Tiny Buddha

Tag: self love

  • How I’m Overcoming Codependency and the Need to Prove My Worth

    How I’m Overcoming Codependency and the Need to Prove My Worth

    “Everywhere you go, there you are.” ~Unknown

    I have heard this quote many times throughout life, but that was it. I heard it, thought hmm, and moved on. Well, here I am at the age of thirty-nine, and I am really starting to see and understand it.

    I first started noticing this idea showing up over and over again recently, at a time of a change in my career. I went from an ER nurse to an RN in the transfer center. So bedside nursing to office work.

    I noticed one day, as I was sitting in my new, quiet office area looking at the board of the ER in epic (which shows how many patients are currently in the emergency room), there were about ninety-eight patients in a forty-four-bed unit. I felt as if I was actually in the ER. I felt horrible on the inside, and felt sorry for the patients, nurses, doctors, etc.

    Then I thought, What the hell am I doing? I am in an office; I am not down in the ER. If I am going to experience the same feelings in this office as I would have in the ER, then why did I change jobs?

    It was at that moment that I was like Katie, you got to heal this wound. Whatever it is, you got to heal it.

    I took a deep breath and consciously chose not to feel that way. I decided to acknowledge that there were long wait times, that workers were overwhelmed, and that patients may not get the care they needed due to the hospital being saturated.

    In that moment I chose to be thankful that I was not one of them. I chose to feel better. I chose to celebrate that I had stepped out of an environment that was unhealthy for me.

    Another time it happened was when we were working on a stroke transfer. Everyone was rush, rush, rush.

    I felt my face get flushed; my chest tightened. The fear and worry were taking over. I thought to myself, What the hell, Katie. You are doing it again. You are feeling as if you are in an emergency room at the bedside. Calm down. Remember, if you are going to feel the feelings you felt in the ER, you should have just stayed in the ER.

    Once again, I took a deep breath. I reminded myself that I am only one person. I was doing all that I could do, as fast as I could, and that was enough. I reminded myself that I don’t have a magic wand and can’t teleport anyone in an instant. I felt better but was really starting to have an awareness of “Everywhere you go, there you are.”

    This happened again on a day of consistent work in the transfer center. I did try to be creative, do some swapping of patients, but, ultimately, all my work led nowhere.

    As I was sending out my email that shows transfers that were complete, it read “zero.” I had thoughts like Omg, they are going to think I did not do anything today. I did not help the ER at all. They have thirty-three admits, and I got no one moved from the hospital.

    The truth is I did my best. There were things out of my control that inhibited the movement.

    At that moment of frustration, I heard in my head, once again, “Everywhere you go, there you are.”

    I started talking about how I was feeling with one of my friends and coworkers. He asked me if I was familiar with codependency, I’m guessing because he could see the signs in me.

    It made me laugh because codependency is definitely something I am working on overcoming. Everywhere I go, there you are, codependency. It does not just show up in relationships; it shows up in all areas of my life.

    In my work, it showed in how I looked to validate my importance by the number of transfers out of the hospital I made, even though there are so many factors involved in transfers, most of them out of my control.

    In my personal relationships, it showed in how I aimed to please everyone but myself, ultimately to feel worthy based on their approval.

    According to Psychology Today, codependency is “a dysfunctional relationship dynamic where one person assumes the role of the giver, sacrificing their own needs for the sake of others.”

    This, in my opinion, is what’s happening in healthcare. So many healthcare providers give, give, give but only receive a paycheck. That is not sustainable, not satisfying to the individual or their spirit.

    Do you find that you often feel responsible and overly invested in the lives of others, abandoning your feelings, thoughts, and identity; feel guilty for asking for a break or just sitting for a minute; have poor boundaries or no boundaries with your friends, family, coworkers, and clients? If so, it might be a good idea to take the time to reflect and see if you are codependent.

    Self-awareness and understanding what role you play in feeling burned out or dissatisfied can lead to a much more fulfilling life and career.

    Pay attention to your thoughts, emotions, and feelings. They are powerful messengers. Take the time to be curious about your reactions and your triggers. When you replace judgment with curiosity, you create space in your brain to learn.

    As I reflect on my nursing career, I have a feeling that many people, especially in healthcare, struggle with codependency. I think perhaps we create most of our problems from unhealthy patterns developed in childhood.  For example, I learned young to neglect my needs, please other people instead of speaking up for myself, and suppress and deny how I felt.

    So, what was I really feeling in that moment—the moment when I felt guilty that there were no transfers? I was feeling like a letdown. I was feeling like I wasn’t good enough, and why? Old habits are hard to break, but I am thankful now because I have awareness. With awareness I can do better, create new habits, and break old patterns. I can pay attention to what follows me everywhere I go.

    Tomorrow is my last day as an RN. I am stepping out on faith and wanting to create a new life and career for myself.

    I am not expecting all rainbows and sunshine. I am aware now that as I embark on this journey there are going to be thoughts, feelings, and emotions that are going to follow me everywhere I go.

    I am going to have to remind myself not to make choices based on the need for validation. I might get insecure when I get just one like on something I posted on social media, or I might worry that my son won’t like me if I don’t buy him everything he wants.

    But I have to remind myself not to allow views and likes to determine my worth, and I also have to remember it’s more important to set a good example for my kid than to win his approval.

    It all starts with questioning my thoughts and trying to get to the root of my behavior.

    With awareness I can grow, heal, and become the person I am destined to be. Perfectly imperfect.

  • Why I No Longer Chase Emotionally Unavailable People, Hoping They’ll Change

    Why I No Longer Chase Emotionally Unavailable People, Hoping They’ll Change

    “Never chase love, affection, or attention. If it isn’t given freely by another person, it isn’t worth having.” ~Unknown

    We met at a bar with Skee-Ball and slushy margaritas for our first date.

    She was gorgeous. I noticed that as soon as I walked in. I still wasn’t sure whether we’d have anything to talk about though. The messages we’d exchanged had been minimal.

    It turned out we did.

    Conversation flowed from one topic to the next—meandering from her passion for biology in college to how I tried to master mountain boarding at summer camp as a kid to how both of us were passionate about writing/putting words to the page.

    I found her articulate, funny, sociable, and down-to-earth. I liked her intellect. Her wit. Her seeming earnestness and appetite for unconventional topics like the environmental benefit of eating insects and sexism in the taxidermy industry.

    She came over to my place after; I cooked dinner for us. Talk got deeper. She shared the effect her dad’s depression had on her when she was a kid; how she’d personalize his quiet moods. I shared some of the instability I’d experienced as a kid.

    The evening ended in a hook-up. Nothing like a good trauma spill for an aphrodisiac.

    A couple weeks later we had another date. I felt similarly elated afterwards. But doubts began to surface before our third; she was acting wishy-washy and noncommittal.

    I talked them away, though, because seeing her filled me with buzzy joy. Our interactions powered me through the week with a buoyancy unlike any that my morning coffee had ever provided.

    So we kept going on dates.

    She’d bring flowers to them. Lift me into the air when we kissed, which I loved. Tell me I was a “really good thing in her life.”

    The last day I saw her, we biked around to local breweries.

    The sun shone against our faces as we sipped from each other’s beers out on the back patio—having what felt like a raw conversation about intimacy patterns and fears. She was working on hers, she said. I acknowledged some of my own in return.

    When she asked if she could kiss me (for the fourth time that day) as we unlocked our bikes, I remember how wanted it made me feel.

    I carried that golden effervescent feeling with me into the next day. It was still with me when I opened a text from her—but  shattered into spiky glass shards when I read what it said.

    That she couldn’t continue seeing me. That she wasn’t in the right place emotionally.

    It’s not you, it’s me.

    We all know the spiel.

    **

    It wasn’t the first time I’d had my heart dropped from the Trauma Tower on top of which a woman and I had been insecurely attaching.

    This woman was just one among several in a pattern. You can call it trauma bonding. A hot and cold relationship. The anxious-avoidant dance. These push-pull dynamics that played out through my twenties had elements of all of these.

    One day the person would open up. We’d connect and it’d feel like I’d really seen them, and they’d seen me.

    The next day they’d pull back (even in the seeming absence of overt conflict). The contrast was painful. The shift felt jarring.

