Tiny Buddha

Tag: guilt

  • What No One Tells You About Setting Boundaries: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

    What No One Tells You About Setting Boundaries: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

    “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” ~Rumi

    Three years back was the first time I dared to set a boundary and be assertive in a friendship, and guess what? She blocked me on her phone, and we stopped being friends.

    It came as a rude shock because I was quite invested in the friendship. Not only did we have good times together, but I had helped her search for and find a job and even babysat her kid for a long while free of charge. I felt betrayed and hurt. It made me feel like I was the one in the wrong, the bad person, and like I had no right to say what felt right to me.

    I admit that I was early in my journey of being assertive and learning how to set boundaries, so my skill set wasn’t the best. But despite the mayhem and chaos it caused, it was a good thing for me.

    We were similar in many ways, and I knew she was a lovely person. Still, I didn’t particularly appreciate that she always wanted to be in charge, acted as though she knew it all, only wanted her way, and behaved as though she had the world’s worst problems.

    I empathized with her because she shared her struggles with me. But I didn’t share mine back partly because I wasn’t comfortable and partly because I felt there was no place for me; it was only about her. So, one day, when I’d had enough, I exploded and said what I had to say, rudely, and that ended the relationship.

    Three years later, when the dust settled, we started talking. We are cordial, civilized, and respectful now. We share laughs and anecdotes, but it’ll never be the same because we’ve both changed, and our relationship has changed as well.

    After taking this journey, I’ve concluded that being assertive and setting boundaries is not as easy as it sounds. But it’s the only way to regain your sense of self, sanity, and self-love.

    What are the Benefits of Maintaining Boundaries?

    Boundaries are limits between us and other people that enable us to honor our feelings, wants, and needs and take good care of ourselves. We need to set boundaries because:

    • Boundaries offer protection against people who habitually do things that leave us feeling uncomfortable.
    • Correcting troublesome behavior and letting other people know what’s acceptable or not, where we stand, and what we are willing to tolerate drastically improves our sense of self.
    • Setting boundaries helps us trust ourselves and, in turn, trust others.
    • It helps us treat ourselves and others as equal with respect and dignity.
    • It teaches us what’s essential for us and gives us the courage to stand up for it.
    • It builds our confidence as we work on our assertiveness muscle.
    • Boundary-setting is generous to others because it allows them to grow and take responsibility for themselves, their actions, and their issues.

    So, if boundary-setting is such a good thing, what’s the problem?

    The problem is that it’s hard, especially for people who are not used to setting boundaries. It can make you question yourself and your intentions and turn your world topsy-turvy.

    Why Is Boundary-Setting So Difficult?

    Most people with weak boundaries:

    • Are not aware of their needs, and this takes lots of time and practice.
    • Are afraid to stand up for themselves.
    • Don’t believe that they deserve to have their boundaries recognized and honored.
    • Are afraid that people will think they are selfish.
    • Think it is wrong to think about themselves because of various cultural or religious influences.
    • Believe that what they want is unreasonable.

    How Do You Start Setting Boundaries?

    1. Take inventory.

    Have you ever been in a situation where you felt like you were being taken advantage of, taken for granted, or treated disrespectfully? When you feel any of these things, you need to ask yourself:

    • What are you feeling? Is it anger, hurt, betrayal?
    • What brought about those feelings? What did the other person do? Did they disregard your feelings or act dismissive? Did they cross a line you’d rather no one cross?
    • How did you react to the situation? Did you ignore it, make an excuse for them, or get angry and resentful but fake a smile?
    • Why did you tolerate this behavior and respond this way? What were you afraid of?

    So, the first step is being conscious of what happened and what you’re feeling.

    This is essential because it helps you become aware of your needs, wants, and limits; notice when someone is neglecting or violating them; and reflect on how you usually respond—and why.

    2. Be honest and courageous.

    The second step is being honest about what you would like to do in the situation and reflecting so you can find the fairest and healthiest way to respond.

    Then comes the hardest part: finding the courage to act even if it may displease, anger, or irritate the other person.

    Everything inside you might scream that this is a mistake. You may feel scared, anxious, and even unsafe speaking up. But remember that ignoring the issue is not a solution because you will just end up feeling resentful if you continually avoid saying what you really want to say.

     What No One Tells You About Setting Boundaries

    1. You may feel guilty.

    Somewhere down the line, you may have learned that your needs, feelings, and wants are less important than others’. When you start making changes, it may feel like you are embarking on a journey of selfishness and betraying the very core of your being.

    2. You will likely make mistakes.

    You are learning a new skill, and mistakes are bound to happen. You may overreact to minor issues or fail to communicate your feelings and needs accurately or clearly. There’s no right or wrong here, only a learning curve. You can always change your decision or apologize later if you realize that your decision wasn’t the best.

    3. It sometimes feels like you are at war with yourself.

    To some extent, that’s what this is. A war with what you once believed to be true but isn’t anymore, a war against your default responses.

    4.  It is not easy.

    It will sometimes mean wrong turns, slip-ups, and lost relationships. But if you’re honest with yourself, you may realize that those relationships were already dead to begin with; you were trying to nurture doomed relationships because you were afraid to let them go.

    5. It makes you confront demons you didn’t know you had.

    Your insecurity, your feelings of low self-worth, your fear of being rejected or alone—all this and more bubbles to the surface when you get honest about why you’ve struggled with boundary-setting and start pushing past your blocks.

    6. It takes all you have, tears you up, and breaks you down.

    But when it’s all done and over, you build strength, wisdom, and trust in yourself. You learn to give your feelings more credence, knowing they’re an internal signal that something is off and you need to investigate them further so you can decide what’s really best for you.

    So yes, boundaries can be life-changing, but the emotional upheaval that often accompanies them isn’t for the fainthearted. Changing yourself, getting out of your comfort zone, and doing what is right for you can trigger your reptilian brain, which craves safety, making you feel like you are doing something wrong. Arnold Bennett rightly says that all change, even for the better, is accompanied by discomfort.

    Deepak Chopra said that “All great changes are preceded by chaos.” I believe the benefits of maintaining boundaries make the chaos worth it.

  • How I Stopped Putting Everyone Else’s Needs Above My Own

    How I Stopped Putting Everyone Else’s Needs Above My Own

    “Never feel sorry for choosing yourself.” ~Unknown

    I was eleven years old, possibly twelve, the day I first discovered my mother’s betrayal. I assume she didn’t hear me when I walked in the door after school. The distant voices in the finished basement room of our home drew me in. My mother’s voice was soft as she spoke to her friend. What was she hiding that she didn’t want me to hear?

    I leaned in a little bit closer to the opening of the stairs… She was talking about a man she’d met. Her voice changed when she spoke of him. The tone of dreamy wonder when you discover something that makes your heart race. She talked about the way they touched and how she felt being with him.

    I felt my body go weak. I could not tell if it was sorrow or rage. All I knew was, she had lied to me.

    Several months prior, my parents had announced their divorce. My mother told me the decision was my father’s choice. She told me he was the one breaking up our family. She told me she wanted nothing more than to stay with us and be together.

    And now I heard her revealing that was not true. She wanted to leave. She was not choosing me. She was choosing him.

    Since I was nine months old, my mother had been in and out of doctor’s offices, hospitals, psychiatrist’s and therapist’s offices trying to find the cure of her mental and emotional instability.

    When I was a young child, she began to share her frustrations and sorrows with me. I became her support and the keeper of her pain. She had nicknamed me her “little psychiatrist.” It was my job to help her. I had to. I needed her stable so I could survive.

    I don’t remember when or if she told us that she was seeing someone. I just remember she was gone a lot after that day. She spent her time with her new boyfriend out of the house. As the parentified child who she had inadvertently made her caretaker, it felt like she was betraying me. She left me for him.

    I was no longer the chosen one—he was.

    I hated him for it. When my mother moved in with him, I refused to meet him. I didn’t want to get to know or like this man she left me for.

    I saw them one day in the parking lot outside of a shopping plaza. I watched them walking together and hid behind a large concrete pillar so they wouldn’t see me. The friend I was with asked if I wanted to say hello. I scowled at the thought. I despised him.

    Within the same year, his own compromised mental health spiraled, and they broke up. He moved out of their apartment. I didn’t know why or what happened. I only knew my mother was sad. Shortly after their breakup, he took his own life. From what we heard, he had done so in a disturbingly torturous way. It was clear his self-loathing and pain was deep.

    My mother was devastated. She mourned the loss of her love and the traumatic way he exited. She stopped taking her medication, and her own mental health began to spiral. My father received a phone call that her car had been abandoned several states away. I’m unsure what she was doing there, but she had some issues and took a taxi back home.

    He later received a call stating that my mother had been arrested for playing her music too loud in her apartment. Perhaps to drown out the voices in her head. She was later taken to the hospital without her consent and was admitted due to her mental instability.

    After several days of attempting to rebalance her brain chemistry with medication, my mother began to sound grounded again. The family decided she would move in with her parents a few states away from us and live with them until she was stable again.

    A few days after Christmas she called me to tell me how sad she was. She grieved her dead boyfriend. I was short with her. I was still angry for her betrayal. I didn’t want to continue being used as her therapist. The imbalance in our relationship was significant, and my resentment was huge.

    I loved her, but I could not fall back into the role of being her support without any support back. It was life-sucking. And I didn’t care that he was dead. She chose him over me. I was fine with him being gone.

    I don’t recall feeling any guilt when I got off the phone that day. I felt good that I had chosen myself and put a boundary in place to not get sucked into her sorrow. I was fourteen years old, less than a week shy of fifteen. I just wanted to be a kid.

    The next day, my mother chose to make more decisions for me and for herself. These were more final. She told her parents she was taking a nap and intentionally overdosed on the medication meant to save her. She died quietly to relieve herself from her pain and left me forever.

    That choice—my own and hers—would change the course of my life.

    The day my mother freed herself from this world was the same day I learned to become imprisoned in mine. I was imprinted with a fear that would dictate my life. I became quietly terrified of hurting other people. I feared their discomfort and feeling it was my fault. From that day forward I would live with the silent fear of choosing myself.

    My rational mind told me it was not my fault. I did not open the bottle. I did not force her to swallow the pills. I did not end her life. But I also did not save it.

    I learned that day that creating a boundary to preserve myself not only was unsafe, it was dangerous. When I chose me, people not only could or would abandon me, they could die.

    Of course, I never saw this in my teenage mind. Nor did I see it in my twenties, thirties or the beginning of my forties. I only saw my big, loving heart give myself away over and over again at the cost of myself.

    I felt my body tighten up when I feared someone would be mad at me. I heard myself use words to make things okay in situations that were not okay. I said yes far too many times when my heart screamed no. All because I was afraid to choose myself.

    The pattern and fear only strengthened with time. I learned to squirm my way out of hurting others and discovered passive-aggressive and deceptive approaches to get my needs met. My body shook in situations where conflict seemed imminent, and I learned to avoid that too.

    What I didn’t see was that this avoidance had a high price. I was living a life where I was scared to be myself.

    On the outside I played the part. The woman who had it all together. Vocal, passionate, confident, and ambitious. But on the inside, I held in more secrets than I knew what to do with. I wasn’t living as me. My fear of being judged and rejected or not having my needs met was silently ruling my life.

    So many have developed this fear over time. Starting with our own insecurities of not feeling good enough and then having multiple experiences that solidified this belief. The experiences and memories differ, but the feelings accompanying them are very much the same.

    The fear of choosing ourselves, our desires, our truths, all deeply hidden under the masks of “I’m fine. It’s fine.” When in reality, we learn to give way more than we receive and wonder why we live unsatisfied, resentful, and with chronic disappointment. Nothing ever feels enough, and if it does, it’s short-lived.

    The memories and feelings become imprints in our bodies and in our minds that convince us we can’t trust ourselves. That we can’t trust others. That we must stay in control in order to keep us safe. We learn to manipulate situations and people to save ourselves from the opinions and judgments outside of us. We learn to protect ourselves by giving in, in order to not feel the pain of being left out.

    We shelter ourselves with lies that we are indifferent or it’s not a big deal in order to shield ourselves from the truth that we want more. We crave more, but we are too scared to ask for it. The repercussions feel too risky. The fear of loneliness too great.

    In the end, our fear of choosing ourselves even convinces us we can live with less. That we are meant to live with less, and we need to be grateful for whatever that is.

    Do we? Why?

    What if we learned to own our fear? What if we accepted that we were scared, and it was reasonable? What would happen if we acknowledged to our partners, families, friends, and even strangers that we, too, were scared of not being good enough? Of being discarded, rejected, and left behind.

    What would it be like if we shared our stories and exposed our insecurities to free them instead of locking them up to be hidden in the dark shadows of ourselves?

    I’m so curious.

    Where in your past can you see that choosing yourself left a mark? What silenced you, shamed you, discouraged you from choosing your needs over another’s? When were you rejected for not doing what someone else wanted you to do? And how has that fear dictated your life?

    Choosing ourselves starts with awareness. Looking at the ways you keep quiet out of fear or don’t make choices that include your needs. Seeing where this fear shows up in your life gives you the opportunity to change it. The more you see it, the more you can make another choice.

    Start with looking at the areas of life where you hold on to the most resentment and anger. Who or what situations frustrate you? Anger often indicates where imbalances lie or when a boundary has been crossed. It shows us where we feel powerless.

    Make a list of the situations that annoy you and then ask yourself, what’s in your control and what’s not? What can you directly address or ask for help with?

    Note the ways you may be manipulating others to get your needs met in those situations and how that feels. Note also what you may be avoiding and why.

    How would it feel to be more direct and assertive? What feelings or fears come up for you?

