Tiny Buddha

Tag: popular

  • What’s Really Going on When Someone Seems “Too Sensitive”

    What’s Really Going on When Someone Seems “Too Sensitive”

    Crying Eyes

    “For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” ~Cynthia Occelli

    The whole time I was growing up, I was told, incessantly, that I was “too sensitive.” These words, when I first heard them, came from the mouth of the person I vowed I would never become.

    And yet, as I grew up, these words didn’t stay within the darkness of my childhood home. They began to roll out of the mouths of kids on the playground, boyfriends, classmates, friends.

    “Wow, you’re really touchy.”

    “You’re so emotional.”

    “You’re turning really red. Are you, like, really offended right now? You should take a chill pill.”

    “You can’t take a joke.”

    Often, my reaction was to a joke—an insulting one. I’ve never liked insult humor, and yet it’s followed me throughout my life. It was (and still is) there in my Eastern European origins, and it was there every step of the way when I came to Canada as an immigrant.

    They were right. I just couldn’t take a joke.

    Each time this would happen, I would own it. Yes, I was too sensitive. It was my fault. I had to try to hide it better. I came up with all these tactics to hide my volatile emotions, but they failed.

    Even if I didn’t cry, I’d turn red. Even if I didn’t turn red, my lips would quiver and my body would tense up. Someone would never fail to point it out.

    “Wow, you get really red—like a tomato!”

    “Hey, lighten up. You take things so seriously.”

    I left the toxic environment of my childhood when I was seventeen years old, having counted down the days until I could be free. An old journal of mine from around then says, “I’m so glad I’m over the past.” I thought changing locations was the end of the story.

    I had focused so much on getting free that, when I got to that freedom, I didn’t know what to do. Slowly, I developed serious mental health issues that grew from not healing. I became more than just sensitive. I became what my ex called “crazy.”

    After my first relationship—which quickly turned into mutual emotional abuse—dissolved, something broke inside of me. I became cold, distant, intolerant. I began to make comments about other people being too sensitive when they reacted, because I no longer did.

    And you know something? It felt good. It felt so good to, for once, not be the one that felt ashamed of my emotions. I felt powerful. I felt like everything would be okay.

    I became everything I had fought so long and so hard against: loveless, distant, cynical. I became the bully I once feared. I began my journey to become the abuser I vowed to leave in my childhood memories.

    Thankfully, I had a breakdown. I say thankfully, because those weeks of unbearable pain were nothing compared to a lifetime I could have lived as yet another abuser recreating her past.

    As I allowed myself to feel again, I felt a flood of regret and guilt for the people I’d hurt. I felt terrible about shaming those emotions in others that I’d had shamed in me. I used this feeling to forgive the people who had hurt me, realizing that their actions were by-products of abuse in their pasts as well.

    I had escaped hurting myself and hurting others by healing the pain of the past, which was only possible by feeling the pain of the past. And I realize now that this was what I was trying to do all those times I would overreact—heal. I was trying to heal.

    When we get ignored or put down, it hurts. It leaves a wound. And then, when we’re in a safer situation, that wound tries to heal.

    Each time I reacted emotionally to a situation that didn’t seem appropriate, my wound was trying to heal.

    Each time I would react to a joke with pain, my wounds were trying to heal.

    Each time I’d get this rush of anger or anxiety or self-hatred, triggered by some little thing someone did that reminded me of the abuse of the past, my wounds were trying to heal.

    But what did the world say?

    When I needed someone to hold me while I cried about being insulted and pushed down after being triggered by something little and silly, people would say, “You’re too sensitive.”

    When I needed someone, anyone, to just look at what was happening in my life and listen to me, having no communication skills and able only to start drama, people would say, “You’re doing it for attention.”

    I came so close to killing myself before I had a breakdown. If I had, wouldn’t they have said, “We didn’t see it coming”?

    Abuse has been rampant in my family for generations. In my work, I see every day how rampant emotional abuse is in our society.

    Abuse makes people “sensitive.” I put this in quotation marks because there’s a difference between perceiving a person’s sensitivity as a characteristic and perceiving that person as having gaping wounds, which are sensitive because they’re healing.

    And our cultural tendency to push down the healing process in those who have been abused is the most silent killer of them all.

    As human beings, we need to connect, to love, to belong. We need to feel like we are accepted and respected for who we are. And how many of us had those needs shattered at a young age? If not by our parents, by a group of peers. If not by a group of peers, by a partner.

    As soon as we get hurt, we start to heal. This goes for paper cuts as much as it goes for emotions. We can allow that healing, or we can block it.

    Those who appear outwardly sensitive and touchy are actually doing something incredibly brave. They are choosing to stay with their emotions, which are pathways to healing, instead of shutting down and joining the abuse statistics.

    So next time you hear someone being called too sensitive, know this: there are only so many times a person’s healing process can be repressed before they can’t take it anymore. And the way a person breaks out is either through ending their life or ending their emotional life by becoming abusive themselves.

    This is happening everywhere, and we can all do our part to stop it.

    Jon Briere said, “If we could somehow end child abuse and neglect, the eight hundred pages of DSM […] would be shrunk to a pamphlet in two generations.”

    We can all do our part in this, and the way we can start is by understanding the connection between emotional release and healing, by allowing people to experience emotions in front of us without judging or backing down, and by allowing ourselves to experience those emotions, to heal, and to find people who will allow us to do so.

    Like this, we can build a better world together. But we can’t do it alone. We need you. We need all of us.

    Crying eyes image via Shutterstock

  • Create an Extraordinary Life: 5 Questions to Ask Yourself Daily

    Create an Extraordinary Life: 5 Questions to Ask Yourself Daily

    Woman thinking

    “We have one precious life: do something extraordinary today, even if it’s tiny. A pebble starts the avalanche.” ~K.A. Laity

    Do you have a vision of a life you want to lead?

    Doing work that you enjoy, being happy, healthy, and having great relationships?

    You probably have your own idea of what an extraordinary life means. But how often do you feel that you are living that life?

    Life is bound within the confines of our schedules, our money, and our limited resources.

    There are many things that you want to do, or want to be, but most of the time you tend to go with the flow, putting things off for later. Either because you are too busy, or because you feel that you lack the means to do so.

    What if that’s not true?

    What if you are mistaken about the limitations you think you face? What if you can do much more—starting today?

    What if, by just asking yourself a few questions every day, you could become happier, healthier, and much more successful?

    For me, an extraordinary life is not about being in a permanent vacation in Vegas or having millions in the bank. My vision is not of any particular destination, but a journey. It’s a life where I am content with what I have yet strive for more. A balance of the present and the future.

    Last year was one of the best years of my life. And I could make it so because I was able to look past what I had assumed to be major limitations that were holding me back.

    A Dream on the Backburner

    Since I was ten years old, I wanted to visit Scotland.

    Filled with breathtaking natural beauty, fascinating legends, rich history, incredible medieval architecture, wonderful people, and divine food, Scotland is one of the most enchanting places on Earth.

    I had glimpses of it all my life through travel shows, books, and movies –Braveheart, The Water Horse, the legend of the Loch Ness monster, R.L. Stevenson’s stories, and more.

    For me, this was not just about a vacation. This was connected to the very core of my identity—to my sense of freedom and adventure; to my love for art, beauty, and a desire to live a life of meaning.

    The trouble was that I was running a startup business and I was always either too busy or had too little money to spend on personal matters.

    My wife and I had this grand vision of a luxury trip to Scotland, when we would have enough time and money. We really didn’t want to go on a regular trip because we wanted it to be ‘extraordinary.’

    One day all that changed. But not in the way I had expected.

    A Simple Bit of Wisdom

    I came across a bit of simple but powerful wisdom by bestselling author Marshall Goldsmith. He spoke about asking ourselves daily questions about things that really matter to us:

    Did I do my best to (be or do something) today?

    The question might seem simple, but it has a very powerful impact. It will make you examine your life and your perceived limitations. It will prompt you to take personal responsibility for your life.

    I became intrigued and began to ask myself one particular question that he recommended:

    Did I do my best to be happy today?’

    Asking this question made me more cognizant of taking responsibility for my own happiness. Initially, it prompted me to practice gratitude every day. But then came a big revelation.

    A Revelation

    Over a couple of weeks, I began to think more deeply about my life. I really began to wonder, what would make me more fulfilled right now? And the same answer kept repeating itself: I had to go to Scotland.

    And then, I thought, why not? Why am I putting off something that means so much to me?

    My wife and I were planning a trip for the next year, but many ‘next years’ had elapsed without us taking action.

    Over the next few days, we did some serious research and realized that it wouldn’t really be as expensive as we had thought. Besides, there are ways to save, like staying in AirBnB instead of a hotel.

    Soon after, we were standing in the medieval city of Edinburgh!

    Nothing can prepare you for the magic when you actually land in that mesmerizing city. Traveling through the Highlands, visiting castles, and taking a boat ride on the legendary Loch Ness was far more beautiful than I had ever expected.

    And it all began by asking a simple question every day. Honestly, if I hadn’t asked that daily question, we would have put off our trip again for ‘next year.’

    The Power of the Question

    A meaningful question has the power to prompt you to take a close look at your life and your actions. It directs you to take responsibility for your success and happiness. So what other questions can you ask that have the power to change your life?

    I will share four more daily questions that you can ask yourself about different areas of your life. Each of these questions has the power to transform your life. But first…

    A Word of Caution

    Don’t expect an earth shattering revelation when you ask any of these questions for the first time. You will only realize the profound power of these questions once you begin asking them for at least a few days. But over time, these questions can truly make your life extraordinary.

    Ready? Let’s begin.

    Here are four more daily questions for living an extraordinary life.

    Improving your Career

    Are you less than satisfied with your job?

    Most of us are, or have been. Few of us feel completely fulfilled at work.

    However, what’s also true is that few of us consider themselves to be responsible for their happiness at work.

    Ask yourself, “Did I do my best to enjoy my work today?”

    Asking this will prompt you to make a sincere effort to enjoy your work.

    The moment you take this responsibility, it will become easier for you to connect with people, resolve conflicts, take more initiative, and lend a helping hand to a colleague.

    Over time, taking personal responsibility will drive better results, reduce your stress, and bring you more recognition and success.

    Improving Health and Fitness

    Do you tend to ignore your health because you are too busy? Do you make fitness resolutions without ever sticking to them?

    Ask, “Did I do my best to stay healthy?”

    This question will provide you with the energy to persevere.

    Eating better, going for a run every day, or even changing simple habits like taking the stairs instead of the lift takes time and effort to build.

    It is important to do your health habit a little every day till it becomes second nature.

    By asking this daily question you will remind yourself to take the small steps toward everyday health—eat a fruit, skip the rope, or sit down to meditate for a few minutes

    It will also give you the assurance that you can succeed despite your lack of time or inconsistency in the past.

    You realize that all you need is some extra effort and perseverance. Let the question be your inspiration every day.

    Improving Relationships

    Do you often find yourself involved in a disagreement or a conflict?

    Conflicts are one of the biggest sources of stress. How much easier would your life be if you had a way to resolve conflicts quickly, or even better, prevent them from occurring in the first place?

    Ask, “Did I do my best to understand people?”

    Most conflicts happen because people fail to understand each other. Because we fail to see the other person’s viewpoint, or appreciate their interests. Before you can truly make the other person understand you, you must understand him or her. Why not take the first step yourself?

    Designing your Life’s Purpose

    Do you ever feel a lack of clear purpose? Or that there is a special purpose to your life, but you don’t know what it is?

    There have been times when I have felt the same. It’s not unusual to question the direction your life is taking.

    But have you considered that you don’t really have to discover a special purpose in life?

    What if you can design your purpose every single day? What if your life has multiple purposes, the same way we have multiple roles in life—a spouse, a parent, a friend, an employee, a citizen, a human being.

    What if you just strived to be a person who attempts to do the best in one or more of these roles – everyday?

    Ask yourself, “Did I do my best to find meaning in my life today?”

    Out of all the above questions, this is probably the most powerful of all. Take the responsibility of finding meaning in your life every day. I believe that meaning already exists; we just don’t recognize it. Well, now you can—every day.

    It’s All Up to You

    I believe that life is a gift. Life itself is extraordinary.

    All of us will not find equal success in relationships, work, finances, or health. However, we can choose to do the best with the limited means that we have. We can choose to make a sincere effort to live life to the fullest every single day.

    These are just a few daily questions that can take you in the direction of creating an extraordinary life.

    What areas of your life do you want to focus on? What daily questions will you ask yourself?

    Woman thinking image via Shutterstock

  • No Matter What You Tell Yourself, There Is Nothing Wrong with You

    No Matter What You Tell Yourself, There Is Nothing Wrong with You

    “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” ~Bronnie Ware from Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

    I wish I could remember the exact moment I mis-learned that being myself wasn’t going to cut it.

    It happened early. Maybe kindergarten. I didn’t do it consciously, but at some undetectable moment, I put my real self in a box and created someone else. This new me was so much better—always happy, very accommodating, super quick and witty, and an expert at everything.

    This new me was almost impossible to maintain. She required constant observations, self-sacrifices, and living in fear of being found out. But I knew she was necessary. The real me was not an option.

    Why? Because something was wrong with me. Even in elementary school, I had come to an unfortunate conclusion: Everyone is better than me. I can never let anyone see that.

    There was evidence. I had the only divorced parents in a conservative suburb. I had stringy hair that never congealed into the halo formation I desired no matter how much spray I applied. (It was the eighties!) I didn’t own any brand names. And, worst of all, my father was gay.

    My dad never told me he was gay. He just was gay one day when I was ten. The problem was, he left my mom for a man when I was three. That left seven years of deception in between.

    I went to gay parades with him because he “had some gay friends.” I slept over at the house he shared with his “roommate.” So when my mom finally sat me down to tell me the truth, I was shocked. And betrayed. They’d both been putting on a show for seven years. Why?

    My ten-year-old brain assumed they must have hidden it because it was supposed to be hidden. In a time before Ellen or even an inkling of gay marriage talk, I figured this was a secret so shameful that nobody should know about it.

    I wasn’t against my father or against homosexuality. I was against being different. Flawed. Weird. I was surely the only girl in elementary school who had seen assless chaps at a street fair. I wish I had owned it and flaunted a rainbow flag backpack, but I couldn’t then. I was too obsessed with being ‘the same.’

    I decided not to tell anyone. Not my friends. Not my teachers. No one.

    But a story has all the power when the only place it’s allowed to live is inside you.

    Keeping up a constant lie is exhausting. The anxiety alone about being found out can overtake your body. It controls the way you speak, the way you breathe, what you choose to share with friends. The latter kept all my friends at an arm’s distance. I craved so badly to feel closer to them. Connected. But connection was too scary.

    Six years after I found out about my father’s true self, he fell into one of his many deep depressions and took his own life.

