but we often forget to experience it because we glorify the illusion of always being strong, mentally healthy, and resilient. 

    Fear is a block to healing. It activates our survival brain and keeps us there. Never feeling safe enough to process our emotions, we continue to suffer instead.

    Alice Miller, the renowned swiss psychologist, coined the phrase “enlightened witness” to refer to somebody who is able to recognize and hold your pain, and this becomes a cycle. Once you have had your authentic pain validated and witnessed, this frees up space for you to become an enlightened witness to another.

    That is why I believe there are so many people needlessly suffering right now. We are all afraid to confront the human condition of pain because we are afraid to lose our attachments to others, so we mask it and avoid it and deny it at any cost.

    I am terrified of losing my attachments to others too. I am terrified of ending up alone, and I am terrified of never being loved again. But I am more terrified of having to sacrifice my true self in order to gain that love.

    So, I vow not to put my grief on hold, and I welcome you to join me. However deep the pain becomes, I encourage you to sit with it and honor it as being a true reflection of the magnificent intensity of being human.

  • How I Finally Healed When I Stopped Believing a Diagnosis of Incurable

    How I Finally Healed When I Stopped Believing a Diagnosis of Incurable

    “The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.” ~Rumi

    The quarantine has felt oddly familiar. That’s because I spent thirteen years largely homebound with a mysterious, viral-like illness. It even started with a cold on a flight back from Asia in 2005.

    My nose was an open faucet, and my head felt like the cumulus clouds outside my window. When I returned to San Diego, I was so weak and exhausted, I could hardly get out of bed. My brain and body were on fire.

    I couldn’t focus or recall names of coworkers. Although I’d previously been able to fall asleep in action movies and moving vehicles, I suddenly had severe insomnia. I existed in a perpetual state of tired and wired.

    I tried desperately to return to my profession as a broadcast journalist. But what good is a reporter who can’t show up for the evening news? Eventually, I lost a career and life I loved and retreated into my house.

    Well before the word quarantine splashed across TV screens, I began to live inside my four walls. I left merely for trips to the grocery store, if that.

    Doctors diagnosed me with chronic fatigue syndrome. Untreatable, incurable, hopeless. Labs showed high titers of Epstein-Barr and other obscure viruses.

    Specialists homed in on faulty mitochondria or bad genetics. They had ancillary diagnoses, too: fibromyalgia, post-viral syndrome, leaky gut syndrome, candida overgrowth, adrenal fatigue, interstitial cystitis. Etcetera.

    They stacked up like weights on my shoulders. I collapsed into an unrecognizable me.

    At thirty-five, in the prime of my career with hopes of having my own family, I was deflated. My scant strength went into researching remedies, fighting health insurance denials, and trying to save my house from foreclosure.

    My life as a TV news reporter went into an endless commercial break. Then, dead air. I was stuck in this morass for years, trying everything from anti-viral IVs to energy healers.

    I saw the best specialists in CFS/ME. Plus, Tibetan and Chinese doctors, shamans, and therapists. I rewrote the traumas and tried to flush them out with enemas.

    Nothing moved the needle on my symptoms much—not diets, supplements, or medications. Some made it worse.

    After more than a decade of dashed hopes—and finally, a pipe-smoking healer who charged $200 to tell me about her cat—I let go of hopes that someone else could fix me and turned to simple and small reliefs. It’s not that I gave up on healing. I stopped frequenting sterile doctor’s offices and smoky dens.

    That freed up long afternoons to watch ravens and snails, read poetry, and write my own poems. I’d sink into the words of Rumi, Rilke, or Eckhart Tolle. I’d meditate, chant Sanskrit, take short walks, and stretch into restorative yoga poses.

    I luxuriated in simplicity and slowness as if there were nothing better on earth. I looked for what was given rather than what was taken away. A still and contented mind replaced my busy and accomplished life.

    There was an intrinsic connection with the living world. From this messy, real, surrendered state, something magical happened: I recovered.

    Through an online writing class, I met a woman who healed from CFS. Kathy told me her story and heard my story. She explained how she did it, and I had an instantaneous remission.

    I went from being bed-bound to running around the block. Many times!

    How could words make my symptoms disappear on the spot? Kathy told me about the little-known but groundbreaking work of Dr. John Sarno. The late physician from New York University Medical Center helped tens of thousands of patients recover from chronic pain, fatigue, headaches, and other stress-related conditions by teaching them the origin of their symptoms: the way the brain is processing stress due to overwhelming emotions.

    I’d heard the only truth that made sense about my symptoms. They were physical manifestations of tension and trauma, not so different from PTSD.

    I felt them in my body, but the cause was in my brain. This explained why the sensations moved around, came and went, and shifted in intensity. Tissue damage doesn’t act that way.

    If you’re walking on a broken leg, it doesn’t suddenly stop hurting. If you have a tumor, it won’t wax and wane.

    My nervous system was trying to warn me of danger. It had become stuck in fight, flight, or freeze mode. Like a broken record with a deep rut, my brain had learned patterns of pain and fatigue.

    But brains are neuroplastic. I could rewire mine to feel well again! Hope filled me like spoonfuls of medicine.

    Over the next year, I retrained my brain with gusto. It had associated so many things with harm: foods doctors told me not to eat, activities they warned me not to do, anything that reminded me of the initial trauma and all the dominoes to fall in its wake.

    I started feeling my body sensations with curiosity, while reminding myself I was safe. I spoke to my brain as one would a frightened child, with kindness and confidence.

    “I know you’re creating these symptoms, but they are not dangerous. There’s nothing wrong with my body. I am not sick. I am resilient and strong!”

    It may sound woo woo, but imaging shows self-affirmation activates the more logical prefrontal cortex over the reactive amygdala. You could say I became the adult in the room rather than the skittish kid or the catastrophizing parent.

    Next, I began challenging my triggers, doing things that brought on symptoms, which is to say almost everything. I took baby steps back into the world, with indifference to the fatigue, pain, and brain fog. Slowly but surely, they subsided.

    It was working! I was retraining my very own brain.

    I also started feeling my emotions, instead of my lifetime habit of repressing them. I mourned the loss of my career, child-rearing years, ability to climb a mountain or feel okay in my body.

    After years of being frozen, I started thawing. That brought tears, along with sadness, shame, and anger. I wrote angry letters (and didn’t send them). I started telling myself it was okay to feel whatever I feel (and pausing long enough for that to arise).

    It took thirteen years before I understood that healing does not happen in a disempowered state. We must take back our power. We must believe in our resilience, despite evidence to the contrary.

    We must connect with the part of us that is already well and keep our attention trained on that. It could be our little toe, the energy inside our body, or a connection with something divine. We must not listen to those who tell us we are sick and broken beyond repair.

    When someone says there is no cure, we conclude that they do not have the answer for us and move on. We do not listen to those who make us feel scared or small. We seek that which makes us courageous and hopeful.

    As we gain confidence in our self and our inner wisdom, we start to feel safe and empowered. This works wonders for our nervous system, which works wonders for every other system in our body.

    Modern medicine offers life-saving therapy for acute conditions, such as infections, tumors, blood disorders, and illnesses with tissue damage that can be repaired. My beloved mom is alive twenty-three years after battling an advanced case of ovarian cancer, thanks to medicine derived from the Pacific yew tree.

    But allopathy has little success with stress-related symptoms, such as chronic back pain, pelvic pain, fibromyalgia, and irritable bowel syndrome. Dr. Sarno said that’s because it doesn’t yet recognize them as physical manifestations of emotional stress.

    There is little scientific evidence to show that viruses cause chronic fatigue syndrome. I relied on doctors armed with small-scale studies and their own best guess. Of course, I would have been thrilled if their treatments worked.

    But then, I wouldn’t have discovered the joy of healing, which I now see as a skill for life. It’s a self-written prescription for a more authentic and empowered experience.

    DISCLAIMER: This post represents one person’s experiences and beliefs, and one route to healing. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any condition or disease. Please consult a professional if this doesn’t speak to your personal experience.

  • How I Reclaimed My Life When I Felt Numb and Unhappy

    How I Reclaimed My Life When I Felt Numb and Unhappy

    “All appears to change when we change.” ~Henri-Frédéric Amiel

    The biggest life-changing moment in my life would have looked unremarkable to an outsider looking in.

    I was at a point in my life (my late twenties) where everything seemed to look good on paper. I had a great job, I was living in downtown Seattle, and I enjoyed the live music scene. Aside from not being in a relationship, I thought I had “arrived.”

    The only problem was, I was miserable, and I barely acknowledged it. A part of me knew that I wasn’t happy, but I tried to run away from that feeling by playing guitar, writing, or watching live music as much as I could.

    My other avoidance tactics were working long hours at my day job or socially drinking at “hip” bars in the city.

    But every time I came home, there I was. Still grappling with my feelings and trying to understand why happiness was so fleeting.

    I had also recently broken up with someone that I cared about but knew was not healthy for me. She was a heavy drinker, and because I tended to just blend in with my partners, my drinking had increased substantially when I was with her, and I felt horrible (physically and emotionally).

    It was a messy ending, and it left me even more confused. I should be so happy. “Why aren’t I?” This nagging thought haunted me for several months.

    Moment of Awareness and Choice

    One afternoon, I came home from work and mindlessly went through my routine. Dropped my bag off by the door. Changed into comfort clothes. Went to the refrigerator and opened a beer.

    I then plopped on the sofa and turned on the television. This was my routine for several mind-numbing months.

    When I reflect back on this moment, I can see that I was absently flipping through every channel available through the cable box. Interested in absolutely nothing. I would take a tug on the beer in one hand without even tasting it while changing channels with the remote in another hand.

    I was literally in a trance and not really processing anything. I was running on autopilot, without any conscious awareness, as channel after channel flipped by.

    And that’s when it happened. It was like the background noise in one part of my mind suddenly became amplified. I could hear thought after thought running through my mind like a CNN news crawl.

    The shocking part, for me, was how negative these thoughts were. “You’re no good. Nobody loves you. You’re a failure. You’ll never find someone who loves you. You’re not worth it.”

    I also had the realization that I’d heard these thoughts before but had chosen to stuff them down or mute the volume through distraction.

    But here they were. Loud and blaring. I was forced to face them once again.

    I was in a state of disbelief for several minutes while some choice expletives escaped my lips.

    Once the shock wore off, there was an overwhelming sense that I had reached a huge fork in the road.

    One choice led to stuffing these thoughts back down to wherever they came from and going back to sucking down a beer mindlessly watching television.

    And then, magically, a second choice came out of nowhere. Stop everything and just sit with these thoughts.

    I remember simply saying, “Huh!” out loud. I never realized that I had choices. I was programmed to run and hide.

    I became aware that this was a prodigious moment for me. I could feel chills run through my entire body.

    The choice was: Go to sleep again or just be present and experience these thoughts.

    Something deep within me knew which path to choose. It was the strongest sense of knowing I had ever experienced. I also knew that if I didn’t get on this train right now, I may be lost forever. It almost felt like a life-or-death decision.

    It was in that moment of choice that I finally gave in. I stopped resisting and avoiding. I chose to sit in the discomfort and not run away and hide anymore.

    The Choice to Pursue “Better”

    As soon as I made the choice to stay and be with these negative thoughts, my body jumped into action. As if someone else was not at the controls.

    In one long, swooping motion, I turned off the television, went over to the kitchen sink, and dumped out the rest of my beer. I then took a deep breath, walked to my living room, and sat cross-legged on the floor.

    I’d never meditated before but had heard of it. I was strongly interested in Buddhism when I was in college but never took the steps to explore what it was all about. I figured there was no better time than now to just try it.

    All I know was, in that moment, I made the firm decision that I was just going to sit and be with my thoughts. No matter how intense of a ride it would be or how crazy just sitting in silence seemed to be.

    I still remember those first moments of being in silence. It was a bittersweet experience. The bitter side was experiencing all of the mean and nasty thoughts running through my mind at full volume. There didn’t seem to be an end to it.

    But there was also a sweetness in the silence that was bathing my experience. There was a peace here that I had never experienced before. It was like being cuddled in a warm bosom, and I soon felt the negative words less scary to be with.

    I can’t remember how long I sat in silence on that first day, but it was at least a couple of hours. I remember opening and closing my eyes several times. I was checking to make sure I was still in my living room.

    It was like figuring out if you can trust wading into a lake you’ve never been to. Slowly, step by step. And certain moments I needed to take open my eyes and just allow myself to feel comfortable before going further.

    There were also moments where I felt “myself” leave my body, which honestly scared the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks out of me. It was such a foreign experience. Even though I could feel some sort of a chord holding me to my body, I had never experienced being able to pop out and look down at my cross-legged self below. I was both intrigued and a bit freaked out at the same time.

    But I then started to hear a different voice coming in. A gentler voice.  One assuring me that everything was okay.

    I was guided to just be with the process and that I would eventually get comfortable and not need to pop out of my body. And for the first time in a long time, I started to relax.

    Eventually, I noticed that by letting my thoughts just float through, they would start to fade away until there was just sweet silence, and then more thoughts would come back at a lower volume. I still had no idea what I was doing, but I was feeling better and that was all that mattered.

    I didn’t realize it, but just sitting with my thoughts was making a statement. I was now broadcasting, “I want to learn how to be happy and more loving. I am not going to run away anymore.”

    From that moment on, I came home from work every day and just meditated. I got rid of my cable box and allowed myself to be open to new opportunities. I was guided by a friend to hire a life coach and started to address things in my life that prevented me from experiencing happiness.

    For example, I realized that I’d deadened my ability to tap into emotions because I worked in the aerospace industry, where it was all about facts and data.

    By using my new friend, awareness, I started to identify emotions that I had never really processed, examined, or tried to heal. One particular healing moment was visiting the anger I held from going to an all-boys Catholic high school. I was one of the smallest kids and got picked on from time to time.

    I didn’t even realize how much anger was simmering below the surface. It wasn’t until I was aware of it and then had permission to express my feelings, that I was finally free of my long-held anger about being teased and bullied.

    I also faced the fear I’d developed after being in an airplane crash at nineteen and had a beautiful moment of release with tears flowing like the Nile. It never occurred to me that I held onto to so much trauma and that it was begging to be released.