    Then start with one small thing you could do differently. Include who you could ask for help with this step, if anyone.

    As for me, I have found myself in situations where I lied or remained silent to avoid being judged, in an attempt to manipulate how others see me. I have felt my body cringe with sadness and shame each time. It doesn’t matter how big or small the lie, it assaults my body the same.

    I have learned that speaking my truth, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant, saves my body from feeling abused by the secrets it must keep. Choosing me is choosing self-honesty; identifying what is true for me and what is not based on the way my body responds. I am not in control of others’ judgments of me, but I am in control of the way I continue to set myself up to judge myself.

    I have also found myself agreeing to do things I didn’t want to do in order to win the approval of others, then becoming resentful toward them because I refused to speak up for myself.

    Choosing me in these scenarios is honoring the fact that I will still be scared to ask for what I need, as my fears are real and valid, but asking anyway, even when the stakes feel high. It’s scary to feel that someone may abandon us if we choose ourselves, but it’s scarier to lose ourselves to earn a love built on a brittle foundation of fear.

    l cannot control the past where I have left myself behind, but I can control today, the way I forgive myself for falling victim to my human fear, and the way I choose to love myself moving forward. When I choose me, I have more love to give to others. Today I can take a small step toward change.

    Taking these small steps and building on them will help us to show ourselves that we can make progress in bite size amounts and prove to ourselves we are going to be okay. The small bites are digestible and give us proof that we can do it. This helps us build our ability to do more over time, while also decreasing our fear.

    If we look at our past, we will see the majority of our big fears do not come to fruition, and if they did, we survived them and gained knowledge or strength in the process.

    It’s not the action holding us back, but the memory of the discomfort we still live with. The more we move through these fears, the more that discomfort will decrease, and the more we will trust that we will be okay no matter what.

  • Where Our Inner Critic Comes from and How to Tame It

    Where Our Inner Critic Comes from and How to Tame It

    “Your inner critic is simply a part of you that needs more self-love.” ~Amy Leigh Mercee

    We all have that critical and judgmental inner voice that tells us we’re not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, etc.

    It tells us we don’t do anything right. It calls us stupid. It compares us to other people and speaks harshly about ourselves and our bodies. It tells us all the things we did or said “wrong” after communicating or connecting with someone.

    Sometimes it projects criticism outward onto others so we can feel better about ourselves. Other times we try to suppress our inner critic through overachieving, being busy, and accumulating more and more things.

    Sometimes it’s a protective mechanism that’s trying to keep us focused on our self-judgments so we won’t be authentic, because, if we are, we may be rejected and not get the love and acceptance we want.

    But, by doing this, we’re creating even more pain and suffering because we’re disconnecting from and rejecting our own essence.

    Just ignoring the critical voice doesn’t always make it go away. It may initially, but soon enough it will resurface if we haven’t healed/embraced our hurts, traumas, and wounds and shifted our internal patterning, which is where it comes from. 

    Have you ever heard the expression “What we resist persists?” Have you ever told an angry person to “just calm down” or a screaming child to stop crying? Does it work? Not when our energy is in a heightened state.

    Why is someone angry? Why is a child screaming and crying? Because there’s something going on internally that’s creating how they’re behaving. There’s often an unmet need or pain that’s asking for attention.

    Thinking a more positive thought to compensate can sometimes work, but sometimes it just creates an inner debate and mistrust in ourselves because deep inside we don’t believe what we’re saying.

    As children, many of us were taught to suppress those “bad” feelings because if we expressed them, we may have been or were punished. Welcome to the beginning of the critical voice; it’s often a frightened part of us that’s wounded and asking for attention. It wants to be seen, heard, and understood.

    My dad used to get really frustrated with me and constantly told me, “Damn it, Deb, you never do anything right.” Hearing that many times left an imprint in my subconscious. I started living with that interpretation of myself, and the critical voice kept me “in check” with being this way.

    For me, the critical voice was my dad’s voice as well as the deep shame I was feeling for making mistakes and not doing things the “right way.”

    I was holding in suppressed anger, sadness, guilt, unforgiveness, resentment, traumas, and pain that I tried to keep hidden with a smile on my face, but eventually it turned into a shame-based identity.

    My inner voice criticized me whenever I fell short or wasn’t perfect according to society or my family’s expectations.

    Just like when we’re triggered by another person, our critical voice is asking for our attention and guiding us to what needs healing, resolving, forgiving, understanding, compassion, and unconditional love.

    When it comes to the surface, we’re experiencing an automatic regression; it’s a part of us that’s frozen in time. It’s a reflection of our unhealed wounds, which created ideas of not being enough or that something’s wrong with us. Basically, it’s a trance of unworthiness.

    When we’re in a trance of unworthiness, we try to soothe ourselves with addictive behaviors. It’s hard to relax because we think we need to do something to be better and prove ourselves, so not doing anything, resting, isn’t safe.

    When we’re in a trance of unworthiness, it’s hard to be intimate with others. Deep inside we think there’s something wrong with us, so we don’t get close because they may find out and leave. This keeps us from being authentic because we don’t feel okay with who we are.

    Deep down I felt unworthy, unlovable, and undeserving, and the critical voice showed me what I was feeling and believing. I didn’t feel safe in life or in my body. How could I? I was living with so much hurt, pain, and shame inside.

    The critical voice is often stronger for those of us with unhealed wounds and who are hard on ourselves, and it tries to get us with shame and guilt. We’re always looking at ourselves as the “good self” or “bad self,” and if we’re identified with a “bad self,” we’ll act in accordance with that in all areas of our life.

    If we’ve become identified with the critical voice, it’s who we think we are; it just seems normal. And when we start to be more kind and loving, it doesn’t seem right because our identity becomes threatened and our system registers that as danger.

    That happened for me. Eventually I became identified with being a “bad girl” who’s critical and hard on herself, and, even when I started being a little kinder, more compassionate, and more loving, I felt an angst in my body. It wasn’t familiar, and even deeper, it wasn’t okay for me to be this way. My survival was at stake, so I would automatically go back to self-criticizing and judging, without conscious awareness.

    The critical voice didn’t only speak to me harshly; it also told me to do self-abusive things like cutting my wrists and face, starving my body or eating lots of sweets, and exercising for hours like a mad woman to get rid of the food I ate, whether it was a carrot or sweets, because I felt guilty. 

    Even after twenty-three years of going in and out of hospitals and treatment centers, taking medication, and doing traditional therapy, nothing ever changed; the critical voice had a hold on me.

    It was a powerful force, and when I tried to stop it, it would get louder. It thought it was protecting me in a backwards sort of way; if it hurt me first, no one else would be able to do so.

    When people used to say to me, “Debra, you just need to love yourself,” I looked at them like they were crazy. I had no concept of what that even meant because I had no experience of it.

    What I’ve come to see with myself and those I assist in their healing is that the more we keep our deep hurts, traumas, anger, guilt, shame, and pain hidden, the more the critical voice chimes in.

    And, for some, like me, it seems overpowering, so we try to find relief through smoking, drinking, eating, or being busy, and/or we experience severe depression, anxiety, or self-harming.

    When we’re consumed by the critical voice, we’re disconnected from our true essence, and when we’re disconnected from our true essence, the love within, we feel a sense of separation; we don’t feel safe with ourselves or others, and we don’t feel lovable for who we are, as we are.

    This is why many people can change, be happy for a day, but then go back to their critical and/or judgmental ways. Our automatic programming, stemming from our core beliefs, kicks in. It’s just like an addiction, and in a sense it is.

    We can try meditating, deep breathing, and positive thinking, but, unless we address the underlying cause, we’re likely to keep thinking the thoughts our internal patterning dictates. They come from a part of us that doesn’t feel loved or safe.

    So, what do we do when the critical voice comes to visit?

    What do we do when it’s what we’re used to, and it just happens automatically?

    What do we do when we don’t know how to be with ourselves and how we’re feeling in a kind and compassionate way?

    What do we do when we have no concept of what it even means to experience self-love or ease in our bodies?

    First off, please don’t blame yourself for how you’re being. Awareness isn’t about judgment; it’s about kindness, compassion, and love.

    Working with and healing our traumas, where the critical voice was formed, is key in shifting our internal energy patterning. Many people call this inner child healing and/or shadow working. 

    This is a soft and gentle process of moving through the layers of trauma with compassion and love and making peace with our protector parts.

    Through inner child healing, we can shift and transform that “negative” patterning and how the energy is flowing in our body. We can help that part of us that’s frightened, hurting, and maybe feeling separate have a new and true understanding so we can feel loved and safe in our bodies.

    When we pause and take a deep breath when we first hear or sense the critical voice, it allows our nervous systems to reset and helps us come back to the present moment; this allows space for compassion, healing, and investigation.

    Why do I believe that?

    Where did I learn that?

    Is it true?

    How does my higher self see this and me?

    Does the critical voice totally go away? No, it may still chime in; it’s part of being human. But once we realize where it’s coming from and heal/shift that energy pattern, more love can flow through, and we can experience our truth. When we learn how to be our own loving parent and meet the needs our caregivers didn’t meet when we were children, the critical voice often softens.

    Remember, the critical voice is just a scared part of us who really wants attention, love, and a way to feel safe. When we no longer take it personally, when we’re no longer attached to it as our identity, we can offer ourselves compassion, understanding, love, truth, and whatever else we’re needing.

    Life can be messy, and our thoughts can be too. This isn’t about perfection; this is about experiencing a deeper connection with our loving essence.

    There’s a sweet and tender spirit that lives within you. This spirit is your deepest truth. This spirit is the essence of you. You’re naturally lovable, valuable, and worthy. You’re a gift to humanity. So please be kind, gentle, loving, and caring with yourself.

  • I Was Addicted to Helping People – Here’s Why It Made Me Miserable

    I Was Addicted to Helping People – Here’s Why It Made Me Miserable

    “As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.” ~Maya Angelou

    Growing up in Africa, I was told that the virtue and worth of a woman lies in her ability to take care of everyone around her; that a woman was considered good or worthy when everyone around her was happy and pleased with her. I took this advice to heart, especially since I watched my mother meet this standard to a T. Putting everyone else, including strangers, above herself.

    Most of the Things We Learn as Kids Shape Us

    As a kid, I was taught how to cook, clean, and care for others. As a teenager, I got a lot of practice caring for my younger siblings; at first, it was great, being a caregiver, being the one who everyone went to when they needed something. I loved being needed, and I relished in the label I was given as dependable.

    Family, friends, and even strangers knew that I was the go-to girl for whatever they wanted. If I couldn’t help them with whatever they needed, I would find someone who could. I was determined to never leave anyone high and dry. I loved being needed, and if anyone needed me, I believed that I was their last resort.

    The Joy of Giving

    You see, one thing about giving is that it feels good… until it doesn’t. The moment you get to a place where giving doesn’t feel good anymore, it means that you need to turn the giving around and start giving to yourself. But how does someone who is addicted to being needed realize this?

    When helping people started feeling more exhausting than exhilarating, my first instinct was to give more because I believed that the more I gave to others, the more I would receive from them. But that was not the case. The more I gave, the less I received, and this prompted me to label most of my friends as bad friends because I wasn’t getting as much as I was giving to them.

    When I became isolated from cutting friends off because they were “bad” to me, I realized the problem wasn’t that I was not getting as much as I was giving; the problem was that I was giving to everyone but myself. I had put myself in the back burner and abandoned myself. How can I abandon myself and not expect others to abandon me?

    The Guilt That Comes with Giving to Yourself

    Realizing my deep-seated issues was easy, but addressing them was a whole other thing. Because I was conditioned to believe that my worth was in pleasing others, I always said yes to everyone who needed my help; saying no was extremely difficult.

    This was because I was suppressed by intense guilt and ended up caving in to finding help for the person at my own expense. Everything changed for me when a former classmate said to me out of the blue: “You are nobody’s last resort.”

    You are nobody’s last resort, no matter how bad it is. If you cannot help someone with their problem, another person will. And more importantly, it’s not your responsibility to ensure they get the help they need—it’s theirs.

    This was a turning point in my life because now I knew that telling someone no because I needed the time to invest in my own needs did not mean that they were never going to get help.

    The guilt was still there, but little by little, I persevered in choosing myself over and over again. I started with little things, like saying no to helping a friend walk their dog to stay at home, to take a long bath and read a book (I enjoy reading). And over time I was able to get better at saying no to larger requests that would have been draining and would have negatively impacted my mental health.

    Give to Yourself and You Won’t Expect Too Much From Others

    Slowly but surely, I learned that my worth is determined by me and me alone—by how much love and care I direct toward myself. Guilt still visits me sometimes, but it is not as intense as it used to be.

    I know now it is better to feel guilty for taking care of yourself than to expect others to anticipate your needs and take care of you. News flash: if you don’t take care of yourself from the inside out, no one will.

    Don’t get me wrong, I still take care of my loved ones and help others as well as I can, but I now do it from a complete place, a place of wholeness, knowing that I will be fine whether they invest in me or not.

    I don’t expect much from people, and I don’t get disappointed much because I have learned to prioritize myself. Frankly speaking, I have noticed that the people around me enjoy me more now that I am not a self-righteous person who resents her giving and selflessness.

    “I give and give and give, and what do I get? Nothing.” If you have heard yourself say or think these words, then you are expecting people to make you happy just because you are bending over backwards to make them happy. If you keep bending backwards to make others happy, one day you will break your back. A broken back is very painful to bear, take note.

    Life’s a Journey, Not a Race

    This is not an overnight process; it will take time and patience. I have learned that part of taking care of myself is being nice to myself, whether I’m making progress or not. I’m done talking down to myself. Everything I wouldn’t do or say to another person, I’ve vowed never to do or say to myself.