    According to Healthline, “Recognizing emotional unavailability can be tricky. Many emotionally unavailable people have a knack for making you feel great about yourself and hopeful about the future of your relationship.”

    Whenever these situationships crumbled, it would really break me. Feelings I’d hoped to have buried for good would resurrect—among them, doubt that anyone would ever choose to see and accept me fully.

    And yet the “connections” felt so hard to disentangle from once formed. From my perspective, the woman and I often had strong chemistry. Words came easily. We talked about vulnerable things, but could also laugh and enjoy the lighter aspects of life. They were my type physically. The perceived strength of our connection compelled me to stay.

    **

    It took me some time to realize that each relationship of this sort that I remained in spoke to unhealed parts of me.

    Part of the healing I did over the past few years involved looking at the role I played in them. It involved realizing that I too contributed to the cycle—by continuing to give chances to a person who couldn’t (or didn’t want to) help meet my needs.

    I contributed by staying and hoping the situation would shift. That the clouds obstructing their full attention and investment would magically lift. That they’d depart to reveal the sun that was waiting all along to wrap its powerful rays around my heart.

    I contributed by not establishing boundaries. For instance, in one situationship I felt as if I’d become the woman’s therapist, there to reassure her when self-doubts overtook her; to validate her following any perceived rejection by strangers; to coddle her ego when she felt unattractive in the eyes of the male barista who’d just served us our coffee.

    I could have set a limit around how much she confided in or leaned on me. I could’ve communicated that if we were just friends with occasional benefits, then I only had so much bandwidth. That it didn’t feel reciprocal to be her on-call therapist.

    I also could have left at any time. I chose to stay in these situations, though, despite the signs. Perhaps I thought those signs were ambiguous enough to be negotiable. Or that I was just giving the benefit of the doubt.

    Additionally, I chose to look at the women for who I wanted them to be, who they could be somewhere down the line, and who they sometimes were—rather than seeing them for who they fully were on the whole and in the present moment.

    When we see others for their potential, no matter how innocent or well-meaning our willful obscuring of the present reality may be, we pay a cost.

    **

    Inconsistency and unavailability are less attractive to me the older I get and the more that I heal from my past trauma. Game-playing has even begun to repel me in a way it didn’t used to. When a person shows signs of it, I notice my interest starting to wane. Conversely, qualities like consistency and decisiveness, and earnestness are increasingly attractive now.

    In my thirties I no longer find the emotional ups and downs of an anxious-avoidant dynamic sustainable. I want something calmer.

    I hope for a connection that takes a load off—not one that adds more stress to a world already saddled with the weight of so much of it. One wherein we’re both safe spaces for the other. I believe this is what we all deserve, granted that we too are willing to put in some work.

    In general, having a choosier mentality means you may stay single for more years than you imagined—because it’s true that the dating pool bubbles with people whose traumas and defenses are incompatible with our own. I think maybe it always will.

    Still, when I picture all the heart pain spared, it’s an approach that feels right. The thought now of being pulled back into another cycle of fleeting hope and optimism punctured by blindsiding shards of disappointment unsettles me more than the thought of staying indefinitely un-partnered.

    Not only that, it also saddens me. The sadness I feel is for every person ever caught in the same emotional cyclone. I can’t help but think it’s such a tremendous drain of energy. Energy that could be used instead to vitalize both the larger world and our own lives.

    **

    No more will I follow the bread-crumby path to another person’s heart when it takes me so far from the integrity of my own.

    And anyone who’s been through similar experiences—I encourage you to remain hopeful that one day, a person who’s deserving of your love will step into your life and onto your path. Until then, remember you have you. Treasure yourself, treat yourself well, and realize you’re worth more than chasing. You deserve to put your feet up and let someone chase you—or better still, come meet you in the middle.

  • How I Learned the Power of Letting Go After My Father Developed Dementia

    How I Learned the Power of Letting Go After My Father Developed Dementia

    “There is beauty in everything, even in silence and darkness.” ~Helen Keller

    When I was eleven years old, I would force myself to stay awake until the wee hours of the morning.

    I was severely anorexic at a time when eating disorders were considered an “inconvenience” you brought on yourself. Anorexia was dismissed as a rich, white girl’s disease (although we were certainly not rich)—a disease that was easily curable with a prescription for a chocolate cake.

    Although my emaciated body was a dead giveaway of my condition, it was school that noticed the change in me first. My once stellar grades began to slip, and I was falling behind in the advanced academic and art program I was a part of.

    “Just eat already,” my teachers would tell me, and when I tossed my lunch into the garbage, I’d be sent to the nurse’s office to watch The Best Little Girl in the World. Again.

    At home, grape-flavored bubble gum and bouillon cubes were my foods of choice. I did toe-touches, crunches, and jogged at least four times a day, passed out some mornings, and hid my body under layers of flannel shirts on the hottest August days. But even as my disease raged, home was still my refuge, a place where my eating disorder could take its hair down and run wild.

    Thankfully, both my parents worked full-time and often through dinner, so mealtimes weren’t much of a struggle. And when we did eat together, I became as much of a master at hiding my food as I was at hiding my body.

    I was also smart. Or maybe conniving is a better word. A weekly trip to Friendly’s for ice cream (the irony of that name!) fooled my overworked parents into believing that I was fine.

    Puberty had simply shaved off any “baby fat” I had, they reasoned. What they didn’t know was that puberty never had a chance with me. No sooner did my period appear, I starved it away.

    But even with the ice cream trips and their growing awareness, I still felt fairly safe at home.

    Until that one moment that changed everything.

    On a sunny, unremarkable fall day (Isn’t that what Joan Didion tells us? We are most surprised by those tragedies and traumas that happen on “normal” and “beautiful” days…?), my father surprised me by picking me up early from school.

    Hurrying to the office for dismissal, there was a tiny, naive part of my eleven-year-old self that thought maybe he was surprising me with a trip to Disney World.

    That’s what happened to my friend, Mary, the previous year. When she returned from her impromptu trip, she was sporting tanned skin and a perpetual grin. She then spent most of our fifth-grade year with mouse ears glued to the top of her head.

    But there was no Magic Kingdom for me. Instead, without so much as an inkling as to where we were going, my father hustled me into his car, and we drove away. Sitting next to my father, a man who held all the power over me, my stomach ached as I wondered what was about to happen.

    My weak heart pounded in my chest, and as we drove, I prayed it wouldn’t give out. Catching a glimpse of my ashen skin and white, cracked lips in the rearview, I knew that I was nothing more than a stray dog in a shelter, ripped from my cage by a complete stranger, wondering if I was about to be put down, thrown into a fight, or worse.

    Finally, we arrived at our destination, a medical center in a strip mall. As soon as we walked through the front door, I gagged on the thick scent of medicine and grape lollipops that hung in the air. Without a second to catch my breath, I was whisked into a doctor’s office and onto a scale.

    Looking down her nose at me, the doctor snapped, “You’re too skinny. You need to gain weight.” While I stood there on the scale, she turned to my father and diagnosed anorexia nervosa.

    Then she looked at me. “If you don’t eat,” she warned in a sharp tone, “we’ll have you put in a place for ‘girls like you’.” She then informed me that once I was locked in that wretched prison of force-feedings and shackles (as I imagined it), I wouldn’t see my family again until I was “fixed.”

    When we returned to the car, my father spoke the first words he had said to me all day: “So? Will you gain weight?”

    “Yes,” I answered, too frightened to fight. Too scared to advocate for myself. Too terrified to tell him that this wasn’t a choice. I wasn’t choosing to starve myself; I was sick.

    But even if I had spoken, he wouldn’t have understood. No one did.

    From that moment on, I knew that I was completely alone. That’s when I began to stay up way past midnight, quietly jogging in place. I’d stop only to press an ear to the door, straining to hear what my parents were saying. Would they send me away? To that place?

    “I’ll never let it happen,” I assured myself. I would die before I’d go to a place where I was literally stripped of myself.

    For the next few years, the games continued, and although there were always doctors and threats, I kept myself just alive enough to stay out of that particular treatment center.

    ****

    Flash-forward almost forty years, and today, my father is an old man with dementia.