    The more I became aware of my past and released it, the lighter and happier I naturally became. I caught myself whistling to work one day, something that I hadn’t done in years!

    I also got into Buddhism and energy healing and soaked in all forms of spirituality that interested me. It was a joyous time of learning and trying.

    But ultimately, I knew that just learning was not enough. I needed to practice the ideas of love, healing, and forgiveness in the world.

    “Leveling Up” with Awareness and Choice

    When I look back on that moment where I finally stopped and chose a different way to be in the world, I recognize that was the most defining moment in my life.

    Sure, I have attended many spiritual workshops, retreats, and trainings and have had “mountaintop” experiences. But they never would have happened if I hadn’t made the choice stop and be completely present with my thoughts.

    Our minds are constantly in and out of awareness (awake) and unawareness (asleep). It takes diligence and practice to stay awake and to make loving choices.

    Think about how much of your day you’re actually aware of your thoughts or habits vs. when you are on “automatic pilot” doing tasks or zoning out over social media.

    Here are some ways to remain aware and at choice throughout your day:

    1. Set a goal for the day. Something like: “I want to be aware of my thoughts at work and think lovingly.” Set an hourly reminder on your phone to check in throughout the day.
    2. Put a post-it note with the words “Awareness and Choice” next to your work space or area where you spend most of your time to remind yourself to be present with your internal experience. Place it where you will see it often.
    3. Schedule meditation “dates” throughout your day. See if you can sneak in five five-minute meditations throughout the day. Set reminders if you need to.
    4. Pick someone in your life that you have a hard time being with (especially at work). Have a conversation with that person and watch your thoughts. Choose to see them differently in the moment (as best as you can).
    5. At the end of the day, review the thoughts you had about yourself or others. Go back to times in the day where you were hard on yourself or someone else. Replace those thoughts with ones you would rather have said to yourself.

    Awareness and choice are a powerful duo that can change your life for the better. Both are needed. Awareness is taking in what’s present. Choice is taking steps to move your awareness in your intended direction.

    Look to see where you can benefit from awareness and choice in your life. Then set your compass toward happiness and enjoy the journey!

  • How Embracing Your Sensitivity Can Benefit Your Relationship

    How Embracing Your Sensitivity Can Benefit Your Relationship

    “Today I want you to think about all that you are instead of all that you are not.” ~Unknown

    If you are a sensitive person like me, you may think being sensitive is problematic. Especially when it comes to love and relationships.

    Maybe you’ve been called “too sensitive” by your partner or a parent. Maybe you feel overly emotional or have strong reactions to things or take things personally that don’t bother your partner, or you are easily irritated or get cranky all too often, or you feel the urge to be alone a lot more than you think you should in a healthy relationship.

    If so, you may believe you really are too sensitive.

    Now, sensitivity can cause problems in our relationships when we’re operating unconsciously and feel at its mercy. That tends to bring out the harder aspects of sensitivity.

    I know this all too well. Not knowing I was a highly sensitive person and not understanding how to work with my sensitivity was the biggest reason my first marriage ended in divorce.

    And even before that, for most of my life, I thought something was wrong with me because of what I now recognize is my genetic trait of high sensitivity.

    I hear the same from so many sensitive women I speak with.

    But I’d like to flip that perception on its head. Because high sensitivity is often misunderstood and totally undervalued. Particularly when it comes to marriage and intimate relationships.

    Think about it: What do most women want more of in their relationship?

    They want their partner to be more attentive to them. To have more understanding of what’s going on for them. To be more responsive to their words and gestures. To be more tender with them. To be more conscious of them.

    I always wanted my first husband to be deeper with me. More caring and empathetic. More in touch with himself and his feelings…

    If you, too, would like more of any of the above in your relationship, then what you want is more sensitivity. All those things are what “sensitive” means.

    Sensitive is defined as: attuned to, aware of subtleties, caring, sympathetic, empathetic, compassionate, understanding, perceptive, conscious of, responsive to, alive to…

    Sensitivity is, in fact, exactly what we need more of in our relationships, not less. It’s an asset in love. 

    And if you are also a sensitive person, you were built to embody it. To bring all of those juicy delights to your relationship.

    If you were born an HSP, it’s a cause for celebration. We are made for love.

    Once we’ve done our own work to develop the best aspects and manage the challenging parts of the trait, we gain access to what we need to have the depth, connection, understanding, love, and passion we want most with our partner.

    In other words, we develop into the best possible role model for being in a loving relationship—one non-sensitive people should aspire toward.

    Of course, there are unhealthy ways our trait can be expressed. Ways that do lead to more hurt and struggle than harmony and love in relationships. These more “negative” aspects (like “touchiness”) are really only expressed when we have not learned how to consciously work with our sensitivity.

    Once we do, the “negative” aspects fall away, leaving us with all the good parts that are most needed for the healing and thriving of relationships—and even the healing of our world!

    Many things keep us playing out the negative aspects, but I’ve found that the biggest thing is believing old, outdated (and frankly wrong) judgments about sensitivity being a bad thing. Because it leads us to being self-critical and feeling bad about who we are.

    When we berate and look down on ourselves for our sensitivity, we feel ashamed, we close off, and we become more negative.

    If we are at war with ourselves like this, we can’t open up our hearts to others or life. We are likely to feel like others are at war with us, so we take things personally and feel gripped by negativity and inner turmoil. We can’t come from sensitivity toward ourselves or toward others because we’re too bogged down.

    I know this because I judged myself for my sensitivity plenty in the past, and it only forced me into a hole, hiding my light under self-judgment and anger at myself. That anger poked out left and right and spilled over onto my husband, hurting our marriage and leaving us miserable with each other.

    After our divorce, I learned about HSPs and that I was one. What an aha moment! I stopped trying to squash my sensitive nature as I learned to accept and even love it. I felt safe to honor it, and much happier and more relaxed in my skin (finally!).

    Then, the best parts of my sensitivity were able to shine through naturally. And I was able to powerfully guide my second marriage into one that is now, by my definition, amazing.

    How to Tap into the Healing Power of Your Sensitivity in Your Relationship

    I bet many things you’ve been self-critical about are actually aspects of your sensitivity! That was the case for me. So consider and answer this question:

    How might the things you’ve judged about your sensitivity be the things most needed to take your relationship to the depth and health you long for?

    Take time to recognize the brilliance of your sensitivity, the healing it can bring to your world. You are naturally wise, so go to your own mind and heart to come up with your answers.

    Here are some hints from my experience and ponderings to get you going:

    Could your emotionality be the antidote to the numbness and disconnection that are so often the kiss of death in an intimate relationship?

    Could your capacity to feel big feelings be the deepest, most sustainable source of love in your partnership, carrying your partner in its tide?

    Could the moments when you are flooded with overwhelming feelings in your relationship be an internal request to pause so you can process deeply—and reap the wise insights that arise from that pause that will take your love and understanding of each other to the next deep level?

    Could your natural tendency to see the little things in yourself and others as flaws or problems help you diagnose the areas that need to be healed or developed in your partner—and inside yourself—so you can thrive together as a couple? Could it be the call to become the most conscious, empowered, loving version of yourself, able to navigate both the joys and challenges of love with grace?

    Could that same tendency to be bothered by little things and get easily irritated because of your subtle attunement to detail also be the very thing that helps you really know and be deeply attuned to your partner, and help him feel really known and loved?

    (My sensitivity helps me know my husband’s inner world without a word from him and allows me to understand what he’s going through. He’s told me many times some version of these words: I feel so supported, seen, and loved for who I am. I feel you really get me. I’m in awe of how in tune we can feel.” Hearing that feels like music to MY ears.)

    Could your people-pleasing tendencies and over-concern about making sure your partner and others in your life aren’t upset be the compassion and conscientiousness we need to survive and thrive as a species? The very thing that inspires others to look out for each other with fierce care and kindness—once you’ve learned to bestow the same grace on yourself?

    Could your need for quiet and space alone to decompress be just the example other humans need in order to put an end to this toxic, fast-paced culture that robs us of actually enjoying life—and is even robbing the planet of life itself? Could it be just the thing our society needs to learn to slow down and de-stress so each of us can access the love, insight, and creative problem-solving we need to thrive in our partnerships and on this planet for generations more?

    When I recognized the asset my sensitivity is, I was able to climb out of the hole of self-rejection and shame and change how I showed up in my relationship.

    I could suddenly pay deeper attention to my partner, offer a little support here, a little insight there, say just the right thing at just the right time because I’m so sensitively aware, come up with creative solutions to navigate those inevitable sticky moments couples have, let my big wide heart out, and be all those things that I want my partner to be for me: loving, reassuring, aware, understanding, and respectful.

    I started living out the kind of love I’d only dreamed of before. And it caught on. My husband has learned to be way more empathetic with me, more caring, and more attuned to me. Way more… sensitive.

    We can pass on our gift of sensitivity to our partners by modeling it, by leading the way.

    Do you see how your sensitivity is an underutilized healing resource in your love life? The highly responsive superpower of sensitivity that you embody enables you to lead your relationship in a much healthier and more loving direction if you honor it.

    It should be a goal to not only feel great about your sensitivity but also to become more sensitive. In a healthy way.

    The lack of tenderness, the instinct to shut down and disconnect, the lack of empathy and compassion and understanding that is so destructive in our marriages and in our world—it can end here with you. Now. Your sensitivity is the remedy!

    We sensitives are the particular variation of human needed to sway our relationships into healing, if only we give ourselves the sensitivity, care, tenderness, and encouragement we need by believing in ourselves instead of berating ourselves.

    We are the ones to lead ourselves and others back to our hearts, back to compassion, care, and being in tune with others. Back to sensitivity.

    Start by telling yourself the truth:

    You are different from the “norm.” But different in just the way that’s most needed for love to thrive in your home and community.

    If you really believed that, would you finally start appreciating the qualities that make you, you? Would you do all it took to cultivate them instead of squashing them? I would. I am. Let’s do so together.

  • How I Found the Courage to Leave an Abusive Relationship

    How I Found the Courage to Leave an Abusive Relationship

    “Do something today that your future self will thank you for.” ~Unknown

    My whole life has been filled with toxic and abusive relationships, starting with extreme physical and emotional abuse from my parents, right up to the last relationship that I left in 2013. Abuse—physical, sexual, emotional, and verbal—is all I’ve ever known.

    My entire life. I knew it wasn’t normal.

    I desperately wanted to be loved, appreciated, and respected. I desperately wanted ‘normal,’ whatever that was. I longed for a fairy tale romance. I longed for happiness and peace. I just wasn’t convinced I would ever have that.

    And I feared being alone.

    Longing to Be Loved

    I spent most of my adult life giving myself freely to anyone who showed me the least bit of attention. I was in and out of unhealthy relationships, looking for love in all the wrong places. Mostly on dating sites. I was always sure the next guy was ‘the one.’ Until he wasn’t.

    My mission in life was to find someone who would love me the way I deserved to be loved and take care of me, and then we would live happily ever after.

    I sacrificed myself in unspeakable ways just to be loved.

    The problem was that I didn’t even know what real love was, or how to love myself. I had little to no respect for myself. I was looking for happiness in the form of another human being. I was sure a man would bring me eternal happiness and true love.

    It wasn’t until I left my last abusive relationship that I realized I would never find happiness and true love until I loved myself.

    My Last Toxic Relationship

    He started out as “Mr. Not So Bad,” and despite all the frantically waving red flags, I convinced myself he would be the one.

    The first year was touch and go. He lied to me and disrespected me many times, in many ways, but I ignored it. I clung on to him. He ticked off a lot of the boxes on my list. Surely, I could overlook his faults. Besides, I wasn’t perfect either.

    The verbal and emotional abuse became more frequent in our third year together. I endured that for five more years before I finally packed it all in.

    He belittled and bullied me almost on a daily basis. At the end of the day, he would apologize, and things would be better. He assured me he truly loved me, and he would improve. It gave me false hope, but hope nonetheless. I was sure things would get better.

    They never did.

    In our fifth year he took a job on a Caribbean island and left me. I was in total and complete shock. We had just bought a house, and I had just bought a hair salon. I couldn’t understand why he was doing this. Though our relationship was far from perfect, we were still doing okay-ish.

    He returned eight months later and, again, promised that we would work this out and we’d be okay. Things just got worse. He became a complete control freak, and the bullying was constant.

    Everything was always my fault. I became a “yes sir/no sir” girl. Whatever he wanted, he got. Whatever he wanted to do, we did. I no longer had any say in anything with regard to the relationship or household decisions.

    We did everything his way or no way at all.

    I became a shell of a woman clinging to the hope that things would get better. I mean, he always did apologize at the end of the day, so surely, he meant well. Surely, things had to get better. And we weren’t spring chickens anymore either. We were both on our way to fifty.

    “He’ll change,” I thought. “I know he will. I can help him with that. Show him his mean, evil ways and let him know how much they hurt. I know this will change him. He’ll get it one day.”

    That never happened either.

    I Was a Complete Failure

    By year seven I had probably already written ten “Dear John, I’m leaving you” letters that I never gave him. I couldn’t leave him. Where the hell was I supposed to go?

    By this time, I had to close my hair salon business because it was dying a slow death (much like our relationship), I had just declared bankruptcy, and I didn’t have two cents to rub together. He had purchased another home and built a small salon in it for me, but all my clients had already abandoned me.

    I was barely making any money and totally relying on him for financial security and stability.

    My life had become a complete disaster. Emotionally, financially, professionally. I had nothing left in me.

    I looked in the mirror and cried at the woman staring back at me. She was broke and broken in so many ways. The one-time bubbly, happy girl I used to know was now empty, hollow, and void of any emotion.

    I was fifty-one years old, and the thought of ending my life crossed my mind more times than I care to admit. I was nothing and had nothing. I couldn’t even stand to look at myself in the mirror anymore.

    I cried all the time. I became a meek, submissive, frail woman with no hope for the future. In my eyes, I was a complete failure.

    Something had to give.

    The Beginning of the End

    It was Easter weekend, 2013. We were having a family dinner at our house. All my family. He had none close by. My family liked him enough. I was sure it was going to be a beautiful dinner filled with love and laughter.