    I had just gotten my driver’s license. His phone was off the hook, and I drove against my mom’s rules to see him. His apartment was a den of depression and his 6’5” body thinner than I’d ever seen. I gave him a hug, and when I drove away, I had no idea it would be our very last hug.

    At sixteen, there were few conclusions for me to make besides: See! Something is seriously wrong with me. My dad didn’t even want to stay to see me grow up.

    Outwardly, I pretended it was no big deal. I cried alone in my room, in my car, places where nobody could see. I wanted to rewind it all. I wanted to change everything. I wanted to go to sleep for years and wake up a happy adult with it all figured out.

    I jumped further into people pleasing. That guy needs a date to something? Let’s go. My teacher is handing out extra credit? I’ll do double. Smile. Smile. SMILE! I got my grade point average to 4.5 and was crowned homecoming queen. (Kids, take notes! You too can become homecoming queen if you simply accommodate every single person who is not you.)

    I went to college far away to get away from myself, but my self followed. My fear. My pretense. My anxiety followed. And as I compared my family to an even broader spectrum of strangers, it got worse.

    The only time I would talk about my personal life was when I was drunk and making jokes. Once a salesman told me to buy a present for my father. I laughed and said, “My father is in the ground!” Then I walked out of the store laughing as if it was the funniest thing I’d ever said.

    Years after college, I met a girl in a writing class. She was the tiniest person I’d ever met and had a voice to match. It happened that our leases ended at the same time, and we had a frank conversation about becoming roommates.

    “I am a loner,” I told her.

    “Me too. We can close our doors and we’ll know that it’s not a good time. Let’s do it.”

    We moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles, and one month after combining our silverware, this girl washed the dishes I’d left in the sink. I didn’t get it. She wasn’t my mom. She didn’t have to. I could not grasp the concept of someone else actually wanting to do something for me without being forced or wanting something in return.

    She also insisted on driving me to the airport or paying for dinner or seeing if I needed anything from the store. She simply wanted the best for me. She was offering me the connection I’d craved, and I didn’t know how to handle it.

    We would lie on the carpet at night and stare at the popcorn ceiling. I tried to be vague when she asked me about my life. I was used to short answers, accustomed to my motto: Get done with the talking fast so the group can move on to someone better. But she wouldn’t let me off the hook.

    She reached for me. She held my hand. I’d never experienced such intimacy with a friend. I recoiled at first, but she persisted. It’s like she knew the terror inside my head—the terror to be close, to be discovered, to be guilty. She knew, and she was guiding me through.

    And so I told her my truth. I let it out. And she told me hers. And we cried and we laughed and we didn’t stop until our lives made a pile on the living room floor. She didn’t hate me. She didn’t abandon me. She didn’t tell me I was weird or different or wrong. She just held me and said it was all okay.

    At twenty-eight, she was my first real friend. At twenty-eight, I finally grieved openly for my father.

    This first friend of mine began to unravel the mask I had spent years sewing. She pulled the first thread, and then I began to write, which untied me even more. I posted an essay about my father on my blog and was met with solidarity and hugs. And love.

    Being real felt suffocating at first. I had to get used to awkward pauses when I’d say the word ‘suicide.’ I had to learn to relax and not be on constant alert during conversations in order to say the wittiest response first. I had to admit when I was wrong or didn’t know. I had to be willing to show others my imperfection.

    I’m still working on it all. Every day. But since I came clean, my world is completely different. I drink less alcohol because I don’t need to hide from my own terror-filled brain. I have a set of friends with whom I can share every tiny detail about myself. I feel fulfilled. I feel honest. I sleep well.

    And most of all, my story has lost its power. Once I began saying it out loud, I realized that every single person has felt shame at some point. No one thinks she or her family is perfect. But it takes sharing to find that out.

    I felt such a relief from letting go of my secret that it became my mission to spread the word.

    I started a show in Hollywood called Taboo Tales. I help people take their secrets and make them into emotional comedy pieces they tell on stage to a big crowd of strangers. It’s a mini version of what I’ve experienced over the last seven years. People get to tell their story, feel a relief from letting go, and then find immediate solidarity from the audience.

    Brene Brown says, “When we deny the story, it defines us. When we own the story, we can write a brave new ending.”

    It is the absolute truth. I have seen it firsthand countless times on stage. And I experience brave new endings every day. I have an entirely new life after learning to become vulnerable. To tell it all. To own what’s made me who I am. To be proud of my cool, gay, leather-wearing dad!

    Sure, I’m still working on figuring out who I am after faking it for so long. But I know for sure I’m doing my best. And I’m not following in my father’s footsteps. He let his shame simmer inside of him until it was too much. Not me. Vulnerability saved my life.

    —

    If you’d like to taste some vulnerability, you can start with a tool I use in my Taboo Tales workshops. Set a five-minute timer and write a list of all the things you would never share with anyone else. The timer makes you keep going, and you’ll be surprised at what comes up.

    Take one of those things on your list—the scariest one— and write about it. You can burn everything later, but just getting the story out from inside where it festers is a necessary step. See where that takes you. Maybe read what you wrote to one person if you can.

    If not, start with small truths. Post an honest picture on social media instead of something posed and perfect. Let someone see your messy house or car when you may have made an excuse in the past. Respond with anything other than ‘fine’ when someone asks you how you’re doing. And something I really value in my own life: tell the truth when it’s time to break plans.

    “I’m really too depressed to hang out today” is actually what a good friend would want to hear instead of “I can’t make it.” Your honesty could open that friendship up to new and more intimate conversations.

    Friends are really important in your path to vulnerability. Could you tell any of those items on your list to a friend or two? If you feel like they would all judge you, maybe you could use a new, cozier friend. They’re out there, I promise.

    And one last tip: participate less in gossip. One thing that keeps us holding ourselves back is the fear of being judged. So I challenge you to not be a part of judging on the other side either. Once you begin letting go of your own judgments against others, the idea of being judged yourself becomes less scary.

    Tips or no tips, the goal is to tell your story, whether it’s big and taboo or not. Start small and work up to letting it out in whatever ways you can. Hey, if you want to start below, let’s make this comment section a judgment-free space where everyone’s allowed to share whatever it is they can. That can happen on the Internet, right?

  • The Beauty of Being Single: 6 Benefits of Solitude

    The Beauty of Being Single: 6 Benefits of Solitude

    “I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.” ~Henry David Thoreau

    Shock. Rage. Sorrow. Excitement. Terror. These are just a handful of the emotions one experiences in the aftermath of a separation or divorce. Emotional rollercoaster? It’s more like being hit with the speed and velocity of a bullet train.

    I should know. After twenty-five years of marriage to a kind and accomplished man, I found myself alone.

    Our decision to divorce was neither acrimonious nor cruel; neither sudden nor impulsive. Rather, our decision to file for divorce was an incremental process.

    We had more disappointment than hope, more unease with each other than affection and contentment. As difficult as it was to recognize the wrong turns we’d made in our two-plus decades together, we both realized that it was time for each of us to draw a new map.

    While my husband remained in the home we had lived in together throughout our marriage and the raising of our daughter, the path on the new atlas of my life led me back to Italy, the country of my birth.

    In retrospect, it was far easier to relocate to somewhere radically different from the place I’d called home for thirty years than it was to sit with the equally radical emotions aroused by separating from the person who knew me best.

    Once the bags were unpacked, the boxes unloaded, and the small apartment I’d rented in the heart of Rome redecorated, I had to contend with the alien feeling of a naked ring finger and a heart full of pain.

    The relief of our separation—no longer would I have to tiptoe around the mounting frustration and disenchantment between us—was short-lived; the rush of excitement at the idea of “a fresh start” evanescent as a shooting star.

    With a job from home, only a shoebox of an apartment to tend to, and no wifely duties, motherly chores, or social commitments, I had only one thing to do and one place to go—and that was inward.

    It was lonely in there. Where, I kept thinking, was that rock-solid husband of mine who was ready to jump onto the roof at a moment’s notice when the gutters overflowed?

    Who would take care of me when I was sick, keep me warm when I was cold, ease me into sleep when I had insomnia? Who would share the beauties of life with me?

    How could I live if I didn’t have a partner to love?

    I was in profound disbelief (it wasn’t really over); angry (how could my husband let me go?); worried (would I end up begging for scraps of food in Piazza Navona?); ashamed (I should have tried harder); resolved (I’d get him back and we’d make it work), and adrift (life was pointless).

    But then resignation arrived, and with it, a certain, glorious freedom. I was divorced, not dead. The questions I had? It was akin to asking a well where I could find a drink of water. And in their absence, new ones arrived: Who were my neighbors in the eternal city? Which interests could I develop? How could I create a routine that nurtured my values? And how could I march in single file?

    As I began navigating life alone, I discovered that, while enormously different, a great deal of solace and satisfaction can be found in solitude. If you’re going through a similar transition, consider the following benefits of flying solo:

    1. Your imagination will soar.

    It’s true: Creativity emerges from quiet and an open agenda. Having long been a writer—but also a wife, mother, homeowner, and full-time corporate executive—I long ago learned to write against distraction.

    In my new space, where the only distractions were those I created, my imagination was provoked in ways that I hadn’t experienced since I was a child. Without time- constraints and working to the tune of a television show I wasn’t watching, I found myself freer on the page, more productive, and thoroughly content daydreaming about a daydream.

    If thinking of a long, unstructured weekend day fills you with the blues, use it to your advantage. Creative expression, whether through writing, drawing, or dancing, often proves to be cathartic for people.

    Paint your way through anger, redecorate a room to lift your mood, or spend an hour imagining the places you have the freedom to explore in your new, unencumbered state.

    2. Your life will become entirely yours.

    Responsibilities have always been a large part of my adult life. From commuting to the office to hosting dinner parties for my husband’s colleagues, rarely did my former schedule allot much time for what I—and I alone—wanted to do.

    In the absence of these duties, I found a surplus of time, energy, and excitement to pursue my passions. A candlelight yoga class? An art-house film on a Tuesday that would have been otherwise dedicated to household chores? Cocktails on a school night? Yes, yes, and yes, please!

    I discovered the deliciousness of creating my own schedule and following what called to me rather than what was expected of me—and you are wholly free to do the same.

    What fell by the wayside during your relationship—friendships, hobbies, unread novels, moving to the city of your dreams—are exactly where you left them. Only now you have the time and devotion to give them the attention and energy they deserve.

    3. You will learn self-reliance.

    While I was the master of my own life, I was also the one solely responsible for making sure that such a life worked.

    Going from a dual income to one was daunting at first—until I recalled the gift I had for budgeting pre-marriage, which allowed me to buy my first apartment before I turned twenty. A leaky faucet, a flat tire, a frustrating day? I bought a toolset and watched YouTube videos, befriended our local mechanic, and learned that Rainer Maria Rilke was entirely right when he said that no feeling is final.

    The more self-reliant I became, the more confident—and happy—I felt.

    Should you find yourself in the same place, start slowly but stay determined. Pick one area of your life where you need to become self-sufficient, whether it’s in balancing your checkbook or learning to cook for one. Once conquered, attack the next…and next, and next, and next, until you find yourself surprised that at one time you depended on anyone else at all.

    4. You will befriend yourself.

    With only myself to please and take care of, I embarked on a new relationship—with myself.

    I was tentative at first, much as one is when they first start dating someone new. Would I like a glass of cabernet out of habit because it’s what my husband often ordered, or did I think a Viognier might be a better fit with this dish? Would I like to stay at home and take a bath, or venture out to a café with a newfound friend?

    The more I began treating myself with the kindness and attentiveness I showed toward my husband and daughter, the more I got to know myself on a deeper, truer level, realizing how much of what I did and what I ate and how I acted was an act of either submission or compromise.

    If you’re in a similar position, listen to your needs, honor your wants (within moderation), and tune in to what your heart is telling you. The more you take care of yourself, the better equipped you will be to deal with the conflicting emotions your newfound single status has likely stirred.

    5. You will learn the art of a healthy inner monologue.

    Marriage and motherhood don’t leave much room for listening to one’s inner voice—there’s enough noise as it is. Alone, I was introduced to a whole cast of inner players I had silenced out of necessity for years. Some of these voices were unkind—judgmental, condescending, or tempting me in unhealthy directions—but with time and practice, I learned to conduct inner dialogues that were loving, beneficial, and illuminating.

    As you set out alone, give yourself the time and space to listen to the voices inside of you. Silencing those that are cold or self-sabotaging will allow you to hear the tenderness and determination of others. And, with time, you will cultivate an ability to listen to what is best for you—and the backbone needed to ignore all the rest.

    6. You will find peace with your past.

    Those first few months alone were ripe with recrimination. If only I’d done this; if only he’d done that. How could I have done this; how could I have done that? I was reprehensible, a failure, destined for a future of take-out alone and two too many cats. But, again, with time (a true salve for most things), I realized that the old adage is true: Everyone we meet comes into our lives for a reason.

    My marriage was not so much a failure as it was a stepping stone on my journey. I had lost, but I had also learned.

    If you’re bearing similar grief, consider compiling a list of what you have gained rather than focusing on what you’ve suffered; what you look forward to rather than what you miss.

    If you’re anything like me, you’ll find that the greatest lesson of all is that the person you were looking for was right where they were supposed to be all along: within.

  • What Creates Abusive People and How to Release Your Anger

    What Creates Abusive People and How to Release Your Anger

    Peaceful Man

    “The biggest problem for humanity, not only on a global level, but even for individuals, is misunderstanding.” ~Rinpoche

    Through the course of the relationship he was dishonest, emotionally manipulative, and unkind. It was subtle at first—do we really sign up for this on the dating application? But the acts wound their way through like a slow vine that eventually kills a tree. When it ended, he handled it atrociously.

    It took me many months to process it all, facing things I had suppressed in denial. When the shock wore off, I had a desire to let him know how he traumatized me—to outline all the ways in which he made me uncomfortable and how unbelievable and disgusting his behavior was.

    I wanted to punish him.

    I wanted him to understand that his actions—secrecy, meanness, disregard—were simply not the way you treat someone you supposedly love, someone that cares for and supports you.

    I knew I had my own issues to work out around why I chose to stay in this kind of dynamic, but I somehow thought a really good apology on his part would at least validate my experience and hike me back up onto the pedestal on which I deserved to stand.

    I wanted to believe that somehow my words would enlighten him—that understanding my experience would affect and change him for the better.

    And I tried! My goal honestly wasn’t to get all prison gangster on him. I just wanted my pain recognized; to feel regarded and important.

    I wrote a few letters that I thought diplomatically captured my hurt and positioned him perfectly to validate me and apologize. That apology would never come. In fact, when he did respond, it was in the form of anger, denial, projecting or minimizing. 

    When engaging him didn’t work, I turned inward. I created little pieces of art that depicted him with a huge ego and small…other parts. (I did not send those. One mature point for me there.)

    In time I accepted that the recognition and apology were clearly not going to happen.