    As the Universe sometimes works in strange ways, I am now one of his primary caretakers. Although our relationship was strained for many years and I missed out on the experience of having a strong male figure in my life that I could trust, he did walk me down the aisle, and I am here for him now that he needs help.

    My father doesn’t remember that day that will forever be burned into my brain. He doesn’t remember the hell I went through the years that followed—the fear, the insecurities, the isolation, and the self-inflicted bruises I sported because I hated myself so very much. More than anything, he was, and is, clueless of the real battle scars—the ones that lay deep inside.

    He doesn’t know that that one “unremarkable fall day” when he pulled me from school started a negative spiral in my life, a time when I began aligning with damaging beliefs and inflicting self-harm.

    All he knows now is what his dementia allows him to—if the sun is out, if the squirrels ate the peanuts he tossed to them, and whether or not I am there to help him; to deliver his groceries, to take him out on drives, and to care for him.

    Yes, this could easily be the ultimate story of revenge, but years of teaching and practicing yoga have brought me down a different path.

    The path I have chosen is the path of letting go.

    Truthfully, my father’s dementia has left me no choice but to let go, at least of some parts of my life. I’ve needed to let go of expectations, of attachments to the outcome, and even, sometimes, like in those moments when he calls me “Sally,” my own name and identity.

    But in letting go, I have found that his disease has brought some gifts as well. I’ve learned to slow down and appreciate the daisy he wants to admire, the flock of chickadees darting in and out of a bush he’s watching, and the feel of the cool fall air on my face as I help him to and from a doctor’s appointment.

    Letting go has allowed me to experience all those things that I was previously too busy to appreciate. As Helen Keller said, “There is beauty in everything, even in silence and darkness.”

    But letting go because of his dementia wasn’t enough.

    I had to let go for me, too.

    To let go of the toxic weight from the past, I released that moment when everything changed, all those years ago.

    How? By simply deciding to put the weight down—and not just with regard to that event, but in all aspects of my life.

    Was it easy? No. But it was doable.

    In letting go, I didn’t worry about forgiving (although it is an important step for healing), or seeing someone else’s perspective. I simply unhanded my tight grip on all the “wrongs” I had endured and still carried with me, as well as all those things for which I blamed myself.

    Every one of us will live through events, some that we consider positive, and others, not. The only control we have is in how we deal with the circumstances we’ve been given.

    We can choose not to shoulder the burden, and to unpack those weights we’ve been carrying. We can close our eyes, breathe deeply, and tell ourselves, “I will put that weight down.”

    That’s where our true power lies.

    Have I forgotten my past? Of course not. But I have let it go, and in letting go, I have reclaimed an important relationship with my father, and more importantly, with myself.

    By letting go, I have released my suffocating grip on life, and reclaimed my personal power.

  • The Art of Nurturing Self-Talk: How to Tell Yourself What You Need to Hear

    The Art of Nurturing Self-Talk: How to Tell Yourself What You Need to Hear

    “You will never speak to anyone more than you speak to yourself in your head. Be kind to yourself.” ~Unknown

    Talking to ourselves in a nurturing way can be a challenge if we rarely heard nurturing words in the early formative years of our lives. In fact, if we were often criticized or neglected, we probably learned to criticize and neglect ourselves instead.

    When I was growing up, my mom was a dedicated wife and mother, but she suffered from deep depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. She didn’t know how to be encouraging or nurturing because she was never nurtured or encouraged by her parents while she was growing up. So her words to me reflected the negativity that she felt about life and herself.

    I have forgiven my mother for all the mistakes she made in my childhood, and, in fact, we ended up extremely close during her last years of life. But that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t work for me to do on myself in order to heal the self-hatred that had been unconsciously passed down.

    Growing up as I did, I struggled with low self-esteem, I was deeply depressed, I found myself in an abusive marriage with my first husband, I depended on other people for approval, and I neglected my dreams, since I didn’t believe in myself.

    Over the years I’ve done a lot of work to heal and have made significant progress in all these areas. I’ve discovered the meaning of unconditional self-love. I’ve learned to set healthy boundaries and accept myself as I am, without needing approval to feel good about myself. And I’ve educated myself so I’m able to handle stress and face my problems in healthier ways.

    Most importantly, I’ve learned to speak to myself in a more loving and nurturing way. In fact, just recently, I learned how to find those words more easily by using the following exercise.

    First, I made a list of all the influential people from my childhood and early adulthood. Then I asked myself, “What loving words did I need or want to hear from each person even if I don’t think I still need to hear those words today.”

    Then, I wrote down everything that I wished I could have heard them tell me from a loving and understanding place in their hearts. And if someone in my life had spoken to me in a loving and supportive way, I wrote those words too.

    Here is the list of influential people from my childhood and adulthood: Mom, Dad, brothers, sister, relatives, neighbors, friends, teachers, coaches, ministers, therapists, doctors, bosses, co-workers, and spouses.

    As I began to make the list of statements that I wish I could have heard from these people, I could feel that these were words that my heart still needed to hear today, but now from myself.

    It’s interesting how appropriate these statements feel even after I switch the person speaking them, to be from me. For example, when I read the statement that I wished I could have heard from my mother, “You are so talented and creative,” and then switch the giver of the statement to be from me, I felt a rise of recognition lift inside of my chest as if I was being seen and heard for the first time.

    When I work on this exercise, I let go of any judgment toward the people on my list because I realize that everyone did as well as they could, considering the stress they were under and the state of mind they were in.

    This exercise is not about them, it’s about me and my healing; it’s about taking the time to listen to the neglected person inside of me and allowing her voice to speak up about what she has needed for so long but has rarely received from others or from herself.

    Then the exercise shifts into being about giving and receiving these words to and from myself, in a loving way, so that I can learn how to nurture myself on a deeper level.

    Here are a few of the statements that I wish I could have heard from my mother in my early years:

    • I cherish you.
    • I want the best for you.
    • You are a good person.
    • I want you to keep growing.
    • You are smart and creative.
    • I see so much good in you.
    • I respect your opinion.
    • I believe you.
    • I trust you.
    • I appreciate how hard you try.
    • I admire you.
    • I am here for you.
    • I appreciate your help.
    • You can depend on me.

    At first, I wrote the statements in a stream of consciousness, without editing. I kept asking myself, “What words did the little girl inside of me need to hear from others when I was so young and vulnerable? What did the young woman inside of me need to hear in order to feel valuable and confident in herself?”

    I allowed myself to take breaks in my writing and return when I felt ready to continue. I found that each time I came back to the exercise, I always thought of something new to write, and as I wrote it, I would feel a sense of relief inside of me.

    Once the names on the list were all addressed, I began to gently edit the statements so that they became more appropriate for my life now. For example, I changed the statement I wrote from my brother, “I am sorry I didn’t play with you,” to read, “I allow myself to play now and have fun.”

    For the sentences that clearly did not fit, I looked to see if they had a message of their own that could be worded in another way.

    Here is an example statement from my P.E. Teacher: “I see your potential to become a strong athlete.” My first response was to delete this sentence since I am no longer involved in sports. But then I chose to rewrite it to read, “I see your potential to grow physically stronger,” which is helpful to me now since I struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome.

    I think there will always be at least a seed of something valuable to work with from each statement you’ve written.

    Once I got into the rhythm of this exercise, it woke up other nurturing thoughts in my mind that I also needed to hear. So I wrote those messages too.

    After I edited all the statements, I kept a master list and then made another copy to work with further. With this new working copy, I removed all the names that I first started with and then combined all of the statement together.

    Next, I wrote beside each statement what kind of statement it was: apology, praise, a question, or a statement of truth. Then I grouped the statements into these four categories.

    Each group has its own healing benefit. For example, the apology statements reflect the areas in my life that I may have felt neglected in. With each apology statement, I ask myself if I still neglect myself in this same area.

    For example, after I read the apology statement “I am sorry I let you down,” I can ask myself, “In what areas of my life do I let myself down now?” Or the apology statement “I am sorry I scared you.” I can ask myself, “Do I scare myself today by the way I speak to myself? Do I worry myself into a state of depression?”

    The group of question statements is a helpful list to use later as a source of inner reflection as it pertains to my life currently.