    What started out as a day with the two of us preparing things for dinner quickly turned into the biggest fight we had ever had, with him storming out of the house before the guests arrived.

    He returned home late that night after the guests had all left. I had had enough. I couldn’t do this anymore. I spent the night in the spare bedroom and started to write yet another “Dear John” letter, but this time, I was going to deliver it to him. I was done.

    I was an emotional wreck. I knew I had to leave, but I was terrified.

    I had nothing. I had no money, no job, and no belongings except the clothes on my back, and I was a shell of a human being. What I did have was a tiny thread of hope. I asked myself a hundred times that night, “Iva, if you don’t leave now, when will you leave? How much longer can you live like this?”

    I was scared of my future. There were so many unanswered questions. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. I wasn’t’ sure I could survive on my own. I had nothing. I had officially hit rock bottom.

    Then I realized the only way out was up. It was up to me to claw my way out and fix this disaster I called my life.

    My Healing Journey

    That night I handed him the letter, we talked very briefly, and two weeks later I moved out of the house. I put all my faith and trust in the universe and found the courage to rebuild my life, first working on my self-esteem and then self-love.

    Friends came out of the woodwork to help me get back on my feet. I was able to get my old job back at a salon I had worked at for years prior to me opening my own salon. People donated items and furniture. My sister lent me money to get an apartment.

    Things all fell into place magically.

    I still do remember the fear and uncertainty I felt on a daily basis. I couldn’t believe I finally left him, yet I still didn’t trust myself to make good decisions. My entire life was the result of all the bad choices I had made.

    I didn’t know how to love or respect myself. I had no self-confidence and very little self-worth. I needed to learn what boundary lines were and start drawing them. Thick! I needed to learn what love was, self-love, and how to find happiness in me.

    I had an awful lot to learn. Unplugging fifty-one years of limiting beliefs and being told, “You’re no good, you’re worthless, you’re stupid” was going to take some time and a lot of work.

    I was literally starting at zero and working my way up.

    And I had no clue where to start. I had never felt so alone and afraid in my entire life. Everything was now up to me.

    Learning to Love Myself

    I found and read self-help eBooks online. I found personal growth and self-improvement articles. I listened to motivational podcasts and watched inspirational YouTube videos until my eyes bled. My healing journey was exhausting, frustrating, messy, and beautiful all at the same time.

    Every time doubt crossed my mind, I’d shout it out, declaring that “I am worthy, dammit!” I did this daily.

    The more I read self-help, the stronger I became. Day by day, slowly but surely, I was finally learning to love and respect myself. My self-confidence was growing beyond anything I could have imagined.

    I was stepping out of my comfort zone and making changes that scared the poop out of me but added to my growth.

    I completely reinvented my life, trading in my twenty-five-plus-year hairstyling career to become a freelance writer. I write of my healing journey, giving hope and inspiring others that they too can have the life they truly want. A life of happiness, joy, and inner peace.

    I still have growing to do. We never stop evolving. It’s just not as scary anymore, and it’s absolutely beautiful.

    Change is Up to You

    I think back on my life and wonder where I would be had I not left that toxic relationship, and I shudder. My desire to change my life became stronger than my desire to live in my comfort zone.

    Yes, it’s scary. We all want to know what the future holds for us. We all want answers to our questions. We all want to know that we’ll be okay and life will get better.

    But life won’t get better until you make the decision to make those big changes. It’s up to you to do that. Hard and scary? Yes. Impossible? Absolutely not.

    You have to ask yourself this one question: “How bad do I want it?” You have to trust that life can and will get better when you decide to take control, step boldly out of your misery and comfort zone, and have faith.

    Things might not magically fall into place right away, as they did for me, but things will improve over time if you believe in yourself and keep moving forward, one day at a time.

    The life you want is one step away. Take the step. You are worthy. You are deserving of a better life. Do it for you, babe!

  • When You Feel Bad About Feeling Sad and Anxious

    When You Feel Bad About Feeling Sad and Anxious

    “You don’t have to be brave all of the time. You are not damaged or defeated. Have patience. Give yourself permission to grieve, to cry, and to heal. Allow a bit of compassion, you’re doing the best you can. We all are.” ~Unknown

    Growing up, I received the message that everything had to look a certain way. It was only okay to feel positive emotions, and any expression of unruly emotions was totally unacceptable.

    It wasn’t that anyone directly said this to me. I wasn’t given a written set of rules to follow. I wasn’t given any speeches or trainings about how to present myself in public. But the message came across.

    It was relayed to me in phrases like “Don’t cry, you’re fine,” “Relax, people are watching,” “Just ignore them,” and “Don’t let things bother you.” It was conveyed to me through subtle criticisms of my reactions, which in my mind translated to “You aren’t good enough if you feel bad.”

    In many ways, I was raised to feel uncomfortable with my emotions. I came to believe that negative emotions were a defect within me rather than a natural and essential part of my being. It wasn’t anything my parents did deliberately to try and hurt me. In fact, they were probably trying to avoid seeing me in pain. They were simply following what most people and parents do.

    We advise others to avoid their pain and upset feelings. To snap back into shape, even after immense tragedy. 

    We hear things like “Your cousin died? Well, he’s in heaven now.” “You had to put your dog to sleep? Well, he’s just crossed the rainbow bridge; and anyway, you can always get another dog.”

    People don’t advise you to sit with uncomfortable emotions. They don’t tell you it’s okay to feel sad, hurt, or scared.

    As a young and impressionable little person, I internalized my parents’ messages and fought against every “negative” emotion I had. That is, until the feelings I was trying so hard to avoid took over my body and manifested themselves as a series of seemingly unexplainable health issues and panic attacks.

    As I got older, I became so anxious that I couldn’t hide it anymore. Once I reached the point of being uncontrollably uncomfortable, I set out on a journey of self-exploration.

    I came to realize that my only choice was to examine what I was feeling and explore what those feelings could tell me about myself. For the first time in my life, I decided to figure out what my emotions were really about. I decided to find out why I was so damn anxious.

    Many of us are embarrassed and ashamed of our own feelings and thoughts. 

    We think our unfavorable emotions make us weak, and we worry that other people would think less of us if they knew how bad we actually felt. If we allow dominant ideas about tough emotions to take over our own thoughts, we can wind up feeling shame for the rest of our lives.

    When we’re emotional, we can feel completely powerless, like we’re never going to gain any kind of control over our thoughts, bodies, or surroundings. It can feel so uncomfortable to be upset that we choose to numb ourselves rather than risk feeling any pain.

    For so many years, I had it all wrong. But once it clicked, everything changed.

    The point of being alive isn’t to numb our feelings; we’re always going to feel something, and sadness is always going to try expressing itself in our lives. That’s a fact of life. We can try to avoid it all we want, but the more we distance ourselves from this reality, the more control it gains over us. 

    Freedom comes when we can feel our tough emotions expressing themselves, but no longer let them rule our lives. 

    The more we try to avoid our true nature, the more whatever we don’t want to feel shows up with a vengeance.

    The more I tried to rid myself of worry, sadness, negative thoughts, and panic attacks, the more they seemed to persist. The more they persisted, the more reactive I got to feeling anxiety. And the more reactive I became, the more power anxiety had over my life.

    When we try to get rid of anything in life, we create resistance; and the more we resist something, the more it shows up. Famous psychologist Carl Jung stated that “what you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.” So, the goal here isn’t to get rid of anxiety, panic attacks, or sadness, it’s to work on our intolerance of those feelings. It’s to learn how to manage ourselves through the discomfort of it all.

    We don’t gain comfort, self-compassion, and calm by resisting or wishing things were different; we reach true calm by letting it be okay when we’re sad and anxious, and then letting it go.

    The more you fight it, the more it will show up; the more you let it be, the less power it will have over you.

    This is, of course, easier said than done. It’s a natural instinct to try banishing anything that feels uncomfortable. However, by continuously practicing deep acceptance for what is, we put ourselves in the best position to change it, or even achieve freedom from it, so that we can move past it.

    Here’s what I did to pull myself back from numbing myself and stumble into my new world with tolerance of my emotions:

    1. Know that it’s okay to be anxious and upset.

    Without a doubt, the most important thing to remember is that it’s okay to feel overwhelmed and stressed out. It’s okay to feel lost and unsure. It’s alright to have no idea how you’re going to hold it together sometimes. We put so much pressure on ourselves to be happy all the time. It’s okay to acknowledge when times are tough. It’s alright to feel anxious, even if it’s uncomfortable.

    2. Become an observer of your life.

    Instead of judging and getting angry with myself for feeling a certain way, I decided to be an observer of my emotions and environment. I chose to slow down and watch. I remind myself that when we’re busy judging ourselves for the way we feel, we aren’t honoring ourselves.

    Our emotions are involuntary; we have no control over them. However, what we do have control over is how we decide to respond to those emotions. When we accept our emotions as they come, take ownership of them, and avoid taking them out on the people we love, we train ourselves to manage our emotions from within.

    3. Decide who you want to be.

    I’ve found that it’s much easier to be happy, nice, and upbeat when your life is going well. It’s a lot harder to hold onto yourself when stress and anxiety are high. Knowing this, I work at trying to stay true to who I am, even in unfortunate situations. Even if I’m feeling agitated or upset, I know I can choose to respond in ways that allow me to shine through. Just because I’m not feeling so great, doesn’t mean I need to take it out on anyone I care about.

    4. Know it’s okay to feel strong emotions.

    During hard times our emotions can feel more intense. We may lose hope or be more reactive. Even though it’s totally fine to maintain an optimistic perspective of life, it’s also important to allow ourselves to process and feel the full spectrum of emotions.

    5. Remember that even negative emotions have a place in our lives.

    Sadness, anger, frustration, boredom, anxiety etc. all have a place in our lives. The key is not to avoid or numb these emotions, but to experience them and learn to manage them effectively so they don’t run our lives.

    Unfortunately, many of us don’t know how to manage our negative feelings—in part, because we’ve been taught to repress them. As children, many of us are told not to cry, which leads us to believe that crying is bad.

    As adults, when we experience emotions like depression or anxiety, our natural impulse is usually to mask those feelings. We may have an inner voice telling us to forget about it; we may even turn to drugs, food restriction, or binge eating to distract us from our emotions.

    As human beings, we’re simply incapable of numbing a select set of emotions. So, when we numb sadness, we also numb happiness, joy, and other positive emotions. What’s worse is that as we struggle with our own negative emotions, we may create even more suffering. It’s hard work to deny something we’re truly feeling. It takes energy; it wears us down. So rather than try to ignore our feelings, it better serves us to work on observing them.

    It’s alright to admit that you’re hurting or struggling. We all go through hard times. And maybe we can find a bit of comfort in remembering that we aren’t alone. But first, we must accept what’s happening. Then we can decide how we want to best deal with it.

  • A Buddhist Chaplain Shares How to Cope with the Pandemic

    A Buddhist Chaplain Shares How to Cope with the Pandemic

    EDITOR’S NOTE: You can find a number of helpful coronavirus resources and all related Tiny Buddha articles here.

    When I decided over two years ago to become a Buddhist Chaplain, I could’ve never dreamed that I would be experiencing our current pandemic crisis.

    I chose to become a Buddhist Chaplain after I lost my son in 2010. The experience of losing a child forever changed how I related to the world and how I relate to grief, suffering, and compassion.

    One of the most profound lessons I learned about grief is that it doesn’t have to follow the loss of a loved one. We grieve anything we feel a connected to that provides our lives with purpose and meaning. By this definition it is no wonder our current situation of isolation is creating an undercurrent of deep grief and loss for what we once deemed our “normal life.”

    For two years I studied Buddhist Philosophy at Upaya Zen Center under the instruction of Roshi Joan Halifax and other incredible Buddhist teachers. Currently I’m finishing my 1600 hours of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) to become a board certified chaplain.

    After experiencing a life-changing event I wanted to be able to give back and, in a way, keep my son’s memory alive through this work. I imagined coming alongside people as they and their loved one experience the end of life and providing compassionate bereavement support to those who were left to mourn the person they loved and lost.

    These experiences, I imagined, involved human connection and touch. Warm hand to warm hand, heart to heart. I knew that my presence wouldn’t heal the whole of it but hoped that it would provide the next brush stroke in the mandala of mean-making for these people along the journey of grief.

    But in these most recent days it looks more like this: I call a dad through the safety of a phone call, no heart to heart, to tell him his young son was killed in a motorcycle accident. And when he asks if he could come to the hospital and see him, I say no and explain our COVID guidelines.

    Then when he shows up to collect his son’s personal belongings, I stand in the parking lot of our emergency room, with a face mask on, six feet away, hand him the bag, and instruct him not to open the red biohazard bag for three days. It’s a COVID precaution, I tell him.

    He holds the bag gently, looks at me with tears welling up in his eyes, and says, “How can we even have a funeral? No one is allowed to come.” And, with that, the tears break past the levy and rush down his cheeks.

    We stand in silence until he pleads, “So I really can’t see him?”

    I immediately think of how I would’ve felt if someone wouldn’t have let me see my son when he died. My heart tightens, I look away and explain the guidelines again (inside I feel like a failure as a chaplain).

    If this were two months ago this interaction would plant the seeds of healing. The emotional closure of seeing his son one last time would prime the pump of healing and integration. But instead, he’s left with a red biohazard bag that he can’t open for three days.

    Now that I am working full time in a level one trauma center during the COVID pandemic I can’t imagine doing this work without those years of training as a compassionate caregiver grounded in Buddhist teachings.

    As the days have unfolded, and my ‘typical’ chaplain experiences are tarnished by new policies, even when the patient isn’t a COVID patient, I have reflected on what teachings and skills have helped me the most. My hope is by sharing these with you it will give you some tools to come alongside others, warm hand to warm hand, heart to heart.

    Allow all the feelings and emotions that arise.

    This is a time of unprecedented and volatile changes. It is normal and natural that with these changes a variety of feelings arise. Unfortunately, we live in a culture that embraces toxic positivity. Seeing bumper stickers that read “good vibes only” and being encouraged to manifest the life we want through positive affirmations, we begin to feel guilty or like there is something wrong with us when we have a normal human emotion like grief, anger, or sadness.