    But the anger kept surfacing, and it was getting annoying. I had read volumes on the notion that “the behavior of others is about them, not you.” Logically I understood this, but I remained stuck in a purgatory. I couldn’t fully connect to and let go of the hugely distracting resentment.

    Then a curious thing happened. As I began to learn the deeper roots of why a person mistreats another, the anger dissipated.

    This didn’t require an individually detailed personal history to construe. They were facts that can be generally applicable to anyone that displays habitually abusive or destructive behaviors. They came through lots of therapy and research as I sought understanding I would never receive from him.

    It is this:

    When a healthy person behaves in a way that hurts others, they take responsibility for that action and make amends.

    I was dealing with an unhealthy person.

    There are people who, because of an abusive childhood (emotionally, physically, or otherwise), navigating their way with a narcissistic or extremely controlling parent, or suffering other emotional trauma, developed protective mechanisms early on to avoid dealing with the shame and violation they experienced.

    These mechanisms can start in the form of an inflated sense of self, denial, or even a secret life. They are ways to create “emotionally safe” conditions that allow them to experience freedom, “love,” or accomplishment in a way they didn’t have access to through healthy means.

    Emotional stability was the most immediate, basic human need. But they had to learn to achieve it at a time when core values—such as respect, honesty, and empathy—may have not been fully developed.

    When this person fails to deal with their pain and anger into adulthood, they never outgrow their early emotional survival skills. As these mechanisms take on an increasingly functional role, values that the person eventually came to understand (or claim to adhere to) become secondary to protecting their emotional safety.

    These methods weld to their identity: they can live without the values but not without the relief their emotional protections provide. They develop into practices such as criticism, disconnection, projection (applying their transgressions or perceived shortcomings—whatever they don’t want to own about themselves—onto their victims), lying, and addictive behaviors.

    What a healthy person considers a normal relationship negotiation or expression of personal needs, or even when life demands the basics of responsibility of regard for others, the unhealthy person perceives a threat to their vulnerable sense of self and unleashes their behaviors to maintain the emotional “safe place.”

    Their abusive techniques essentially produce short term (false) feelings of success, confidence, or acceptance that feel uplifting and comfortable, especially when the alternative is to face a reality that is filled with perceived failure. 

    In my experience, there was often no discernable threat when my ex displayed inconsiderate, bizarre, or hurtful behaviors.

    For example, if his sense of self was feeling particularly low—despite my adoration and support—that may have meant him blatantly ignoring me in a social situation to drink and flirt with other women. He often met requests to accommodate my schedule or needs with indignation. Playing with my son started to turn antagonistic to the point where I’d have to intervene.

    Mere days after we ended our relationship, he claimed he had become “emotionally connected” to a new lover. A couple of weeks later he purposely paraded her in front of me and my children, yet completely ignored us. I couldn’t fathom what I, much less innocent children, had done to deserve that.

    Even long before this absurd “new lover parade,” trying to have open, mature dialogue about the effects of his behavior, even in the most non-threatening way, resulted in projection, disconnection, or playing the victim.

    There they were: the mechanisms to cushion himself from the emotional pain associated with having to take responsibility for his behavior (that he most likely regretted or felt ashamed of already).

    The crazy-making boomerangs hurled at me made me realize the relationship would never grow into the beauty I had envisioned for myself, and if I stayed in, I would have to live with only erratically and unreliably receiving the things that were important to me: honesty, respect, commitment, kindness, empathy.

    And that’s when a giant light bulb shone on my anger. His mechanisms for achieving emotional “stability” occurred in direct conflict with some of my deepest core values.

    Anger is not a primary emotion; it is created to avoid core hurt feelings such as being disregarded, devalued, or rejected. And I felt all of those things every time my values were trampled.

    Anger isn’t a measurement of something negative in your life; it’s a signal to reaffirm your own boundaries and values. 

    With emotionally unhealthy people, we’re not talking about mild immaturity or self-centeredness—we’re talking full-scale inability and unwillingness to recognize responsibility for their actions. And almost anyone is subject to the pie-flinging.

    The slightest thing that he could translate into a question of his principles, responsibility, or regard for others resulted in anything from stonewalling to an aggressive verbal assault. I observed it wasn’t just me: it was his siblings, parents, the mother of his children—anyone he felt was “locked in” to him enough to have to swallow his behavior.

    When I could finally understand that his motivation wasn’t to devalue me—that his destructive decision-making processes existed long before I came along—the adage “Don’t take anything personally” finally, fully came to life for me.

    I was able to dissociate from the anger and focus on the more critical issue: regaining control of my life and all the wonderfulness of me. He was stuck in his own tornado, but I had a choice to live differently.

    There are still moments where a tiny part of me wonders “Why won’t he change?” Because the fact is, he could. We are all capable of extraordinary growth. He chooses the comfort of the known; though disappointed, I can now accept that the disregard, disrespect, and uncompassionate behavior I experienced weren’t a matter of my value or importance.

    I never thought it could be possible, but the love I feel now being alone with just my kids and my friends is more fulfilling and inspiring than having a partner I couldn’t trust to live by the values of basic human kindness when life gets challenging.

    Understanding allows me to hold a prayer for peace for him in my heart, while I live my own life of opportunity from a place of strength and joy.

    Peaceful man image via Shutterstock

  • How to Stop Being a Victim of Your Own High Expectations

    How to Stop Being a Victim of Your Own High Expectations

    “The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.” ~Gandhi

    If someone asked you to recall the last time you were kind to yourself, would you struggle to bring up that memory?

    At one point in time, I couldn’t remember ever being kind to myself.

    I grew up with a lot of expectations from a demanding mother and other caretakers. Their expectations were all about them being in control and always being right.

    It was more than confusing; it left me with a need to prove myself constantly, and it gave me an inner critic that berated me at an early age.

    Years later, I got a job in corporate America where expectations were clear-cut and measured. Positive encouragement and regular successes made me feel good about myself.

    I became addicted to that feeling. My ego encouraged me to continually exceed other peoples’ expectations by making my own even higher. My inner critic accepted nothing less.

    Then I started my own business. I expected success to come quickly, easily, and be beyond anything I had experienced before.

    It certainly bypassed my expectations—in the worst way possible.

    This is a story of failure and how life got better when three small changes worked together to free me from being a victim of my own expectations.

    Take a look, and imagine what these changes can do for you.

    Change One: How You Treat Yourself

    Not only had my third attempt at creating a successful business failed but also the man I loved turned out to be a lying, thieving con artist who left me emotionally and financially broke.

    Life became nothing more than dealing with shame, runaway anxiety, and panic attacks that flung me out of bed at night.

    Then I tripped over a bag of books one day that I’d packed for a fundraiser. One fell out.

    Have you ever heard of the Buddhist practice called loving-kindness? I hadn’t, but Tara Brach’s book Radical Acceptance that fell at my feet explained it to me. Desperate for any relief I gave it a go.

    The practice begins with expressing loving-kindness first for yourself and then for others. Think you might have trouble with that? Then begin by expressing kindness to someone or something you love such as a pet. Take that feeling and transfer it to yourself.

    That’s how I had to do it. It was both heart- and eye-opening to realize how mean I had been to myself, and for how long I’d been that way.

    Though the full loving-kindness practice can take hours to complete, using this shortened version is a quick, effective way to feel better about yourself.

    This is what I’ve taken as my mantra, but feel free to use your own words: May I be filled with loving-kindness. May I be held in loving-kindness. May I realize loving-kindness as my essence.

    The practice is simple and easy to do: Eyes opened, lowered, or closed, speak the words quietly or silently, and immerse yourself in the feeling of loving-kindness for as long as you can or for as long as time permits. Thirty seconds is fine, but the longer you can sustain the feeling, the quicker you’ll reap the benefits of this practice.

    Not only can you begin and end your day with loving-kindness but you can also easily practice it as you’re waiting for tea or coffee to brew, an elevator or bus to show up, or a person to come back after putting you on hold.

    Aim for a total of six or more practices each day. Not only will that help you make a habit out of treating yourself kindly but it’s also a great stress buster.

    Yes, you have to practice, but imagine how good you’ll feel when you fill yourself with all that loving-kindness.

    Change Two: What You Say That Limits You

    Though I was trying to be nicer to myself, my inner critic was entrenched in the judgmental family attitude.

    When I challenged it to stop judging me so harshly, it was quick to call me out on my own behavior of judging people.

    It was true. I judged, and I labeled.

    Attach a label to someone and that’s how you see them and think of them—even when evidence exists to the contrary.

    And what I was doing to other people was the same thing I was doing to myself.

    So I challenged myself. For every negative label I wanted to attach to someone, I had to come up with at least six different reasons that would stop me from doing so.

    For example, the person who cuts you off in traffic. Instead of labeling them as a stupid jerk, you think: Maybe they got fired or hired today. Or maybe it’s something tragic or serious that’s distracting them. Perhaps they just came from the dentist, and now they’re getting transmissions from outer space!

    It’s a practice that I made a game out of, and like any game, it has rules:

    1. You must focus on the person’s behavior and come up with six reasons that could have caused it.
    2. At least some of the answers have to be within the realm of possibility.
    3. Reject all expectations of finding the perfect answer or even coming up with six of them.

    This practice is doable anywhere and with almost anyone, including kids.

    It helps create an awareness of how labels limit your thinking and creates an awareness of the truth that what we do to other people reflects what we do to ourselves.

    Don’t forget to play it with your inner critic. Listen closely and you might hear grinding noises as it tries to switch gears from beating you up to being supportive.

    After all, if you can be less judgmental toward other people, how can it not do the same for you?

    Change Three: What You Say That Belittles You

    This one is about your self-talk habits. You know the ones when you ask yourself questions like, “How could I be so stupid? ” or, “OMG what a screw-up! Could I not make a bigger mess of things? ” or, “Why do I do this to myself? I’m such an idiot!”

    Yes, labeling is definitely going on here, but this is different. This is all about your expectations of yourself and how you talk to yourself when you fail to meet them.

    Even with the loving-kindness and labeling practices, my expectations of myself continued to run high. My inner critic loved beating up on me for every mistake, failure, or setback, real or imagined. Then one day, a little voice made itself heard, “Not being very kind to yourself, are you?”

    So leaning heavily on my loving-kindness practice, I struggled to be more tolerant of my mistakes. Asking myself questions that would produce a more positive response was a big help.

    For example: “Nothing is a total failure. There has to be something positive about this. What is it?” Or, “Is this really a mistake? Did I really screw up? Is it possible the outcome is acceptable?”

    Think about those harsh ways you talk to yourself and the questions you ask that belittle you. They may be old reruns of taunts and questions other people used on you to make you feel ashamed or to justify punishing you.

    Replace them with questions that explore the circumstances of your mistake or setback. Remember to look for anything that could be construed as positive. Doing so will help you reform your demanding expectations.

    Sometimes, positives can be hard to find. That’s when you really want to be nice to yourself. Do extra loving-kindness practices, and then ask yourself what you’ve learned from what happened.

    Experience can be a harsh teacher. Owning up to what you’ve learned may not be an easy pill to swallow. There may not be a spoonful of sugar to help it go down, but it’s certainly more desirable than beating yourself up, isn’t it?

    Small Changes Have Large Impacts

    These changes are small but powerful because they open you up to possibilities that you may not have considered previously.

    They help you stop being victimized by your own expectations by treating yourself more kindly, by helping you realize that judging other people is closely aligned with the labels and limitations you put on yourself, and by helping you see the positives in supposed failures and cut yourself some slack.

    Changing habits of thought and behaviors is challenging, but if I can do this, you certainly can!

    It all begins with a practice taking less than a minute, six times a day. It’s a small practice of showering yourself with loving-kindness.

    It’s easy to start. It’s easy to do. Just repeat after me:

    “May I be filled with loving-kindness. May I be held in loving-kindness. May I realize loving-kindness as my essence.”

  • 6 Signs You Have a Strong Friendship That Will Stand the Test of Time

    6 Signs You Have a Strong Friendship That Will Stand the Test of Time

    Best Friends

    “Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.” ~Muhammad Ali

    Doesn’t it hurt?

    You develop a friendship with someone who appeared to be decent but turned out to be a huge problem in your life.

    I’m not talking about those occasional slip-ups like keeping you waiting at the coffee shop until 4:10 when the rendezvous was scheduled for 4:00.

    I mean those things that completely slash the fabric of your friendship—stuff that truly hurts, like harsh words that prey on your weaknesses and sensitivities, or complete betrayal of your trust and abuse of your goodwill.

    We’re all vulnerable to being hurt by those closest to us, and I’m no exception.

    Over the years, I’ve made friends with several people who turned out to be destructive to my well-being.

    Some had spoken words to me that cut like blades. Others had coldly accused me of things I wouldn’t even dream of doing, just to save their own hide.

    But despite the pain and anguish those experiences put me through, they were telling moments in my life because they forced me to rethink my understanding of the true meaning of friendship.

    We often befriend someone because we see commonalities in them. They have shared interests, a common background, or a similar sense of humor. But while all those things are important, they’re not enough to build a deep-rooted, long-lasting friendship on, at least not by themselves.

    I had lots in common with my friends, and they always cracked me up, so why did they end up hurting me? Something was obviously missing, and after some deep reflection, I found out what it was.

    For a true friendship to form, it has to be mutually built on the essentials—strong pillars that burrow deep beyond the superficial stuff.

    Here are the six signs you have a strong friendship that will stand the test of time.

     1. You stick with each other through the highs and lows.

    You don’t desert each other when things get tough or suspiciously start spending less time together after a promotion at work.

    Your relationship doesn’t fluctuate based on each other’s bank balance, the kind of people you hang out with, or any other trivial variables.

    Your connection to one another stems from one creed—you are friends because you want to be.

    2. You keep each other in the loop.

    You have trust and confidence in each other, and you’ll come to each other directly if any problems arise between you instead of talking behind each other’s backs about it.

    You try your best to avoid getting a third party involved if you do have problems because you cherish how your friendship is like a coin—it’s two-sided and in no need of a third to be complete.

    You’re close enough to confide your problems in each other and come to a sensible solution between yourselves.

    By doing this, you both show that you are actively eradicating any potential threats to your friendship’s survival and that you genuinely care about preserving it.

    3. You view each other through a positive lens.

    You both realize that you’re human and make mistakes, so you give each other the benefit of the doubt.

    You forgive and pardon the petty stuff and don’t reignite the flames of bad memories.

    One day, my friend came over with a gift to encourage me in my studies.

    Now, I’m kind of quirky. I only do well in my studies if I stay focused through my own motivations, and I see outside encouragement as a distraction.

    I know my friend meant well, but at that moment, I rejected his gift with some snappy comment without explaining my position. I regretted it almost instantly.

    Thankfully, he gave me the benefit of the doubt and hasn’t mentioned that little blooper to this day. (Let’s hope he doesn’t mention it anytime in the near future!) Now that’s a true friend.

    4. You respect each other’s boundaries.

    You both acknowledge that you come from different backgrounds and have different upbringings, so you understand that differences of opinion are inevitable.