    There is no glory in stomping all over yourself to please the world, there is no glory in self-deprecation and self-hate. It is not humble to call yourself terrible names or to live in suffering because you don’t want to hurt some else’s feeling or because you want to be called a nice/polite person.

    Our feelings and needs matter as much as anyone else’s, but we can only honor them if we recognize this and prioritize them.

  • I Was a Bulimic Nutritionist, but I’m No Longer Ashamed or Hiding

    I Was a Bulimic Nutritionist, but I’m No Longer Ashamed or Hiding

    “Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.” ~ Brené Brown

    I felt like a hypocrite. I would tell my nutrition clients to eat a salad with vegetables, then I’d go home and scarf down an entire pizza. After guilt and shame set in, I would purge and throw it up.

    I think I became a nutritionist partly so I could better control my relationship with food. If I learned the secrets behind eating I could biohack my way to putting the fork down, losing weight, and finally being happy. This was back when I thought thinness equaled happiness.

    It’s taken me over ten years to recover from an eating disorder. Years filled with perfectionism, shame, and isolation as I untangled that my worth is not tied to my weight. I share my story in hopes that it sparks a deeper dive into your own relationship with food.

    Growing up I was an over-achieving, people-pleasing perfectionist. Which by itself may have been fine but, paired with a sexual trauma I experienced in early University, it was the perfect storm for developing an eating disorder.

    I used food as a coping mechanism for the trauma I’d endured. It was a way to dissociate from having to feel the shame of being assaulted. I assumed it was my fault this terrible thing happened, and while eating as much and as fast as possible, I could numb out from strong emotions.

    For a short period of time, I was worry-free.

    But then inevitably came the guilt and shame—ironic, since I was trying to numb the shame of my assault with food.

    Why did I have to eat so much? Now I’ll gain weight, and if I gain weight no one will like me. Why don’t I have the discipline to control my food? To control myself? I am truly worthless.

    Somehow my brain had built the association between looking a certain way and being accepted, worthy, and even safe. Having a sense of control over what I ate and how I looked made me feel powerful in a way. And maybe subconsciously it gave me a sense that I could also control what happened to me.

    I knew I needed help in University when after purging for the third time one day I had a sharp pain in my chest. Bent over the toilet, clutching my heart, I realized things had gotten out of control.

    Luckily, before I lost my nerve, I set up an appointment with a counselor. And there began my long and twisty road to recovery from bulimia. A word I would rarely utter in the coming years, instead referring to it as my “food issues,” downplaying the severity of my illness. Bulimia was something only celebrities developed, not something a straight-A student like me could encounter.

    Wow, was I ever wrong! Along this journey I’ve met many others like me, and I discovered we had more similarities than differences. We put immense pressure on ourselves to be perfect, had an insane need to control everything, and we all felt deep shame about our behavior. Many others I met had also experienced trauma and used food to soothe.

    In 2008, when I first sought treatment, I worked in secret on my recovery, only talking with a counselor and a doctor. I needed weekly blood tests to ensure my electrolytes were balanced. Turns out purging is very hard on the body, something my lack of tooth enamel will attest to.

    It was years until I told friends and family, and even now many will be shocked reading this article. It was easy to hide from roommates, as I would binge alone in my room and come up with creative reasons to use the bathroom when needed. Sometimes even purging into bags in my room then disposing of it later.

    In 2013, after a few weeks of some particularly painful binging sessions, a doctor told me I had lesions in my throat. I could barely swallow, having to sip smoothies through a straw. And my first thought was:

    Yay, now I’ll definitely lose weight.

    Thankfully, it was followed by a second thought.

    This is dumb. I’m putting my health at serious risk here… to be thin? That makes no sense.

    That’s when I knew I needed to kick my recovery into high gear. I started out-patient treatment in Toronto and attended support groups with others like me. I learned to sort through complicated emotions and release my need for everything to be perfect. In short, I was on a great track.

    But here’s the thing no one tells you about recovery—it’s not linear. I was settling into my career as a nutritionist, my binging episodes reduced, then someone would make an off-hand comment…

    Wow, you cleaned your plate, you must’ve been hungry!

    And boom, I would spiral out and feel compelled to rid myself of the extra calories. Secretly hunched over the toilet once again, knowing I had failed.

    I didn’t think people would trust my nutritional advice if I gained weight. I was also a yoga instructor at this point and convinced students wouldn’t return to my classes if I didn’t have a lean svelte yoga body.

    I continued the ups and downs of recovery for years. Having to choose recovery every single day was exhausting. Over time, the periods between binges got longer.

    For me, there was no silver bullet cure. It was a combination of using mindfulness to sit with difficult emotions and getting a whole lot of therapy to address the trauma. I never thought I’d get to this place, but eventually I learned to see myself as a worthy person—no matter my past, no matter my size.

    I used to think having an eating disorder was a shameful secret. Now I see that struggle as the source of my strength. It takes an incredible amount of courage to address trauma, and working tirelessly on recovery has taught me how to bounce back over and over again.

    I went through the ringer for many years, having to hide many of my behaviors, and thinking my weight was the most interesting part of me. I share my experience as part of the healing process, to take away the shame that hides in the shadows. I hope it encourages you to examine your relationship with food and your body—and how you might also be using food or another substance to avoid dealing with your own traumas.

    We tend to judge what we’re eating and think of food as something to be controlled, but eating disorders aren’t just about food. They’re a reflection of how we judge ourselves and our need to regain control when we feel we’ve had none.

    If we can come out of the shadows and face our pain and shame, we can start to heal, but it might not happen overnight. It might be two steps forward and one step back, sometimes one step forward and two steps back—and that’s okay. People who struggle with eating disorders are often perfectionists, but we need to accept that we can’t be perfect at healing. It’s a process, and as long as we stick with it, we will see progress over time.

    Now that I’ve worked through the pain of my past, I can finally see that food is something to be enjoyed and celebrated, and I too deserve celebrating, no matter my size. I don’t need to be perfect to be worthy. And neither do you.

  • Surviving a Dysfunctional Relationship: What I Wish I Knew and Did Sooner

    Surviving a Dysfunctional Relationship: What I Wish I Knew and Did Sooner

    “No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.” ~Alice Walker

    When I was a child and in my early teenage years, I was a free bird. I laughed easily, loved life, never worried, and dreamed big. I thought the best of others, the glass was always full. I never dreamed others would hurt me, and I had a joyful and playful attitude toward life.

    That was a long time ago.

    My breakdown started gradually and slowly with judgments from a very close and trusted family member I dare not name. This person, though probably well-intentioned, thought that you make someone stronger by criticizing them. They believed in knocking me down, throwing verbal punches to make me “resilient.”

    They believed in “hard love.” They watched while I faltered and sometimes suffered. They stood back and watched from the cheap seats, then critiqued my performance. Their assessment of me was rarely, if ever, encouraging and was full of arrogance and judgment.

    Well into my adult life, this trusted person threatened me after an ugly incident where they made a terrible judgment call. Instead of admitting their error, they threatened me and made it my fault by saying, “If you ever tell anyone about this, I will disown you.”

    Shuddering under the weight of those words, I decided to sever ties with this person once and for all.

    Those words, “If you ever tell anyone about this, I will disown you…” said so much about this person who I have struggled to understand my entire life.

    For me, it was about as close to the admittance of wrongdoing I would ever get from them. And as always, there was the signature and ever-present judgmental spin. “I will disown you” because, after all, this is your fault, and you deserve punishment.

    I try to come to terms with the aftermath of the ugly side effects that this person has brought to my life.  Someone so blatantly flawed showed me my own weaknesses because I allowed them to erode my confidence and well-being.

    I regret not cutting ties sooner—like twenty years ago.

    As I sat in the aftermath of this situation, I wondered what good can possibly come from such a disappointing relationship? A lifetime of misunderstanding, jarring actions, harmful words, and hurt feelings—all from a person so close to me—someone I should trust, love and respect.

    Perhaps the answer lies in the decisive way I ended it after so many years of abuse. The final decision for me to end this relationship was my first real stand to protect myself. The first time I valued myself more than another person.

    The dysfunction of this relationship would not have come this far if I knew how to establish healthy boundaries early on and knew how to deal appropriately with a difficult person. I am nearly sixty years old and have learned my lessons the hard way.

    I like to share with you some easy strategies you can employ if you are struggling with a dysfunctional person in your life.

    1. Nothing you say or do will ever change them.

    Save yourself a lot of time and energy and come to terms with this reality. The only person you can change is yourself, which is the best place to focus your energy. You can control your reactions to this person, your opinions, and how you deal with them, but you can’t control them.

    They have to accept you for who you are, and likewise, you have to accept them for who they are.

    If you don’t like them or their behavior, you have to decide how you will deal with it. Maybe you only visit once a year or not at all. Perhaps you only call on the phone. Explore all the options that you feel will work for you and keep you safe, and try not to feel guilty about your decision.

    2. Set healthy personal boundaries.

    Healthy boundaries are essential not only for you in this relationship but within all relationships. Setting healthy boundaries with friends, your boss, your wife or husband, your children, with anyone is key to having healthy and fulfilling relationships.

    When you set healthy boundaries, you also allow the other people in your life to know what you expect and what you will or will not tolerate.  They will appreciate you for that.

    Setting healthy boundaries starts with knowing what irritates you, what pushes your buttons, what compromises you might make, if any.  Healthy boundaries have a lot to do with knowing your core values. Start with a shortlist of core values important to you. Know them and stick by them, and when someone challenges those values, be ready to protect them because they are there to protect you.

    Also, choose your words carefully when setting clear boundaries. For example, saying, “You insulted me, so I am out of here,” is not as effective as saying, “Your words (specify the words you find insulting) are insulting to me, and if you continue to talk to me like that I will have to leave.”

    Everyone deserves a chance to change their behavior for the better. However, act decisively and immediately if your boundary is crossed.

    3. Whether it is a friend or family member, people who constantly cross your boundaries and challenge your values don’t deserve your energy.

    Being decisive like this is called standing up for yourself. You can walk away and come back another day—or not.

    If you don’t stand up for yourself early, people will chip away at your inner confidence and make you resentful and even potentially volatile. Don’t let things get that bad.

    Make yourself strong from the inside out, rely on your judgments. Don’t listen to other people who persuade you to ignore your guidance. Only you can know whether someone is violating your inner self.

    4. You are not a bad person for deciding to step back or even end the relationship.

    Tell yourself that you are not a bad daughter, son, wife, husband, mother, whatever. You are not bad for deciding to end a volatile relationship that has left you drained, eroded, and empty.

    Maybe you could have done things differently or better or sooner, but you didn’t and couldn’t, and you did your best. You had good reasons to step away or even leave the relationship; accept that and don’t beat yourself up over it. Self-preservation will always make you a better person in a relationship, and indeed, it will make you a better person out of it as well.

    —

    There is a great deal of wisdom that can be learned from years of perseverance and working your way through challenging lessons. It was my choice to stay in a dysfunctional relationship, perhaps too long, in a place that clipped my wings.

    I now know the true value of standing strong in who I am, and not basing my self-acceptance on the way others treat or view me.  That wisdom is profoundly liberating and once again I can be free, like a bird with newly feathered wings.

  • When You Lose a Loved One to Suicide: Healing from the Guilt and Trauma

    When You Lose a Loved One to Suicide: Healing from the Guilt and Trauma

    “You will survive, and you will find purpose in the chaos. Moving on doesn’t mean letting go.” ~Mary VanHaute

    I was ten years old when I discovered the truth. He didn’t fall. He wasn’t pushed. It wasn’t an accident.

    He jumped.

    Suicide isn’t a concept easily explained to a six-year-old, much less her younger siblings, so I grew up believing that my father’s drowning was an unfortunate freak accident. It was “just one of those things,” the cruel way of the world, and there was nothing anyone could have done about it.

    This explanation more than satisfied me and, other than a fear of open water and a slight pang of sadness whenever he was mentioned, I suffered no grievous trauma for the rest of my early childhood.

    But at ten years old I learnt the truth—that it wasn’t some divine entity or ill-fated catastrophe that took him from me. He had, in fact, ripped himself from the earth and left everyone he loved behind. Left me behind.

    Was it something I did?

    That’s the first question I asked.

    “Of course not,” my mother said. “He was just sad.”

    The idea that suicide was a simple cure for sadness became the first of many dangerous cognitive distortions I adopted. It would take no more than a dropped ice-cream cone or trivial friendship fall-out for me to declare my sadness overwhelming, to the point where, at the age of eleven, I drank a whole bottle of cough medicine in the belief that it would kill me.

    I was sad, I said, just like him. And if he could do it, why couldn’t I?

    As I grew into my teenage years, the possibility that I was the driving force behind my father’s suicide began to plague me, albeit subconsciously. I reasoned that the bullies at school hated me so, naturally, my father must have hated me too.

    Maybe I wasn’t smart enough or polite enough. Maybe I was unlovable. Maybe everyone I loved would leave me eventually.

    This pattern of thinking would slowly poison my mind, laying the foundations for what would later become borderline personality disorder. I suffered from intense fears of abandonment, codependency, emotional instability, and suicidal ideation, believing that I was an innately horrible person who drove people away.

    I refused to talk about my problems and allowed them to fester, harboring so much anger, guilt, shame, and sadness that eventually it would erupt out of me. It was only in my mid-twenties that I realized just how deeply my father’s suicide had affected me and the course of my whole life.

    I sought help and, slowly, I began to heal.

    Coping with The Stigma

    “Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all.” ~Bill Clinton.