    Here are some example questions that I wrote on my list:

    • Tell me how you feel?
    • Tell me what is on your mind?
    • Tell me what you dream about?
    • Tell me what you want for your life?
    • Tell me what you believe in?
    • How can I best support you?

    Now with the two groups remaining, the praise statements and statements of truth, I used them to create my master list of nurturing things to tell myself. As I edited the statements, I either wrote them so they were speaking to me or as if I was speaking to myself, depending on what felt better. For example, “You are a precious person to me” or “I am a precious person.”

    Here are some examples of my new nurturing self-talk statements:

    • I care about myself.
    • My health is important to me.
    • I love myself.
    • I believe in myself.
    • I see my future with confidence and trust.
    • I am grateful for my life.
    • I am safe and loved.
    • I am a creative and caring person.
    • I allow myself to grow.
    • I am a smart and resourceful person.
    • I cherish the happy moments in life.
    • I appreciate kindness.
    • Life is beautiful in so many ways.
    • There is always something new to discover.
    • Never give up hope for a better day.
    • My life is guided by love.

    When I finished this exercise of nurturing statements to tell myself, I had a few hundred statements written and some were duplicates, so I chose to only keep the statements that really spoke to me and deleted the others, making it a stronger and more powerful master list.

    Now that I have made my master list, it has become an empowering tool that I can use every day. The more time I take to read and nurture myself with these loving words, the more peaceful and grounded I feel.

    And by speaking to myself more kindly, I am better able to practice unconditional self-love and make healthy choices for myself.

    You can also use this exercise as a way to build your inner sanctuary—a place you can go to in order to find nourishment and rejuvenation. This inner place of refuge will become stronger and more dependable the more you practice loving exercises like this one.

    Artwork by the author, Rita Loyd

  • Unbecoming the Old Me: How I’m Finally Discovering That Life Can Be Fun

    Unbecoming the Old Me: How I’m Finally Discovering That Life Can Be Fun

    “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” ~Albert Einstein

    I woke up one morning and realized that I had no idea who I was. I realized that over the past thirty-something years I had been everyone but myself.

    I was like a chameleon molding into the people that surrounded me. Not wanting to make noise or cause disturbance to others or trigger my own inner wounds.

    My goal was being whoever I thought the person around me wanted me to be. To be accepted, loved, and liked by others. I realize now that I was searching for something external to validate what I needed to give myself. I needed to learn who I was. I needed to like, love, and get to know myself.

    Once you discover that you do not like yourself and that you don’t even know who you are or what you like, change starts to happen. You start to identify areas where you were using people and things to fill a void that only you can fill. Alcohol to numb the pain, sex to feel less alone, to feel valuable. Helping others and fixing external problems so you don’t have to look at yourself.

    I had no clue this is what I was doing. Honestly, I thought I just wanted to help people. Turns out I was projecting externally what I needed to be doing internally. We tend to do this without any awareness. If you find yourself constantly nurturing or encouraging other people but, on the inside, you feel alone, sad, or wondering if this is all life has to offer, you may be doing this as well.

    Pay attention to what you constantly give to others. It’s likely that’s what you need to give yourself. Pay attention to what you say to others because you likely need to say that to yourself. 

    The journey to discovering myself has been a long one. It has been a fun one and a difficult one. I have explored different activities and hobbies—reflecting back on activities that I enjoyed as a child and bringing those back into my life; trying new things that I have always been curious about or wanted to try. I have kept the ones that bring me joy and peace and eliminated the ones that lower my energy.

    I have also done this with people, jobs, and my own thoughts. The voices in my head have been the most challenging to discard. But after years of consistently working with them, my inner dialogue is finally much nicer.

    Yes, the criticism does still arrive, but I see it for what it is and get curious about it. I ask if what my negative inner voice says is true. Ninety-nine percent of the time it is not. I see what it is trying to teach me.

    I often will ask myself: Who said that to you and when? Oddly enough, my thirty-year-old self’s belief system was one I built as a kid, when I concluded that I wasn’t good enough and I was only valuable when I had something to give someone. It’s really funny when you realize you are an adult body carrying around beliefs you developed as a child, with zero awareness. 

    I also had to take the time to reflect on how my actions and thoughts were playing a role in my life. I had to make the decision to basically do the opposite of what I had been doing to get different results.

    For example, instead of waiting for the people around me to start respecting and prioritizing me, I had to start respecting and prioritizing myself. I had to identify my wants, honor my needs, and set boundaries in relationships.

    Instead of sleeping in, I had to start getting up early before my son so we could have a pleasant morning versus running out the door. I had to nurture myself at the beginning of the day before the world had a chance to pull at me.

    Instead of holding my truth in, I had to muster up the courage to speak it. To share my feelings, rock the boat if I had to, and trust I wasn’t “being crazy.”

    Instead of tiptoeing around everyone and trying to please them, I had to understand that this is not even possible.

    Instead of hating myself, I had to start loving myself.

    Instead of being closed off, I had to open my heart—to myself, others, and the world.

    Instead of remaining stuck, I had to start taking baby steps to discover who I am and who I want to be. Like spending time in silence in nature so I could hear my inner voice, making art, saying positive words to myself in the mirror while brushing my teeth, and meditating for just three minutes a day.

    Before I started doing the opposite of what I had been doing, I had no clue that life could be fun. I am here to tell you that life really can be fun, you’re not alone, and by taking one small step you can begin to transform your life into something you didn’t even know was possible for yourself.

    It does take courage, compassion, consistency, and commitment, but if you start today, when you look back in a few years you will not even recognize yourself or your life.

    If you start to believe bigger than your beliefs about yourself and this world, magic will start to happen.

  • 9 Things I Would Tell My Younger Self to Help Her Change Her Life

    9 Things I Would Tell My Younger Self to Help Her Change Her Life

    “You are one decision away from a completely different life.” ~Mel Robbins

    At twenty-six years old, I lost my dad to suicide. I was heartbroken and so angry.

    My dad was not the best. Ever since I was little, he would criticize everything I did. I was never good enough for him, and I was a place he discharged his anger through emotional insults.

    It never stopped, and I was always on high alert around him. Right until the moment he took his life.

    He could also be loving, kind, funny, and warm, but my nervous system could never relax around him. He was a Jekyll and Hyde. I never knew what behavior would set him off.

    Then all of a sudden, he was gone.

    I was angry because he had caused me a lot of pain growing up, and now he had left me.

    I was angry that I loved this man so much and felt such deep pain without him. It made no sense to me. Surely my life should be better now that his constant abuse was over.

    But it was just the beginning of my emotional breakdown. Children love their parents unconditionally, no matter how we are treated. But if our parents project their pain on to us, we end up not loving ourselves.

    Now that the abuse had stopped, it was time to deal with all the emotional wounds he’d inflicted over the years.

    But I resisted this and got stuck. I struggled in romantic relationships, unconsciously dating versions of my dad.

    I was full of self-hate. He may have died, but his criticism was very much alive in my head! And I was the one now persecuting myself for everything.

    I may have loved him, but I had no love for myself, as he had taught me that I wasn’t worth that.

    I felt powerless and in so much pain. I numbed this pain with the tools he had given me—wine, TV, food, and caretaking others. I had the busiest diary so I would never have to feel.

    I had no idea how to stop feeling so awful and like I was doomed for life because of this childhood trauma I had suffered. I was in denial that I had even experienced childhood trauma.

    The man who had caused me the pain had gone, so why did I feel the same, if not worse?

    I would lie in bed at night with this huge ache, longing to be loved by someone but looking for it in all the wrong places.

    I felt trapped in my emotions and like there was no way out.

    I sit in my front room now, over fifteen years later, in a life I didn’t think was possible, in a home that feels safe and peaceful. No longer abusing myself. Doing a job that I love and married to the most amazing man.

    I feel like life is a gift and there is no dream I cannot make a reality. That pain that kept me awake at night is no longer there but replaced with love for myself, and even for my dad.

    If I could go back in time, I would tell myself these nine things to get me moving forward to the life I’ve since created. If you also grew up with an abusive parent, my list may help you too.