    Subconsciously withholding permission to experience the full spectrum of human emotions is akin to only allowing a pendulum to swing in one direction.

    The end result is that we can only feel the positive emotions to the depth and degree that we allow ourselves to feel deeply into the difficult emotions. Any joy or happiness we experience is blunted and/or limited by our inability to lean into the difficult emotions we have as part of the human experience.

    Just like any skill we develop, it takes practice. So, when we spend energy pushing away or ignoring grief, sadness, anger, or depression, we are stealing an opportunity from ourselves to become more skilled at working with this emotion.

    This is one reason why many people don’t understand why they aren’t happier in spite of working hard at “good vibes only.” On the other hand, when we get to know the full spectrum of emotions, we become more agile at working with them.

    For example, I know that when I’m feeling grief it often shows up in my chest, whereas anger I’m more likely to feel in my throat. I can only discern this because I work to develop a mindfulness and awareness of these.

    One of the best ways to begin a relationship with the more difficult emotions that arise is to distinguish between you and the feeling.

    Dr. Susan David, in her TED talk on emotional agility, suggested we shift our word choice. For example, instead of saying, “I’m sad,” try saying, “I’m feeling sad.” There are no good/bad feelings, just feelings that need to be acknowledged.

    Make friends with impermanence.

    Illness, old age, and death are always part of our lives, but now we feel as if they have moved in closer. The latent awareness of these inevitabilities can cause us to feel an increase in anxiety.

    In part because of our cultural aversion to grief, we often live our lives as if illness, old age, and death are as far away as the moon, needing a telescope to see the details. But the truth is aging is a gift, and every morning we wake we are one day closer to all three of these.

    All of our experiences are impermanent… including this one with the COVID virus! The flow of life continues even through the hurt and pain of health problems, lost jobs, and all the other difficulties that are arising in this time.

    These experiences are never as far off as the moon, they are always near to us. But, just like only embracing selective emotions, when we ignore the truth of life (and death) we are likely to be caught very unprepared for when things change.

    All of life, our possessions, and our relationship are temporary. Making friends with impermanence helps us suffer less, and acknowledging impermanence encourages gratitude for all that is good in this moment.

    One of my favorite teachings on impermanence is by the renowned teacher Thich Nhat Hahn. They are called The Five Remembrances.

    My first experience with these was in a weekend course with Frank Osteseski, the founder of the Zen Hospice Project, and Metta Institute in San Francisco.

    In a very powerful group experience, we had to speak the five remembrances over and over again to one another. There wasn’t a dry eye in the group!

    I’ve shared them below and I would encourage you to sit with someone you trust and say them to one another. After each statement sit with what comes up for you and feel into what you’re experiencing, not turning away from any of it.

    I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

    I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.

    I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.

    All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.

    My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

    Reduce your stress and increase your joy and compassion with these four Buddhist virtues.

    Alleviating suffering is at the core of all Buddhist teachings. More than any other Buddhist teachings, I’ve used these four qualities to regulate the emotional turmoil and difficult times while working in the hospital.

    In Buddhism you will often hear these qualities called the “Four Boundless Abodes,” or “Four Brahma Viharas.” They are loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.

    These qualities are the ultimate form of self-care and connect us to the innate goodness within ourselves and others. I believe it is the element of connecting us to others that make these so powerful, especially during these times of social isolation.

    Loving kindness, the first quality, encourages us to always make the kindest choice. This means in our own inner narrative about ourselves and in the way we interact with other people.

    Practicing loving-kindness to myself could mean being mindful of my own limitations and not beating myself up if I fall short. Another way of saying this is to make sure that we are treating ourselves with the same kindness we would offer someone we love.

    As we interact with others it helps to assume everyone is doing the best they can with the skills and resources they have. This doesn’t mean we agree with their actions, but it reduces our suffering by allowing us to let go of what we think should happen and express kindness. Loving-kindness is cultivated in relationship to self and others.

    The second quality of the Four Boundless Abodes is compassion. Compassion arises when we stay open to the suffering of another and begin to blur the lines of being separate from others.

    Compassion encourages us to not turn away from suffering, but to lean into it. This is another way that practicing with all of our emotions allows us to be fuller, more tenderhearted human beings. Compassion is the nudge we need to take action that might reduce another person’s suffering.

    Compassion, like loving-kindness, is rooted in relationship with others. But it’s important to recognize we can be compassionate to another person without taking on their suffering. Sometimes just being seen in our suffering is enough to transform it.

    As a chaplain I often say that all I do is listen. People want their story to be heard and their suffering to be acknowledged. In this way, by simply being present, we give the invaluable gift of being seen.

    The third quality, I believe, has the most potential to transform our relationship with others and to break down barriers that keep us from suffering alone. Sympathetic joy is the practice of feeling happy for other people’s joys and happiness.

    In our culture that is focused on competition and winning at all cost, this can be a very difficult thing to do. Judgment, envy, comparison, greed, and many other things get in the way of experiencing sympathetic joy. However, sympathetic joy encourages us to transform those ugly feelings into the realization that our own happiness often depends on the joy and happiness of many other people.

    Gratitude is a close cousin to sympathetic joy. Finding joy in ourselves and others is another way of expressing gratitude for how things are in the current moment. It also raises the awareness of goodness in the moment when sometimes we can’t find anything good about the current situation.

    Last month experienced a moment of sympathetic joy when talking to a mental health provider in our emergency room. She told a story of a very difficult bi-polar patient that, in the end, told the nurse how grateful she was for her help. Seeing the joy on the nurse’s face as she told the story cultivated joy in my heart as I thought of how good it feels to be acknowledged for the work we do that is difficult and often unrewarding.

    The last quality, equanimity, pulls everything together. It holds the best of all the other qualities

    Equanimity is working with our heart-mind to create a calm, unbiased mind that can hold compassion, loving-kindness, and sympathetic joy, without getting swept up in toxic positivity, or not being able to let go when it’s time.

    Equanimity grounds us in an open heart that isn’t attached to how things should be, but can accept things for how they are. My teacher Roshi Joan Halifax refers to this as having a firm-back and soft-front. She also says, often jokingly, that the current agenda is subject to reality.

    These are hard times, and it’s important to give yourself permission to feel all the emotions freely and fully so that you can widen the swing of the pendulum of emotions.

    And with the support of sympathetic joy, joy becomes more fulfilling. With compassion and loving-kindness, we can bring in the reality of impermanence and focus on the things that really matter because we haven’t pushed them off thinking we have more time or it won’t happen to us.

    Below I’ve shared a few meditations on each of the four Boundless Abodes to use as you cultivate these qualities in your own life during this difficult time.

    Loving-Kindness: May I accept all my emotions with an open my heart, knowing I am not limited by them.
    May I be filled with love and kindness equally towards myself and others.

    Compassion: May I, and all beings, be free from suffering.
    May I realize the truth of impermanence for myself and all beings.

    Sympathetic Joy: May I feel your joy as my own and my joy extend to all beings.
    May I find peace and well-being so that I may be of service to others.

    Equanimity: May I accept all things as they are with an open heart and mind free of judgment.
    May I be able to let go of expectations and accept things as they unfold.

  • Surviving as an Empath During the Time of Coronavirus

    Surviving as an Empath During the Time of Coronavirus

    EDITOR’S NOTE: You can find a number of helpful coronavirus resources and all related Tiny Buddha articles here.

    “When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting and less scary.” ~Fred Rogers

    If you are a human on earth at the moment, you’re likely feeling the uncertainty and anxiety of living in the time of a pandemic. It’s not something we have seen before in our lifetime, so every step is a new one, and the end is unknown and nowhere in sight.

    Everyone is coping in their own way. Some are fearful and anxious right now. Others insist on staying on the positive side. Still others are in denial and perhaps will feel the emotional effects later or when it hits their area. Or, more commonly it seems, we have some combination of all three at various times throughout the same day.

    It’s all normal.

    I have come to realize there is no right or wrong way to feel emotionally. Everyone is doing the best they can based on their own coping style.

    As a recovering people-pleaser, I used to try to talk people out of their feelings, make them feel better by taking over responsibility for their emotions. Essentially, I had to fix them to make myself feel better.

    This was my stress response. I picked up on the emotional energy in a room and tried to stabilize it. I am so glad I recognized this in myself, or I’m not sure how I would survive this time.

    I realized the damage this did to me, and to my relationships. If I feared anger, I would walk on eggshells to prevent people from getting angry. If I took on someone’s anxiety, I had to do everything I could to help them so I could relax.

    People have a right to be angry.

    Everyone has the right to feel anxious.

    It is not my job to judge how anyone reacts to life. It’s theirs.

    It is my job to be a compassionate witness to their suffering and to my own suffering.

    This is a hard lesson to learn when it almost cost me my health and my life. But during this time of the Coronavirus I am so grateful I learned it when I cracked the empath code.

    If you find yourself taking on other people’s emotional energy to the point of depletion, and exhaustion and perhaps chronic health issues, read on.

    Life as an empath can sometimes feel you are being tossed around in a tiny boat in an open ocean, with no solid ground. It’s a terrible feeling. So we struggle, we fight, we gasp for air, and occasionally come up to breathe for long enough to see the sun setting on the horizon.

    That is what living as an empath can be like. Only the waves are crashing waves of emotion, sometimes ours, sometimes those of others. It’s unpredictable when the hurricane will come, so we hang on to the oars tightly most of the time… just in case.

    We wonder how other people seem to live easier, to ride the waves smoother and leave storms behind as they head for calmer waters. Until we find out that we see and feel things differently, more acutely, and have to learn the skills to row efficiently, with the wind, and in the preferred direction.

    Then life becomes smooth sailing. We can feel the wind in our hair, smell the ocean, and taste the sea salt on our lips.

    Life as an empath can be hell. Or it can be a deeply sensory experience.

    Before I cracked the code, I was in a lifeboat without a life jacket. I was going down fast.

    Until one day I came across a test “Are you an empath?” Out of curiosity I took it and scored 100%.  I found another test.  Yup. 100% emotional empath.

    I had never stopped to learn what the term “empath’ meant until that moment, even though I had been in the field of counselling for over two decades.

    Now I knew why I used overthinking as a way to protect myself. Why I preferred being alone a lot of the time.  Why I found some people overwhelming and took on everybody else’s emotions. Why I felt responsible for everyone and fell head-first into people-pleasing just so I could feel better.  Why I suffered with so much anxiety and worry for others.

    I felt like I had cracked the code to my life.

    Now I could get in, understand why I was how I was, and set clear boundaries around myself.

    I didn’t need new tools. I didn’t need to change. I was not a problem to fix. I was a human to hold and I needed to carefully guard who I was.

    During this time when the world can feel overwhelming and too, too much, take time to understand yourself and your nervous system’s response to stress a bit better.

    • Notice when you feel anxious… where do you feel it in your body?
    • Notice where you are, who you are with, and what you are doing.
    • Breathe into the tight areas and imagine breathing out your compassion into the world.
    • If someone you are with is anxious, can you stay present and breathe? If not, take a break and find compassion for yourself.
    • Notice what you are consuming—news, stressful or needy people, violence in movies or TV; decrease and take lots of nature breaks.

    When you learn to guard your own health and well-being above everything else, you give yourself a soft place to land in what can be a harsh world to live in. And you give others the same gift of a soft place in your compassion.

  • In My World, There Are No Bad Kids

    In My World, There Are No Bad Kids

  • How to Ease Your Suffering and Confusion by Deciphering Your Emotions

    How to Ease Your Suffering and Confusion by Deciphering Your Emotions

    “The symphony of bodily feeling, mental thoughts, and images is emotion. It is the symphony on which people must learn to focus, to understand their inner stirrings and to harness its message.” ~Dr. Leslie Greenberg

    Like most people in our Western culture, I didn’t learn to read the language of emotions growing up. I had no clue that our emotions are purposeful information about ourselves, our relationships, and our experience in the world around us. They actually carry messages about what to do—what actions to take to meet our needs for safety, balance, and contentment.

    Like all people, my parents were a product of their generation and their family dynamics. Both of their childhoods consisted of emotional deprivation and trauma.

    Like all humans, they did their best to survive.

    Their intolerance to deal with the transgenerational trauma they carried led them to numb themselves through partying and drinking every weekend to avoid their pain. In the eighties this resulted in relying on pretty much any kid from the neighborhood to babysit me and my brother. One of those babysitters sexually assaulted me when I was seven.

    I had no skills to deal with all of my feelings from this and other life experiences. Like all kids, I adapted quite automatically and unconsciously to my environment.

    Like many victims of abuse, I tried to numb out and not feel. I started experimenting with drugs at age fourteen, not having any insight that I was drawn to teens doing the same because we were all trying to self-medicate—to cope. When I didn’t have drugs to help me zone out, I ate. And ate and ate and hated myself for it.

    Of course, the uncomfortable feelings would be only temporarily anesthetized, inevitably reappearing with equal or more intensity. I felt like an open funnel where any soothing, satisfaction, or peace I experienced siphoned through, leaving me again faced with my vulnerability, like a dark cloud I couldn’t shake that brought with it more anguish than I could bear.

    The illusion of love and care from boyfriends became another way to detract from the shadow within and distract myself from negative feelings.

    A history of ignoring and trying to avoid my feelings meant that I also couldn’t hear their messages telling me “This relationship isn’t good!” I heard the whispering inner voice that said “leave this jerk,” but I stayed far too long, not trusting or believing my feelings mattered.

    The earlier abuse and unresolved trauma I carried had eroded my sense of self-worth. Without knowing how to read the cues of my emotions that told me otherwise, the internalized belief that I didn’t matter, that I wasn’t worth protecting, was the one I acted from.

    Although I was desperate to just feel better, the choices I made because of these unconscious beliefs and disconnection from my emotions left me feeling worse and worse, running from a dark shadow that followed me always with mere momentary lapses of relief.

    Like for many people, it took a level of pain and despair that was no longer tolerable for me to change the course of my life.