    Selfishness, cowardice, and damnation are toxic convictions that permeate the topic of suicide, adding to the anger, guilt, shame, and isolation that survivors feel. Growing up, I hid the truth of how my father died under fear of judgment or ridicule, scared that the knowledge would not only tarnish his humanity, but paint me with the same black brush.

    I still remember the words of a girl in high school, “Well, you shouldn’t feel sorry for people who do it, it was their choice after all.”

    Understanding the intricacies of mental illness and just how destructively they can distort the mind allowed me to come to terms with my father’s death. I was able to accept that his suicide was born not out of selfish weakness, but from lengthy suffering and pain, carried out by a mind that was consumed by darkness and void of the ability to think rationally.

    Letting Go of The Need for Answers

    “Why?”

    It is a question that only the person who took their life can answer—but they often leave us without any sense of understanding. In the absence of a detailed note or some definitive explanation we find ourselves trapped in an endless spiral of rumination, speculating, criticizing, and self-blaming, to no avail.

    It becomes a grievance, a desperate yearning for closure that weighs heavily on our hearts. After all, not only did they leave us, but they left us in the dark.

    It is completely natural to want an answer to the question of “why.” We feel as though an answer will provide closure, which in turn will ease our confusion, pain, and guilt. However, because there is usually no singular reason for a suicide attempt, we will always be left with questions that will go unanswered.

    Fully accepting that I was never going to get the answers I craved freed me from the constant rumination of “why.”

    Releasing the Guilt

    To quote Jeffery Jackson, “Human nature subconsciously resists so strongly the idea that we cannot control all the events of our lives that we would rather fault ourselves for a tragic occurrence than accept our inability to prevent it.”

    As survivors, we tend to magnify our contributing role to the suicide, tormenting ourselves with “what if’s,” as though the antidote to their pain lay in our pockets.

    We feel guilty for not seeing the signs, even when there were no signs to see. We feel guilty for not being grateful enough or attentive enough, for not picking up the phone or pushing harder when they said, “I’m fine.” Even as a child I felt an overwhelming guilt, wondering whether I could have prevented my father’s suicide simply by saying please-and-thank-you more often than I had.

    It wasn’t my fault. And it isn’t yours either.

    The truth is that we cannot control the actions of others, nor can we foresee them. Sometimes there are warning signs, sometimes there are not, but it is an act that often defies prediction. It is likely that we did as much as we could with the limited knowledge we had at the time.

    Healing takes acceptance, patience, self-exploration, and a lot of forgiveness as you navigate your way through a whirlwind of emotions. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel of grief. Although we may never fully move on from the suicide of a loved one, in time we will realize that they were so much more than the way in which they died.

    To quote Darcie Sims, “May love be what you remember most.”

  • How to Stop Over-Apologizing, From a Lifelong Over-Apologizer

    How to Stop Over-Apologizing, From a Lifelong Over-Apologizer

    “Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you lived through it. Honor your path. Trust your journey. Learn, grow, evolve, become.” ~Creig Crippen

    When I was a child, my immediate reaction to most things was “I’m sorry.”

    Had to miss class because of a field trip for a different class? I’m sorry.

    Something bad happened to someone I knew? I’m sorry.

    It didn’t matter what the situation was or if I directly caused it or even if I was involved in it in any way whatsoever. Even in the best of situations, strangely, I’d figure out some way to apologize. I apologized for everything.

    I probably apologized a hundred times a day (even in good situations). It was so much a part of who I was, in fact, that when I was about ten years old, my parents bought me a stuffed animal with an “I’m sorry” T-shirt on.

    I know they meant it with the best of intentions. We all thought it was pretty funny. I proudly displayed it.

    I had no idea at the time that people did bad things that that they had to apologize for; I just thought it was a personality trait I had. I couldn’t understand why anyone would make a stuffed animal with a T-shirt like that (like, you know, to actually apologize for something) other than for someone like me.

    As I got older, I didn’t stop the over-apologizing. Deep down somewhere it became a part of me, and over the years I took the blame for all kinds of things that were not only not my fault but had nothing to do with me. It wasn’t until I started doing some personal development work on myself that I realized this bad habit needed to go.  

    I attended workshops, hired coaches, and found some amazing leaders that help people break free and get what they want in life. They were always having us work through feelings from our past like anger, sadness, etc., and I knew I really didn’t hold onto a lot of anger inside of me.

    I’m sure I had a normal amount of sadness and all the other negative emotions that you really don’t want to hold onto if you can let them go. But I worked through them and wasn’t seeing all these breakthrough changes that everyone else kept finding.

    In my thirties, I listened to a Louise Hay meditation during which she said, “Guilt always seeks punishment,” and that’s why those of us who feel guilty (especially about things that have nothing to do with us) don’t always allow ourselves to break through and let go.

    I knew right then I needed to find a way to stop the over-apologizing. Saying “I’m sorry” when you’re wrong or when something terrible happens isn’t a bad thing; it’s the over-apologizing and holding that guilt inside of yourself that can cause an array of problems.  

    I started trying to figure out other ways to say, “I’m sorry,” and the best approach I’ve found is replacing apologies with gratitude.

    This immediately changes our focus. It helps us to reframe the whole situation, taking us out of worry, fear, and guilt and allowing us to form a new perspective. As beautifully stated by Kristin Armstrong, “When we focus on our gratitude, the tide of disappointment goes out and the tide of love rushes in.”

    Though I don’t like to be late, I realize if I am a couple minutes late for an appointment, it’s truly not the end of the world. The other person (or people) probably aren’t going to hold it against me for the rest of my life (like I might if I held onto that guilt). So I’ve learned to say, “Thank you for waiting. I know your time is valuable and I appreciate it.” And then I try to do better next time.

    If I have a conflict and can’t make it to a friend’s party or get-together, instead of wrestling with it and going over it in my head again and again, feeling terrible, I say, “Thank you for inviting me. I’d really love to be there, but I have a prior commitment.” I find gratitude in the fact that they invited me in the first place instead of guilt for not being able to be in two places at once.

    If I disappoint someone, I really look inside to see if there was something I could have done better. I remind myself that I have to stay true to my convictions as well, and sometimes that unfortunately means disappointing others. I do my best and I work to do better next time.

    If I find that there was something I could have done better, I can still apologize. It’s not like working to stop over-apologizing means that I can never again apologize. But it’s not a gut reaction, an immediate response, and I think it’s a good thing to take another look at the situation and truly understand it. That way I can learn from it and continue to do better.

    Over-apologizing can make you hold on to guilt for longer than you need to. It should never be a first response or a gut reaction.

    Apologize when you truly feel regret and remorse in your heart and forgive yourself for the rest. By finding other ways to say “I’m sorry” when a situation truly doesn’t warrant an apology, it lessens your burden, lessens your worry, and allows you to focus on other things. Learn, grow, evolve, become.

  • What You Need to Know About Motherhood If You Feel Lost

    What You Need to Know About Motherhood If You Feel Lost

    “Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn’t know you had and dealing with fears you never knew existed.” ~Linda Wooten

    It was October of 2016 and there I was staring at the wall after yet another sleepless night, nursing my one-year-old, and feeling like a total failure because this motherhood thing still didn’t feel at all natural to me. Why couldn’t I tap easily into my motherly instinct? Why did I feel that, instead of completing me, becoming a mom was actually making me fall apart?

    I always knew I wanted to be a mother. It was a given in my case. And, like many little girls, I grew up romanticizing the idea. I couldn’t wait to be one.

    Even when I began to understand that things could get hard (because babies don’t sleep right?), I was still confident that with my love, strength, and sheer drive I could surmount it all. Like many of us, I believed being a mom comes naturally to women, that we’re born to be mothers, so even when we struggle, our instinct eventually kicks in and we’re able to figure it out.

    Fast forward to a year later and I can honestly tell you that my love, strength, and drive were simply not enough. The truth was that becoming a mom ripped my identity apart. It made me question everything. I didn’t recognize myself anymore and my self-confidence was in the dump. I felt I had broken into a million pieces and I didn’t know how to put them back together.

    It took eighteen months of total overwhelm and endless questions without answers for me to finally understand that the old me was never coming back. Everything had shifted.

    For the longest time it felt like I was drowning, desperately looking for a lifeline. What I was really looking for was my own permission to want more than being a mother and the courage and self-love to go for it. I realized my identity had been lost to mothering and it was time to take it back.

    I reached out for help, went to therapy, and hired a coach. I gave myself the space to mourn the loss of my old self and began to slowly redefine myself as a mom and a woman. Throughout my journey I’ve worked endlessly to boost my strength, courage, and self-confidence and to build my self-worth and step into the world as a new me.

    Here are five things I learned about motherhood in that journey that I wish someone had told me back then when I was feeling so lost:

    1. It’s not you. You’re not the problem. It’s not in your head.

    As I struggled to understand what was happening to me when I became a mom, I sincerely thought that I was the only one feeling this way. That I would never be able to measure up and be both the old and the new me. That it was only me who was always feeling less than regardless of what I did. But as I dug deeper into how other mothers felt, I realized that there are actual terms for what we mothers experience. I never felt so relieved and validated than when I first learned about them.

    The academic study of the transformation of woman to mother is referred to as matrescence, a term first coined back in 1973 by medical anthropologist Dana Raphael. Matrescence is the complete transformation (physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual) a woman experiences when she becomes a mother.

    Think of it like adolescence. Remember being a teenager when hormones were all over the place, you were questioning everything, and you didn’t feel like yourself anymore? Pretty much the same thing is happening when you become a mom, only this time around you’re expected to be cool and happy about it, not awkward and lost.

    And the inner split in matrescence refers to the feeling of being divided between the person we used to be and the mother we are becoming. It’s not just us or in our heads. It’s a REAL identity shift and the reason why we constantly feel pulled in every direction except the one we want to go in.

    2. The expectations the world places on mothers and women are at odds.

    On top of our individual struggles in becoming a mom, we also have an added layer of the expectations and beliefs society as a whole has placed on us as women and mothers that don’t support us in this journey.

    There’s a huge pressure for us to strive to have it all: to lean into a successful career and at the same time be a great and dedicated mother and partner at home—not to mention an endless array of other shoulds. But if you look at them closely, the expectations we all have of what a good mother should be versus what a successful woman must do are at complete odds.

    For me, this was my biggest source of guilt. Always trying to be loving, dedicated, and almost martyr-like for my kids, while simultaneously trying to have a successful career that I needed to be equally dedicated to. Needless to say, I felt like I was falling short on all fronts.

    It wasn’t until I understood that I was using external definitions of success to measure myself that I began to look at what being a good mother and successful woman really meant to me. And when I started giving myself the permission to only do what felt right for me, I started feeling more at peace with my daily decisions.

    3. Motherhood is hard. You’re not alone. It’s a shared experience yet few speak of it that way.

    Motherhood is full of contradictions. There’s no right or wrong. Joy, love, guilt, sadness, and anger coexist side by side. The daily shuffle can feel like a grind or a blessing. Yet none of us feel safe expressing this. Nobody has told us that what we’re feeling is not only normal but also expected given the massive identity shift that we’re experiencing when becoming moms. And since nobody talks about this, we don’t realize it’s actually a shared experience by all mothers around the world.

    We need to allow women to express the full spectrum of emotions when it comes to motherhood. No mother should feel alone in this journey. I’ve learned that this is why sharing our stories is so important. And why reaching out, speaking up, and building a community of other mom friends that can help and lift each other up is vital to our journey.

    4. Feeling guilty for wanting more may be a good sign.

    Oh, mom guilt. All moms know that’s one ugly sucker to be stuck in. You feel guilty for not wanting to be a mom all the time. For not being present with your kids when you are with them. For not being the perfect partner. For needing to mentally check out of your daily life every once in a while. For craving space. For taking space! And the list goes on and on.

    My guilt used to eat me up. It would paralyze me and prevent me from taking action. My days were flying by without me enjoying anything for me, for my own sake, because I felt so guilty not doing what I thought I was supposed to do. As I began my healing journey, I realized that if I continued this way, my guilt would turn into resentment and to move out of resentment is much harder to do than from guilt.

    Nowadays, I view my guilt differently. I take it as a sign that I’m not in alignment with what I really want or need. It’s just one more way my soul is calling me out and telling me I’m ready to start moving forward with what I actually want in life.

    When I feel my guilt creeping up, I take a pause and remind myself that I’m more than just a mom, than a partner, than my job. That there’s nothing wrong with wanting more than what I’ve got. And after a deep breath I ask myself, “What do I really need?” and I go do it.

    5. This is your chance to completely redefine yourself.

    Probably the most important thing I’ve learned is that motherhood can be a catalyst for change. The loss of identity I felt when I became a mother embarked me on a journey of self-discovery.

    I’ve had to shatter old beliefs and expectations on what I should be and do. Step by step, I’ve rebuilt my self-confidence and redefined who I am now. I work daily on ensuring that I’m aligned with what I really need and want to feel vibrant, balanced, and free.

    Motherhood is a journey of unraveling, redefining, and rebuilding, and no mom should feel alone, unseen, and unheard in what probably is her greatest challenge to date: the discovery of who she’s really meant to be.

  • A Surprising but Effective Way to Get Out Of A Shame Spiral

    A Surprising but Effective Way to Get Out Of A Shame Spiral

    “I have found that, among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.” ~Maya Angelou

    As an aspiring daily meditator, I’ve been instructed by many a spiritual sage to think of my emotions as clouds drifting across my internal landscape. The idea here is that clouds come and go, so clinging to any one cloud is an exercise in futility.

    I like this metaphor. It overlaps quite nicely with the cloud-classification skills I learned in third grade and haven’t since put to use.