    1. It was not your fault.

    We put our parents on a pedestal as children because we have no choice. We need them to survive. When my dad persecuted me for not being quiet enough or not pleasing him, I translated that as “I am not good enough” and that everything was my fault.

    We often take all the blame when our parents mistreat us. But what were their stories? How did they grow up? Did someone teach them how to balance their emotions?

    I see now that my dad was struggling. He was grieving the loss of his parents and a difficult childhood. He was not given any tools to manage his emotions. He was shown how to lash out and project them. He was shown how to drink to numb them out.

    He would come home from a job he felt he had to do, feeling tired and stressed, and blame others to help himself calm down.

    Realizing this helped me let myself off the hook. It has also helped me forgive him, which has brought me peace. I started to understand him and his traumas. He was repeating a pattern of survival that his parents had taught him.

    This is generational trauma, and it wasn’t his fault. But it was his responsibility to keep his children safe, which he didn’t fulfill because he had no idea he was traumatizing them!

    2. Reparent the wounded child within.

    The versions of me that still hurt and felt this ache to be loved still lived within me, many years later. The seven-year-old who was shouted at for being too loud, the thirteen-year-old who didn’t study enough, and the twenty-five-year-old that wasn’t there for my dad. All these parts of me had unmet needs and were in pain.

    We can’t change the past, but we can go back in time in our imagination and be the parent we needed.

    I have imagined taking baby-me out of the house where I was born to live with adult me. Telling my parents to get some therapy and sort themselves out before they can have the baby back.

    I’ve imagined holding her and telling her how special she is. Over time, this helped that deeper pain to heal.

    3. Work on self-love.

    I was always seeking love and validation outside of myself.

    I was never taught or shown that self-love and self-care are necessities. You have to be able to fill up your own cup in order to love others.

    I would tell my younger self to take a step back from pleasing others and finding a man. I would tell her to focus on giving herself the love she longed for.

    For example, speaking to myself with love and kindness, having quality alone time, buying myself gifts—these were all things I longed for from a man, but I needed to start doing them for myself.

    I needed to spend time every day giving myself love and listening to my needs, not ignoring them. Do I need rest? Water? A healthy meal? To just breathe? To be in nature to calm my anxiety?

    Learning to listen to my own needs and fulfill them took time. It felt unnatural. It was a new behavior I had to repeat every day, and then soon enough it became second nature.

    4. Get to know your shadow.

    We all have parts of us that are dysfunctional and behaviors that are not serving us.

    For me, it was emotional eating, drinking wine, pursuing emotionally unavailable men, and caretaking my family. The last two made me miserable.

    But I blamed the men and my family for being needy. I didn’t take responsibility for my own behavior.

    I felt powerless over how others treated me. I was trapped in this victim state, and then I would numb with food and booze.

    Getting to know my shadow and recognizing my toxic behaviors were the first two steps to change.

    When a man didn’t treat me well, I stopped trying to prove my worth and changed my behavior to move away from the relationship.

    When it hurt, I learned how to love myself instead of chasing someone else’s love.

    Ask yourself: What am I doing that hurts me? Then work on a step-by-step plan to change the behavior. Baby steps are key in this process, as you can get overwhelmed by trying to do too much at once.

    5. Get support.

    It takes time and work to change toxic behavior and heal. I would give my younger self permission to get help when I was struggling with a change. For example, giving up toxic relationships and booze was a real challenge for me. Finding people who had already been through the transformation I was seeking was so valuable.

    Sometimes this would mean listening to a podcast or reading a book, blogs like this one, or posts on social media, and other times it would be investing in working with someone who had already done the work.

    When you work with someone who’s already made the change you’re seeking, they can outline the steps they took, which saves time and energy and makes you feel less alone.

    6. Get in your body.

    I once was a floating head and very disconnected from my body. It didn’t feel safe to feel fear, so I had to be that way to survive my life!

    I would tell my younger self to slow down and notice how her body feels. That it was safe to do that now.

    For example, certain relationships made my heart race out of fear. This was a sign that they weren’t good for me.

    I would also tell her to find ways to bring the body back into balance by discharging the stress and fear.

    For example, breathwork techniques, movement, and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) tapping all help us process our emotions rather than running away from them.

    7. It’s safe to speak your truth.

    I have always been incredibly loyal in relationships. Growing up with a dad who was awful meant I had few boundaries and expectations in relationships. This was the only way I could have some form of a relationship with my dad.

    I would let my younger self know it is okay to step back or walk away from relationships that don’t feel good or safe, even family.

    I would let her know that she can always express her truth in relationships and explain when a boundary has been crossed, but that also it’s okay to walk away. Especially in relationships that feel unsafe and abusive.

    8. Celebrate all your progress.

    A journey of healing and transformation takes time! It’s a marathon, not a sprint. It’s so important to celebrate the smallest of wins daily. For example, “I meditated every day this week,” or “I said no to an invite so I could take care of myself when I used to say yes all the time.” Change starts small and grows big.

    At the beginning especially it is so important to track everything because it feels like such a mountain to climb. It will motivate you to carry on. Seeing the little changes shows your efforts are paying off.

    Younger me didn’t have a family that celebrated small wins and growth. They focused on my imperfections and were highly critical. By celebrating myself, I help that little girl feel enough!

    9. Set intentions and dream big.

    Each month, set little goals to improve your life and keep you moving forward. This could be for your personal growth, relationships, physical health, emotional health, money, love, or work.

    Make the goal super small, for example, “In January, I will not text my ex.”

    You may want to set an intention to take better care of yourself. Break this down into daily tasks to repeat for the month. And if you don’t know what you need to work on, maybe your task for the month is to read a book to help you find out.

    With intention you can create the life you dream of. But often we don’t know what our dreams are. Get still and explore what would bring you happiness.

    I think of younger-me who looked out of her bedroom window wishing for a safe home.  I think of that little girl and the life she deserves. A full, fulfilling life, just like I’d want for my own child. This has helped me to dream bigger to create a life that is not only safe but also makes me happy.

    —

    You too deserve an amazing life! Not a life stuck in patterns of surviving and playing it small, but one where you heal and thrive. Your parents treated you the way they did not because you were not enough but because they were wounded. You were always enough, and now you have the power to take daily steps to change your reality so it is not longer tainted by trauma.

    I have the most incredible life now, and it has and continues to be a journey of healing. I wish I would have done these things sooner, but it’s never too late to take the first steps on a new path! There is hope, and I believe in you.

  • How I Stopped Feeling Embarrassed and Ashamed of Being Single

    How I Stopped Feeling Embarrassed and Ashamed of Being Single

    “Be proud of who you are, not ashamed of how someone else sees you.” ~Unknown

    “When was your last relationship?” my hairdresser asked as she twisted the curling wand into my freshly blow-dried hair.

    “Erm, around two years ago.” I lied.

    “Why did you break up?” she asked.

    “Oh, he had a lot of issues. It wasn’t really working out.” I lied again.

    I had gotten quite good at this, lying to hide my shame over being in my early thirties and never having been in a serious relationship. I had learned to think on my feet; that way, no one would ever call me out. The last thing I needed was people’s pity and judgment.

    I sat in my chair thinking about what she might say. Should I have told her that I have never been in a serious relationship? Would she be compassionate or judgmental? Would she feel sorry for me and think there was something wrong with me? That was a risk I was not willing to take.

    I felt so much shame and embarrassment around my relationship status that I would avoid discussions about it at all costs. Or I’d lie or get defensive with family and friends who would bring it up, to the point that they noticed it was a sore subject and would avoid asking about my love life.

    I learned to recognize how shame manifested in my physical body—the anxiety I felt when someone would ignorantly ask when I would be having children, the rapid heartbeat when asked if I would be bringing a plus-one to gatherings, and the knots in my stomach when I would be invited places that would consist of mainly couples.

    The shame I felt around my relationship status had always prevented me from speaking my truth because I was afraid I would be judged harshly.

    I felt like someone with an addiction who was in denial. I was so ashamed that I couldn’t bring myself to say the words “I’ve never had a serious relationship” to anyone, not even my closest friends and family, despite them knowing deep down.

    The Quest to Find Love

    I felt aggrieved that I had gotten to my early thirties without ever being in a serious relationship. The creator didn’t love me; it had forgotten about me. I desperately wanted a loving relationship, as I was tired of being alone, and I wanted to experience true love.