    The means I used to numb myself lost their effectiveness to numb the pain. The emotional abuse I endured by my boyfriend put me in a trance of darkness so far from myself that “brainwashed” is the closest descriptor that comes to mind.

    It took the depth of this darkness before I finally listened to the inner whisper—the voice of something or someone inside me that said “Enough.” I woke up out of what seemed like a trance and left the dysfunctional community I was in. But still a dark cloud followed me.

    I made many steady positive changes towards being healthy. I cut out the toxins—both substances and relationships. I went back to school and exercised regularly (to feel better, not just to look better).

    I learned about mindfulness and began meditating daily. I ate healthier food and slowly and steadily started to treat myself like my own close friend. Though smaller, and with breaks of light, the dark cloud continued to follow me.

    I was accepted into graduate school to become a therapist and I met my soul mate, but I still didn’t understand my emotions.

    The aha moment came while sitting in a training course to learn about emotion-focused therapy from its developer, Dr. Leslie Greenberg. The missing piece of the puzzle that had eluded me finally landed.

    Dr. Greenberg taught that emotions are actually purposeful, important, and meaningful information. Like data, when understood and translated, emotions can help us connect with our needs and values. They are the clues to the path to find meaning and happiness in our life.

    I had spent my life avoiding, pushing down, and viewing feelings as the greatest nuisance—something to try to shut down and get rid of. It rocked my world to learn that they are actually purposeful, natural, and wise—they are there for a reason!

    “How is everyone not freaking out right now?” I wondered.

    How is this knowledge not everywhere, in every school, so we can all learn the skills to deal with our emotions and not suffer so much? Why is knowledge about emotions so esoteric?

    After that epiphany, I became a devout emotion-focused therapist, training as a clinician and finding true healing working with Dr. Greenberg as his student and client. I finally rid myself of the hanging cloud by learning how to process my deeply suppressed emotions and resolve my unfinished businesses of the past.

    Transforming my relationship to my emotions was the missing piece that allowed me to fully heal. Learning to be with my emotions, investigate them, and process them was like letting go of 100-pound chains shackled around my body all these years.

    I felt free and empowered, knowing I no longer had to run from myself. I could decipher the inner sensations of my emotions and actually use them to get out of life what I want and need for peace and happiness.

    For the past decade, I have taught hundreds of people how they too can ease their suffering and confusion by relating to their emotions differently, with mindfulness and compassion, and by processing the unresolved emotions that have been stored as their own personal shadows.

    Here is a brief synopsis of my knowledge about emotions, as well as some practices that can help you transform your relationship to—and experiences with—them.

    The Different Types of Emotions

    All emotions are not equal. There are different types of emotions—some are healthy and helpful, while others, linked with social conditioning and internalized from negative experiences are less healthy. To complicate things, emotional expression can also be used as a tool to try and get our needs met.

    Understanding the different types of emotions is a great first step in being able to read what type of emotion we might be feeling.

    1. Core Emotions

    Core emotions are a source of intelligence, hard-wired into us and available from two months old. These emotions tell us about what to get more of, what to avoid, and about the state of our relationship with others in the world.

    For instance, core anger informs us when we are being violated or our boundary is being crossed. Sadness is a core emotion we feel with any loss, and fear is a hardwired survival emotion to let us know when there is a threat to our safety.

    Core emotions tell us what action to take (e.g., core anger wants assertive empowered action, sadness typically wants acceptance and comfort, whereas fear will tell us to flee for safety).

    If they are responded to well (considered valid, without added judgment or resistance), they leave the body fairly quickly.

    But if core emotions are not responded to well by others in childhood, and especially if there is trauma, the emotions can be imprinted in a skewed and negative way.

    This is where people tend to feel stuck in painful emotions, which can last long after the situation that caused them—sometimes for years (e.g., feelings of shame, destructive rage, and unresolved grief).

    For me, feelings of shame and unworthiness were imprinted as a result of abuse. These core emotions (that include thoughts and beliefs) needed to be experienced and activated in order to access the adaptive and healthy emotions to help heal, such as core anger and self-compassion.

    2. Secondary Emotions

    Secondary emotions mask the core emotions. They are influenced by our judgment about emotion. They include internalized messages from culture about what is permissible (e.g., “boys don’t cry”). They can also be a form of self-protection or as a defensive mode (e.g., afraid of one’s anger or ashamed of one’s fear).

    These are the feelings that are created from thoughts. For example, if you have a negative thought about yourself, this will trigger a negative feeling, which in turn triggers another negative thought and there you are, caught in a negative ruminative loop.

    3. Instrumental Emotions

    This is a type of emotion that small children try on to see if they can get their wants met by expressing emotion, like the toddler who cries when Mommy says “No” to a second cookie (i.e. “Crocodile tears”).

    If Mommy gives in and gives the child the second cookie, the child learns that by using certain expressions of emotion, one can get what one wants. This reinforces the use of instrumental emotion, which is basically expressing certain emotions to manipulate others to get one’s wants/needs met.

    Anger, for example, can also be instrumental, like when people walk on eggshells around a family member and give into their demands in order to avoid the consequences of their anger. Here, anger is not primary, but is instrumental and as you can imagine, a big problem for all involved.

    Practices that Help You Get Better at Feeling

    While it may take some time, following these steps is a good start to change your relationship with your emotions and help you feel better by become emotionally literate.

    1. Meditate

    Practice mindfulness meditation or yoga to help build your capacity to stay present in your body. Mindfulness meditation has been proven to help expand your “window of tolerance,” which refers to the capacity to be with all of your sensory experiences, including uncomfortable emotions.

    2. Mindset

    Bringing an attitude of curiosity and care to your inner emotional world will help you start to connect with your emotions. Investigate and challenge any internalized myths/beliefs that emotions (i.e. tears) are weakness. Understand that your emotions are not who you are—they are energy, sensation, and experiences all humans are hardwired to have. They do not define you.

     3. Self-reflection

    Learning to pause and go inward to investigate your emotions is essential to see what type of emotion(s) you’re experiencing.

    Ask yourself: What am I feeling? Can I stay with it long enough to see if there’s something underneath? See if you can name what you might be feeling. It’s okay to guess if you’re not sure. (“Is this sadness? Fear? Anger?”)

    If you feel a negative emotion, like shame, question the truth of the thoughts that accompany it to help get underneath to the core emotion. For example, if the thought is “I suck at everything,” you might ask yourself, “Is that true?” Then ask, “Where did I learn that I’m not good enough?”

    Write down the messages you were taught and from whom. You might be able to see that you learned this from somewhere.

    Remember, just because it feels real, doesn’t mean it’s true. It is most likely one of those skewed, negative, unhealthy emotions that came with painful learning in childhood or from negative or traumatic experiences in your life.

    Recognizing our use of instrumental emotions is important to check ourselves. If you are using emotional expression to get another person to respond in a certain way, choose to be truer in your emotions. Investigate what it is you really want and speak directly with the person in your life about what you really feel and what you need.

    The practice of mindfully witnessing and reflecting on my emotions allowed me to know myself, understand my feelings and needs, and ultimately see that I am not my emotions. They are important information, but they do not stay stuck and they do not define me. This felt incredibly helpful and freeing.

    4. Express your emotions

    Journal/write/paint/create to begin to connect with and express your inner feelings in some way.

     5. Self-compassion

    Sometimes staying with our emotions is hard. Sometimes we close off or shut down from our emotions, which, particularly in cases of trauma, can be adaptive. Bringing an attitude of care and friendliness to our difficult emotions is essential.

    Not knowing what we’re feeling, or feeling something other than happy, needs to be held without judgment.

    As we work to learn the language of our emotions and relate to ourselves with understanding, it helps to approach our experiences with kindness, patience, and compassion. We are all feeling beings, and we all suffer at times in our lives. Reminding ourselves of this is paramount to healing and being better at feeling.

    You will find that practicing these steps will transform your experience of feeling. Over time, you will come to see that many emotions, when they arise and are not judged, dissolve naturally without activating stories of the mind or creating drama or painful narratives.

    When we investigate the stronger emotions that have deeper meaning for us and relate to issues of importance, we can close in on them with curiosity and openness, able to identify their inherent messages and heed their call to connect with our inner most needs and desires. We can connect with our true self.

    Getting better at feeling completely transformed my life. Thinking back to the times when I couldn’t bear to be with any of my feelings, drowning myself in anything I could to not feel, it’s like I was a completely different person. Eons away from my true self.

    Of course, I was still me. The difference is, I learned that my emotions are an importance source of intelligence in life. I learned how to read the messages of my emotions and to use them to connect with myself, which ultimately led me to pursue my dreams and my purpose. Which I realized is to help others do the same.

  • Your Emotions Will Not Drown You; They Will Save You

    Your Emotions Will Not Drown You; They Will Save You

    “You weren’t built to be calm, cool, and collected all the time. If you were, it wouldn’t feel so exhausting.”~Ryan O’Connell 

    There’s a lot of talk nowadays about “highly sensitive people” and “empaths.” It can be difficult for people who don’t relate to these labels to understand, or even believe what more sensitive folks experience. As a culture, we’re just beginning to grasp what sensitivity is and how to manage our energy.

    What Sensitivity Actually Is

    It’s easy to get caught up in cultural biases and stigmas concerning personality traits, and sensitivity has always been a part of that. This is why I believe it’s important to define sensitivity in the most objective way possible.

    Sensitivity is simply about attunement, which is a fancy word for how much attention your nervous system is paying. Sensitive folks have more highly attuned nervous systems than others.

    For this reason, our nervous systems are both in a position of advantage and vulnerability at the same time:

    1. You will likely be the first to recognize a genuine threat in the environment. That’s a great evolutionary adaptation! In other words, sensitive people are pretty much designed to outsmart danger and stay safe in the world. (Contrary to the stigma that sensitivity is weakness, sensitive people would probably make the best Jedis ever.)

    2. You will be more susceptible to stress-related symptoms, exhaustion, and mental health issues. In other words, threats that aren’t worth considering will still be considered threatening by the sensitive person because they may struggle with discernment.

    If my nervous system is signaling a threat, how am I supposed to ignore that?!

    Imagine tuning a guitar; as you turn the knob, you create a higher pitch. The string becomes tighter and the notes higher.

    I think this is the perfect metaphor for sensitivity, and one I discovered in college after reading the work of a troubled 1800s poet, Charles Baudelaire. He said, “My nerves are strung to such a pitch that they no longer give anything but piercing and painful vibrations.”

    He wrote this after describing a beautiful landscape he was looking at. He loves it, only, as he takes more and more of the scenery in, it begins to overwhelm him. His nervous system is easily overstimulated by the sights, even positive ones. Lacking the wisdom to glide with this energy, he is tormented by it.

    In all of my angsty college depression, I thought, “This guy gets it!”

    Back then, I was brand new to adulthood and had no idea how to use my sensitivity in any advantageous way. As a result, I developed chronic symptoms doctors couldn’t explain, did poorly in school, and attracted negative relationships with people who didn’t experience the world like I did.

    I simply believed there must be something wrong with me—and so all my efforts went toward fixing myself. I tried developing new skills, making new friends, and applying for various types of jobs. My assumption was that as soon as I figured out how to be “valuable” and well-liked, I’d finally be happy.

    But these pursuits never quite panned out. After college I found myself confused and depressed, and much like Baudelaire, tortured by my sensitivity to the world. I started looking elsewhere for answers and stumbled upon yoga and meditation for the first time.

    In the years following, I worked from home more and more, increasingly turned down parties and unfulfilling trips to the bar, and settled into a healing phase in which I kept to myself.

    The depth of this phase surprised me. There was so much baggage, so much pain to sort through, and so many confusing emotions to sit with. But the more I sat, the more the emotions spoke, revealing my guilt, grief, dissatisfaction, and many more realities I was unaware of. Life was hard because I wasn’t listening to their feedback.

    The more I let them speak, the more positive they became, inspiring new emotions and new behaviors that moved me forward in life.

    Wielding Your Power

    Thankfully, we no longer live in an age that demonizes sensitivity. We are, in many ways, free to arrange our lives in ways that support us, rather than pull us deeper into the currents of overwhelm.

    Imagine walking down the street and realizing that every little stimulus is an invitation—an invitation to feel an emotion, experience a memory, or share in the emotional stream of others’ conversations, etc.

    It’s no wonder sensitive people shut themselves away from the world! It’s so much easier to just avoid all stimuli and hyper-control your environment.

    Unfortunately, doing this 24/7 actually enables the sensitive person to avoid practicing their power. It helps us stay stuck.

    Imagine if Luke Skywalker simply said, “Man, the force is too draining! I think I’ll just stay inside forever.”

    As a newly awakened sensitive person, you may need to hibernate for a while. However, this is only part of the growth path.

    The tough truth is that those with highly attuned nervous systems must master emotion… or suffer. Mastering emotional fluency is an extremely fulfilling journey because you get to experience the full spectrum of human emotion. Whereas many people are just going through the motions, you feel everything, which gives you a unique power and ability to handle anything.

    But for those at the starting line, it can seem like a punishment.

    Why me?

    How to Master Emotional Fluency

    It is unlikely that any of the following points I make will shock you. In fact, they may frustrate you because you already know them. They’re just so hard to implement!

    The thing is, the human nervous system has evolved through many, many centuries. This means that the patterns you are now trying to change or guide in your body are very well established.

    It’s important to not look at this as you trying to work against or change your tendency to become stimulated in uncomfortable ways. When people get caught up in this mentality, they adopt the notion that they are unwell, victims of their own bodies, broken and powerless to direct their own lives.

    As someone who has been through that pain, I want to tell you: That is so far from the reality of your situation.

    You are not here to make yourself less sensitive. You are not here to be like everyone around you.

    You are here to:

    1. Heal your own recurring trauma patterns so that you can lighten the load for your nervous system.

    In essence, this means reducing unnecessary triggers that disrupt your day and cause a full-body stress response. Start to notice things that continuously upset you and catch yourself in those moments. Simply stop and watch the reaction. What specific emotions create a downward spiral in your day?

    It will help you to write down each time you feel triggered so the underlying issues can slowly reveal themselves. For example, you may find that each time you feel anxiety, you’re in a crowded space, or you recall the same painful memory. (This is not only lightening the load on your nervous system, but your adrenals and hormones as well.)