    The more time I spend on the cushion, the more I realize that some of my emotions are cirrus clouds: feathery wisps of humor, annoyance, or connection that drift away as quickly as they came.

    Others are cumulus clouds: hearty puffs of joy, nostalgia, or anger that make themselves known by casting shadows on the ground.

    In my experience, only one emotion is a cumulonimbus cloud: an angry, heaping, blackened pile that trudges sluggishly across the sky. That emotion is shame.

    Shame plants himself down in front of the sun with no intentions of leaving. He makes a god-awful racket with ceaseless thunderstorms and doesn’t move until he’s good and ready.

    Recently, I found myself in the thick of a shame spiral. I had made a series of oversights that were impacting my very new and, as such, very delicate, romantic relationship.

    The mistakes I’d made were honest, but I should have known better, and this became the mantra that fueled hours of self-blame and judgment. My mental movie was like a 1500s tragicomedy, and I was the snarling, callous villain.

    I was feeling like sh*t, and I certainly wasn’t making it any better for myself, but I couldn’t seem to stop. I couldn’t focus on my work, my social life, or even the simple task of taking out my recycling.

    As a person in recovery, I knew that a shame spiral was my one-way ticket to a first drink. So I rang up a trusted mentor for guidance. Over steaming coffee in the hidden back booth of a nondescript coffeehouse, I bemoaned my vivid ruminations.

    What’s Shame?

    Research professor and best-selling author Brené Brown is all over the shame game. She makes clear that guilt is the feeling that you’ve done something bad, while shame is the feeling that you are bad, and as such, “unworthy of love and belonging.”

    As a recovering perfectionist, I get hit with red-hot shame when I do something “wrong.” (As my mom loves to remind me, I sobbed inconsolably when I got an A- instead of an A on my fifth-grade report card.)

    As a recovering codependent person, I get hit with extra shame when I do something “wrong” in the context of relationships. Here cometh the fear of abandonment and the cold sweat of unworthiness!

    Because shame is the feeling that we are intrinsically bad, it’s particularly conducive to spirals—cycles of self-fueling negative energy that perpetuate ad infinitum.

    I know I’m in a shame spiral when I seek reassurance from my friends compulsively; don’t want to leave the house or interact with anyone; don’t feel the need to wear decent clothes, do my dishes, or other acts of self-care; and feel totally uninspired to do the things that generally give me joy.

    In reality, these actions are ways of subconsciously punishing myself. We accept the behavior we think we deserve, and when I’m in a shame spiral, I don’t feel like I deserve much of anything.

    The Solution

    So anyway, back to my conversation with my mentor. I was talking a mile a minute, running my hands through my frizzy (unwashed) hair, and articulating, in great detail, all the ways I’d done my partner wrong.

    It was not a pretty scene. But, as mentors are wont to do, she listened without judgment. When I’d conveyed the whole story, visibly deflated like a sad balloon, I turned to my mentor with wide eyes.

    “How can I fix this?” I asked her.

    She paused, digesting, and replied firmly, “Call someone and ask how they’re doing. Go to the food bank. Volunteer. Be of service somehow.”

    Her suggestion seemed so out-of-left-field that it stopped me in my tracks.

    Call someone and ask how they’re doing? I thought. But that has absolutely nothing to do with my problem or me! (Shame is a very self-referential emotion.)

    I wanted to ruminate, stew, fix! I wanted to call my best friends just one more time and unpack this whole thing, top to bottom. Also, if my intentions for service were self-serving, was it even service anymore? Shouldn’t I only “serve” if I’m really jonesing for some Good Samaritanism?

    I relayed all of this to her. She listened patiently; she’d heard it all before.

    “Hailey, you need to get out of yourself,” she said. “You are driving yourself crazy, cooped up in your mind this way. Give yourself a break.”

    So I did. And it worked. Here’s why:

    1. Shame traps us in our thoughts; service puts us into action.

    In an appearance on Oprah, Brené Brown offers three ways to stop a shame spiral:

    1. Talk to yourself the way you’d talk to someone you love when they feel unworthy.

    2. Reach out to someone you trust.

    3. Tell your story.

    Brené Brown is an absolute sage, and her research on shame and vulnerability has profoundly changed my life. But when I’m in my darkest shame spirals, these three tactics aren’t quite enough for me.

    Because my shame is so self-referential and all-consuming, I cannot think or talk myself out of a shame spiral.

    Every thought—no matter how brilliantly it rationalizes my actions or how warmly it reassures me of my own goodness—is coated with the persistent, underlying certitude that I am bad.

    My shame is like an advanced-stage, resilient bacteria; the first course of antibiotics doesn’t make a dent. I need to prove to myself, with not only my words but my actions, that there is more to me than what I’m so ashamed of. Service is an easy road out of my frazzled mind and into the world around me.

    2. Shame isolates; service connects.

    When I’m ashamed, the idea of being social sounds like torture. I’m normally quite extroverted, but when I’m spiraling, I don’t want to hang out with my closest friends, let alone strangers. In the thick of a spiral, it’s not unusual for me for cancel plans, be unresponsive to friends’ messages, and go dark on social media.

    Isolation enables my shame to fester. It keeps the scope of my world small. Service, on the other hand, does the opposite.

    Service is intrinsically connective. First, I’m connected in real time with the person I’m serving. The newcomer to the twelve-step program I call to check in on, the man whose bowl I fill with soup, the kid I read aloud to.

    Second, I’m connected to my community. Few acts of service exist in a vacuum; typically, I’m at least peripherally involved with a community organization, a church, or a grassroots group of do-gooders determined to make the world a better place. And though the unbridled optimism and rah-rah mentality of service groups can get on my nerves, there’s something heartwarming about being part of something bigger than myself.

    Finally, there’s that universal connectedness; the sensation of being human, of being one of seven billion people dancing their way through this complicated and confusing thing called life. When I’m in service, I’m helping other people with other problems who have baggage of their own. With this perspective in hand, ruminating about my shame suddenly feels far less important.

    3. Shame exhausts; service awakens.

    Self-flagellation takes a lot of emotional energy. It’s exhausting to rewind, fast-forward, and rewind the movie reel of your mistakes. Because it’s our human tendency to defend against threat, a part of us—no matter how small—will fight against the shame. This is the part that will rationalize our behavior, craft a narrative for our actions, and pepper us with positive self-talk.

    These two forces—“I am good!” vs. “I am bad!”—are at odds with each other. The result is an internal Civil War, one that rages as we try to fall asleep, as we stare at the tile wall in the shower, as we drink our coffee on the patio. It can become the soundtrack to our days.

    Service provides a respite from this turmoil. By getting us out of our own minds and into the world around us, it gives the shame soundtrack a much-needed pause. In that silence, we can gain new perspective and peace.

    4. Shame breeds shame; service breeds hope.

    Shame is self-perpetuating; it cycles ‘round and ‘round the same tired litany of self-criticisms and judgments. In such a state, there is little room for anything novel to enter our consciousness. If we respond to our shame by self-isolating and hibernating, we just make the echo chamber smaller. Shame breeds shame.

    Service, on the other hand, connects us with the newness of other people’s stories and challenges.

    Studies have shown that novelty makes us happier whether we’re shame-spiraling or not. Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, writes, “Often we’re happier, we feel more energetic, more productive, more creative when we try something new, when we challenge ourselves a little bit, when we kind of go out of that comfort zone. That atmosphere of growth can really boost our happiness.”

    Service gets us out of our own way and offers a new palette of emotions and values to choose from: togetherness, community, connection, service, altruism, and more. It puts our personal challenges into perspective and simultaneously offers us tangible, actionable proof of our own goodness that stands in contrast to our negative self-judgments.

    It was hard for me to realize that my darkest shame spirals were also my most intensely self-indulgent moments. Even though I may have felt totally miserable, at the end of the day, it was still all about me: my wrongness, my badness, my words, my actions, my self-perceptions.

    When I mustered up the will to be of service, I was astounded by the serenity that came from relenquishing my role as the star of the show.

    Becoming a vessel for acts of goodwill opened my eyes to a greater, simpler reality, one I didn’t need to control or micromanage. From that vantage point, I was able to look back on my actions from a distance, and with that distance came the self-compassion, acceptance, and self-forgiveness I’d been hoping for all along.

  • How I Stopped Feeling Guilty About Doing What’s Best for Me

    How I Stopped Feeling Guilty About Doing What’s Best for Me

    “A good rule of thumb is that any environment that consistently leaves you feeling bad about who you are is the wrong environment.” ~Laurie Helgoe

    Do you ever worry that if you fulfill your needs you will disappoint others? Do you ever feel guilty for doing what’s best for you?

    For years, I felt guilty about taking time for myself. I thought that being alone, away from the rest of the world, meant being selfish. This was especially true in one toxic relationship that kept dragging me down because I was afraid to make a change. As a peaceful, compassionate person who’s always been a good listener and a giver, I was drawn to his unstable and needy behavior, thinking that I could help him change for the better.

    But after two years of having to deal with constant putdowns from a possessive partner who thought I was selfish every time I craved alone time, I knew I was nearing my breaking point.

    I remember one night, after an exhausting day at work, I joyfully looked forward to a relaxing evening. As I drove home, all I could think of was taking a hot bath, brewing a fragrant herbal tea, and putting on my favorite fluffy pajamas. Under the dimmed light of my reading lamp, snug in a warm bed, I got lost in the world of mystery and imagination that made my soul come alive.

    Just a few minutes into my reading session, I received a text from him, demanding me to “get ready in ten because we’re going out, and you don’t have a choice.”

    At first, I ignored the message and went back to my reading, since he’d made plans earlier that week to see his friends. Then he called but I didn’t pick up. Finally, after several attempts to reach me, he came rushing to my apartment, banging on the front door.

    I pretended to be asleep and didn’t answer. The truth is that I was frightened and reluctant to open the door given his usual aggressive behavior.

    I didn’t want to confront him because I knew he wouldn’t understand. I felt mentally and physically drained for having to constantly explain myself and for letting him manipulate me yet again. I was fed up with having to come up with believable reasons why I needed time for myself, and I was sick and tired of constantly changing my plans for him.

    But as he left, I started to feel horrible. I felt guilty about avoiding the situation and for not being able to stand up to him. What made me feel even guiltier was that I’d finally done what I was afraid to do for so long. I’d listened to my inner guidance and done what was best for me.

    Still, instead of going back to reading and enjoying my evening ritual, I opened up a one-pound bar of chocolate and slowly devoured the massive amount of fat and sugar in a matter of minutes. Instantly, I got back into my “happy” mood, thinking life was good again. But then, as the guilt of eating so much sugar slowly sank in, I found myself back at square one, feeling even worse.

    This happened over a decade ago, when I struggled with a full-blown sugar addiction. To compensate for my inability to say no, being a perfectionist, and staying in a toxic relationship, I’d eat sugar. A lot of it. I was so drawn to sweets and chocolate that I couldn’t go a day without eating at least a whole bar. It was part of my daily routine and something I considered normal.

    Sugar was the answer to all my hardships. It was my biggest excuse for staying where I was and not doing anything about my life.

    Unsurprisingly, I struggled with self-blame, feeling that I was deeply flawed because I was an introvert. In childhood, I was ashamed of being regularly humiliated by my math teacher in front of the whole class and continuously bullied by some of my classmates and older students. Later on, the same guilt haunted me in similar ways, but as I grew older, it became a part of me, almost like a sickness.

    After that day, I decided to end the toxic relationship that made me doubt my worth and scarred me emotionally for years. I finally found the courage to confront the person who’d used blaming, shaming, and threatening to cover up all of his wrongdoings.

    Throughout our whole relationship, I apologized every time he hurt me because I felt guilty for making him feel bad. I tried so hard to be the perfect girl who never made mistakes, never spoke her mind, and never messed up. I found myself agreeing with everything while my conscience screamed the opposite. For so long, I tried to fix what was broken. I felt hurt, lonely, and betrayed.

    The truth is that I believed I was responsible for what he felt. For his actions. For how he saw me. I was afraid of being judged, so I diminished my value to make him feel comfortable. And I was slowly losing myself.

    I became an obsessive perfectionist, paralyzed by the fear of not being good enough. Everything I did had to be absolutely perfect. But no matter how hard I tried, it was never enough to meet his expectations.

    Now, I know that the guilt I felt that night was the reaction I’d gotten accustomed to, my place of comfort that told me I was safe. But no matter how guilty I felt for doing what I felt was right for me, I gained invaluable courage to start making a change.

    It took a great deal of work, patience, and understanding, as well as learning through growth and change, to know what I wanted out of a relationship and how I wanted to be treated.

    I started with forgiveness. I forgave myself for not listening to my intuition and for treating my body and mind badly. Knowing that I cannot change the past and that I do not actually want to go back there, I became mindful of the mistakes I’d made and learned invaluable lessons.

    When I became honest with myself about what I wanted, I began to take care of myself, preserving my health, nourishing my body, and nurturing my soul. I made my priorities clear and realized what was important to me. I started eating healthy and exercising regularly.

    Finding the courage to put an end to my unhealthy relationship inspired me to take action and do something about my serious sugar addiction, which was slowly but surely destroying my health. I signed up for a wellness course that I’d been telling myself I would enroll in for months. Just reaching this place was a huge success for me, at the time.

    I remember the moment I got there, I freaked out, unable to catch my breath. All I wanted to do was leave and never return. I thought I wasn’t ready to give up sugar, since it was keeping me safe and comfortable. All I could think of was getting one more bite of my favorite chocolate while promising myself, “I’m quitting tomorrow.”