    You also handle those differences of opinion and other sensitivities tastefully and respectfully.

    You don’t impose your mindsets on each other, take a swipe at each other’s opinions, or become irritated if you differ on something because you both know that respecting and being respected are critical factors in maintaining a good friendship.

    You also value and treat each other as people with freedom of choice and don’t expect each other to bend out of character to entertain quirks and caprices.

    5. You share each other’s shortcomings as a gift.

    You don’t always have a hey-it’s-all-good attitude. You won’t hesitate to advise each other about a particular shortcoming because you deeply care for one another and don’t want to see each other hurt.

    Oscar Wilde once said, ”True friends stab you in the front,” and how true that was for me a few years back when I was developing a strong friendship with someone from a different culture.

    We were watching a bunch of boisterous kids wrestling, and I jokingly said, “They’re like animals!”

    I didn’t think much of it, but he immediately brought to my attention that saying something like that in his culture is very offensive and that it’s like belittling the children and their parents to a sub-human level.

    I really appreciated his sincere concern for me because if he hadn’t corrected my mistake there and then, I probably would have hurt someone with my goofy jokes!

    6. You want for each other what you want for yourself.

    You are both perfectly aware that envy is a massive threat to your friendship and that it can wreak unpredictable havoc because it’s like a festering pot itching to erupt and spew out its nasty contents.

    So you are genuinely happy for each other’s success and aren’t consumed by jealousy when one surpasses the other in any way, like with career, money, or popularity.

    When one of you comes to know of the other’s success, you react positively with hand-on-heart sincerity instead of continuously repeating the phrase, “It should have been me.”

    You are like one mind, and you see each other’s success as your success.

    Build Your Pillars of Deep-Rooted Friendship

    Friendship is truly an invaluable treasure, but only if it’s built on the right pillars. Otherwise, you risk your friends disappointing you when you most need them.

    If you’re looking to deepen and cement your friendship with someone, use these six pillars as your guidelines. Make sure they’re concretely intact, both on your side and theirs, and you’ll begin to relish the sweet fruits of true friendship.

    Or perhaps past friends have put you through painful experiences, and, like me, you don’t want to repeat that mistake.

    So put on your discernment hat and use these six pillars as your screening device. If you see someone constantly doing the opposite of these pillars, they’ll probably hurt you sooner or later.

    You deserve to be in good company, and you don’t deserve to be hurt by the people closest to you.

    So spare yourself the headache of being betrayed by someone you held close, and enjoy the value of true friendship instead.

    Best friends image via Shutterstock

  • What to Do When You Love Someone Who Hurts You

    What to Do When You Love Someone Who Hurts You

    Angry Fingers

    “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” ~Pema Chödrön

    There is a person in my life who I love with all my heart, but in this relationship I struggle to keep a full cup myself. They are family, the situation is complicated and tender. But learning to have compassion for this other person begins with having compassion for myself.

    A nasty divorce spanning most of my childhood set the stage for our current situation. My mother was deeply emotionally wounded by my father, and carried that pain into her parenting of my sister and me.

    Contact with the ex (my dad) dropped to nil—maybe a week a year, far below what the court had decided.

    Any efforts on our parts to connect with our absent parent, even recounting fond memories, were seen by our mother as attacks on her legitimacy and a discounting of her pain. And what emotional intimacy we shared was often exploited—it kept us locked into the family unit, not believing we could have our needs filled elsewhere, least of all with our absentee father.

    A few short years prior, I felt part of a happy, perfect family. Suddenly one parent was effectively gone. My relationship with the other became a labyrinth of confusion—love down this path, hurt down the other, and at my young age I couldn’t find the rhyme or reason to it.

    Childhood gifted me a number of unhealthy survival mechanisms, which still follow me around today: a deep fear of conflict (because conflict often meant someone would leave), constant apologies and guilt for things I’m not truly responsible for, and a voice in the back of my mind telling me no matter what I do, who I am, who I become, it will never be enough.

    Growing up, I realize that those mindsets that helped me survive as a child, in the trenches of grief, inadequacy, and parental loss, no longer served me. Becoming a healthier person showed me how unhealthy this particular relationship really was.

    Healing with my mom—communication about the past, forgiveness, and moving on together—has not taken place. Attempts to bring up my own hurt and pain are minimized and shut down. My words, invariably, have been met with responses like “I can’t do this right now, it’s a bad time,” “I can’t believe you’d do this to me,” or “It all came from a place of love.”

    So, in interactions with my mother, I keep my guard up. I know she still hurts, and seems timelessly stuck in her own grief, but it would take a great degree of emotional wholeness on my part to absorb each new wound with simple forgiveness and empathy. I see where my path might point toward such healing in the future, but we’re not there yet.

    Many of us have experienced relationships like this: someone we love acts toward us in ways that continually damage.

    It’s one thing to forgive and move on from a wound we received in the past, and another animal entirely when we get hurt again and again, in the same place, a scab not quite healed over before it’s ripped off again.

    We all have histories, wounds, scars. Most people carry deep tender spots that have never truly healed, and some use all their actions to self-protect. The fear of vulnerability leads them to cover those places, distract from those places.

    Attempts to wear the heaviest of armor results in getting “bitter” rather than “better,” and those who are too thick-skinned start to lose their delicate abilities to empathize. They project their fear of getting hurt into decisions that may themselves, unintentionally or intentionally, cause others to suffer.

    Here lies the difficulty: in a relationship with someone who continues to act in hurtful ways, how do we toe the line between loving them and interacting with compassion, and protecting our own heart?

    We can save no one but ourselves.

    Real shifts in our psyche, our inner being, do not come from outside pushes. Change will never stick unless the changer is ready. Our worldly circumstances will nudge us here and there, and we ultimately respond by either softening or embittering our vision, our paradigms.

    If we’ve allowed experience to push us toward a scared, closed off, hardened heart, things can only be different when we are ready to make our own intentional choice to be different.

    We cannot throw another person over our back, or carry them in our arms through the fire. That cannot be our job. Be there for them, be support, hold space in time of need, even be a guide when asked. But always, the true work will be theirs alone.

    Being love does not mean being a doormat.

    Compassion for others begins with compassion for ourselves. Loving someone should not mean getting hurt time and again. There will always be need for forgiveness, but not at the cost of healthy boundaries. Here, love might mean taking a step back.

    I’ve realized that sometimes, forgiveness is not about absolving someone of their actions—it means we have given ourselves permission to move on with our lives, deciding “what you did no longer holds power over me.” It’s okay, necessary even, to set up firebreaks, to say, “Enough.”

    We can’t resolve hurts from unstable ground.

    If someone has hurt you, chances are they’re suffering themselves. When both parties feel pain that they believe the other caused, they will already be on the defensive. I believe the only place from which we can work through those old woundings is one of stability, of love and trust.

    Yet closure in the sense of reconciliation, communication, and healing together may never happen. If someone doesn’t believe they have wronged you, arguing your point will only drive the relationship rift further apart.

    If we can find common ground in our love and words, it’s possible to move forward together into resolution of hurts. But if one party isn’t ready to look at themselves truthfully and engage in painfully open communication, resolution must come a different way.

    Putting things to rest can be one-sided.

    Here’s the tough truth: closure won’t come from someone else. It happens when we are ready to let things go.

    In her book Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola-Estes uses the concept of descansos, death-markers, the white crosses seen on the side of roads in the West and Southwest, as a metaphor for marking, blessing, and moving on from trauma, grief, little “deaths” in our lives.

    By tenderly identifying our own descansos—things in our lives which haven’t gone as planned, dreams we’ve had to leave behind, expectations we’ve put aside in exchange for the truth—we give ourselves a unique means for closure.

    “Be gentle with yourself and make the descansos, the resting places for the aspects of yourself that were on their way to somewhere, but never arrived…  

    Descansos mark the death sites, the dark times, but they are also love notes to your suffering. They are transformative. There is a lot to be said for pinning things to the earth so they don’t follow us around. There is a lot to be said for laying them to rest.” – Clarissa Pinkola-Estes

    Surround yourself with people who love you.

    This one is easily said but sometimes complicated to walk out. Family doesn’t always go hand in hand with blood: people we are related to may never truly be good for us, while the friends we’ve chosen might be more dear and positively impactful than any relatives.

    A great relationship inspires and brings out the best in us, and the love shared there has few strings attached.

    Great friendships should be sounding boards for the good and the bad in our lives. We need people to see our inner truths, hold our hands in the dark times, exhort us in times of abundance—and we must recognize those people as gifts.

    —

    These are hard lessons for me. It is sad to let go of a fairy-tale ideal, what I expected this relationship to look like.

    But after a process of grieving, it can be so much healthier and more fulfilling to live with reality, to send out love without expectation of what we “should” get in return, to have compassion for someone without a constant eye for what they “should” do for us.

    We take back our power, creating graceful resolution for the future where it wasn’t available in the past.

    May we all learn to love without contingency; in the meantime, may we learn to walk our path in self-compassion. Loving ourselves is our dawn into the light of truly loving others.

    Fighting fingers image via Shutterstock

  • Why Silence Is Often the Best Response to a Verbal Attack

    Why Silence Is Often the Best Response to a Verbal Attack

    “Have the maturity to sometimes know that silence is more powerful than having the last word.” ~Thema Davis

    It all started with the forks.

    “You need to return my forks,” my roommate demanded one morning as I sat in the kitchen attempting to get some work done.

    “I have already said that I don’t have them. We told you that the other roommate has been hiding them,” I replied.

    She began raising her voice at me, “I can’t believe you would accuse her. You’re just a mean, nasty person!”

    I slowly turned around and said calmly, “Today is my birthday, actually. So I don’t really want to have this conversation right now.”

    She retorted, “I don’t care,” and then began to attack my character with a spiel of all the various other things I’ve ever done to upset her.

    Perhaps she felt some kind of underlying hurt, but she would not share this with me. She was not telling me these problems so that we could work on them together to fix the hurt. Instead, she was insulting and attacking my very existence as a human so that I could feel hurt with her.

    I could already foresee that nothing I could say was going to calm her down, so I chose to respond with silence. I suppose my silence pushed her over the edge, because she ended the conversation with “good luck with your miserable life treating people this way!” and stormed out of the room.

    Well, that escalated quickly. All because of some missing forks. I continued on with my birthday as happily as I could.

    Over the next few weeks, I waited for my roommate to come to me in a calm manner to resolve her issues with me, but she never did. Any chance she had, she continued to speak to me in a hateful manner, even though I didn’t engage her.

    For some reason, my respectful silence made her angrier with me. I had held my tongue and kept my negative thoughts to myself, yet she still found a reason to hold on to her anger. This made it seem to me that she did not respect me or wish to resolve our issues.

    One day she shoved me while coming in the front door at the same time as me. She went so far as to spread rumors that I was planning to break up with my boyfriend so that he would break up with me first. I remained silent and still as a tree.

    Looking at things from her point of view, it seems that she was trapped in pain. A pain so severe she wanted someone else to feel it with her. She did not know another way to express her pain to me, so I will never know the true cause of it.

    Luckily for me, she moved out shortly afterward. Though our relationship ended and our issues remained unsolved because of her lack of cooperation, I do not regret my silence for several reasons.

    Silence shows that external factors cannot affect your self-esteem. 

    If you have hurt them, it is okay to acknowledge this and apologize. You are a human who makes mistakes. If they are unfoundedly attacking you, remember that they are speaking from a place of hurt that clouds their judgment.

    In either situation, remind yourself that their negative view of you does not change your self-esteem and value as a person.

    Oftentimes, flinging an insult is a reflection of their hidden insecurities and fears. True maturity comes from letting the hurtful words roll off your back without feeling the need to defend yourself, knowing that they are not a reflection of you.

    Silence is not weakness.

    Silence is harnessing your calm in a heated moment. Silence is a moment of Zen in which you can see the positive and negative coexisting together. Silence is the power to mindfully choose to stay out of the negative space, and not to say hurtful words back.

    It takes true strength to hold your tongue and not succumb to negative energy. With time and practice, it will become easier and easier to ignore negative comments and continue on happily with your day.

    Silence is not ignoring the problem.

    Silence is the way to avoid saying things during a moment’s anger that you may later regret. Of course if the person has cooled off later on and wishes to speak to you calmly and respectfully regarding the matter, you should have a dialogue with them. Rational conversations are the only way to effective conflict resolution.

    Silence is always in your toolbox. 

    When someone has an interpersonal problem that they genuinely wish to fix, they approach the other person from a place within their heart, a place of actual caring and love. If someone immediately attacks your integrity and character, they are not speaking out of love but out of hate. Hatred cannot solve problems, only love can.

    When the other person is being intentionally hurtful, without regard for your feelings, you always have the choice to stay silent and walk away from the conversation. There is a point where no words will calm them down, and they simply want you to join in their anger. Reciprocating their anger and adding fuel to their fire will just make things worse.

    Silence is always there for a moment of clarity.

  • How to Make Peace with the Past and Stop Being a Victim

    How to Make Peace with the Past and Stop Being a Victim

    “Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.” ~Harvey Fienstein

    Do you usually feel as if everything bad that can happen will happen, and it will happen to you?

    You must be the unluckiest person on the face of the planet. Opportunities never work out. Doors that should open close in your face. Friends let you down. Bosses don’t see your value. There seems to be a universal conspiracy to keep you stuck right where you are now.

    You feel like your life is always going to be like this.

    You feel like a failure as a person.

    You worry that you’re never going to be happy.

    You stress that you have no control to change any of it.

    And it’s all so unfair, right? Why does this bad stuff always happen to you? How come other people get all the breaks, and you never do?

    If this sounds familiar, you’re probably still affected by past events that left you feeling helpless, scared, or inadequate—and you’re going to keep re-experiencing these feelings until you do something to change them.

    My Experience with Self-Sabotage

    Why do I get how this works? It’s no big mystery. I’ve been there myself. In fact, at one time, I was the queen of self-sabotage.

    I went from being a straight-A student to dropping out of school a year before my finals. From being a loved and spoiled child to losing touch with my family. From being confident and self-assured to needy and codependent.

    What happened? I stopped thinking of myself in a positive way in response to events outside of my control. I’d always taken pride in myself, and I felt someone had taken that pride away from me.

    All of these dramatic changes came from something very small—a change in my home circumstances that stopped me feeling like part of the family. Because someone in my life constantly criticized me, I lost confidence in my ability. Because I lost my security, I became chronically insecure.

    Instead of feeling that I was a person of worth, with good prospects, I started thinking of myself as rejected, unwanted, and somehow less-than.

    As a teenager, I was in no way equipped to deal with that. So I rebelled. And from there, my life went very rapidly downhill.

    I sabotaged my jobs; I couldn’t stick anything beyond a few months. I sabotaged my first degree by dropping out. And as for relationships, I attracted every narcissistic guy around, all with the agenda of keeping myself a victim.

    So What Changed—and How Do You Change It?