    I had a warped belief that being in love meant that I would feel happier, content, and life would genuinely be easier. After all, this is what we are told in fairy tales—the princess gets her knight in shining armor and they live happily ever after!

    Over the years, I delved into the dating scene, trying dating apps, and keeping an active social life so I could meet people. Time went by, and I dated multiple unavailable men who ran when they sensed I wanted something serious.

    This eventually got tiresome, and it took a toll on my self-esteem and confidence. I felt undesirable and not good enough.

    I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong! Was I being punished? I was well-educated, with a good career and prospects, and I wasn’t bad looking at all. And more importantly, I was considered kind, outgoing, and friendly by those who knew me.

    Enough Is Enough

    I was exhausted and frustrated and had no more energy left in me to keep looking for a good match.

    I was so fed up with being met with disappointment and feeling bad about myself that I slowly began to give up on love.

    I convinced myself that I would never find the right partner, that I wouldn’t experience the over-glamorized idea of love I had conjured up in my head from early childhood.

    This only heightened my feelings of shame. It told me that not only was I not good enough to have a partner, I wasn’t capable of seeing something through until the end, and I didn’t possess the courage to ‘tough it out.’ Shame told me I was a bad person, unworthy of love.

    Sulking into my pillow on a Sunday afternoon, I had a sudden thought: Maybe it’s not them, maybe it’s you. I got angry at this thought. How could I possibly be to blame? I’ve done nothing wrong. The only thing I am guilty of is wanting to be loved.

    Another thought came: Maybe you can do something to change your experiences. This thought didn’t get me as angry, and after reflecting on it for a day or two, I concluded that I had to take some responsibility for the kind of men I was attracting.

    I took a step back from finding ‘the one’ and put my energy and focus on working on myself. I concluded that most of the qualities I wanted in a man I didn’t even have in myself—for example, confidence and assertiveness.

    Compassion Over Everything

    I learned that shame can be ‘killed’ when it’s met with compassion, so I started being kinder and less critical of myself. I made a conscious effort to avoid negative thoughts, praised myself as often as I could, and tried not to be too hard on myself.

    I confided in my close friends about the shame I felt around my single status, despite it taking much courage to do so. The more I admitted to people that I had never been in a serious relationship, the better I felt and the more I began to accept it.

    Being vulnerable with those I loved was like a weight being lifted off my shoulders. What’s even better was that I wasn’t judged harshly or pitied as I anticipated, and instead, I was shown love and compassion.

    I remember telling a new colleague that I hadn’t been in a serious relationship, and she said, “Me too.” My fear of how she would react quickly turned to relief that there were people just like me, that I had nothing to be ashamed of.

    I was, however, choosy about whom I told my story to, as not everyone is deserving of seeing me at my most vulnerable. I knew I had to be careful because if I was not met with compassion and was judged and ridiculed, this could have exacerbated the shame I already felt.

    Love is Love, No Matter Where It Comes From

    I began to realize that love is love, and regardless of my relationship status, I had plenty of it. I didn’t need a partner to feel loved, and love isn’t less valuable because it doesn’t come from a relationship.

    We can be shown love by our friends, family, colleagues, ourselves, and even strangers. This love is just as special and meaningful as the love you experience in a relationship.

    With this in mind, I began to cultivate more self-love in order to boost my confidence and self-esteem. After all, the best relationship I’ll ever have is the one I have with myself.

    I started being kind to myself and saying nice things about myself through daily affirmations. I also accepted compliments when I was given them, took time out for self-care, and put boundaries in place where needed.

    As a result, my confidence and self-esteem grew, and I started to understand my worth and value.

    Letting Go of the Need to Find Love

    Over time, I began to let go of the need to find love. I hadn’t noticed that it had completely taken over every part of my being. I wasn’t closed off to finding love; in fact, I was very open about finding a potential partner. Only this time, I was okay with it if it didn’t happen.

    I let go of the idea that someone would be coming to rescue me, and I concluded that I could be my own hero and best friend.

    I let go of the idea that I needed to be in a relationship to be happy and made a conscious decision to be happy at that very moment. As a result, I began to feel free, liberated, and completely content with where I was in life.

    When I let go, I noticed that the shame I felt around my relationship status had stemmed from fear. I was scared of what people would think of me because I wasn’t meeting the status quo. I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to start a family.

    Where I Am Now

    I still haven’t met ‘the one,’ and I’m okay with this. I am now at peace, joyful, and enjoying my life as it is in this present moment.

    I no longer feel the shame I once felt around my relationship status or the fear that I have been left behind. I understand that I don’t have to be ashamed, as there are plenty of others just like me.

    I choose to see my single status as my superpower. I get to use this time to learn and grow. I embrace and appreciate every moment of being single, as I know that when I do get into a relationship (which I will), I will miss moments of being single and having no one to answer to.

    There are, of course, times when negative thoughts and behaviors try to rear their ugly head, but I simply remember who I am and ask myself, “Does this thought or behavior align with what I want or who I want to be?” If it doesn’t, I simply let it go.

    For anyone reading this who’s experiencing feelings of shame and fear because they do not have a partner, remember you’re still worthy single, and you deserve your own compassion and love. Once you give these things to yourself, you set yourself free.

  • Why I Didn’t Trust Myself to Make Decisions (and What If It’s All Okay?)

    Why I Didn’t Trust Myself to Make Decisions (and What If It’s All Okay?)

    “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” ~Mary Oliver

    Lately, I’ve been taking time to think about what I actually want. Not what I “should” want or what other people want for me.

    One thing I have learned is that mistakes happen when you choose not to follow your inner guidance system. The problem is that, for many years, I chose not to listen to mine.

    Whenever it screamed and pulled at me, desperate to get my attention (“Don’t purchase a car from that shady car dealership! Don’t go out with that person who makes you feel very uneasy! Don’t spend thousands of dollars on a degree that doesn’t make you happy!”), I would simply override it. I would tune out everything my gut was telling me, and instead, justify in my head why doing xyz would be a perfectly fine idea.

    After enough of these experiences piled up, rather than arriving at the realization that I willfully chose to ignore my intuition and that’s what got me into trouble… I arrived at a somewhat different conclusion. I decided that I simply wasn’t good at making decisions.

    So I stopped trusting myself. Before making an important decision about anything, I’d always have another person “validate” it. You know, just in case. My justification was, if I end up making a totally messed up decision, well, I don’t need to feel too badly about it since it was backed by another human being. Evading personal responsibility at its best.

    Now, short term, this sort of worked.

    The people offering guidance and helping me with my decisions were sound-of-mind individuals who cared about me. In fact, some of their guidance was largely beneficial to me, and I’m glad I listened.

    The thing is, while listening to others can be very helpful, it should not be used as a crutch. If someone gently encourages you to make a decision that you know, deep down, is good for you, that is perfectly fine. However, if you are relying solely on input from others because you’re afraid to make the “wrong decision,” that needs to be examined.

    Three problems started to slowly arise for me.

    One, I started to lose my own voice. I started to forget my own taste and what I liked, disliked, agreed with, or disagreed with. I convinced myself that I honestly didn’t know. But oh, I knew. I just was terrified of admitting it to others, much less myself.

    Two, there were occasionally moments where someone’s advice did not resonate with what I wanted. Wait, disagreeing with someone?! Feeling like I might have a separate, completely valid opinion that is different than another human’s?? TOO MUCH TO HANDLE.

    And three, chaos ensued when multiple people had multiple opinions about how I should live my life. And every single person expected me to honor their advice and guidance. And oh my god, what do I even do now?

    After years of dealing with the anxiety caused by trying to do everything everyone wanted, as well as the deep depression that arose as I realized I had become a former shell of who I was, unsure of who I was or what I wanted, I knew that something needed to change. I was lost and slipping away.

    I started making small decisions. It felt terrifying.

    I would like to buy this shirt. I would like to eat sushi for lunch. I would like to stay in this evening, rather than go out.

    Little wins for self-advocacy!

    Then I started making bigger decisions.

    I would like a new job. I would like to stop “hustling” during my non-work hours and just do things that make me happy. I’d like to take more abstract, nature photos than cookie-cutter family photos.