    After days of crying in agony and successfully completing the workshop, I decided to continue without sugar for the whole month. I promised myself that I would let go of the one thing that was making me happy momentarily but holding me back in so many areas of my life.

    And that’s when something incredible happened. I noticed that the more I held off sugar, the more I pushed myself to pursue other things. I started waking up early and meditating. I began making better food choices and training for long-distance running. Postponing the immediate gratification and choosing not to eat what was actually hurting me, made me a much happier, more productive person.

    I became completely aware that my vice provided a powerful short-term relief, but in reality, it was forming a vicious cycle that was leaving me feeling vulnerable, empty, and regretful.

    After I’d forgiven myself, I forgave others. No matter how hard it was, I found the strength to forgive anyone who’d harmed me and asked for forgiveness of everyone I had unknowingly or deliberately wronged in the past.

    Forgiving someone means that you are letting go of bitterness and resentment toward that person. It doesn’t mean that you need to contact them or continue having them in your life. Not at all. They don’t even have to know, but in your heart, you know that you have no sourness left, only love and acceptance.

    And finally, I accepted myself for who I am and for having my own needs. I went back to reading daily and taking courses and certifications to better myself and improve my skills. I started trusting my innate needs and desires because I finally realized that it’s up to me to decide how I spend my time and how much alone time I need.

    As introverts, we feel guilty for not talking enough, for not going out as often as we think we should, and for avoiding social situations because we need time alone. We often end up in toxic relationships because we give, we love, we care about other people’s feelings, and we don’t want to hurt anyone.

    But our alone time is so vital to our well-being that if we don’t listen to our needs we end up feeling frustration, resentment, and the inevitable fatigue that goes with them.

    Living life according to your own needs doesn’t make you a selfish person. It’s perfectly okay to spend time away from others, to fulfill your need to read, write, create, and explore. It’s okay to want to be alone and to enjoy it. It’s okay to do whatever you need to do to feel fulfilled, balanced, and connected to yourself.

    Never feel guilty for doing what’s best for you or for prioritizing what you value in life. Never feel guilty for being honest about how you feel, and never apologize for being you.

  • Made a Big Mistake? What to Do Instead of Beating Yourself Up

    Made a Big Mistake? What to Do Instead of Beating Yourself Up

    “Note to self: Beating yourself up for your flaws and mistakes won’t make you perfect, and you don’t have to be. Learn, forgive yourself, and remember: We all struggle; it’s just part of being human.” ~Lori Deschene

    When I was in twelfth grade I took a World Issues class and learned about colonization, child soldiers, and how some children, by no fault of their own, had a much more challenging life than I’d had. After that, I wanted to help but wasn’t sure how.

    Then, at age twenty-three, I was hired at a non-profit organization where I had the opportunity to work with teenage girls in prison. Finally, I had a real opportunity to help and I wanted to be perfect.

    It was my dream job. I was excited. But then I made a big mistake.

    I walked into the prison and filled out the visitor’s sign in sheet. I waited until Sharon, the classroom teacher, came to meet me.

    She was rushing, as she often was, trying to accommodate me and keep teaching her class.

    “A couple of girls tried to knock themselves off last night, including Kate,” she said quickly, “so they’re not in class today. But it’s fine to go ahead with the interview.”

    “Attempted suicide?” I stammered.

    “Yeah,” said Sharon, “They’re just trying to get attention. Don’t worry too much about it.”

    I cringed. My breath got short and my stomach tightened. I couldn’t imagine that it was only about getting attention, and something felt off about going ahead with the interview.

    Before I really had time to process what had happened Sharon opened a door with her key card and held it open. “Kate’s in here with one of the staff, go ahead. She’s fine,” she said. I stepped through. She let go of the door and walked off quickly to get back to her class.

    I was interviewing Kate that day for a blog post. My organization wanted to profile her to show the breadth of work that we do. I had a list of questions I’d prepared and a recording device.

    I’d been working with her class for a couple of months. I was running a workshop on advocacy, so I went in once a week. I’d brought in guest speakers to inspire the girls, and now they were working on their own advocacy project—telling their stories through a short film.

    I liked Kate. She wasn’t afraid to share her opinion and was a bit of a class clown. She was seventeen and had had a difficult life but was tough and resilient. I could tell her sense of humor helped all the girls through the hard days.

    She seemed fine. We joked around and then got into my prepared questions. I turned on the voice recorder and started asking her about her childhood and her life.

    Half an hour passed quickly and then I packed up my voice recorder and said goodbye. A staff member took me through a series of magnetic lock doors and I left.

    When I got back to my office there was a message from the manager of the prison on my voicemail. She’d heard I’d asked Kate how she ended up in prison. Kate hadn’t answered, but since youth in Canada have special privacy rights when they’re involved with the law, the manager was very upset.

    She was also upset that that I’d interviewed Kate when she was in a vulnerable state and said that never should have happened.

    I felt terrible. My face got hot and breath shallow. I’d wanted so desperately to help and now I felt like I was making things worse.

    “What’s wrong with me?” I asked, “Why didn’t I follow my instincts and postpone the interview? Am I really making things better or am I just making things worse?”

    These thoughts ran through my head for weeks following the event and I began to seriously question if I could do this job.

    And I was scared of messing up again, so I became a perfectionist with everything I did. I would spend weeks editing a single email to make sure there wasn’t something inappropriate in it.

    And eventually it got to be too much. It was my dream job but it was too hard. The girls’ stories were too sad. I couldn’t do as good of a job as I wanted to.

    I could barely get up in the mornings. I was too tired, too depressed. I was burning out.

    So I quit.

    I knew I couldn’t look for another job; I’d just be looking for something similar. I’d landed my dream job but couldn’t do it. I needed to press the reset button on my life.

    So I moved to a yoga and retreat center in the Canadian mountains and spent two years learning to meditate, learning what was within my control, how I could help, and what was not my responsibility.

    And eventually, I learned how to forgive myself for the mistake I made with that young woman. I realized that my intentions were good, that I hadn’t meant to hurt her, and that I’d made a mistake but it wasn’t quite as big as I’d thought.

    And after two years of studying yoga, I went back to the same job. Working with youth with similar stories, I learned to do it better. I still made mistakes but was better at forgiving myself. And I could see that the positive impact I was making outweighed these errors.

    If you’ve made a big mistake (or even a small mistake!) you can forgive yourself too.

    Here’s how:

    1. Tell someone you trust.

    The best thing I did after making the mistake with Kate was call my boyfriend. He listened to the situation and then said, “Bryn, honestly, if I was in a rough place and had attempted suicide, you’re exactly who I would want to talk to the morning after. I’m sure your kindness helped.”

    My boyfriend wasn’t the type to give compliments, so I believed him and it started the process of forgiving myself.

    It might be hard to be vulnerable and share your mistake, especially if you’re feeling deeply ashamed and afraid of being judged. But odds are someone who loves you will view your mistake from a different perspective and help you see the positive intention behind the misguided action.

    2. Be radically kind.

    If you’re anything like me, your instinct after you make a big mistake will be to punish yourself for it. You’ll think, “I have to work harder to make up for it.” You might tell yourself, “I don’t deserve to take a bath or go for a walk in the woods.”

    So try your very best to be radically kind to yourself. Take that bath. Go to bed early and get enough sleep. Get outside or take a yoga class.

    We’re more prone to make mistakes when we’re tired or stressed. So if you take care of yourself, you’re less likely to make future mistakes.

    3. Realize you were doing the best you could with the resources you had.

    Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, you do better.”

    You probably were doing the best you could when you made the mistake. Maybe you were overwhelmed or exhausted which both make errors more likely.

    And now that you’ve made the mistake, you can learn from it and ensure you don’t make it again.

    4. See that beating yourself up isn’t helping anyone.

    Beating yourself up doesn’t take back the mistake and probably is just making you tired and maybe even depressed.

    According to shame researcher Dr. Brene Brown, when you tell yourself, “I am a mistake” it sends you into a shame cycle that is correlated with depression, addiction, eating disorders.

    The good news is when you tell yourself, “I made a mistake” you can learn from it and this is correlated negatively with depression, addiction, eating disorders.

    I learned a lot from my mistake. I blamed myself for hurting Kate when she was already having a terrible day. And, yes, if I could go back I would do things differently. But I eventually realized my mistake wasn’t as big as it originally seemed and my intentions were good, so I could forgive myself.

    I also realized it wasn’t just my mistake I felt bad about; it was also that Kate and the other girls had such difficult lives. I needed to learn that I can’t save people, and that’s okay. I can still make a positive impact, no matter how small, even if I’m not perfect.

    —

    If you’ve made a big mistake, I get it. It can be very difficult to overcome. But taking one step at a time, you can learn to forgive yourself and ultimately this will free up your energy to do more good in the world.

  • The One Realization That Helped Me Forgive Myself and My Father

    The One Realization That Helped Me Forgive Myself and My Father

    “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
    ~Maya Angelou

    Sunlight shone through the living room window. A lazy Sunday afternoon. I lounged on the couch reading a book with my dog cuddled at my feet. My love had just set out to purchase a new set of acoustic guitar strings. Soon he would return, and music would fill our home, adding to my sense of blissful peace.

    The telephone rang. I could see from the caller ID it was my father. “Good,” I thought. “It’s been a few weeks. I wonder what he’s been up to.”

    His voice was filled with rage. “I’m dying!” he screamed. “You are killing me.”

    “What’s this about?” I placed my book on the table. I was not alarmed; my father has been talking about his death for decades. I was only curious how his heart condition had suddenly become my doing.

    “Did you get a marriage certificate yet?” he asked angrily.

    “No,” I said. “We haven’t. That isn’t happening.”

    My father erupted again. “I’ll probably have another stroke! My arms are tingling. It could be a heart attack—heart attack number three. This one will be your fault. I can’t sleep. I can’t even take a shit. I ate two bowls of fiber yesterday and nothing came out of me.”

    “That’s not my fault.”

    “It is your fault! The anxiety is killing me. Get the marriage certificate, please. It’s what normal people do. If you don’t get that thing, it’ll be the official cause of my death.”

    “You should talk to someone about this. A therapist maybe.”

    “I’m not talking to anybody.”

    “Then pray,” I said. “Meditate.”

    He was silent for a moment, then he scoffed at me. “I’ll go to Afghanistan. I’ll become a missionary. I’ll kill as many ragheads as I can before they capture me. You know how my dad died?”

    I did, but I knew I was going to hear the story again.

    “The snow was deep that morning. There’d just been a big Chicago blizzard. He asked me to shovel the driveway, but I went out with my buddies instead. He died that morning of a heart attack while he was shoveling. I’ve lived with that guilt for over 50 years. I’ll never forgive myself. You’re going to live with the guilt of killing me. Never forget that. I’m planting that in your head right now.”

    “That’s not a nice thing to do. I’m not the one killing you. Your own mind is doing the killing.”

    “It’s you.”

    “There’s no reason for you to be so upset.”

    “You’re not even really married!”

    “That doesn’t matter to us. We’re happy the way things are. If it helps bring you peace, just pretend we never had any kind of ceremony. Pretend we’re still dating.”

    “You know what? I’m done with you.” My father hung up the phone.

    —

    This was not the first time I’d been disowned by my father. I can count on both hands the times he’d chosen to end his relationship with me—sometimes for months, sometimes for years—always because a lifestyle choice on my end didn’t align with how he thought I should be living (e.g.: when I became a vegetarian, or traveled to Morocco, or lived with a gay roommate…)

    In truth, I was surprised that earlier that month after I first told my father that my boyfriend and I had flown to Scotland for a hand-fasting ceremony, he had expressed actual happiness and excitement for me. “Congratulations!” he’d beamed. “I’m happy for you guys. Those pictures of the Highlands are beautiful. What a beautiful country.”

    I remember thinking, “Well, that went well. That could have gone in so many directions. I’m glad he’s happy for me.”

    And I’m sure he was, in that moment, until his chronic anxiety returned—and he didn’t know how to deal with it other than to blame me.

    If my father died tomorrow, would I feel guilty? Would I blame myself for his death?

    No, I would not.

    I would be devastated. He’s my father; I love him dearly, despite our differences. He raised me as best he could, and I am grateful for that.

    But I will not accept responsibility for the mental anguish from which he suffers. The choices my father makes that support his unhealthy ways have nothing to do with me.

    We—the rest of the family—have tried for years to help him, but he refuses to change his habits: the poor eating (he just developed type 2 diabetes), the rejection of exercise, the harmful outbursts toward others, the fearful world he’s created inside his head.

    To be clear: I do not discount the severity of anxiety, depression, or PTSD. I’ve battled with depression myself; I understand it’s not as simple as “thinking positively” or “snapping out of it.” It often requires careful and tender care—whether that care is spiritual, therapeutic, medical, or a combination of the three. However, it is my belief that an illness of the mind is not an acceptable justification for emotionally, psychologically, or physically abusive behaviors.

    That’s all I’ll say about mental health because 1) I’m not a doctor and 2) this is not meant to be a story about illness; this is an exploration of forgiveness.

    As far as my father’s situation is concerned, I require no self-forgiveness. I will not regret the way I have always loved and accepted him.

    I will feel sad that he never forgave himself for his own father’s death. He was just 16 the winter his dad died from that heart attack. My father hadn’t known any better.

    And I will feel sad that my father never forgave himself for some of the choices he made as a soldier during the Vietnam War. He would never admit that those actions require any level of self-forgiveness, but I think the remorse is buried somewhere deep inside his heart—perhaps somewhere alongside his acceptance of me.

    Forgiveness is a tricky thing.