    I hit rock bottom. My last bad relationship had come to a nasty end, I’d dropped out of University, and I had absolutely nothing in my life to keep me going.

    When you hit rock bottom, you have two choices: You give up, or you say, “enough is enough.” And you start changing the way you’re thinking about things and do something to radically improve your life.

    I took the second option, and my life turned around. From nothing, I went to a happy marriage, motherhood, a lovely home, and a fantastic career. And I promise you, if I can do it, from where I was at that time, so can you.

    The following are some of the things that helped me overcome my negative programming and self-confidence issues. If you feel you were born to be a victim, and to live a life filled with anger and frustration, these steps could work for you too.

    Why “Just Let Go” Is Not the Best Advice

    I hear this advice all the time. People come to me saying they’ve been told to put the past behind them and start over, but they have real problems doing that. If only everything in life were that simple.

    This stuff happened, and it happened to you. You’d need to be some sort of superhuman, or a machine, to think that it’s had no effect on who you are. And letting go, like it never happened, is denying its influence.

    People who try to deny the effect of past experiences use a strategy called repressive coping, and these things have a nasty habit of coming back to bite you when you least expect it.

    Accept what happened, understand how it’s affected you, but make sure you place it where it belongs—in the past. The fact that it’s there doesn’t mean you have to keep playing the same situations over in your life. You can make different choices, think in different ways, and keep moving forward.

    Being Peaceful or Being Strong?

    Of course we’d all like to be peaceful and calm, but sometimes that’s just not possible, especially when you’ve been through traumatic events. Lacking a magic wand, we can’t just make it all vanish. So following on from acknowledging it, we then move to what it gave us—and although it may be hard to see sometimes, it gave us strength.

    There are people in the world who’ve never had to deal with the stuff that you’ve been through. You’ve dealt with things they can’t even imagine. That gives you reason to be proud of yourself, and a whole different perspective on what “tough” really is.

    Losing my family and my identity may have been the cause of my initial problems, but it also provided me with the strength to overcome challenges I encountered in my life, and played a great part in giving me the confidence and ability to achieve my management career goals.

    Accept Who You Are—But Who Are You?

    So following on from the point above, who are you now and how do you see yourself?

    You may have been a victim in the past, but you’re still here, in spite of everything that the world’s thrown at you. In my opinion, that makes you a survivor. You may not feel it, but you’re strong.

    You can take the strength and be proud of the person who survived the challenges. You can choose how you see yourself. Do you want to see yourself as a helpless victim of circumstance, or as someone who is still standing, still fighting, still growing, still on a journey to make your life better and not give in?

    Sure, the insecure stepdaughter is still somewhere inside me. And she’s now also the person who has achieved a really good life and has the security and success she always wanted.

    As We Forgive Those…

    Another piece of common advice that people are given: forgive what was done to you. Unfortunately, some things are harder to forgive than others, so the brain will fight that.

    If someone has maliciously caused you harm and you have to live with the consequences, forgiving what’s unacceptable may seem to keep you in victim mode—as if, once again, you’ve just had to take it.

    Of course, the truth is, by staying angry and bitter, you’re still hurting yourself. It’s irrelevant that they may deserve your bitterness. They aren’t suffering from it; you are.

    So, I don’t advise you to force forgiveness. Instead, accept what happened, acknowledge how you feel about it, then put it behind you. You can’t change the past, but you can change the future, and dwelling and brooding on these feelings will not help you move forward.

    Count Your (Amended) Blessings

    However positively you can spin the past, your life has still been negatively affected. You may have a worse life than you would have done if this thing had never happened, and it’s hard to feel gratitude for something awful! So how can you be grateful for what you do have now?

    Be glad for the person who has come through this—the survivor, even though you may not feel like one.

    Be glad for what you’ve managed to achieve, in spite of everything that’s been done to stop you. You may feel like you haven’t achieved much, but as a person who is reading this and trying to change your life, you’ve achieved the power to make decisions and refuse to give up, which some people never do.

    Be glad for the extra lessons you learned: the ones that made you tough, make new problems minimal compared to past challenges, and put you in a position to be able to help others who’ve been through the same things.

    —

    These are the things that are going to empower you to go out and change your world.

    Playing with the cards stacked against you is just plain unfair. It’s time for you to even the odds.

    Your past is always going to be something that happened to you, but that doesn’t mean it needs to define you, restrict you, and dictate your future life.

    How would your life change if you were only taking what was positive from the past? If you could see yourself as someone who overcame it, who chose to reject the negative self-concepts that were forced on you, who was a survivor, and not a victim?

    You can do this. You, and only you, have the power. And that’s why you’re not a victim. The only person who can control this is you.

    Work through all of the points above. Find out where your blocks are. Deal with them. Move on. You’ve been through enough already. It’s time for things to get better.

    You’ve got this.

  • Why We Don’t Need to Try So Hard to Be Better

    Why We Don’t Need to Try So Hard to Be Better

    Relax

    “To heal a wound, you need to stop touching it.” ~Unknown

    I’ve always been an overachiever. In sixth grade, I spent weeks memorizing over five pages of the poem “Horatius at the Bridge” for extra credit, even though I already had an A in the class.

    When I started therapy in my mid-twenties to deal with depression and panic attacks, I turned my overachieving tactics to self-improvement. I spent hours journaling, going to meetings, talking to mentors, reading books, and beating myself up when I fell into old habits.

    I always worried: Was I doing it right? Was I making enough progress? Would I feel better, find enlightenment, or be a better person in the end?

    That’s when I began to notice a pattern that surprised me.

    I found that when I first had an insight, discovered a tool, or began a new practice, I got very excited. It worked wonders for me and I could feel a sense of growth and expansion.

    I’d begin to try harder to generate more insights and discover more tools. But as I redoubled my efforts and worked harder at healing, I’d begin to feel anxious, self-critical, and depleted. The harder I tried, the less enlightened I felt.

    At some point I’d give up. I’d let go of trying to become the next Buddha and accept the fact that I was just going to be neurotic and flawed the rest of my life.

    And that’s when the insights and growth would start again. That’s when I would suddenly experience the most healing and notice the biggest changes in my life.

    Why was this? I wondered.

    And then one day it hit me: When we get injured, our body knows what to do and mends itself automatically—we don’t have to try. We’re designed to self-heal physiologically. It occurred to me then that perhaps we’re designed to self-heal mentally, emotionally, and spiritually as well.

    Why We Don’t Need to Try So Hard

    Once I recognized our capacity to self-heal, I began to see evidence of it everywhere. Here are three common ways I’ve seen it work:

    1. The insight, answers, and wisdom we need are always within us and emerge in their own time.

    One of the things I’ve learned through years of struggling with depression is that no matter how miserable, confused, and hopeless I feel, clarity always returns at some point and I know exactly what to do.

    For instance, a few months ago I was feeling depressed for a few days and couldn’t for the life of me figure out why.

    Then suddenly one night I woke up and it was clear: I was trying to do too much. I was overcommitted. I was doing too much to please other people.

    What I really needed was space for rest and relaxation. I cut back on a couple of commitments and took some time to rejuvenate. The depression lifted and things started to go a lot better for me.

    I get off-track a lot, but the wisdom is in there, and it always comes out when I allow space for it to emerge.

    2. When we miss a lesson, we’ll get new opportunities to learn it until we get it.

    Growing up, I struggled with my sister because when we fought, she would judge or blame me. I didn’t know how not to internalize that criticism and feel unworthy because of it.

    Then, years later, I fell in love with a man who did the same thing. He helped me realize that when he got angry and blamed me, he was actually feeling vulnerable or hurt himself. I learned how to use his judgment to help me connect to compassion and love—for him and myself—rather than guilt and shame.

    I didn’t consciously seek someone out who reminded me of my sister, but something within me drew me toward him, allowing me to work out a new way of dealing with blame.

    3. Our pain won’t let us stay off course for long.

    I was shocked when I learned that a runny nose and fever are more than mere byproducts of having a cold; they’re actually the body’s way of healing itself by flushing or burning out those mischievous germs.

    Similarly, our pain and neuroses are often our spirit’s way of getting our attention and guiding us so we can heal.

    Case in point: several years ago I began to have trouble sleeping. Falling asleep became more difficult and before long I was sleeping only three to six hours a night, if at all. I was exhausted, cranky, and miserable much of the time.

    It took a long time, but eventually I noticed patterns in what kept me from sleeping. Some nights I would lie in bed wide awake until I finally allowed myself to feel an emotional response (i.e.: fear, anger, disappointment, etc.) that I was pushing away or avoiding. Once I felt the feeling, sleep came quite easily.

    Other times I couldn’t sleep because I was being particularly hard on myself that day. I struggle with a very active inner critic and high expectations for myself, and on these nights sleep wouldn’t come until I dropped my critic’s attack and directed some compassion and love towards myself.

    I had tried ignoring the problem, powering through, or finding quick fixes, but they didn’t work. The insomnia forced me to address what was at the heart of the issue. Far from being an unlucky curse, the pain of not sleeping actually helped me to take the next step on my path to healing and wholeness.

    The Key to Allowing Self-Healing to Happen

    The reason so many of us spend so much time in pain and misery (myself included) lies in the difference between our egos and our true selves.

    Our true selves—who we are beneath the fears, the defense mechanisms, and the limiting beliefs—are wise, whole, and deeply connected to the larger world.

    Our egos, on the other hand, feel separate and alone and rigidly hold onto a particular set of habits and identities in an effort to feel okay in the world. We all have access to both.

    When I’m trying to grow and develop, I’m often caught in ego. I want something—peace, enlightenment, the respect of my peers, or an image of myself as an evolved person. I feel like I need to change something about myself in order to be worthy or good enough.

    When I’m coming from ego, I obsess. I strive. I effort. I compare myself to others and become convinced that I’m the least enlightened creature on the planet.

    All this striving and comparing is the mud that gums up the works of my self-healing process. That’s why it sometimes takes so long to work: I get in the way.

    To allow my self-healing process to unfold with its full power, all I need to do is relax.

    When I stop trying so hard, I reconnect with my true self. I have access to the fundamental wisdom and strength we all share. When I trust my inner workings to do their thing and simply observe what’s happening without trying to change it, my ego relaxes and healing happens naturally.

    To that end, I’ve found a few questions that help me heal and grow with less interference:

    Where am I striving with the intention of fixing myself or becoming more perfect? What would I do if I were to fully accept that I’m good enough as I am and that I’m exactly where I should be?

    What would nourish and nurture me right now? What would help me relax and feel safe enough to let go of old patterns?

    What is my inner wisdom trying to tell me right now? And if I’m not sure, how could I create enough space in my head and my life to hear what it has to say?

    We don’t always receive satisfying answers right away. That’s okay—in my experience, if we keep asking the question long enough, eventually we’ll get more clarity. It just may take a little longer than we expected.

    The process of relaxing into the process of change isn’t an easy one; knowing that I’m self-healing doesn’t mean my ego never gets stirred up or I don’t fall back into striving and obsessing. In fact, I believe that getting in our own way is an inevitable and enlightening part of the process, and I like to think that my inner wisdom is strong enough that it can handle whatever my inner foolishness throws at it.

    At some point I always become aware that I’m efforting again, and that’s when I can chuckle, pat my ego on the head, and remind it that it doesn’t need to try so hard. I can return to the questions, listen for answers, and then pray for the willingness to let go once again.

    Relax image via Shutterstock

  • Why Advice Doesn’t Help When We’re Hurting (and What Does)

    Why Advice Doesn’t Help When We’re Hurting (and What Does)

    Couple Hugging

    “Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we’re listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.” ~Karl A. Menninger

    I remember my first call like it was yesterday.

    I answered the phone, heart beating out of my chest, hand firm on a sheet of local emergency phone numbers.

    The voice on the other end was full of… meek embarrassment.

    Not exactly what I was expecting.

    “Uhh, I’m really sorry… I’m not, uhh… I’m not suicidal…. I just… I just had a huge fight with my girlfriend…. I just… I really need to talk to someone…. Is that okay?”

    If you’re like I was before I became a volunteer in 2011, when you think about a suicide hotline you imagine circumstances so traumatic and unbearable that they bring people to consider ending life.

    But, I soon discovered that everything I expected to be true—everything from what the callers would be like, all the way up to how I would handle them—was completely wrong.

    And what I learned forever changed the way I think about pain.

    My First Big Surprise About Pain

    I became a volunteer because I wanted to help people who were hurting.

    But looking back, I realize that I had a big misconception about what those people would look like.

    I imagined two discreet groups: “normal” people living with minor ups and downs in one bucket; and “broken” people struggling with trauma and unrelenting emotional upheaval in the other.

    (I had imagined I was in the “broken” category, but that is a story for another day.)

    I was sure callers to the hotline would fall into the latter bucket, too.

    Which is why I was very surprised when I found myself speaking with “normal” people over and over again, people who I might easily have met behind my local coffee shop counter or in the grocery store aisle.

    I began to see that we are all vulnerable to pain so big that we might reach out to an anonymous ear in order to pour out our hearts.

    I realized that some of us may struggle with mental illness, but none of us are “broken.” Feeling extreme pain is simply part of the human condition.

    But that was just the very beginning of what I was to learn.

    What We All Need More Than Anything Is to Be Seen

    I thought my work at the hotline was going to be about giving advice. Indeed, I looked forward to it.

    I imagined helping callers develop coping techniques.

    I pictured using my keen insights to help identify root problems.

    I fantasized about offering guidance toward self-transformation.

    But, although I didn’t understand at first, all of these things were actually forbidden at the hotline. My role was to be an attentive listener.

    That’s it.

    This only began to make a little bit of sense when I realized that there was just one thread running through each of the hundreds of stories shared with me by callers: a lack of a trusted confidante.

    What each and every caller had in common was a deep craving to share themselves with a caring listener. Our job as volunteers was to offer this.

    Okay, that made sense to me. In a world filled with busy, stressed out people, it’s too easy to feel like we don’t really matter to anyone beyond fulfilling our obligations, if at all.

    Maybe it was this feeling—the feeling of being invisible—that was bringing so many callers to the brink of despair and onto our phone-lines.

    “Mmm, it sounds like you feel…”

    This simple string of words was taught to volunteers in order to make callers feel deeply seen and acknowledged.

    But are you wondering (as I did) how simple parroting is supposed to do anything substantial?

    Didn’t the callers also need help?

    Yet I found that callers were indeed substantially moved when they received undivided and caring attention.

    Someone might begin a call in a frantic tone of desperation only to end it with a sense of peace and hope, all because a volunteer fully acknowledge their complete being.

    Eventually, I even began to see that well-meaning “help” (like advice or personal anecdotes) could actually be damaging.

    Telling someone in pain about ideas based on our experiences crowds out what a distressed person really needs—a reflection, pure acknowledgement, to be seen.

    We Are All Profoundly Resourceful

    Despite callers’ uplifted moods, for a time I was still skeptical about the usefulness of empathetic listening.