    2. Start cleaning house—what has to go?

    Whereas step 1 is about past trauma that keeps haunting us, this step is about recurring present-day stressors. These have the same, if not more of a detrimental effect on you because they influence daily stress levels.

    This step often takes sensitive folks the longest because they must find ways to restructure their lives (leaving behind toxic relationships and jobs, letting go of old routines, etc.) This may require creativity and outside-the-box thinking because the world is currently designed for less sensitive people, which research shows is the majority.

    Grabbing a stimulating coffee, running off to a stressful job, taking care of your kids with little support, eating stimulating foods—all of this stimulation is “normal,” but for you, it is not sustainable. These habits will lead you in a downward spiral of mental and physical exhaustion.

    For me, this meant finding more flexible jobs that didn’t demand much from me emotionally. Inevitably, it also meant distancing myself from people who were not right for me – even when it was painful to do so.

    3. Rebuild, rebuild, rebuild.

    Begin welcoming in that which fuels you, and begin creating a life that is lighter, simpler, and freer. This life will lack drama that distracts you from who you are. By learning and exploring what matters to you, you will move closer and closer to a reality of true joy.

    Your heightened emotions can come along with you in this new life. Only, you will experience a new side to them—the positive. You will finally begin to feel the ups along with the downs, and it will reveal how more and better was always possible for you.

    This is a slow, challenging process, and by no means have I reached the finish line. For me, refueling has been about getting back to the root who I am and moving toward my genuine goals without rushing myself. The rebuilding phase is all about how you spend your time. Do what feels replenishing and step away from what feels draining.

    No matter how many hurdles you see ahead, you have more power than them. You are not here to bear the weight of society’s chaos. You are here to bring it into order so your sensitivity can work for you, not against you.

    Are you ready to begin?

  • The Negative Impact of Not Feeling Your Feelings

    The Negative Impact of Not Feeling Your Feelings

    “If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.” ~Sidney Banks

    I spent most of my life scared of my feelings. Having feelings and expressing them made me mentally ill—or so I was led to believe by a large number of mental health professionals. When I felt sad, they labeled me as depressed. When I showed any signs of anxiety, they gave me another list of mental health disorders I needed medication for. And if I was angry? Oh well, that was the absolute worst. That clearly proved how insane and utterly out of control I was!

    I didn’t understand how they couldn’t see what was really going on for me. I couldn’t understand how everyone saw me as the problem when what was happening to me was the actual problem. But that’s a story for another time.

    I was brought up to be a good girl, which meant that any angry expressions were forbidden, shamed, and punished.

    I wasn’t allowed to express disappointment because that made me ungrateful.

    I couldn’t ask for what I wanted because that made me greedy.

    I wasn’t allowed to disagree with anyone because that made me difficult.

    I couldn’t express frustration because that meant I was out of control and needed to be left alone to think about my shameful behavior.

    I didn’t ask for help because good girls don’t inconvenience other people.

    I couldn’t be happy either because that made me attention-seeking and annoying.

    I felt all the feelings, but I was taught that they were wrong, forbidden, and shameful, so it didn’t feel safe to feel them. And so I tried to suppress them. I inhibited them, pushed them away, avoided them, shamed them, and feared them.

    Every time I felt something, I saw it as more evidence for how bad I was. Later on, I saw it as evidence for how broken and mentally insane I was. It drove me crazy. But it was thinking that having feelings made me insane that actually drove me insane.

    I believed that what I was experiencing was wrong. I saw my feelings as problems, so I tried to hide them and not feel them. So much so that I don’t even recall feeling very happy or excited about anything. All I remember is feeling tired, lethargic, and bored. I wasn’t even fifteen years old at that time …

    I continued like this for a very long time. My life felt lifeless and bleak. I don’t recall having any fun, adventures, or exciting experiences. Everything just seemed so hard. Life was something to endure, not enjoy. Enjoyment seemed to be reserved for a lucky few, and I most certainly wasn’t one of them.

    It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I learned that my feelings weren’t problems, and that they didn’t make me insane. My feelings only made me one thing—human.

    Feelings Lesson 1: Feelings aren’t evidence that we are broken or insane. They are evidence that we are human.

    I know now that I had always been perfectly healthy, but others taught me to believe that being a little human with feelings was somehow wrong and shameful.

    My feelings were a problem for others. They were inconvenient to them. And as a result of them not dealing with their own feelings—their own irritation, intolerance, and impatience—they tried to control and eliminate mine.

    But what happens when we try to control or eliminate our feelings is that we deprive ourselves from experiencing the richness of life. We numb them all because we cannot selectively numb. We feel it all or nothing at all.

    So if I am unwilling to feel my anger, I will eradicate other feelings with it—apart from maybe one or two that will be expressed more strongly than they would if we only let ourselves feel whatever it is that we actually need to feel.

    Feelings Lesson 2: We are meant to feel all our feelings and can’t selectively numb them.

    In my professional work, I have noticed that sad people usually suppress their anger and angry people usually suppress their sadness. It’s a simplistic generalization, but it is largely true. The problem is that the displaced feeling will be way more powerful and destructive than it would be if we didn’t try to control or avoid it. We avoid a feeling when it is shame-bound, when every time it arises we feel shame for feeling it.

    If we feel something excessively and intensely, it’s a sign that we have shame-bound another feeling, which means that this feeling was not tolerated in our childhood, and every time it arises, our anxiety level rises. We then try to push it down to stop ourselves from feeling it, but then the energy of that feeling gets displaced and added to a feeling we believe to be more acceptable to feel and express.

    The ‘more acceptable’ feeling then takes on a bigger form, and we end up having panic attacks instead of expressing our frustrations about someone. Or we get depressed instead of setting boundaries with people who treat us in disrespectful ways. Or we explode in a rage because we don’t allow ourselves to admit to feeling hurt, alone, and unsupported.

    There are thousands of examples like the above. Sadly, we always believe that our misdirected expression like rage or depression is the problem we need to fix, and so we focus on the result of the problem and not on its actual cause, which means that we cannot solve it.

    If we want to work through our issues, we need to identify which of our feelings are shame-bound and then reconnect with them in healthy and compassionate ways. This is a process. We are going against a lifetime of conditioning, so we need to be gentle with ourselves while persevering and getting honest with ourselves.

    But it is possible. We can remove the shame-binding from all of our feelings by reminding ourselves that our feelings aren’t problems, and that feeling our feelings is what makes our human experience special.

    Feelings Lesson 3: Shame-bound feelings express themselves in different and destructive ways, meaning we simply can’t not feel.

    When we inhibit what we are meant to express to protect others from our feelings, because we perceive that they’re a problem for them, we reinforce the message that our feelings are problems and that we are wrong to feel them. Believing this will negatively impact our mental health and enjoyment of other people and life in general, because feelings exist for our benefit.

    Our feelings exist to guide us through life. They show us what we want and what we don’t want so we can create more of the former and move away from the latter. When someone shames our feelings and encourages us to disconnect from them, they encourage us to disconnect from our emotional guidance system, which serves to help us create a great life for ourselves in which we can grow and thrive. This inevitably leads to creating an inauthentic, unfulfilling life, and stunted development.

    Our feelings also show us when we believe something harmful that isn’t true: a lie of the mind.

    If I believe that my anger is a sign that I am an inherently flawed human being, I feel distressed because this isn’t true. My guidance system is trying to tell me that I’m on the wrong track.

    Because just like the physical pain we experience when touching something painfully hot, emotional pain tells us to move away and let go of a harmful thought. And so, our emotions highlight our state of mind. They encourage us to let go, drop, and move away from anything that doesn’t serve us or promote our personal growth.

    Feelings Lesson 4: Our feelings tell us when we engage in harmful thinking.

    Once we understand the purpose of our feelings, we begin to see the beauty in them. We are made to have feelings—all the feelings! We are meant to feel our feelings. Our feelings aren’t problems. They are just here to give us the full human experience. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! We have the potential to experience it all. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

    But we cannot make the most of this opportunity if we go in blind. Being cut off from our feelings is just that. It’s like trying to sail the oceans without a compass, hoping to find paradise to live in. It’s navigating life without any sense of what we want or what is good and healthy for us. As a consequence, we make many wrong choices and keep believing all the wrong things.

    Our attention then goes into fixing our mistakes instead of creating a life that is most suited to who we really are. Because we simply don’t know what’s good for us and what isn’t because we don’t know what we are feeling. We are emotionally disconnected.

    We have feelings that try to move us toward what’s good for us, but because we don’t like how some of them feel, we disregard them all. We try to create a successful life without any sense of what successful actually looks like for us.

    Let me outline this with an example:

    What was my anger during my childhood trying to tell me?

    It definitely wasn’t that I was a bad and ungrateful child who was inherently flawed and devoid of any tender human qualities. My anger didn’t mean that I was disrespectful or manipulative and deserved to be hit, shouted at, shamed, and punished. My anger was trying to get me to act, to stand up for myself, to protect myself. Only I was too little.

    Then.

    Not now.

    But I lived by those shame-bound rules for most of my life. I hated my anger. I avoided conflict. I didn’t stand up for myself when it mattered and then got myself into situations that were abusive, full of conflict, draining, and traumatic—but also unnecessary.

    If I had been attuned to my anger, if I had responded to it immediately, nothing would have ever needed to escalate. I would have stood up for myself and moved away from whoever and whatever wasn’t healthy for me and didn’t contribute positively toward my growth.

    I would have made very different choices and I would have lived a very different life.

    Being cut off from my feelings and disconnected from my internal guidance system deprived me of the experience of life I wish I’d had.

    I was doing it the hard way. I was trying to succeed going in blind. It doesn’t work. I know you know that too.

    Feelings Lesson 5: Our feelings ask us to act in ways that are good for us.

    So why am I going on about feeling our feelings? Because it’s the solution to many of our problems.

    Instead of putting all our energy into avoiding, controlling, and eliminating our feelings, we have to become attuned to them. We have to reconnect with them so we can make better and healthier choices for ourselves. We need them. We are meant to have them. And the more we let ourselves feel them, the more easily we learn to respond to them in healthy and life-enhancing ways.

    Because our feelings aren’t problems. They are not inconvenient. They are trying to move us into the direction of health and well-being on a physical, emotional, and mental level.

    And in that way, they help us create a life we can actually enjoy. But only if we allow ourselves to feel them.

  • My Favorite Tip to Ease the Pain of Grief

    My Favorite Tip to Ease the Pain of Grief

    “It’s also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that’s sitting right here right now…with its aches and its pleasures…is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.” ~Pema Chodron

    Many people like to think of grief as an emotional experience. It’s something that dominates your internal, emotional space, and that’s it.

    But it doesn’t take long when you’re in the thick of grief to experience grief that isn’t emotional at all.

    You feel heavy. Like there’s a giant weight on your shoulders.

    You feel like your legs are weak and shaking from trying to stand after the ground has been pulled out from underneath you.

    It’s hard to breathe because it feels like the wind has been knocked out of you.

    You feel heartbroken. Like there is literally a hole punched in your chest. Your grief is as much physical as it is emotional.

    Each of the times you experience intense emotional grief you have also been a human being, in your body, experiencing what’s going on.

    When I started to recognize my own body as part of my grieving, I discovered my favorite way to ease the pain from grief for myself and for people around me.

    You see, when I was fourteen I started high school two weeks after my dad died.

    As I walked into that school building, everyone knew what happened, but at the same time I felt like I had no allies. No one that understood. That knew my dad, or that knew where I was coming from.

    The first couple months I just tried to get by.

    I did the motions.

    Didn’t ask too many questions.

    Nodded and shook my head at the appropriate times, making sure each day I came back with the worksheets filled out and ready to turn in.

    I was like a machine.

    My school counselor checked in with me each week to see how things were going. I saw her in homeroom every Tuesday.

    “How’s it going, Kirsten?” she’d ask.

    “It’s so hard,” I repeated again and again.

    So when she sat me down in her office after the first term, she braced herself for the worst. She’d gathered all the paperwork and people she needed to begin a full blown intervention. And then she looked at my grades.

    “Kirsten! What are you talking about?”

    “What do you mean?”

    “You have excellent grades. What do you mean ‘school is hard’?”

    “That’s just it. It’s one thing to fill out a worksheet everyday (this is what I now call “showing signs of life”), it’s another thing to actually do this school thing. I barely feel like I get settled in one class before the bell rings for the next one. I can’t switch my mind from thinking about geometry to immediately conjugate Spanish verbs. My world runs in slow motion, and this place doesn’t slow down.”

    “What can I do to help you?” she asked.

    “I don’t know.”

    Because I didn’t know.

    That’s totally normal not to know.

    Later that week, I found out from my mom that all my teachers had met about how they could help me, and they offered me an extra set of textbooks to keep at home so I didn’t have to carry around heavy books all day.

    “Why would I want that?” I told Mom. I didn’t want any special treatment.

    “Just try it, Kirsten,” my mom encouraged.

    So because she’s my mom, I listened.

    And it was the BEST. THING. EVER.

    On the physical level, it literally lightened the weight on my shoulders. It reinforced the true reality that just showing up to class was more than enough.

    It meant that just being there was all I needed to do, and the rest of the stuff—the logistics—were already taken care of.

    So when you know you’re going to have an emotionally intense day, what’s one thing you could do to lighten your load?

    Maybe it’s setting a timer when you’re cooking so you don’t have to remember how many minutes the pasta has been on the stove. Lighten your mental load so you have space to be with your thoughts.

    Maybe it’s resetting expectations your family has of you, being honest with them about what you are not available to do so you can use that open space for yourself.

    Whatever it is, think about the little things that cause you stress and use those as a source of inspiration for what actions will help.

    The other key part of the textbooks gesture is that it was a gesture that recreated trust.

    You see, in that one small gesture of giving me an extra set of textbooks, my teachers showed me they trusted me.

    They trusted me with these expensive things and they trusted that I would take their gift with respect.

    All the while, I didn’t know if I could trust myself.

    What was even left of me?

    It felt like I was all grief and no me.

    When someone, a whole group of someones who I respected, said with their action, “We trust you,” it was the first time in a long time I was extended a gentle invitation to trust my community again.