    It wasn’t difficult for me to forgive my father for the emotional violence he discharged upon our family over the years, ultimately causing my mother to leave him, and contributing to the struggles shared by my sister and me as we fumbled through adulthood attempting to construct better paradigms of what healthy relationships with men could be (i.e. we learned we didn’t need to tolerate crazy tantrums, or tiptoe on eggshells to prevent unpredictable sieges on peace.)

    But we didn’t blame our dad. We acknowledged his influence, forgave him for being imperfect, and moved on with our lives.

    I find this to be true with many human beings: forgiving others isn’t the hardest part. Forgiving ourselves is where we struggle.

    Self-forgiveness is directly tied to self-acceptance. The more we learn to forgive ourselves for our imperfections and growing pains, the more love and acceptance we allow our hearts to feel toward ourselves and others. I believe that if my father truly loved and accepted himself, it would be easier for him to peacefully love and accept those around him. Perhaps that serenity begins with self-forgiveness.

    Where there is forgiveness, there is acceptance, and where there is acceptance, there is peace.

    One of my sweet friends is struggling with the guilt from two abortions she had a decade ago. The trauma surrounding the events re-surfaced in her life last year, and she cried in my arms wondering if she’d ever be able to forgive herself.

    I told her it wasn’t helpful to hold ourselves hostage to the past. Guilt is not necessary as a reminder of our less-than-perfect decisions; we can learn from the past and make better choices moving forward, without weighing ourselves down with shame.

    —

    I woke up one morning recently and didn’t want to get out of bed. I’d become plagued by all the little lies I’d ever told to those who loved me.

    And what of the illusions I’d built in my own head? The ways I lied to me?

    Or the decisions I’d made thinking of self-preservation, instead of the greatest good?

    I dwelled in remorse until I realized: in each of those situations—I’d done the best I could at the time.

    I realized I wasn’t the same person I was five years ago, two years ago, or even yesterday. And the self-punishment I was putting myself through was not going to change anything. The best I could do was forgive the younger, less-wise, less aware version of myself, then move forward as a wiser, more evolved human being.

    I climbed out of bed and sat in front of my altar, placing both hands over my heart. I sent a blessing to everyone in my life, then to all sentient beings. Then I did something I rarely ever do and probably should do more often: I closed my eyes, filled my palms with light and warmth, and gave a blessing to myself.

    I forgave myself for any strategy, plan, or chess game played during the end of difficult relationships, when I was negotiating the safest and calmest way to exit to my freedom. You did the best you could. Next time, you’ll do better.

    I forgave myself for misinterpreting dreams, visions, intuitions, and strong feelings. Sometimes I wanted so badly for something to be true, I pushed it the extra mile in the direction of the Truth-horizon, when all the while it was meant to remain in a field of uncertainty. You did the best you could. Next time, you’ll do better.

    I forgave myself for disconnecting from the people, places, and experiences that didn’t nurture my spirit or bring me peace. Those people may have felt abandoned or unsure why I’d suddenly felt the need to change my life in a way that no longer involved them—and my explanations hadn’t satisfied their questioning. You did the best you could. Next time, you’ll do better.

    I forgave myself for the times I hadn’t revealed the full truth in sticky situations—I’d held details back in fear that their exposure would lead to my own abandonment. You did the best you could. Next time, you’ll do better.

    And perhaps the biggest one: I forgave myself for once staying in a relationship my soul knew was not meant to last. I’d gone so far with a man in the ‘wrong’ direction—all the while knowing I was heading in the wrong direction, but still needing to make the journey. And once I’d finally arrived in a life that wasn’t mine—after investing so much time, love, and energy—my soul begged me to leave but I stayed longer, still, because my tender heart wasn’t ready to go.

    I forgave myself for that epic journey and released the guilt I felt for leaving the man who’d been by my side all that time. He had felt at home in that direction, and I left him behind, to follow a path that was truly mine. You did the best you could. Next time, you’ll do better.

    —

    “You had difficult decisions to make,” I’d told my sweet, crying friend. “You did the best you could. You don’t need to wipe the events from your memory, but give yourself permission to let go of the guilt you feel. Once you forgive yourself, you’ll be lighter and more capable of movement and transformation.”

    “Lightness of being,” my sweet friend said. “I’d like to achieve that.”

    And she did. And we do. Every time we forgive—each other and ourselves.

  • 20 Things You Don’t Have to Apologize For

    20 Things You Don’t Have to Apologize For

    If you’re anything like me, you apologize far too often, and most of the time, when you haven’t done anything wrong.

    Sometimes we apologize for things beyond our control—like bad weather during a party we’re hosting.

    Sometimes we apologize when someone else was actually in the wrong—when a waiter brings us food not cooked to our specifications, for example.

    And sometimes we apologize for life choices we have every right to make—like the decision to change jobs, or end a relationship.

    We’re wired to seek a sense of belonging, and we fear being ostracized from our tribe, so many of us lean toward excessive contrition to ensure we’re still in people’s good graces.

    We may also apologize because we’re highly sensitive to other people’s feelings, and we want to ensure we haven’t unintentionally caused them pain.

    Particularly if you were abused at some point, it can feel imperative to express remorse for potential slights and offenses, since this could minimize the risk of retaliation. But by doing this, we’re undermining ourselves and reinforcing a sense of guilt and subservience.

    It’s admirable to apologize when we’ve genuinely done something wrong, or even if we believe we inadvertently hurt someone else. But there are certain choices we need to own, and need never apologize for.

    Since this topic has been on my mind lately, I decided to ask Tiny Buddha Facebook followers this question a couple weeks back:

    What’s one thing we should never apologize for?

    More than 2,000 people responded, many with variations of the same ideas. Below is a short list of the ones I found most compelling.

    You Never Have to Apologize For…

    1. Removing someone from your life that repeatedly crosses your boundaries. ~Bonnie Romano

    2. Being who we are, and feeling our feelings. ~Courtney Redd-Boynton

    3. Trusting your instincts, even if you can’t explain it. ~Kate Willette

    4. We should never apologize if we’re not truly sorry. I don’t believe in apologizing because someone ‘demands’ an apology. ~Olga Baez Rivera

    5. Quality “me” time (taking care of ourselves). ~Nath Ray

    6. Your opinion—there is no right or wrong opinion, and there’d be a lot less arguments if more people could just respect and appreciate different insights. ~Jennifer Werner Mader

    7. Standing up for what you believe in. ~Michelle Galyon-Stallings

    8. Living life the way we choose to, regardless of fitting in with other people’s norms. ~Tanya Johns Emery

    9. Making decisions about your own future that don’t do any harm to anyone. No one should be made to feel guilty for trying to better themselves. ~Rebecca Killeen

    10. You shouldn’t have to apologize for how you feel. You may need to apologize for how you act on your feelings, but never for being hurt, angry, sad, etc., and expressing how you feel. There’s a difference. ~NathanArisa Ferree

    11. Being sensitive. I feel my feelings and I believe it’s hurtful when individuals are quick to tell someone to “get over it.” If we aren’t harming anyone, we all deserve to process our feelings in our own time frame and manner. ~Lori Mitchell

    12. For being protective of our children and trusting our instincts as parents—especially when they’re not yet capable of advocating for themselves. ~Amitola Rajah

    13. Having to grieve. Some people think there is a time limit or a timeframe. It could take a lifetime to accept someone we love passing away. ~Lisa Marie

    14. Speaking the truth. It ain’t always pleasant, but better to know what’s really in someone’s heart than be fake! ~Kiran Sohi

    15. Speaking up when someone has hurt us in some way. ~Karin Alberga

    16. Fighting for the rights of animals. ~Linda Leppington

    17. Taking a break and doing absolutely nothing for ten minutes. ~Christina Teresa

    18. Being a free thinker and questioning everything even when it’s not the popular thing to do. ~Kathy Gildersleeve Wesley

    19. Choosing what you think is best for your life. ~Kay West

    20. Apologizing too much. ~Lori Deschene

    Yes, I just quoted myself there. And what I wrote might seem a little ironic, considering the topic of this post. But I’ve realized that despite knowing I don’t need to apologize as often as I do, I may still fall into this habit at times. And I’ve decided that’s perfectly okay.

    It’s okay that I sometimes experience anxiety about potential rejection. It’s okay that I’m insecure at times, and apologize to compensate. And it’s understandable, given my background, that I occasionally blame myself for things that aren’t my fault.

    The whole point of learning to apologize less is to build confidence in ourselves and our choices, and that means embracing our humanity.

    It’s human to struggle, and unless we’re hurting other people, there’s no need to apologize for it.

    What’s one thing you’ve realized you don’t need to apologize for? Have you ever apologized for something on this list?

  • How to Release Shame and Stop Feeling Fundamentally Flawed

    How to Release Shame and Stop Feeling Fundamentally Flawed

    “But shame is like a wound that is never exposed and therefore never heals.” ~Andreas Eschbach

    Shame. Everybody has it. Nobody wants to talk about it. The less we talk about it, the more power it has over us.

    Shame goes to the core of a person and makes them feel there is something inherently wrong with them.

    I remember when I was a young girl, I struggled so much with feeling I was ‘less than’ others.

    There were many nights when I would say prayers to help change me. I didn’t like my freckles. I was so embarrassed by my body. I hated the fact that I had a lisp. My skin was either pale as a ghost or the color of a tomato. I would get blotchy when I was the center of attention. This list could truly go on and on. What I was really experiencing was a strong sense of shame.

    Shame is often the trademark in hurting families, and almost always part of the underlying matrix of psychological conditions.

    It may start with someone not owning their own feelings and making it about someone else. I was such a sensitive kid. I would get made fun of for having emotions, and this eventually led to my own struggles with insecurity that surfaced as depression and anxiety.

    In our society, shame and guilt are often intertwined. However, these two emotions are quite different.

    Guilt’s focus is on behavior. It’s about what we do. When we experience guilt, we have gone against our own code of ethics.

    Guilt tells me that I am not doing what has been expected of me. This emotion usually serves as being an internal conscience. It helps me to not act on harmful impulses. The great thing about guilt is our values get reaffirmed. There is a possibility of repair. We can learn and grow.

    Shame’s focus is on the self. It’s not that I did something bad, but that I am bad. It gives us the sense that we do not measure up to others. We are defective. We are damaged goods.

    A person cannot grow while they are in a space of shame, and they cannot shame others to change. This concept is like saying “you are worthless and incapable of change, but change anyway.”

    When we’re in shame, we don’t see the bigger picture. We feel alone, exposed, and deeply flawed.

    Oftentimes, we will respond to shame by moving away from it, moving toward it, or moving against it. Moving away from it means to withdraw, hide, and/or stay silent. Moving toward would be appeasing and/or pleasing others. Moving against suggests we try to gain power over others. We use shame to fight shame.

    As human beings, we are wired for connection. We come into the world needing connection in order to survive. When we are in shame we unravel our ability to connect. Our first reaction to shame is to hide.

    This may mean we work all the time, attach to someone in an unhealthy relationship, or withdraw from our community. More so, we may have difficulty with healthy levels of self-esteem. We may fluctuate between arrogance, grandiosity, and low self-worth. As a result of this dynamic, we are either one up or one down in a relationship. Relationships lack substance, honesty and meaning.

    According to the research of Brené Brown, shame needs three things to survive: silence, secrecy, and judgment.

    Shame thrives on being undetected. The only thing shame cannot possibly survive is empathy.

    We have to find courage to talk about shame. When we dig past the surface, we find that shame is what drives our fear of rejection, to not take risks, to hate our bodies, and to worry about the judgment of others.

    We are more likely to engage in self-destructive behaviors or to attack others. When we are honest about our struggles, we are less likely to get stuck in the black tar of shame. Shame cannot hold on when we name it.

    So, how do we become aware of shame? And, what can we do about it?

    Well, we first have to name shame when we are feeling it.

    When I make statements like “I am an embarrassment” or “I am such a failure,” what I’m really feeling is shame. When I attack my being, I need to recognize the shame and reframe the belief. “I am not an embarrassment, I just did an embarrassing thing.”

    The next step is to develop more awareness about when I am experiencing shame.

    We have to become mindful of our triggers to shame. Our feelings, beliefs, and actions are motivated by these triggers whether we acknowledge them or not. So, when we are feeling shame, we want to interrupt it with more positive thought patterns.

    Ego repair comes next.

    We have to track and replace that negative internal dialogue, and put ourselves around positive and meaningful influences. It’s important at this stage to practice loving-kindness to ourselves and others. A great practical tool is talking to and treating yourself the way you would someone you love dearly. You would never call someone worthless, right? So, why do that to yourself?

    Name and return shame.

    I was picked on a lot as a kid for being overweight. I experienced shame in my gut and in my chest. I would often feel sick to my stomach. Eventually, I developed beliefs that I was “worthless and unlovable.” These came from an ample amount of being hurt by my peers.

    As I grew into an adult, I lost a good amount of weight, but still held onto those beliefs. Of course, I learned that weight has nothing to do with worth and love. I was able to name where that shame came from, and put it back on my peers who hurt me out of their own ignorance, pain, or confusion.

    If we are unable to put shame back in its place, we will continue to attract people and situations that validate those negative beliefs and recreate shame in our lives.

    Avoid negative situations and build positive supports.

    It is crucial to place yourself around healthy and loving people. When I am active in my shame, I often want to cocoon. During these times of isolation, I feel more alone and shameful. If I am able to simply communicate what is happening with me to someone who loves me, the power of my shame diminishes.

    In order to understand where we are and where we want to go, we have to have self-acceptance about who we are. Shame can make for discomfort in relationships with others. If we could work on developing a loving relationship with ourselves, our ability to be intimate and authentic increases.

    It is vital that we learn to separate shame from the person.