    But if I am being honest with myself, my problem was that it made me feel unimportant.

    If all I was doing was holding up a mirror for callers, how was I supposed to get satisfaction out of my work? Didn’t some of them need my hard-won wisdom?

    But I soon noticed something interesting.

    Since most callers lacked a sounding board for their deepest feelings—buried anger, forgotten hopes, disappointments—many of them started to lose touch with those feelings until they bubbled over into a catastrophe.

    Callers often didn’t even know they were calling the hotline to talk about their uncomfortable feelings.

    They called the hotline to talk about tangible problems—major relationship conflicts, getting fired, losing a friend.

    I started to notice that it was only after having the chance to speak without interruption for several minutes, receiving only empathetic sounds of understanding and reflection in reply, that they would even begin to unpack the twisted mass of pain in their hearts.

    And that’s when I caught a glimpse of the magic beginning to happen.

    Once the mirror I offered allowed callers to glimpse hidden corners of their inner worlds, they were empowered to keep exploring.

    Soon, they were clearing away cobwebs and dusting off all kinds of rusty tools and insights, all as I sat, phone propped on my shoulder and mouth gaping at the miraculous turnarounds that had virtually nothing to do with me.

    The truth was that callers didn’t need to hear about how I fixed my own kinda-similar problem.

    They didn’t need to hear about what my friend did in the same situation.

    Indeed, hearing my own musings would have interrupted the magic process.

    My ego was disappointed at first, but watching someone else regain their footing is immensely more satisfying than patting yourself on the back.

    Instead of my wisdom, I begin to take pride in my ability to convey empathy and ask questions, encouraging callers to dig deeper.

    I was truly happy to be doing my small part in helping callers tap into their immense personal resources.

    Having Our Feelings Validated Is Transcendent

    I was thrilled to be witnessing this new power—the power of skilled and empathetic listening. I saw that it was emotionally replenishing for callers and empowered them to calmly analyze their hearts and their worlds.

    But there was something else going on, too. Something that seemed almost spiritual.

    I felt it, too. When I got off of a call, I sometimes felt a little dizzy, a little euphoric.

    But why was I feeling so uplifted by conversations that started because someone had been feeling hopeless and alone?

    What I came to realize is that empathetic listening offers a lot more than soothing companionship.

    Empathetic listening and acknowledgement also means giving someone the chance to feel like they fit into the order of the world.

    It means allowing someone to feel like a puzzle piece slotting perfectly and seamlessly into something bigger than themselves, like they belong. It is truly transcendent.

    And since the act of empathizing deeply with another person means becoming one with them for a short time, as a volunteer I was experiencing the transcendence, too.

    With every call I felt a part of a bigger whole. I felt connected.

    And by the way the callers often thanked us volunteers, sometimes even through tears of relief, I knew they felt connected, too.

    Connection is the Ultimate Emotional Pain Pill

    Volunteering at the suicide hotline convinced me that listening and connection are so powerful that they can relieve even the deepest pain.

    I might not have found my chance to shine as a skilled sage, but discovering that even the most troubled among us can begin to regain footing was infinitely more satisfying.

    “Yes, absolutely, it’s okay.” I said to my first caller. “It sounds like you feel really, really upset. Tell me more about that.”

    Couple hugging image via Shutterstock

  • You Don’t Have to Adjust Who You Are to Please Others

    You Don’t Have to Adjust Who You Are to Please Others

    Six Faces

    “If you are busy pleasing everyone, you are not being true to yourself.” ~Jocelyn Murray

    Do you say yes to things only to keep people happy?

    Do you fear saying and doing what you actually want?

    I know how that feels.

    From a young age, I was the polite, good girl. I rarely rebelled. I wanted to keep everyone happy. I thought that if I was honest I’d be rejected. That those closest to me wouldn’t love me. I thought I’d end up alone.

    At friends’ houses, asked what I’d like to drink or eat, I would always respond with “Whatever’s easiest.” I never wanted to be a burden.

    At twenty-one I met my boyfriend’s parents. Dinner was fresh sardines complete with tiny bones. I was vegetarian and hated fish, yet I said nothing and ate away.

    I fought the urge to be sick. I followed each revolting bite with a gulp of water. I should have spoken up, but I feared disapproval.

    After college, the desire to keep everyone happy led me into jobs I thought people would approve of. By my mid-twenties I had a job in management. I was successful. But inside I was miserable.

    Living my life according to the word “should” was gruelling. When I finally stopped, I felt empty and unsure of who I was.

    One day it became too much. I didn’t want to get out of bed. Everything was an effort and I spent hours sobbing.

    I looked in the mirror. I was disgusted by my reflection. I’d roll my hand into a fist and hit myself around the head. I thought I deserved to suffer.

    I knew I needed help, so I reached out to a doctor. He put me on antidepressants and I started to talk to a counselor.

    After I started to understand my motivations and explored my values, I started to believe I was enough. I didn’t need to hide who I was to gain people’s approval. I started to feel less depressed.

    I still have my days when I worry what others think, but I don’t feel the urge to adjust who I am, or to follow paths that aren’t right for me.

    This process didn’t happen instantly, but looking back I see the steps I followed.

    1. Start with the root.

    It’s tempting to ignore people pleasing. You feel in control. You feel comfortable .

    But until you start to examine the root of your behavior, it’s likely that you’ll continue to constantly want to please others. This comes at a cost to your own happiness.

    Instead, take some time to explore the motivations behind your people pleasing.

    How does it benefit you? What belief does it show that you hold about yourself?

    I believed that by not speaking up, people would love and accept me. This all stemmed from the root belief that to be accepted and loved I needed to be someone else.

    As a small child, there was a lot going on in my parents’ lives. They were loving and caring but they were young, new parents with a lot of financial pressure on their shoulders. Life was busy.

    I didn’t want to be another thing that they needed to worry about. If I was polite and kept everyone happy I thought this would create less stress for them.

    So that’s what I did. Over the years, it became an ingrained habit that showed up in all areas of my life. I associated being loved with people pleasing and the truth as rejection.

    2. Ask yourself these two questions.

    Letting go of the belief that lies at the root of your people pleasing can seem impossible. It’s scary to step away from something you have held onto for so long.

    One way to make it easier is so examine your belief further.

    I find these two simple questions help:

    Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

    In Katie Byron’s The Work, she suggests we use this question to investigate our beliefs. When I first read this question, I struggled with it.

    My people pleasing was so ingrained that the belief that I needed to be someone else to be loved felt so real. Of course it was true.

    What helped me was to consider the word “absolutely.” It implied there was no room for doubt. So I searched my brain for examples that would 100% prove this belief.

    There weren’t any concrete examples. I realized I had created the belief myself. There was no way I could know that it was absolutely true.

    Is it helpful?

    We often pursue harmful behaviors and beliefs because we believe they offer us something. In reality, they drain us of time and energy.

    So ask yourself is my root belief helpful? Does it help me move further toward my life goals?

    When I asked myself these two questions, I realized that my belief was neither absolutely true nor helpful. This made it easier to let go and to move onto something new.

    3. Get to know yourself.

    When your life has been full of people pleasing, it’s hard to know what to replace it with. It can be tempting to let the habit creep back in. To fill the space it left.

    I felt this way. At first, it was painful to confront the fear that perhaps I didn’t know who I was. It felt like I was moving closer to a trap door about to take a peek inside. What if there was only darkness?

    I fought the urge to run the other way. Instead, I slowly started to take note of my reactions to things. I let my intuition guide me.

    As I did I started to rediscover things about myself, things I had known but had remained hidden beneath the trap door.

    I remembered my love of helping and supporting people. My curiosity for different cultures. The draw toward acting and improvisation.

    I realized I would never be happy in my job, stuck behind my desk working with data rather than people.

    4. Sow new seeds.

    Giving up people pleasing is challenging. It can seem overwhelming. Instead of thinking of it as planting acres of maize, think of it as sowing a seed. One small seed. That’s all.

    What’s one tiny thing you could do to take yourself away from people pleasing and closer to authenticity?

    Could you express your true opinion about something?

    Could you be honest that you don’t want to go to that social event?

    As you start to sew a new seed and nourish it with action, new shoots and roots will appear. Yes, you may feel guilty for being honest at first, but it will get easier.

    As you practice, the old root and belief will naturally start to wither. You’ll feel more assured and confident.

    —

    Constantly trying to please others is exhausting, particularly when it leads you to live a life based on what you think you should do rather than what you want to do. But taking small steps to understand this part of you can have dramatic effects on your life.

    Imagine not having to constantly adjust who you are to please others.

    Imagine feeling more confident in expressing who you are.

    Start with step one. It doesn’t mean you have to give up doing things for others. It does mean giving up a toxic habit.

    Adjust less to others. Listen more to yourself.

    Six faces image via Shutterstock

  • Are You Being Too Supportive? (Yes, There is Such a Thing)

    Are You Being Too Supportive? (Yes, There is Such a Thing)

    “We cripple people who are capable of walking because we choose to carry them.” ~Christie Williams

    Years ago, I had a dear friend who needed a lot of support for various reasons. She was working hard to find her way out of a dark period. She had suffered traumas and tragedies—things I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

    Her life really did resemble a roller coaster ride. It was heartbreaking to watch her struggle, exciting when things would be on the upswing, and upsetting again when things would spiral downhill.

    Because I had known her almost my whole life and because I loved her dearly, I tried my best to always be there when she needed me. I am someone who knows and appreciates how important it is to have supportive people around you, offering love and kindness, especially during times of struggle.

    Sometimes being there for her simply meant picking up her call in the middle of the night and talking with her.

    Sometimes it meant dropping what I was doing and driving to meet her to make sure she was okay.

    There were talks, tears, and through that, hard truths were often revealed.

    Of course, it wasn’t all dark and dreary. There were bright moments and memories too. There were movie marathons and game nights. There was laughter to the point of tears. Many a meal was shared and many a bowl of ice cream was devoured.

    What I got in return wasn’t the same type of support. She was not the person I would turn to in a crisis, however minor or major. She just couldn’t handle it. But in turn, this friend showed me gratitude and genuine love.

    I never thought much about the dynamics of our relationship until another crisis erupted in her life, shaking things up once again.

    The downward cycle began and with it came hysterical phone calls, late night drives, drama after drama. And through it all I did what I always did which was listen, help, care, and show love.

    But one day my boyfriend at the time looked at me and said, “You need to stop doing this.”

    I was confused. The idea had never even crossed my mind. Stop? Why?

    He explained more and his perspective was eye opening. He saw her as less of a victim to outside circumstances and more of an adrenaline junkie—addicted to drama and things going wrong. As proof, he listed off several disastrous choices that were just that: her choices.

    He asked how I could help someone who didn’t really want help at all.

    But mostly he felt this friendship was interfering with my own life, well-being, and happiness.

    I had never thought about it like that before. And while a part of me was mad at him—he just didn’t understand, I thought—there was a tiny part of me that agreed with him.

    What was I doing?

    The truth was these late night calls and drives were interfering with my early morning job.

    The truth was the time spent trying to support and help her was taking away from things in my personal life that also needed my attention.

    The truth was I cared so much that I carried her stresses with me much more than I should have. I felt sad and worried, more than I needed to.

    The truth was her out of control life was making me feel out of control in mine.

    Because the thing was this: in being so busy with always checking in on her, I forgot to check in with myself.

    It was the first time I really understood that in order to support others we must remember to support ourselves first.

    After this realization hit me, I spent a great deal of time thinking about our friendship and I started to see things in a different light.

    Yes, this friend had a lot on her plate, but maybe the way she was reacting and handling these situations could be better. Maybe she needed help beyond what I could give her. Maybe she needed to start by wanting to change and help herself.

    I started to see that no matter what I had done for her all those years, how many phone calls I answered or help I offered, nothing had really changed in her life.

    She was having the same type of emergencies and she rated them all at least a nine on her personal-crisis-Richter-scale.

    Once this truth was apparent, I knew a shift needed to take place.

    I started to do only what I felt comfortable doing. I wasn’t there every single time she needed me, but I was still there a great deal.

    This wasn’t enough. Naturally, my friend was upset and hurt. She couldn’t understand why I was withdrawing, even though I did my best to explain. The more I explained, the more hostile she became. The more hostile she became, the more I withdrew.

    Eventually the crack between us turned into a massive fault line, one that couldn’t be repaired.

    Do we have an obligation to do our best by the people we love? Well, yes—to an extent.

    But we have to remember we have an obligation to ourselves first—for our happiness, our health, and our spiritual well-being. If we are not respecting our time, feelings, and energy, no one else will either.

    I hope that friend of mine has figured that out. I hope she’s living life with more highs than lows, more laughter than tears, and more joy than she ever thought possible.

    And I hope she feels it when I send her a blast of love from my little corner in the Universe to hers.

    I hope she understands that’s the best I can do now… the best for both of us.

  • Why Strong, Brave People Aren’t Afraid to Quit

    Why Strong, Brave People Aren’t Afraid to Quit

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

    Throughout my life I’ve quit many things.

    I quit a reasonably ‘sexy’ job title and steady paycheck.

    I quit a six-year relationship with an essentially giving and loving person.

    I quit being a yoga teacher after investing heavily in getting qualified.

    I’ve quit many courses halfway through like calligraphy (of all things), ‘life design map’ courses, and online courses for all sorts of random things.

    I quit therapy once, before they told me we were ‘done.’

    I’ve quit several crappy part-time jobs when I first started building my business.

    Yep, I’m a quitter. Or at least, that’s the label I gave myself.

    You see, for many years I was the queen of being mean to myself. She can still pipe up on some days, but I used to be so continually nasty to myself, it was exhausting.

    “You never finish anything.”

    “You just don’t have what it takes to go the distance.”

    “You’re so pathetic, Nat.”

    “Why can’t you just see things through? What the hell is wrong with you?”

    The other day a client told me she had these same questions (which are really just nasty taunting statements) going around in her head, as she felt guilty for giving up on something that she’d known for a long time she didn’t want to continue.

    “I feel like a quitter, Nat. Won’t walking away mean that I’m just quitting?”

    And so we began to talk about the meaning of quitting.

    What does it actually mean anyway?

    To me, to quit means to leave, usually permanently, or to be rid of something, right? I mean, that’s what the dictionary definition tells us.

    But what if all the times we labeled ourselves as quitters were actually times when we were following our very finely tuned but so often ignored gut instinct?

    What if quitting was just a term we’ve become used to hearing from the people around us, from our parents, from anyone else that might have reminded us where we “should have stuck things out,” but holds absolutely no truth in relevance to the situation we supposedly decided to quit?

    I mean, let’s take the end of my six-year relationship for instance, which some, including my ex, might view as me having ‘quit.’ Do the years prior to that, where I struggled with myself over what was working and what wasn’t, and where I held on and tried to keep things together for both of us, not count as me working hard to keep going?