    With each little decision I made, I also made sure to pay close attention to how I was feeling.

    If I felt a tightness in my chest and a feeling of uneasiness, I would pay attention to that. I’d think to myself, “You know what, brain… I know you might object to this for various reasons, but the heart is telling me to steer clear of this decision.”

    I slowly started becoming much more aware of everything my body was feeling at any given moment.

    I also started to realize something else. Maybe there truly are no “shoulds.”

    No matter what decision you make, there will be someone who is all for it and someone who disagrees completely. There are thousands of choices that a person can make in a day. It’s impossible to guarantee that everyone will like or approve of all of these little choices. From the decision to order a cinnamon dulce latte at Starbucks (yes, I see all you Dunkin’ Donuts diehards out there cringing), to the decision to dye your hair purple.

    What about the even bigger decisions? Such as the choice to work a certain job, have a family or not have a family, follow a certain political party, etc.

    What if the whole point is to simply live in accordance with our values, and honor other peoples’ desire to do the same?

    What if it is literally all okay?

    To plant down roots. To fly with wings.

    To be financially abundant and have more than you could need. To have just enough to live happily and comfortably.

    To be tall, short, skinny, fat, lean, muscular, and everything in between.

    To live on your own or to live with others. To be in a relationship or to be single. To work sixty hours a week or five hours a week. To have a job you adore or a job that pays the bills.

    To be a work in progress. To be sure. To be unsure.

    To still be learning. To still be searching. To be saved. To not believe. To be straight, gay, bi, or none of the above. To love men. To love women. To love animals. To simply love.

    What if it is okay to have hard ambition and dreams that are larger than life?

    What if it is okay to have soft ambition and dreams that are just right, which make us happy and honor our capacity?

    What if it is okay to not have any “ambitions,” per se, and to simply focus on cultivating habits rather than reaching goals?

    To experience satisfaction on our own terms without needing to prove anything to anyone, ever.

    What if being enough isn’t about trying to be everything to everyone? Rather, it is about being who you want to be, unstoppably, and nothing more?

  • 7 Ways Childhood Trauma Shows Up in Your Romantic Relationships

    7 Ways Childhood Trauma Shows Up in Your Romantic Relationships

    “Love is the greatest miracle cure. Loving ourselves creates miracles in our lives.” ~Louise Hay

    When you are unlucky in love, you tend to blame yourself for not being enough and maybe blame fate for not giving you a break already! Everyone else around you is in happy, long-term relationships, but you just can’t get there.

    You might come to the conclusion that there is something wrong with you—you’re too old or too fat—and all the good ones are already married, and you will just die alone! You never think for one moment that your relationship history is playing out a dynamic from childhood.

    I felt like this for thirty-seven years of my life. It was like I kept dating the same man but in different bodies. The way I felt was always the same. Always chasing after someone who was unavailable in some way. Some had addictions, some were in relationships, some prioritized other people, but the underlying feeling was the same. I am not good enough to be loved.

    Other times I avoided relationships all together, or I was the one running away from the ones who did want me, telling myself that they were not what I wanted. In all situations it ended in the same way—me single, feeling incredibly lonely and hopeless. Looking at everyone who could manage a relationship wondering what was wrong with me.

    I continued aimlessly looking for love in all the wrong places, completely unaware of how my childhood was impacting my relationship choices. Thankfully, I began a journey of healing that started by reading and listening to self-help content. I became aware of Pia Melody and the concept of love addiction after reading her book by the same name.

    This relationship behavior I kept repeating was actually a trauma response. I had grown up with a dad who was emotionally unavailable and very much focused on his own needs. Unconsciously, I was finding him in these other relationships. It got worse after his suicide.

    Since then, I’ve learned a lot about how our childhood trauma plays out in relationships. Here are seven ways it can happen:

    1. You are in a relationship but don’t feel loved.

    You are in the relationship you once wished for, but you still feel this emptiness and feel like your partner is to blame. If they did x, then you would feel loved and enough.

    You blame them and they trigger you. But are you expecting the love and care from them that you are not even giving to yourself? Are you filling up your own love so that their love is just a bonus? Are you even noticing the ways they show you love? It may be different to your love language. Maybe things are not right, but are you working on repairing the issues rather than blaming or ignoring them?

    Our first relationships (with our parents or childhood caregivers) teach us about attachment. If your relationship with your parents was sometimes really loving but other times they were cold and distant, you didn’t grow up with love being available and consistent. Which is why relationships can make you feel anxious and you can over-give and feel lonely in a relationship.

    2. You are the fixer in love.

    When you date or even marry, your partner tends to be the broken bird that you are obsessed with fixing. Or they might be a narcissist who is all about their needs and you taking care of them. Either way, you have found yourself in toxic relationships that don’t feel safe or good.

    They could be an addict and you pour all your energy trying to save them while feeling depleted and unloved. You become almost obsessed with how you can save this person you love so much. It’s quite possible you’re repeating a dynamic with one of your parents.

    For example, I very much repeated a pattern of finding men to fix because my relationship with my dad was all about his needs and his struggles with his mental health. I was always saving him, and when I did, I would receive love from him. I thought this was love, so I repeated this unconsciously in other relationships.

    3. You chase unavailable love.

    You spend all your time and energy chasing after someone who is not available in some way. They need fixing, have addiction or family issues, are in a relationship already, or won’t commit to you. But you think of them day and night. You are obsessed with getting them to choose you, but they don’t and this spirals you into despair.

    You just keep trying and sometimes use other addictions to numb the pain. I was addicted to a psychic line at the height of my love addiction with an unavailable man because I was looking for confirmation that we’d end up together. This is what launched my healing journey, as it really did make me feel insane at times, especially when the object of my affection kept coming forward and then running away.

    We often will attract people who are playing out their attachment trauma from childhood with us. Often one that is opposite to us. So if you chase love, you may attract someone who runs away.

    4. You avoid relationships entirely.

    Falling in love feels like too much and it just makes you feel so anxious, so you might avoid relationships entirely and seem to function better single. But the loneliness is intense. You wish you could be held at night.

    You will do things to avoid these feelings, like overwork, take care of others, keep your social calendar super busy, numb with TV, drink all the time—whatever you can do to not feel your feelings!

    If you even attempt to go on a dating app your heart races and you feel terrified. So you run back to your safe single life, wondering what is wrong with you that you can’t even go on a date.

    5. You ignore the red flags.

    The object of your affection does things that don’t feel safe, yet you don’t say anything out of fear of losing them. You have no idea how to set a boundary and ignore warning signs that this person may not be good for you—how they talk to you, put you down, deny your reality, or even get physically violent.

    Since you grew up with a parent that did the same to you, it feels almost normal. Even though your body will tense up around them, you are used to that. You stay too long in relationships that don’t make you feel good, where you get very little. You feel like this is the best you can get, so you focus on the good rather than noticing the bad.

    6. You feel suffocated in your relationship.

    You are in a relationship that feels safe and easy, but then your brain starts to question it all. Am I attracted to this person? Do I feel suffocated by them? Are they the right one for me? You will convince yourself that they are wrong for you and end the relationship, as you have no idea what healthy love even is. It makes you feel so anxious to end up with the wrong person.

    7. You don’t think you can get better.

    You are in a relationship because you don’t want to be alone, but it doesn’t make you happy. But you don’t think you deserve any better. The fear of leaving and being alone feels like too much, so you just stay. Resenting the other person for not making you happy but not taking any action to make your situation better.

    —

    Many of us fall into more than one of these categories.

    Without healing and inner work, we unconsciously play out patterns from the past and stop ourselves from having a fulfilling relationship.

    We can’t even objectively see what is wrong because so much of what we are experiencing in our relationships is based on our past trauma wounds. We don’t know what we don’t know, and if no one  modelled a healthy relationship for us growing up, how can we know what it is ?

    I had no ideas my parents’ relationship was unhealthy because the constant fighting was my normal, so I had no idea I could have something different.

    Romantic love felt stressful for me for many years. I was either pining after them or they were driving me mad. I didn’t know there could be any another way.

    But understanding my relationship patterns and where they came from has been a game changer for me.