    We need to understand that shame is an emotion. The concern, though, is many people have turned shame from an emotion to a state of being. We want to be able to transform it back into a feeling. All of our emotions have functions. Shame, similar to other feelings, is attempting to protect us from some sort of threat. However, it often is a misperceived threat.

    We cannot become resistant to shame, but we can develop resilience to it.

    We have to help one another know we are not alone in our experiences and in our feelings. It is helpful to have corrective, validating, and emotional experiences with someone we love. We have to understand that part of our shared humanity is having parts of ourselves we are scared to show, but we have to be brave enough to show them anyway.

  • When Thinking About Life, Remember This

    When Thinking About Life, Remember This

    Remember this

  • The Elimination Diet

    The Elimination Diet

    The Elimination Diet

    Source: The Mind Unleashed

  • Overcoming the Fear of Being Judged for Your Mistakes

    Overcoming the Fear of Being Judged for Your Mistakes

    Sad Woman

    “Live your life for you not for anyone else. Don’t let the fear of being judged, rejected, or disliked stop you from being yourself.” ~Sonya Parker

    For years I struggled with a nagging feeling of guilt. This was not for actual things I did, but just a feeling that anytime something went wrong in my life, it was somehow my fault.

    I came from a religious family of eleven kids. My dear mom, bless her heart, occasionally punished us all because she just didn’t have the time in her busy day to find the perpetrator.

    My older brother, the perpetrator of most of our punishments, found this all to be quite humorous. The rest of us did not.

    Was it our desperate appeals to him to be better behaved, or our mom’s reaction whenever she learned of his latest subterfuge that he found humorous? Such are the trials of growing up in a big family.

    It didn’t help that the nuns in school reinforced the necessity of admitting guilt and the importance of being in need of exoneration. If something bad happened to you, like skinning your knee, well it was just God punishing you for something you hadn’t been caught at.

    One would normally think that guilt stemmed from believing you might have hurt someone. It took me some time to figure out the reasons for my feelings I hadn’t hurt anyone, but I felt guilty.

    How Do We Untangle This Web of Guilty Feelings?

    I wanted to know why I was hanging on to these guilty feelings. Self-awareness is about setting aside things that others have said about you and paying attention instead to what you know about yourself to be true.

    I figured my guilt was very much attached to what I believed others might think of me.

    I was using guilt as a defense mechanism. I would blame myself first, hoping to find and correct my mistakes before anyone else found out. I hoped that extra alertness might allow me to avoid criticism and judgments from others.

    My true nemesis was the fear of being criticized. Keeping a ledger of past mistakes was my way of being vigilant to crush any mistakes before anyone found out.

    My ledger of mistakes: the things that I did or said because it was easy and convenient, what I did not do or say when I could have, blaming others in my thoughts or not showing kindness when I could have. I even kept track of my embarrassing moments so I would never do them again.

    I worried that if my mistakes were exposed, I would be judged, rejected, or disliked for them. And so I punished myself for them before anyone else could.

    This fear of being exposed led me to walk through life feeling guilty for who I was and for all the mistakes I’d made. These fears were controlling my life.

    I believed and feared that these mistakes were who I was, and if they were exposed, I would be exposed.

    So How Did We Conquer Those Fears?

    Fears are challenges that put us out of our comfort zone, and they are opportunities for real growth.

    I found my growth happening when I mustered up the courage to experiment. What would happen if I lived my day the way I wanted? What if I stopped worrying about others judging me?

    I started just doing my best.

    I sought out new skills when I wanted my work to be better, just to make it pleasing to me. I stopped trying to impress others and hide my faults. I let them see me so I could understand and get to know them better and learn from their experiences.

    Most of the time, I wasn’t judged or disapproved by others. Guess who was the biggest judge? Me!

    By facing my fears, I reduced them significantly and could live with them. Knowing that others didn’t criticize me was not enough. I still had to resolve the negative self-judgments I still thought about myself if I was going to really accept myself and be free of the guilt.

    So How Does One Get to Self-Acceptance?

    Accepting ourselves is about recognizing that we’ve done things that we are not proud of, and this is part of being human. There is a process for dealing with regrets: sorrow with compassion, remorse, then leading to forgiveness.

    That same process works for resolving those nagging guilty feelings for doing or not doing things that don’t have apparent negative impact on others. I’m talking about those times when I had negative thoughts or opinions about others, yet didn’t express them, or when I didn’t take a higher road when I could have.

    Our guilt becomes this reservoir of mistakes we made in life. Mistakes are part of being human. Sometimes we are just not prepared for situations.

    Having compassion for my humanity, I forgave myself for my mistakes. This opened me up to genuine acceptance for the human that I am, and that we all are.

    I got to know my real self. The real me was that person who took the risk of being judged by others.

    I was not my mistakes. I started getting to like me.

    Then something unexpected….

    I can still remember this moment. I had this feeling of love for me—faults and all. I am talking about the kind of love that you feel for someone you love deeply. I had never before felt this way about myself.

    You can do this too.

    Time to Be Done With Feeling Guilty

    If guilty feelings are nagging at you, there is a way out. Be self-aware by knowing what is true about you. Get out of your comfort zone and face those fears of exposure.

    You can change and make it better. Forgive and accept yourself inside, for who you really are. Be free of guilt and be yourself. One day you’ll find yourself loving you.

    Sad woman image via Shutterstock

  • Letting Go of Guilt About What You “Should” Be Doing

    Letting Go of Guilt About What You “Should” Be Doing

    “Beware the bareness of a busy life.” ~Socrates

    It was December 26th. The day after Christmas. Ten days after my daughter’s first birthday. I was sitting on the floor coiling Christmas lights when I began to try to stand up. Almost immediately, I sunk back down to the floor.

    I was tired. I was physically tired. I was emotionally tired. Even my soul felt tired.

    In that moment, I couldn’t help but wonder, how did I get here? Sitting on the family room floor after two beautiful family events—my daughter’s birthday and Christmas—and my bones, heart, and soul ached so much that I considered whether I would be able to stand up again.

    Six weeks after the birth of my daughter, I chose to get back on a plane and continue building my consulting business. I spent the entire first year of her life haunted by my ego as I frantically tried to build my business, serve clients, and prove that I was needed and valuable.

    The image of a successful woman that I’ve always carried with me is that of a woman who is smart, driven, professionally accomplished. She is also a Mary Poppins mom, a loving wife, and a leader in the community. And she is someone who makes it all look effortless with her calm, impeccable style.

    That superwoman was the gold standard I’d spent years, and especially the last year, trying to live up to.

    But now, on December 26th, I’d awakened only to realize that as much as I was chasing the dream of the superwoman, I wasn’t living my life.

    I came crashing headfirst into my so called life.

    The words of Socrates, beware the bareness of a busy life, were suddenly eerily real.

    I knew it was time for me to make some significant changes in my life.

    As I reflected back on that year, I realized that I had been driven by guilt and its close cousin, the “shoulds.” Together, they ignited a fire in me that drove me, ultimately filling my hours and days with busyness.

    Guilt would rear its ugly head with questions like, “Am I working too much and not spending enough time with my family?” Or “Am I undermining my health and my family’s health because a significant majority of the food consumed in the household comes from a takeout box?” Perhaps, “Am I letting down my client because I did not immediately reply to their email?”

    All I needed to do was to spend a few minutes pondering questions like these, and I was deep in the black hole of guilt—insecure, confused, miserable, tired.

    But, when I paused on December 26th, I realized that it was my fears and anxieties that were driving me. My guilt was the manifestation of both. So, I decided it was time to face my fears by asking myself, “What is the worst thing that could happen? Is it real? Is it true?”

    As I looked at my fears—really looked at them—I realized that I had created elaborate, worst case scenarios that had no actual grounding in reality. They were neither real nor true.

    I did not know a business owner who had lost a client because they did not immediately respond to an email. And, upon reflection, if I did lose a client because of this, they probably weren’t an ideal client for me.

    Once I realized that fear and anxiety had been driving my guilt, it was time for me to take an honest look at its close cousin, the “shoulds.” The “should” are those voices in your head—and you know the ones—saying “You should be doing this,” “You should like that,” “You should spend time on this,” “You should stop doing that,” and so on and so forth—endlessly.

    There were numerous unspoken “shoulds” that had contributed to my busy, barren, exhausted life.

    The problem with the “shoulds” is that they can easily become a runaway train, completely derailing your ability to get clear and focused on what you need and desire.

    I realized that I needed to start saying “no.” Saying “no” to the voices inside my head, and maybe externally as well, and doing it in a new way—a way that I developed and like to call the “P.O.W.E.R. No.”

    Here’s how I use it:

    • Priorities: When that voice in your head tells you that should complete this task, lead another project, attend another meeting, or make cupcakes from scratch, evaluate the priority of that message. How does this “should” align to your priorities, the company’s strategic priorities, and/or your family’s priorities?
    • Opportunities: Explore the opportunities. What opportunities does this “should” create for you? Is there something that does actually need additional attention in your life? This “should” could be shining a light on something that you need to address.
    • Who: Who or what triggered this “should”? Was it an old script from childhood? Was it an ad in a magazine? Was it your colleague?
    • Expectations: Whose expectations are these really? Your manager? Your mother? Your spouse? Your child? Society’s?
    • Real: Get real.What is this “should” really about? Are there real priorities that are driving this “should”? Or are you taking on societal expectations that are not in alignment with your priorities?

    The P.O.W.E.R. No enables me to think carefully and critically about all of the “shoulds” so that I can consciously and thoughtfully respond. It has helped me get back in the driver’s seat of my life—conscious, intentional, and awake.

    I am so grateful that I crashed headfirst into my life on December 26th. In that moment of crisis and confusion, I was able to see clearly what drove me to such a barren, lifeless existence—and to know that I was capable of fixing it to restore personal and professional order for myself.

    Today, I have created a life that keeps me connected to my husband and daughter, laughing, running in the mornings, building my dream business, working simply and living fully.

    With that said though, I keep Socrates’ quote posted inside my desk drawer. It serves as a as a simple reminder of not only what’s at stake, but also, and more importantly, how far I’ve come to build a life I love.

  • How to Quit or Move On Without Feeling Guilty

    How to Quit or Move On Without Feeling Guilty

    “Some people think it’s holding on that makes one strong–sometimes it’s letting go.” ~Unknown

    When I accepted a position with a small company, I thought I had found everything I wanted: challenging work in my field, flexible hours, a laid-back atmosphere, and a short commute.

    My new job seemed to be perfect, but soon I realized it wasn’t.

    While I loved the kind of work I did, the “casual” atmosphere ended up being too casual. Hearing racy jokes and mocking comments became part of my workday. The jokes seemed to become more offensive as days went by.

    Then the gossip and criticism started.

    When I expressed how uncomfortable I felt, others called me “too sensitive.” I promised myself to develop a thicker skin and stick with the job.

    As time went by, my body started to show the effects of the negativity in my office. I had trouble sleeping and felt nauseous every morning on my way to work. I watched the clock several times a day, wishing for the day to speed up so I could finally go home.

    That’s when I decided to quit.

    You might be toying with the idea of leaving a job, a project, or a relationship. You might have already left. When you quit something that is not serving you, you take a healthy step toward joy and fulfillment

    But that’s not the end of the story. Quitting can produce a fair amount of guilt. Why? Because our society teaches us to “never give up.” If we’re “quitters,” we are supposed to feel bad about ourselves.

    How to do what is right for you without experiencing guilt or shame?

    Ask yourself if you’ve exhausted all resources.

    Did you express your feelings about the negative situation? Did you take a good look at the role you played in what happened?

    After months of tolerating a toxic work environment and trying to change the situation, nothing changed. I realized the only action I could control was my own, and I left. I felt at peace because I knew I had done everything I could to make the job work.

    Take some time alone to contemplate your situation and what you have done to improve it. You’ll know whether you’ve run out of resources.

    Determine why you are quitting.

    It’s easy to give up because of fear of the unknown, because someone said you should quit, or because what you want to pursue is “too difficult.”

    If you leave your marriage because it’s “too difficult” to work things out with your spouse, or you stop writing because your mother said you’ll be another starving author, you might not only be making a decision you’ll regret, but you’ll be more likely to be plagued by guilt.

    Two of my top values are health and respect. It was clear to me that my work environment had violated both, so I felt free to quit.

    Push aside fear, negative self-talk, and outside influences. Are you in an environment, project, or relationship that violates your values? If so, you know you can leave without guilt.

    Avoid explaining yourself.

    I tried to explain to those around me why I was leaving my seemingly perfect job, and I quickly learned I had made a mistake. Telling your friends and relatives why you quit opens the door to argument and criticism.

    There will always be someone who will tell you that you’re crazy for quitting, or that he or she knows someone who did what you did and ended up bankrupt or socially ostracized.

    You know why you quit. That’s enough.

    Don’t overanalyze the negative experience.

    It’s easy to fall into the trap of overanalyzing, playing possible scenarios in your head, and wondering if you really did everything you could to avoid quitting.

    I spent nights lying awake, wondering whether I should have been more vocal about my discontent, or whether I really was “too sensitive.” The result? More time feeling negative emotions. I still came to the conclusion that quitting was for the best.

    Overanalyzing will take up valuable time you could be using to plan the next step in your career or personal life.

    Focus on what’s next.

    Place your attention on what you want to create. A fulfilling and well-paid career? A relationship based on love and respect? An exciting new venture? Paint a detailed mental picture of what you want to achieve, and take action to make it happen.

    My experience taught me what I didn’t want in a job environment and motivated me to explore other career options, including the small business I eventually founded.

    When you’re working toward something you clearly know is right for you, there’s no room for guilt.