    If I casually had just walked out without a reason, that would have been quitting, but I didn’t; I stayed and fought for as long as I could, and I made a decision that I felt at the time was right for both of our long-term happiness.

    And then maybe you could also say I quit being a yoga teacher, or at least my mum might have been worrying about that at the time. “But what about all that money you spent traveling over there and taking the course?”

    And I could understand her worry, but I reached a point when I had to be honest with myself.

    I had been putting pressure on myself to be a perfect and shiny and accomplished yoga teacher even though the entire reason I had gone on the training was to heal myself and my spine, tap into who I really was, figure out what I really wanted from life, and deepen my practice. It was never to be a teacher.

    So yes, maybe I quit yoga teaching, but again, what I was actually doing was being true to myself.

    And I want to encourage you to do the same.

    Drop the struggle you might currently be experiencing with the quitter label. It’s never going to serve you, and you know it’s not who you really are.

    If you know deep down that something doesn’t feel right—if you know you’re not meant to be with the person you’re with, in the job you’re in, or doing the work you’re doing—then walking away from it does not make you a quitter, my beautiful friend.

    It makes you empowered.

    It means you have guts.

    It means you are strong enough and tuned-in enough to listen to yourself.

    It means you’re following your intuition.

    It means you know your time and energy are best spent doing something else.

    It means you know you’re on the wrong path and you’re brave enough to take action to change direction.

    It means you’re brave.

    It means you’re strong.

    And it means you’re taking responsibility of your happiness.

    Does it mean you will quit everything in your life?

    No, it most certainly does not. When you find what’s right, you’ll know, believe me.

    But turning over several stones to find the one that shines instead of settling for the safety of the first thing you find is a journey few are prepared to walk.

    So with that in mind, you’re pretty amazing for having chosen to be true to who you really are.

    Finding what lights you up doesn’t come overnight; maybe for some it does, but for most, it requires a few more stones to be unturned.

    So don’t be afraid to keep moving, don’t be afraid to throw in the towel, don’t be afraid to ‘quit.’ It means you’re taking decisive action around what you will and won’t stand for, what feels good and what doesn’t, and most importantly, what feels true for you and what just quite simply doesn’t.

    We can’t live our most expressive, fulfilled, and empowered life trying to labor away at something that doesn’t light us up from the inside out, so stop wasting time trying to, and don’t be scared to do something different.

  • 3 Things to Remember When Facing Emotional Pain

    3 Things to Remember When Facing Emotional Pain

    Sad Boy

    “We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us—how we can take it, what we do with it—and that is what really counts in the end.” ~Joseph Fort Newton

    Life is messy. Sometimes it’s so beautiful that I feel blinded by the glory I have the privilege of bearing witness to. Other times, I have felt such deep despair that I thought my tears would never end.

    Unfortunately, my husband and I endured the deepest despair we could possibly imagine immediately following what should have been our happiest memory—the birth of our son.

    After he was born he could not take his first breath and we almost lost him. Our beautiful little boy that I had nurtured in my belly, prepared for, sang to, and dreamed about for nine months was struggling to hang on to life before our very eyes.

    He was resuscitated and could not breathe on his own for a number of hours while we waited with baited breath and mostly in silence, praying that he would be okay. Thanks to the brilliant nurses and our amazing hospital, our little miracle took his first breath on his own.

    When the immediate shock was over and he was stable, emotional pain crept in as if it was waiting for the right moment to pounce on us.

    In the days following his birth our brains started to process the horror we witnessed that we could not immediately comprehend when it was happening right in front of us, and we felt the deep despair of it all.

    I wish I could say that was the only traumatic experience in my life, but of course there are many more. This just happens to be one that I will share on a public forum. I am far from alone in this. We’ll all inevitably feel emotional pain many times throughout our lives, but we are hard-wired for this emotional turbulence.

    Yes, that’s what I said. We’re hard-wired and made for this, for any unwelcomed pain and anguish that stumbles on our path. For some reason in today’s society there continues to be a taboo against feeling down, even though it’s a normal and inevitable part of the human experience that we are neurologically prepared for.

    In recent years the taboo against feeling down has somewhat improved. Our willingness to accept that things are not always ‘perfect’ has helped many of us face emotional turbulence in a more honest and effective way.

    Over the years I gradually accepted that emotional pain will come and go. I can now see that the more I accept emotional pain as a necessary part of life, the more I can handle it with grace when the waves of sadness wash over my heart.

    Ironically, the more we accept emotional pain as a natural part of our human-ness, the more emotional freedom we come to find when we are faced with despair.

    I am thankful that, at this point in my life, I can acknowledge my pain and sit with it to heal from my tragedies. Many years ago I would feel miserable for feeling miserable. Today, I am likely to think, “I accept myself even though I feel miserable right now and I know I won’t feel miserable forever.”

    Throughout my life and by witnessing others go through despair, I have come to learn three ultimate truths about handling emotional pain that have nothing to do with denying its existence.

    If you find yourself in emotional pain, keep these truths in mind so that you can navigate the waters of anger, sadness, or hopelessness as peacefully as possible.

    1. Memories cannot hurt you.

    After something terrible happens to us, we might respond to memories with fear, anxiety, or deep sadness.

    Months after my son was born, I still had flashes of the hospital staff rushing in to resuscitate him, and my poor husband had intrusive thoughts about our son turning blue. These memories left us feeling hopeless and fearful, as if it were happening again.

    We naturally want to push those thoughts away as quickly as possible or distract ourselves with anything else that takes our mind off of it. However, the more we push away negative memories, the longer we prolong our emotional freedom from it.

    It often helps to acknowledge that this is indeed a negative memory; however, it already happened and cannot hurt you any more in the present. Sometimes you actually need to talk your way through it and give yourself reassurance that you are okay right now in this moment.

    2. Every emotion is temporary.

    Any emotion known to man is a fleeting, impermanent state (even the happy ones). Think of them like waves. Sometimes you can see it coming, other times it catches you by surprise. Some waves are bigger than others; however, by their nature they come and go.

    It is hard to imagine how my husband and I were able to sit in the same room and get through the hospital staff resuscitating our baby boy, but we did. The emotions that we felt in that moment did not stay with us. They were a temporary state of being. We will never be fully ‘healed’ from this experience, but the emotional state changes with time.

    When you are experiencing despair acknowledge that this, too, is temporary (even if it doesn’t feel like it at the moment) and will inevitably pass or change into a different emotional state.

    3. It’s okay to give yourself a ‘time out’ from your feelings and negative thoughts.

    Even though our emotions are transient states, sometimes we need to temporarily avoid negative thoughts and feelings to get through something specific (like a meeting at work, grocery shopping, or other necessary parts of life).

    After my son was born there was no time to feel sorry for what he went through or for myself to have almost lost him. He had to be fed, changed, held, and loved. When negative thoughts interfered I needed to find ways to stop ruminations quickly (even if only for a few minutes).

    There are many ways to temporarily stop negative thinking. Here are a few things I used to help myself cope when negative thoughts and memories crept in:

    • Deep Breathing: Counting the breath is very therapeutic. I would breathe and count on the exhale up to ten, and then start over at one again. I recommend doing this two to three times until you have successfully stopped rumination. If negative thoughts interrupt you, notice that it happened, let it go, and continue the practice.
    • Soothing Sensations: Comforting sensations such as a hot bath, a warm cup of tea, or a pleasant smell can bring a sense of peace. Focus on this completely to self-soothe and stop negative thoughts.
    • Laughter: I often distracted myself from negative thoughts and memories with humor. Watch a funny clip on the Internet or call a friend that always makes you laugh. In a time crunch, you can simply think of something that always helps you laugh or smile.

    We are stronger than we give ourselves credit for. It’s amazing that we have the power to handle emotional distress by simply acknowledging its presence and giving ourselves permission to feel our feelings.

    At the end of the day, these unwelcomed moments give us rich emotional experience because we couldn’t appreciate the gift of happiness if it were not for moments of despair to compare it to. This is not to say that we should welcome more anguish, but to instead remember the cliché, “no rain, no rainbows.”

    Sad boy image via Shutterstock

  • A Simple Sentence That Helps When You Feel Overwhelmed

    A Simple Sentence That Helps When You Feel Overwhelmed

    Woman Hiding Under Pillow

    “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    Days after the initial divorce from my ex-partner, I wanted to meet two very close friends in the city. I knew they would be loving and supportive and that the experience would be good for me. But I was so grief stricken and overwhelmed with emotion that even leaving the house felt like a monumental effort.

    Sitting on the edge of my bed, picturing all the steps it would take me from where I was now to where they were seemed insurmountable. Normally, I would have jumped in my car and traveled to them with ease. But I wasn’t at home; I was staying with my family and I didn’t have a car.

    Being in unfamiliar territory, there was the challenge of working out the public transport timetable (not one of my strongest traits even at the best of times), the fear of breaking down on the bus, and a general air of vulnerability and shame.

    Weeping silently, I considered simply staying at home. But the idea of being alone brought a fresh wave of pain. The thought of spending the morning by myself in an empty house was too much to bear.

    I was caught between two painful ideas: stay at home alone with my grief or face the anxiety of traveling in a fragile state.

    Thankfully, my years of meditation practice came to the rescue and I heard an inner voice say, “Focus on the very next step.”

    A sigh of relief escaped my lips as I realized that I didn’t have to travel all the way to the city to meet my friends. I just needed to do the very next thing.

    I gave myself permission to only focus on what was in front of me. I didn’t have to go anywhere I didn’t want to. I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want.

    All I had to take was the very next step, without thought for what came after or commitment to a particular outcome.

    First up, get dressed. I didn’t think about the fashionable choice; I simply focused on the process of dressing. One leg in the pants, second leg in. Pop the t-shirt over my head. Breathing deeply each time and moving slowly but surely.

    This simple act was enough to undo me. A fresh flood of tears ran down my face, as the pain and shame hit me. I couldn’t do this. I should be handling this better. Why couldn’t I just go and meet my friends like a “normal person”?!

    Drawing deep on all my training, I put one hand over my heart and one on my belly. I felt my breath moving in and out, my belly rise and fall. Sinking into this feeling of presence, I practiced a little self-compassion.

    Recognizing that I was experiencing a moment of suffering, just like a “normal person,” I was able to send some kindness to my tender heart. Just as I would have comforted a hurting friend, I soothed my nervous system with gentle thoughts and deep breaths.

    Once again, I heard the voice: “Focus on the very next step.”

    So I did. I walked to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Not so I could go and meet my friends all the way in the city, but simply to experience the sensation of brushing my teeth.

    Next, I placed each object into a bag that I may need if I was leaving the house. Not that I was necessarily leaving the house. It was simply a task of placing objects, one by one, into a bag. Keys, wallet, phone…

    Then, a short investigation. What bus would take me from the house to the city? A simple act of curiosity. Information gathering. Just a little research.

    I repeated each task in this same fashion. Slow, deliberate, present. Without focusing on the reason or the end result of each exercise, I was able to complete each one with full attention. This presence helped me feel calm and secure throughout the entire journey.

    Breathe, walk out the front door. Breathe, wait at the bus stop. Breathe, watch the suburbs roll past the window. Breathe, walk step by step to the meeting place.

    I made it all the way to the city and fell into the arms of my friends. There were tears of relief as I realized I’d completed the “insurmountable journey” by taking it one step at a time. The time we spent together was nourishing and healing. The sense of quiet pride at making it this far was restorative.

    When I focused on the very next step, I was able to overcome the devastating emotions and inertia. And in the weeks to come, although I faced many difficult days, this mantra went on to help me overcome overwhelm each time.

    If you’re facing a challenging transition, it’s easy to feel swamped by a tidal wave of emotions and thoughts. So when you’re feeling overwhelmed, let go of the myriad of decisions and actions that you need to take. Simply focus on the step that’s right in front of you.

    You may not know all the steps you need to take—and that’s okay. You don’t need to know the end before you start. You simply need to take the immediate action that is required right now and that will lead you further down the path.

    If you focus on the very next step, you’ll be able to release overwhelm and get through any transition you face.

    Woman hiding under pillow image via Shutterstock

  • 12 Ways to Turn Your Crippling Stress into Happiness

    12 Ways to Turn Your Crippling Stress into Happiness

    Happy Meditating Woman

    “More smiling, less worrying. More compassion, less judgment. More blessed, less stressed. More love, less hate.” ~Roy Bennett

    You are a slave to stress.

    I can relate. Stress crushed my life and dreams.

    I started a business and faced intense criticism over this decision.

    Everyone was sure I’d fail. My friends and family attacked me while I was combating my own self-doubt.

    My stress level was insanely high.

    Then the worst happened. My business failed and I lost all my savings. I was crushed.

    It took a long time to finally accept this failure.

    Today, whenever I work, stress still lingers in my body like the shadow of my dark past. But now I know how cope with it. Let me teach you how.

    1. Consider getting a pet.

    Sharing negative feelings with close friends can significantly reduce stress. Studies show that spending time with pets relieves stress in the same way. Also, when you’re accompanied by a pet in stressful situations, it prevents your stress level from rising.

    I have a cat. He was my only friend when nobody was supporting me. I’m grateful to have him by my side.

    If you don’t have a pet, consider getting one. It may change your life in surprising ways.

    2. Stop dwelling on your problems.

    Kant State University had an eye-opening discovery. Apparently, the more you talk about your problems, the more you’re likely to suffer from depression.

    Of course, it’s healthy to share what you’re going through. But when you’re mindlessly dwelling on your problems, it doesn’t solve anything.

    I never talk to anyone about my problems because no one supports me. This propels me to actively seek solutions instead of blindly mulling over things that could stress me out.

    If you’re fortunate to have supportive friends, do seek their support. What’s important is that you don’t just whine about your difficulties, but actually act.

    3. Shower yourself with gifts.

    You’re being brutally hard on yourself.

    You take success for granted. Worse, you exaggerate failure.

    When you’ve reached a goal, you move on nonchalantly. If you don’t, you torment yourself mentally. You scold, devalue, and deprive yourself.

    I’ve been there. I know this is self-destructive.

    Reward yourself for reaching goals. Research shows that when you’re rewarded for an action, you’re likely to repeat it. This is called a positive feedback loop. It’s much more effective than punishment.

    If you gain stress from failure, without happiness from success, the only outcome is stress.

    If you earn happiness from success, without stress from failure, the only outcome is happiness.

    4. Exploit bad habits to your advantage.

    I used to run away from problems. When stress hit, I’d instantly give up on whatever I was working on and resort to escapism.

    You may have experienced this too.

    Escapism may entail over-eating, indulging in unhealthy foods, TV, Internet, porn, smoking, and drinking. Over time, they form destructive habits.

    Exploit escapism by using it as an anchor.

    Pick healthy alternatives, such as meditation, stretching, listening to motivational talks, napping, or light exercises.

    Before you escape, do thirty seconds of an alternative first.

    Say you’re angry with your boyfriend. You think you need to eat some junk food to calm down. Before that, meditate for thirty seconds. Then you’re free to indulge.