    I didn’t have to feel up for every social event or trust the whole world yet, but I could trust my teachers.

    Suddenly, I had a whole group of undercover allies.

    None of the other students knew I had been given “special treatment.” And each day I walked from class to class to class, I knew there was at least one person in the room I could trust.

    That one action was more powerful than any amount of words my teachers said to me over the entire year.

    Here’s what I want you to take away, even if you can’t resolve the pain from a feeling: Try to alleviate some of the physical burden. By doing so, you are creating space for you to heal that would never have occurred if you focus only on words, wondering “What do I say? How can I talk about grief?”

    Pay attention, listen to your body.

    Even if you can’t take away the emotions right now, what can you do to relieve the physical burden?

    How can you relax the gripping around your heart?

    What can you do to release the physical tension in your muscles?

    It might not take away everything, but just a little something can make a world of difference.

  • How to Practice Joy and Bravery

    How to Practice Joy and Bravery

    “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.” ~Alphonse Karr

    “You should have told them. You should have told them you like it. They need to know people are happy there.”

    “I know I should have. But I didn’t want to seem insensitive or make anyone feel bad.”

    We sat at the dinner table, my boyfriend looking at me, me staring at my cleaned plate. We’d had variations of this conversation before. I tell him my coworkers aren’t happy at work, but I am happy at work, and he is forever confused as to why I’m scared to voice up that I love this job.

    Part of the reason for my silence is that I’m the youngest in the office. The pay isn’t very high, but it’s everything my partner and I need right now. I love teaching and working with students. My commute is a twenty-minute walk down a picturesque Main Street.

    Obviously, there are times of stress, imposter syndrome, and downright exhaustion. But it’s nothing compared to the fear I formerly felt about not having a job and living 2,000 miles across the country from my boyfriend. Again.

    Thus, when my coworkers voice concerns over meager pay and little respect, I usually pretend not to hear them, hunkering in my cubicle. Putting earbuds in with no music. Looking preoccupied with something else.

    Their concerns are valid. They have families and decades more work experience than I do. We’re all in different places, which creates the spectrum of job dissatisfaction.

    To say that I loved this job, that it’s the best thing that ever happened to me, I feared would alienate me further from coworkers whom I admire and respect. I am the “new kid on the block” as one referred to me, but I desperately wanted to fit in and be one of the faculty members.

    I’ve danced this line before, wondering when it’s okay to accept and show joy even when others are not feeling it. How can I be respectful and supportive when I’m happy in others’ sadness? Rather than helping them off the ground, isn’t that throwing sand on their faces and walking away? What about empathy?

    My partner, a skilled outdoorsman who asserts the only emotions he feels are laughter and hunger, said it simply: “You can help them if you tell them the truth.”

    I’ve thought about the people who inspire me the most. The people who seem to overcome every odd: being the first in the family to graduate high school and college, finishing a Ph.D. while working full-time and raising two kids, and leading the fight against cancer when it took her mom’s life.

    Knowing that other people have faced hard circumstances and still find joy is inspiring. It’s realizing that you can turn around from the desert you’ve been staring at to instead view a mountainside of purple wildflowers. Other people’s strength gives us strength. This is what my boyfriend meant when he said, “you can help them.”

    More than finding happiness, intentionally looking for joy and reminding ourselves of the good things is an act of bravery. Sharing joy is an act of bravery.

    We don’t have to look hard to find culturally affirming messages that work should be hard. That we should hate our jobs. That getting older sucks. That something other than the present moment is “the good old times.” And of course, that life itself is just plain hard. It’s easy to feel jealous. It’s easy to ignore what would have made us happy years ago.

    That’s easy. Creating joy for yourself is hard. So, let’s all do the hard thing.

    I don’t have the balance between empathy and joy figured out. One of my fears is still being insensitive to others’ pain. But I have come to realize this from more conversations and reflection on my heroes: We help others more than we hurt them when we share our joy.

    We open possibilities for people when they see happiness. Gratitude. Presence. Acceptance.

    As one example, my grandpa passed away last April. Grandpa was the glue and epicenter of our family. His spontaneous jokes, wide smile, and contagious laugh will always be missed by everyone who knew him.

    He and my grandma had been married for nearly seventy years. The grief is still raw for her; she talks to him every day. But she chooses to keep living fully, saying, “I wake up every day, and I think to myself: Am I going to be happy today? Am I going to be sad? And I choose to be happy.”

    It’s not that my grandma doesn’t miss my grandpa. Her bravery to choose happiness doesn’t dilute anyone else’s pain. Instead, it lives out the legacy of a joyous man and gives strength to his children and grandchildren. It opens the possibility that we can be happy. Simply put, her joy helps us.

    Below are three thoughts I’ve returned to when faced with the question of day-to-day living: Will I choose joy? Will I share it with others?

    I choose to…

    1. Make the best out of this situation.

    In college, my roommate came up with ideas for dance parties while she was studying for cellular biology. The idea was simple: study hard for something you don’t really want to be studying at all, and take a five-minute break to dance like an idiot to a 2000s pop song. Occasionally, the folks below you might yell through the vents. But the point is, you make the best of something you don’t want to do.

    I’m forever thankful that my roommate taught me this and then demanded I join in. She taught me that whatever’s going on, we can make it fun. We can make a boring trip to Walmart fun by blasting music, we can make working out fun by making all our friends go with us at 7am, and we can make studying fun by sipping a new flavor of herbal tea with each biology chapter.

    We can all apply this to our lives. Choose music that makes you happy while driving to run errands. Look at clouds and trees and other things that bring you joy. Make up stories. Even just stopping to tell yourself, “I will make the best out of this. I will make this fun for me,” will consciously remind you to make life fun for yourself.

    I choose to…

    2. Acknowledge and accept all emotions—feelings of anger, hurt, boredom, jealousy, not-good-enoughness, sadness, and loneliness.

    Though I choose to see the good in everything, that doesn’t mean avoiding pain. I want to feel it so I can help others through it. I don’t want anyone to feel alone, and that starts with acknowledging that each of us has feelings we don’t want to feel. When we feel them, we get a little braver. It’s easier to ignore them. It’s a whole lot harder to acknowledge they’re there, and to accept them.

    One simple thought to say to yourself, “I will be real with myself. I will be brave enough to feel this, so at the very least I can help someone else walk through this.”

    I choose to…

    3. Focus on everything that’s going right rather than what’s going wrong.

    It’s easy to find problems with everything. One professor told me, “Everyone can find problems. You can be the one guy to find solutions.” And it’s true. Would you rather be a problem-finder or a solution-maker?

    My default setting seems to be anxiety and problem-finding. I can find anything to be stressed about, anytime of the day, anywhere.

    It takes more work for me to intentionally think about what’s going well. So, one strategy I like to use is the negative game (this especially works for me because I’m a great worrier).

    What would it be like if my boyfriend left? I’m so glad to have a partner here day-in-and-day-out who loves me (and tells me that every day), who cooks well, and sincerely loves cats.

    What would it be like if I didn’t have a job? I’m so glad I have the opportunity to work with students each day and to help them reach their goals.

    What would it be like if my parents weren’t here? I’m so glad to have parents I can call every day and who truly care about me, who would fly across the country to see me, who listen attentively to every student-story I share.

    Who wouldn’t relax a bit after playing this mind game? Choose to think about what you can do; what you do have. Even the basics are grounding: having nutritious food to eat, clean water to drink, a safe home to live in.

    I did end up telling my coworkers that I enjoy this job after one of them shared they’re planning to leave after the next school year. I offered up a tentative, “I like this job. It works great for me right now.” No one threw rocks or kicked me out. They agreed it was great for someone just starting their career.

    Don’t be afraid to share your joy, even if other people don’t share it. Who knows, you never know how you can help someone. Maybe my brief words helped my coworker find something positive in our workplace.

    I leave you with one quote:

    “Never dull your shine for someone else.”

    Help other people see joy, and be brave enough to practice it.

  • How to Fight Well in Your Relationship

    How to Fight Well in Your Relationship

    “Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” ~Rumi

    I had one of those really intense arguments with my partner recently, and it made me realize the importance of knowing how to fight well in a relationship.

    That might sound like an oxymoron, but there isn’t a relationship I know of where the couple doesn’t fall out at one point or another. Fights can make or break a relationship. That’s why it’s important you know how to fight well—because the success of any relationship isn’t based on how well you manage the good times but on how well you can deal with the bad.

    Basically, it’s about how well you can learn to fight.

    Learning to fight well is important because it can help bring up lots of hidden stuff that’s been lying dormant for years; it enables you to be really honest with each other, which helps you develop deeper levels of trust; and studies have shown that learning to fight well can even improve the intimacy in your relationship.

    But back to our fight.

    It all started when I was out at friend’s house and lost track of the time. My partner and I had agreed to spend some quality time together that evening, and when I noticed the time, my heart sank. I knew she would be upset as I made the difficult call home, and yep, I was right. She was livid. We then descended into a really uncomfortable argument of blame and counter blame, with a bit of defensiveness thrown in for good measure.

    Criticism and defensiveness are two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, as highlighted by renowned relationship experts Drs. John and Julie Gottman. They noticed these two traits are highly correlated to relationships that lead to breakup and divorce.

    Whenever my partner and I would have our worst arguments these two traits would always be present, and this time was no different.

    That’s why becoming more aware of how you fight can help you avoid relationship Armageddon and instead increase the trust, safety, and love in your relationship. To help with this here are seven key steps to follow when you feel as if you’re descending into another one of those earth shattering fights:

    1. Upgrade your language.

    Some arguments can help grow the relationship and develop greater levels of trust and intimacy between both parties. Other arguments are the opposite; they create a hierarchy and a power struggle, which diminishes respect, trust, and love.

    If we rewind to the start of our arguments we can predict to some extent their “success” by the language that started them and whether it was “hard” or “soft.”

    Hard language starts with generic hyperbole like “You always…” or “Why do you never…” or “I knew that you would…” Soft language uses “I” statements and focuses on the actions that took place, how they made us feel, and what we want to happen.

    My partner’s language that day was very “hard.” She criticized me and I immediately became defensive as the original story in my head started to change in response to her accusations. The firm agreement I knew we’d made became a tentative expectation in my mind. My lateness was no longer my responsibility but my friend’s, who had been delayed preparing food. Bit by bit I retold the story of what had happened and made myself into a victim of my circumstances instead of the owner that I really was.

    The language used at the start of our exchange influenced my response and how the subsequent argument progressed.

    The Gottman Institute reported that they can predict with 94% accuracy how a discussion will end based on the language used to start it. The softer and kinder our words, the less defensive we become, meaning we are more open to taking responsibility and creating connection instead of disconnection.

    A key principle to help with this is to use language to complain but don’t blame.

    2. Create space.

    Luckily, I had a one-hour drive home to work out what had happened and to get some perspective following our argument. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was a crucial period because I used it to work through what had happened, and there’s no way we could have achieved such a good outcome without the time this gave us.

    I’ve learned that it’s wise to agree in advance to call a “timeout” or “press pause” before arguments begin. In the past I’ve attempted to call a timeout to create the space to calm down, but this has only made matters worse.

    My partner and I now have an agreement that if either of us needs to call a timeout in an argument the other will respect the request. It can be infuriating at the time, but arguing when you are in a low mood or heightened sense of emotion is never going to assist your dialogue. Therefore, it’s important to create space as much as you can.

     3. Safely express your emotions.

    On that drive home the first thing I did was shout and scream about what had happened. My inner child had a field day as I moaned and complained to my imaginary passengers about what she’d said and how wrong she was. It was fantastic, and a very cathartic way to clear the negative energy and emotions I was holding on to around the conversation.

    When we had the initial phone call I went into a stress response as my body became flooded with cortisol, and my heart rate went through the roof. Expressing my emotions and doing lots of deep breathing on the way home helped me flush the cortisol out of my body and return it to its original state. Without doing this I would have taken those negative emotions and feelings into the resumption of the fight on my return home.

    The intense emotions we have during a fight form a negative filter through which we see the relationship. There’s not much our partners can say that we won’t interpret the wrong way when we come from this place. That’s why it’s so important to clear the filter and express your emotions as best you can.

    It’s important to make sure that you find somewhere safe to do this, however. Doing it next to your partner won’t go down well, so get out of the house and find somewhere to express your emotions as cleanly and safely as possible so you don’t take it into your next fight,

    4. What if…?

    Once I’d let go of the emotions I started to calm down, and it was only then that I realized I could let go of the story I’d been telling myself. It was at this point I decided to tell myself a new story that started with “What if…”

    “What if she had a point?”

    “What if I wasn’t being honest with myself?”

    “What if I wasn’t taking responsibility for something?”

    This provided a new lens through which to see the situation. With my strong emotions now expressed it was like a fog had been lifted, and I could see the situation from a new vantage point. This new perspective allowed me to completely shift my thinking on what had happened and relinquish my grip on the version of events I had concocted to help deal with my partner’s “hard” response.

    5. Take responsibility.

    From that simple question I realized that there was plenty I could take responsibility for, that I was ignoring based on my initial triggered response. I was shocked because once I found one thing, I found another, and another. By the end, I could take responsibility for almost all of what happened.

    It would have been easier to take responsibility for either nothing (be stubborn) or everything (be a people-pleaser). But the more honest I was with myself, the more I could distinguish between what was mine and what was not.

    For example, we had made a clear agreement about what time I would get back. I knew the food was going to be late, so I could have explained to my friends and left without eating. I knew I didn’t have a watch, so I could have checked on the time from somewhere else.

    Previously I’d been telling myself the story that I needed in order to ensure I wasn’t in the wrong and to protect the scared little boy inside myself that was upset at being made to feel bad.

    This also helped me to realize what I was not prepared to take responsibility for. I was being accused of some things that weren’t right. In fights we easily turn critiques about our actions into criticisms of our character. So, for example, in this scenario I was late home because I didn’t prioritize my partner. This is a critique (and is true); however, a criticism would be that this action makes me a selfish person (not true).

    Taking ownership for what was mine helped me release responsibility for what was not. This helped me to feel much stronger and clearer in owning my part in the situation and how I communicated it to my partner, as a result.