    Do this for two months. Then increase good habit time weekly, until the good habit completely drowns out the bad.

    This way, I built new automatic responses to stress and broke my escapist habits completely. Now when I feel stress, I either take a short nap or move along to uplifting music.

    After a few minutes, I’m recharged and motivated to face new challenges.

    5. Unleash your anger (and cry yourself to sleep).

    Don’t always try to appear perfectly calm. You need to express difficult emotions—anger, for example.

    Discuss your frustration with friends. Journal your rage and analyze it objectively on paper. You can even confront the object of frustration assertively.

    Remember to release your anger under control. Don’t throw tantrums or yell impulsively. Express it as a means of problem solving.

    This applies to other difficult emotions, as well, like sadness. It’s healthy to express these “negative” emotions.

    6. Reach great heights by letting yourself suck big time.

    I’ve learned to accept my devastating failure. I have to. Otherwise, I’d be completely destroyed and discouraged from pursuing anything ever again.

    Some people cannot accept mistakes. Everything has to be perfect from the start. They think others will look down on them if they appear to be flawed.

    These people are frequently stressed.

    The happiest and most successful people focus on improvement. They love mistakes and flaws, because they see them as opportunities to grow.

    Learn from these people.

    Have lofty goals but have realistic standards. Don’t judge yourself based on the results of your actions. See them as feedback and seek improvement from there.

    7. Be shameless about not doing things.

    You don’t have the time and energy to do everything you want to do.

    Inevitably, things are left undone, and you beat yourself up. This creates stress.

    Consider what’s truly important to you. Kill the rest shamelessly.

    This way, you gain more time and control over your life while making more progress.

    I focus only on my career and my relationships. I’ve postponed other ambitions, like becoming a martial artist and a calligrapher, because they’re comparatively unimportant.

    8. Declare war on useless crap.

    I’m clearing up my apartment. It’s now clean and spacious. When I’m inside, I feel more relaxed, concentrated, and in control.

    Psychologists found that clutter competes for your attention and overloads your brain. This makes you stressed and even damages your ability to think.

    Trash this useless crap ruthlessly.

    Begin with discarding one item per day, for two months. It’s easy, and it trains you to detach emotionally from your possessions. Later, you can expand to junk more items daily.

    9. Learn how to use your body wisely.

    I always keep my back straight and try to appear confident.

    Why? Because posture has a direct relationship with your mood and behavior.

    When you position your body in a natural and comfortable way, you feel less stressed.

    Also, when you appear confident, you feel more powerful and in control. Confidence balances out stress.

    Read books on correct posture and body language. These skills not only reduce stress reliably, they also keep your body healthy.

    10. Extract everything from your overloaded head.

    When your mind is overloaded, you feel agitated, you malfunction, and then you collapse.

    Extract all your mind clutter in one place, out of your head.

    Observe your thoughts for five to fifteen minutes, and let information resurface from your mind.

    You’ll be surprised how much stuff pops up. Things you have to do, things you’re waiting to do, open loops, creative ideas, long-term plans, and many more.

    Write down everything as soon as they come up, no matter how trivial they may seem.

    This helps organize your life and clears even the smallest mind clutter. When you can see everything on paper, you’ll find them more actionable. Life becomes less overwhelming.

    I personally prefer pen and paper for this. A sophisticated to-do system works too, but avoid spending too much time on that. You might create stress in the process.

    11. Learn from the Chinese: the spectator’s eyes.

    Stressed people are masters at exaggeration. They magnify every little problem.

    You can’t see the big picture when you are caught up inside a problem. Then you begin to exaggerate and freak out.

    A Chinese saying goes, “The spectator’s eyes are always clear.”

    Ask a friend for his honest opinion on your problems. This will likely help you recognize when something truly isn’t a big deal. Learn from spectators, and analyze your problems objectively. Then you can see problems as they are, and act wisely.

    12. Laugh: meet apocalypse with humor.

    I watch comedies a lot. They give me a brief escape from my stressors.

    One day I had a revelation.

    Visualize these scenarios: bombing a job interview, getting fired, being unemployed, getting robbed, getting sued, getting rejected by the opposite sex.

    Disasters. But they’re all funny in comedies. There’s something funny in every problem.

    Maybe you burned your food. Maybe you dropped your phone into the toilet. Have a laugh!

    Once you can do this, you’ll completely turn your perspective around. You’ll see the positive in every situation, and face problems happily.

    This Second, You Can Transform Stress Into Happiness

    It’s not impossible. Many people have done it.

    Pick one lesson that looks appealing to you, do some research on it, then act.

    You’ve let stress dominate you long enough. Now is the time to live differently.

    Do you want to stay crippled by stress? Or do you want to turn life into happiness?

    The choice is yours.

    Happy meditating woman image via Shutterstock

  • Dealing with “Haters”: How to Rise Above the Negative

    Dealing with “Haters”: How to Rise Above the Negative

    Angry Egg

    “The final proof of greatness lies in being about to endure criticism without resentment.” ~Elbert Hubbard

    A splash of tequila to the unsuspecting open eyes is a brutal way to learn that someone has a problem with you.

    My brother’s girlfriend was drunk at the time, and laughing so hard at the sting of my agony that she had a bathroom accident. I hadn’t provoked her in any way. It was just one of those things that make you wonder.

    Later I would come to find out how much she secretly detested my academic success.

    I didn’t understand it at first. I thought she loved me as if I were her younger sister. It eventually was revealed that she was one of those people who smiled to your face and talked badly about you to other people. Especially when you were in a place to shine.

    That was the first time I realized that no matter what I did, there would people in this world who would seethe on the inside, just because I was who I was.

    Does any of this sound familiar?

    So, you’ve managed to kick start the old social dynamics domino effect of your success. The people who love you will support you and sing your praises. They will defend you in the sight of defamation, be there to toast your victories, and wipe your tears during your defeats.

    And just when you really begin to shine, you hear it on the wind: someone has a problem with the way you look, the way you sing, dance, or flip veggie burgers. Maybe he or she even has a problem with the way you express yourself.

    Our society calls them “haters.” Labeling these individuals as one-dimensional blots of hatred isn’t really the answer. Many of them have problems and are lost and misguided.

    And some of them may even be good people who just happen to be succumbing to the twinge of the ego.

    Here is where some of you are probably thinking, “that’s not my problem.”

    My answer to this is simple. It will be your problem if you let it be. And for many years, I let it be my problem. The tequila thrower wasn’t the only instance, and I burdened myself with what I did to deserve such negative feedback.

    Why didn’t these people like me? What could I do to stop them from “hating” on me? It took me years of inner spiritual exploration to discover one important fact:

    If you zero in on the negativity of these people when they are in the throes of their negative spin, you will be anchoring yourself to their personal baggage and participating in their internal struggle.

    In essence, you will be making their problem, your problem.

    But to rise above the darkness is a little tough. Many times, it will seem that these people will do anything and everything to make you feel bad about yourself. In fact, you have to be a pretty secure person to be able to withstand any onslaught that is less than warm and fuzzy.

    So how does one move forward in the face of ugliness?

    For me it took a flip of perspective. I had to toughen up and see that people who throw tequila in your face when you’ve done nothing wrong are a part of our life’s transformative process.

    1. Negative people will make you grow.

    How many times have you cried yourself to sleep because of something one of these people said or did? How many times after did you pick yourself up and vow to get better, stronger, and less accessible to emotional pain by the hands of others? Whenever a “hater” becomes active in the energy of their negativity toward you, this becomes your time for growth.

    You may fall down crying again or get angry. But you will often find a way to get better and grow beyond their criticism just to make certain that there is no validity in their claims.

    2. They secretly want to be like you.

    Envy is a special kind of cruelty serum. When a person becomes envious of another, it is always because they have admired a beloved trait in that person. Unfortunately, when they turn their focus inward in hopes of replicating your desirable characteristic, they find lack in their own lives.

    It can be a pretty hard thing to want something that others have and believe that there is little chance that you can create this experience in your own reality. Instead of bringing out the best in themselves, they will often fixate on the object that reflects their inadequacies.

    3. They are your success indicators.

    If you’ve attracted the attention of people who take pleasure in criticizing your every move, chances are that you are a shining star and the world has started to take notice. People who have it in them to try to knock you off your high horse are telling you something on the soul level.

    What are they saying?

    “You are a trendsetter, a trailblazer, a person who leads and conquers. And since you’ve decided to make a name for yourself and step up with the big boys, I’m going to have to challenge your fortitude.”

    4. They are your teachers.

    Have you ever heard the expression that we pick our teachers? It is believed by many who thrive in awakened circles that we choose the people who will help us to grow the most in our lifetime.

    We live in a physical world of polarities. In the expression of our physical experience, there is no light without dark, no good without evil.

    The opposing forces in the world serve to give dimension, color, and context to our earthly experience. Under this perception, we can see that there can be no friend without the adversary. For what is a friend without the adversary to use as a comparative backdrop?

    And it is the adversary that will give us some of our greatest lessons in our lives.

    They will teach us to love ourselves, cause us to muster our strength and grow far beyond our perceived shortcomings. The truth is, these people come in all shapes and mentalities. We can talk about personal traits such as prejudice, ignorance, and natural born cruelty to name a few, that could be seen as the true causes of “hateration,” but all of this just falls into the category of the person’s inner darkness and lack of personal evolution.

    The fact is this: Either they will purge through their garbage and learn to bring light inside of themselves, or they will stay stuck in their internal war. Either way you’ve got to find a way to deal with them while keeping your own light protected.

    So how do we deal with the negativity? It’s all fun and games when we talk about it, but how do we actually begin to overcome when the negativity rears its head? It helps to start with this:

    1. Free yourself of judgment.

    Relinquish the desire to form an opinion about what these people are saying or doing. Attempt to see their actions as neither good nor bad, just background chatter of their internal struggle that has little to do with you and everything to do with them. Try not to take their criticisms personally.

    2. Lead with compassion.

    Understand that because of their negativity, they have a lot of internal work to do to become a whole person. See that they may potentially be in the midst of their own suffering, which is spawning their criticism. Realize that their negativity probably affects their relationships and their ability to transform and receive true inner wisdom.

    That’s gotta suck.

    3. Keep your eyes on the road.

    You’ve been put on the planet for an important reason. You’ve gotten as far as you have by focusing on what you need to do. Anyone who is threatened by your positive performance is indicating that you’re doing things right.

    Don’t look to the left. Don’t look to the right. Just stay grounded on your path and continue to surround yourself with people who build you up.

    4. Forgive.

    Forgive these people for raining on your parade and forgive yourself for forgetting your umbrella.

    It’s okay to emote and react sometimes. You’re human. Cut yourself some slack. And if you’re really grown up, try to cut them some slack as well. We were not all created with the same level of pain tolerance, emotional endurance, and maturity level.

    Now remember, these are just some guidelines that you may want to add to your toolbox. I have found that the most important thing to remember is that all of this is just part of the journey of discovering the self.

    Angry egg image via Shutterstock

  • The Pain Won’t Go Away Until We Learn the Lesson

    The Pain Won’t Go Away Until We Learn the Lesson

    Sad Girl

    “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” ~Pema Chodron

    Wounds I thought were healed began to burst open after a recent breakup. I had obviously not learned the lessons I was meant to years ago.

    As a child I put 100% effort into everything I did, from schoolwork and swimming training to leadership positions. I remember feeling so sure of myself.

    I drew my confidence from many areas of my life. A good student, swimming champion, school captain… I had my life sorted. Although the swimming accolades and A’s on my report card meant nothing once the bullying started.

    I was bullied a number of times throughout my schooling. I moved primary schools in the hope that I could escape the cattiness of insecure girls; however, unfortunately for me, bullies seem to be everywhere. I experienced trouble at my swimming club and during my first years of high school.

    Every time there was trouble my solution was to move elsewhere. I changed swimming clubs and schools, not to mention friendship groups several times.

    Eventually, the bullying came to an end, but I was left with suicidal thoughts and depression. I don’t remember specifics about that time in my life. It is as if my brain blocks out those memories as a defence mechanism.

    Once the bullying stopped and I recovered from my mental illness, I thought I was fine. I mean, anything’s better than having a dark cloud hanging over your head.

    I’ve always been the type of person who has aimed to be the best I could be, the comedian, the agony aunt, the people pleaser. Socializing only left me drained, exhausted from entertaining those around me.

    Fast-forward seven years to now…

    It was only until a recent ex felt that our long-distance relationship wasn’t working that I began to question my self-worth. Wasn’t I enough? What did I do wrong? I thought I made him happy. All the emotions I felt years ago came rushing back. The wounds I thought time had healed burst right open.

    Here’s the thing: Those wounds never healed. I just ran away from my issues at every chance possible. I didn’t do any work on myself after the bullying incidents; I just ran away and tried to forget. You can’t run away from your own insecurities and self-doubt.

    My recent relationship wasn’t right for me. He couldn’t offer me the emotional or intellectual support I wanted, but my need to be liked caused me to ignore the relationship red flags.

    After some self-reflection and reading articles on sites such as Tiny Buddha, I realized that relationships reflect how we see and treat ourselves.

    I didn’t feel good enough, and found myself in relationships where I was constantly proving to them, but mainly to myself, that I was, in fact, good enough. That I was enough.

    The funny thing is that no matter how hard you try, you’ll never convince the wrong person you’re right for them. You’ll spend your whole relationship wishing and wanting them to treat you the way you so desperately want to treat yourself.

    The wounds never healed because I never learned the lessons I was meant to learn. Because I refused to face my childhood trauma, I was put into the same scenarios time and time again—constantly seeking everyone’s approval, wanting to be liked, and trying to prove my own worth.

    I am determined that I will never feel so worthless ever again. I will not see my own worth through the eyes of another.

    I have recently begun the journey of self-acceptance. My daily practices of meditation and writing in my gratitude journal continue to serve me on this journey. My mind is more focused, and by listing what I am blessed with daily, I have started to see the value of my own existence.

    If you can relate to my experience, remember…

    What you resist persists.

    The damage caused by childhood bullying continued to resurface regardless of how many times I tried to push it aside. The same is true for you. Whatever pain from your past you’ve tried to outrun, you can’t avoid it forever. It will follow you until you face it and work through it.

    Once you learn the lessons you need to learn, you can break your patterns.

    By not learning what I needed to learn years ago, I was faced with the same situations over and over. We continue to have the same experiences until we get the lesson, and start applying it.

    Relationships reflect what is going on inside us.

    I didn’t feel worthy and sought out a relationship where I had to continually prove my value. When you completely accept yourself, you won’t settle for a relationship that you know deep down isn’t right for you.

    Be grateful and let go.

    Be thankful for the experiences and subsequent lessons. Painful though they may have been, they can make you stronger, wiser, happier, and better able to love and be loved. Knowing this makes it much easier to let go of what was so you can receive what is to come.

    Sad woman image via Shutterstock