    6. Respect your partner’s process.

    When I arrived home I was excited to share what I’d learned with my partner and imagined us having a great conversation about it. That didn’t happen because she was still really annoyed with me. I came through the door with this great insight and awareness about the argument and how and why I’d behaved as I had. However, I was met with stonewalling.

    I’d used the journey home to vent and express my feelings, so the emotions in me had subsided. However, my partner had been sat at home the whole time stewing and making matters bigger and badder in her head, so we were in very different places. She still needed to express those emotions and get them out of her system before she was able to communicate with me in a productive way, and I needed to create space for her to do that.

    That was really tough because I realized I was in one place (emotionally and physically expressed, and now ready to take responsibility for what was mine), whereas she was somewhere else (still emotional and not ready for a rational conversation).

    7. Create the “container.”

    Fights often get out of control when you are both full of emotion and expressing it from a place of fear. The most important thing missing in most fights is a safe space within which to share and be heard

    When my partner and I fight we often fight for space to be heard as much as we argue about whatever the fight appeared to be about. Most fights are secret battles for power in the relationship and not really about whatever started them.

    To fight well requires one of you to have enough presence, away from your emotions, to create a safe space (or the “container”) within which to have the conversation.

    Once my partner’s emotions had calmed I asked if she was okay to have a conversation about what had happened because I wanted to share with her some things I wanted to take responsibility for. She agreed, and we were then able to have that conversation where I took responsibility for what was mine and we discussed what was not for me to take.

    I found that leading and taking responsibility for what was mine made her more trusting in me, which added to the safety we’d developed in creating the “container.” This made her much more understanding and able to take responsibility for what was hers.

    It really helped me when she said the simple words “I was wrong to say you were selfish.” I felt validated, which helped further develop the trust we had for each other.

    She would never have been able to admit that if we’d not created the sufficient safety for us both to be honest with each other.

    —

    This certainly wasn’t an easy conversation, but it would never have been possible if we hadn’t taken steps to create some space to express our emotions, take responsibility for what was ours, and then create a safe environment within which to discuss it.

    I learned that it’s not what we fight about but how we fight that’s most important.

  • Growing in the Dark: Why “Negative Feelings” Matter

    Growing in the Dark: Why “Negative Feelings” Matter

    “Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.” ~Pema Chodron

    Pop spirituality and our cultural attitude would have you think it best to banish negativity from your life. Give it the quarantine treatment until it gets better and can rejoin our polite, positive, placative society.

    We are encouraged to cleanse negativity, a blanket descriptor of things that don’t feel good. Push it away with an exhale and inhale positivity. Anger, sadness, and critical thinking can all be forms of “bad vibes” that are sought to be avoided.

    This banishment of negativity is so simplistic. We are humans, capable of such a wonderful range of emotion and experience. Who are we to banish some of the low, dark, hollow notes from our octaves of existence? Too much cleansing makes us dry, brittle, and sterile.

    When joy and exuberance are out for too long, they get stale. When you are always bathing in the light, the light bulb begins to wane and eventually will dim and burn out. A life of constant light is not sustainable. It’s also not possible. Life is much more wonderfully and tragically complicated. Some of the richest parts linger in the shadows or even in the deepest, dark corners of our lives.

    It’s quite easy to sleep through happiness. A good, easy-going life does little to keep us awake and alive. The darker feelings bring us right into the present. The physicality of crying, shaking, with quaky breath and a hot face brings us into our bodies. To our emotional life. To our knees like no other. Darkness is what pops our eyes open to your life. It’s the catalyst for change and renewal.

    At this juncture in my life, I am spending a lot of time in grief and anger. I do not wish to get into all of the intimate details of it, but the gist is that I am going through a divorce. An icky, shattering, tearing asunder of the life I once knew and the dreams I had for the life of my family.

    It’s been tempting to push my feelings aside and pretend I’m okay. But a very small part of me recognizes there is this opportunity for something new. Renewal. Rebirth.

    While I haven’t given birth myself, I have been in the room during a birth. Birth isn’t only the beginning of a delicate, new life. It is deep and wrenching pain. Pain that steals your breath and turns your voice into a howl. It is uncertainty and a dark intensity that knocks at your ability to stand on your feet. It is sitting among blood, sweat, and tears and still finding deep, undisturbed joy.

    I can’t begin the process of rebirth by dimming the less favorable facets of the undertaking. If a rebirth is what I seek, then I am in line for one of the most wholly altering, body-shaking processes in our existence.

    So, here is what I am doing: I am leaning in. I am sitting upon the jagged surfaces of grief and anger, and I am not moving. I am listening to what they have to say.

    I am listening to anger proclaim my sense of self-worth. It rises each time I feel my innate human value has been violated. It reminds me to maintain a protective boundary around my sense of self.

    I am watching grief slice into my heart and reveal its contents. The reason I feel loss is because I have loved and still possess a capacity to love. My grief reminds me of just how much I truly value and hold dear.

    I am engulfed by the ravaging, purifying flames of my anger. I am lying in the center of my dark pool of sorrow.

    I am a human. Delicate and strong. Tender and powerful. I am built for this. I am made to stand in the center of howling storms sent by mother nature and witness devastating wreckage. My skin pummeled by rain. My feet lifted by wind.

    I am also made for watching the storm ease up and transform into calm. I am made for sunlight on my face and the joy of birdsong. The storm isn’t the ending. Neither is the birdsong.

    Your pain matters. Your anger, sadness, discomfort, grief, confusion. All of those dark feelings matter. They matter just as much to your growth as your happiness and gratitude journals. Without fully allowing the dark feelings, the lighter feelings will be kept at bay. When you close off pain, you close off to the full dynamism that is human existence.

    Discarding the hard shell that protects your heart can feel threatening and unsafe. I have been shucked open and shredded by life. I put my wholeness at stake and I am now piecemeal, the shards of my heart spread across the landscape of my experience. This allows my permeability. My walls are down which means I can allow the outer world in and allow my inner world out.

    Things strike me. I am easily moved. I get attached. I cleave and for a time I don’t want to let go—of people, places, moments. The interesting thing is that this piecemeal version of me is actually more whole, more fully alive, more human the the version of me that protected and held it together.

    At the moment, I am gutted. All my sensitive parts are outside of me. I have been opened and torn into with love and cruelty. But, if I can stay with this dark, wounded part of myself, watch the wounds bleed, redden, and pus, then I will also witness the end of the oozing. The healing of the infection. The beginning of scar tissue. A slow, soft mending. An offering to my tender history. A testament to my future strength.

  • How to Embrace Your Sensitive Superpower and Stop Feeling Overwhelmed

    How to Embrace Your Sensitive Superpower and Stop Feeling Overwhelmed

    “With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.” – Dalai Lama

    Sensitivity can feel like a gift or a burden, depending on our relationship to it.

    If you often feel completely overwhelmed by an overload of stimulation, then your sensitivity probably doesn’t feel like an asset. Maybe more like a liability. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

    As an introvert and sensitive person, I’ve navigated these waters my whole life, and I’ve come to realize that sensitivity is more than a gift—it’s a superpower! But first we need to understand what sensitivity is and what it’s not.

    What is Sensitivity (the Superpower)?

    To keep it fairly simple, sensitivity is essentially the ability to feel. The more sensitive we are, the more we feel.

    Sensitivity allows us to be more aware of what’s happening around us—people, conversations, traffic, nature, how a place feels. It also makes us more aware of and in touch with what’s happening inside us—our thoughts, emotions, sensations, and how we react to external things.

    I see sensitivity as a foundation for self-awareness. Without the ability to feel, we could never discern what’s really happening and break through the limits of our personality and fears.

    Sensitivity is also an aspect of empathy. Because we can feel what others are feeling, it allows us to understand them and connect with them more deeply. Without some degree of sensitivity, we’d be disconnected from people.

    On the other side, it can be extremely overwhelming. Too much sensory information coming in all at once can leave us feeling agitated, overwhelmed, and drained. When sensitivity becomes overwhelming, we often pull away from people and retreat to time on our own—a typical trait of an introvert or HSP.

    When I was young, wherever my parents took me, I’d be very aware of the spaces around me and how they made me feel. I either liked a place because I felt good there, or I didn’t like it because I felt uncomfortable.

    At that time, I didn’t comprehend much more than that—I didn’t know how to—and it’s very clear to me now that I didn’t have a context for it back then. There was too much sensory information passing through me, so when a place felt unpleasant it was just an overwhelming sense of feeling unsettled and unsafe.

    I was also very sensitive to people. I would instantly have a sense of the state, or mood, of them as soon as I met them, or even just saw them. When I was young, I didn’t understand what they were feeling, but whatever it was, I’d feel it in myself. Depending on their emotion, this could be very uncomfortable.

    I’d find myself feeling frustrated and emotional for no reason when around certain people, but it wasn’t my emotion. Again, at that time, I couldn’t tell the difference because I’d feel it in me and assume it was me, but I didn’t understand why I felt like that. Very confusing.

    Later I learned to know the difference between my own emotions and someone else’s, as I was much clearer on what was happening inside me.

    This is when I started recognizing the gift, or superpower, that sensitivity brought into my life. In sensing what others were feeling, I experienced a sense of connection to them, which helped me understand them.

    This awakened a sense of caring in me. I could feel when people were upset, sad, or hurt, and I found myself wanting to help. If someone was angry, I started to feel beyond the anger and to understand why they felt that way. Diffusing an argument or conflict was easy because I could feel where they were coming from.

    It’s so easy to judge people, retaliate, or disconnect when we don’t understand them. The moment we understand, there is opening, heart, and compassion.

    Sensitivity, our ability to feel, is a superpower that allows us to understand, connect, and have deep insights about ourselves and the nature of humanity. And the world needs more of this.

    What’s Not a Superpower

    If we say someone is emotionally sensitive, it could mean they’re sensitive to their own emotions, or it could mean they react emotionally to others’ words, actions, and emotions.

    Being sensitive to what’s happening inside ourselves is the basis for self-awareness, and an essential ingredient if we want to grow. A superpower.

    If someone says something and we’re hurt by it, we might call it being sensitive, but it’s more an emotional reaction than a superpower. Yes, we may feel the intention behind their words, but feeling it and being hurt by it are not the same thing. If their words have triggered something in us, then it’s more about the stability of our sense of self.

    Another example: You’re in a crowded room and you become overwhelmed and drained by the noise and stimulation.

    Here your sensitivity gives you the ability to feel everything that’s happening around you. I think this is an amazing gift. It may be a lot of stimulation, but I’d still call this a superpower.

    However, when we feel overwhelmed or drained, it’s not solely because we’re sensitive. It’s because we don’t feel grounded or stable internally, as I mentioned in my previous post about how I preserve my energy in groups as an introvert. The good news is, we can proactively foster internal stability.

    When we feel overwhelmed and drained in crowds, we often just want to remove ourselves from the situation and be alone. There’s no right or wrong, what we should or shouldn’t do, but when we acknowledge what’s happening inside us, then we have a choice.

    Learning Not to Let Sensitivity Control Us

    When I was young my sensitivity was too much for me. I would feel the good, the bad, and everything in between. It felt like the world around me was not around me but passing through me; and because I didn’t have a context for what was happening, the world felt unsafe, so the only way for me to function was to shut down.

    It wasn’t something I did consciously, as I didn’t understand what was happening. It was something I did on a subconscious level.

    It wasn’t until many years later, after doing a lot of work on myself, that I was able to realize what I’d done. I’m now able to reconnect with my sensitivity and wield it while feeling safe.

    Sensitivity is a gift, but if we don’t have a stable center within us, then our ability to feel becomes stressful and overwhelming, and ultimately begins to control us. In a sense, we become a victim to the power of our own sensitivity, as if it’s wielding us.

    To embrace our superpower—to be able to feel for and connect with others deeply without feeling overwhelmed or easily hurt and reacting emotionally—we need to find stillness inside ourselves. A stable center.

    If we can’t find stillness and quiet amidst the noise of our own mind, we’ll never be able to find peace and quiet amidst the noise of the world.

    Our thoughts amplify how we react to the overstimulation of our sensitivity. We pick up on what’s happening around us, it creates a space inside us—a landscape of emotions and feelings—and this triggers thoughts. The thoughts then reinforce the emotions, anchoring them further. The emotions continue triggering more thoughts, in a vicious cycle that goes on and on.

    For example, if we’re in a loud, crowded room we may feel anxious as a result of all the sensory input—the noise, people’s energy, and the energy of the place. We may start thinking thoughts like “Why did I come here? I knew this would be a bad idea.” Then we start feeling trapped and overwhelmed, triggering more thoughts of perhaps how you blame your friend for inviting you, or “How am I going to just disappear?” This all amplifies the anxiety.

    Or, if someone says something that triggers us emotionally, we may feel insecure, then start thinking about how we always say the wrong things, and then feel more insecure.

    After starting a meditation practice, I realized that when I’m more still and quiet inside myself, I react less and less to external stimulation. I’m no longer at the mercy of my superpower. In fact, the stiller I become, the more I feel, but without it becoming chaotic or overwhelming.

    The Problem Isn’t Our Sensitivity; It’s Our Lack of Stability

    I still value time on my own. I always have and always will. But I now have a more stable center, so I’m able to use my sensitivity as a superpower.

    You can do the same by prioritizing activities that help you create a sense of internal stability, such as:

    After meditation, I particularly like spending time in nature. We can walk outside and let our mind run, and there will still be a calming effect. But when we consciously tune into our surroundings as we walk—using the superpower of our sensitivity to feel nature’s stillness—our own stillness becomes more tangible and stable.

    When we feel stable inside ourselves, we have a solid foundation to feel deeply, so the outside world has less power to control us. The stillness inside is unwavering, regardless of what’s happening outside of us.

    —

    Our sensitivity is a gift in that it opens the door to a more connected world, but we need to proactively foster internal stability so we’re not at the mercy of the chaos around us. The more we embrace our superpower and live in it from a space of stillness and stability, the more at peace we will be inside ourselves—creating a greater capacity to help others, and in turn creating a more connected humanity.

    Find stillness. Find your superpower.