    Now, after a journey of healing the past relational traumas with my parents through therapy, books, and support groups, I know how to have healthy love. What changed was I learned how to love myself and care for myself the way I wish others would love me.

    This changed everything…

    As my relationship with myself improved, so did my relationship with men. I am now married, and thankful my marriage is nothing like my parents’. When there’s conflict, we have the tools to move through it and come out stronger.

    We have a strong relationship in large part because I have done a ton of inner work and healing. Unlike in previous relationships, I now know my own worth, and I also know how to express my needs and boundaries with love and kindness.

    I finally took responsibility for my behavior and moved out of victim mode. This changed the relationships I attracted, not just romantic. I now knew how to treat myself with love and respect, and this meant the quality of love I received was healthier as a result.

    Our internal issues play out in our relationships. Once we heal on the inside, everything changes.

    Love yourself the way you wish to be loved by someone else. Notice when your relationship is triggering negative emotions and ask yourself, “What do I need?” Start to give yourself what you need and then you will learn to ask others for what you need. Showering yourself with your own love will change everything.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    What if you can find small ways to improve:

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

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

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

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

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

    What if each person pays it forward a little more?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • All the Wrong Reasons I Slept with Men Before and Why I’m Changing Now

    All the Wrong Reasons I Slept with Men Before and Why I’m Changing Now

    “We think we want sex, but it’s not always about sex. It’s intimacy we want. To be touched. Looked at. Admired. Smiled at. Laugh with someone. Feel safe. Feel like someone’s really got you. That’s what we crave.” ~Anonymous

    I have not had sex in years. I was meditating one day, and my mind was silent (an extremely rare event), then I heard “Do not have sex until you are married.” Something I heard often growing up as a southern Baptist.

    I started breathing fast, and my thoughts immediately started racing. I am pretty sure I cried, if not in that moment, later on. I felt I had been given clear instructions on what to do to take my life to another level.

    The problem was that marriage was not on my to-do list. I do like the idea of monogamy, but I don’t like the idea of being legally bonded to someone for life. Then, if for whatever reason that does not work out, I have to go through the legal system for my breakup.

    I also thought that would mean I would never have sex again, so my mind was all over the place. Fear had taken over. But then I actually listened to that message.

    The first thing I became clear about was how, on a subconscious level, I was having sex with men before I was ready because I lacked the confidence to say no. I had a fear that if I did not have sex with them, they would not like me or stick around. 

    I also learned that I was using sex to get my needs met. Sometimes I was just lonely and wanted to cuddle or be held, but I would not communicate that. I felt that no one would give me that, so ultimately, I would end up knocking boots with someone.

    I learned that I had a belief that my value was tied to my sexuality. I also learned that when I have sex with someone, I develop a strong attachment to them. I was not able to think clearly. It no longer became about growth or love but about ego. Are they going to call me? Do they like me? I never asked myself if I liked them.

    Although I have no clue as to when I will be sexually active again, I do know this: I have redefined my definition of marriage to one of a spiritual partnership. A union, not legally bound but soulfully bound for whatever time period it flows. And that’s what I’m waiting for now.

    To me, this non-legal marriage is about growth. It is a safe space to evaluate whether or not the relationship should continue. Maybe with a weekly or monthly check in. If it feels right, you keep going forward; if someone decides it’s not working for whatever reason, you move on. People grow and change. Sometimes you grow together, sometimes you grow apart. There is not this underlining pressure to stay bonded to someone your twenty-year-old self attracted.

    A spiritual partnership is a place where it is safe for us to be our authentic selves. We encourage each other, support one another. Explore our sexuality. There is a comfort in telling the other person what feels good and what does not. It is safe to say and share what we think and feel. I think we may find this type of spiritual partnership ends up lasting much longer than most marriages.

    Another lesson I have learned since I received the message about not having sex is that I always thought sex was something that you had to do. I didn’t think a person could function without it. Turns out you can. I have become more familiar with my body and what I like and what feels good to me. I have become more confident and learned that my worth and value is not at all related to my sexuality.

    I have also learned patience, trust, and surrender. We have a tendency to settle because of fear. This is something I want to challenge.

    I want to see what it is like to wait. To be patient and trust that I will form a meaningful relationship in time if I don’t jump on anyone who shows interest in me because I’m afraid of being alone. I have a feeling it will be much more rewarding than I can imagine. 

    I have learned that my body is sacred, that I want to share this with one person and give this to them as gift. I want to wait to have sex until I am in a spiritual partnership not because someone told me to but because that feels right for me. Not having sex helped me learn to love my self, develop my own set of beliefs outside the religion I was raised in, and flourish into someone that I like and respect.

    If you find yourself having thoughts like “Men are always taking advantage of me” or “There are no good men out there” or maybe “I feel like I am being used,” I highly recommend getting quiet with yourself and asking yourself: What role am I playing in this? What am I doing to create this reality for myself? What can I do differently to get different results?

  • I Worry I’ll Never Change – Here’s Why I Still Accept Myself

    I Worry I’ll Never Change – Here’s Why I Still Accept Myself

    “Our journey is not about changing into the person we want to become. It’s about letting go of all we are not.” ~Nikki van Schyndel, Becoming Wild

    I recently went on personal retreat to once again try to heal my wounds, see my patterns, and find my purpose. I loaded my car with journals from the last two decades and a book of poetry dating back to 1980. I packed my cooler full of nourishing food, but then added a six pack of beer and an expensive bottle of wine—completely unaware that I was about to sabotage my personal growth by continuing to numb my pain.

    I had decided to use my retreat time to review my journal writings, pull out any wisdom I wanted to keep, and release the rest in a burning ceremony. On my first day, I labeled each journal with the year it was written and organized them all chronologically. This task felt arduous yet satisfying when I sat back and looked at the twenty-five volumes all laid out neatly in order.

    I spent the next three days re-reading each and every one. Re-living the emotional angst of problems in this relationship, then the next … and the next. Teasing out the patterns of insecurity, sabotage, and grieving. Re-visiting the same themes and my same desire and commitment, after the ending of each relationship, to be this person who stopped drinking in excess, meditated daily, ate healthy foods, and took good care of her body.

    Over and over, I had glimpses of this centered, calm, wise woman who I’d like to think is the real me. Yet over and over, I’d jumped into another relationship, lost myself, and repeated the pattern. Pages and pages full of the same story, only with different characters and at different times. As I read each journal, I tore out pages to burn, cut out sections to keep, and drank to numb the pain.

    On the fourth day I finished organizing the scraps of paper I wanted to keep and sat back with immense satisfaction. By early afternoon I had my fire going and drank my first beer of the day as I burned … and burned … and burned. Words turning into ashes. I stayed emotionally distant, cut off from my feelings, not making much of a ceremony of it after all.

    Feeling restless, I downed the last of my beer and pulled on my hiking boots. The trail outside my cabin began with a steep decline, winding along the side of the mountain and deep into the woods. As I walked, I kept thinking, “I haven’t changed. I’m still the same. What will it take to change? Why can’t I be that person I say I want to be? My life is one big loop.”

    I thought maybe the answer was that I just needed to be more self-disciplined. However, I immediately noticed the word “discipline” repelled me. If there is one thing I know about myself, I am not one to obey rules or codes of behavior—and I already punish myself enough. So, no, self-discipline wasn’t the answer. It was clear that I had spent a lifetime trying that approach and beating myself up for not succeeding. I kept on walking.

    At some point I questioned if maybe this was what life was really all about: the striving to be someone we are not. By that time, I was walking back uphill and had to stop frequently to catch my breath.

    Standing alone in the woods with my heart beating hard, staring blankly at the trees, I wondered if maybe the answer was just to embrace who I am. It’s pretty clear, after reading over my life for twenty years, I haven’t been able to change.

    My mind continued to whirl: But I’m not able to accept those parts of myself that drink too much or can’t stay focused. I don’t want to be that person who is overweight. I really do want to meditate. I stopped again, looking down the mountainside from which I had come. Apparently embracing myself wasn’t quite the answer either.

    By the time I had returned to my cabin, I no longer wanted to drink. I reflected again on the common thread throughout the years and suddenly saw the essence of myself that is timeless.

    It was there in my poetry from over forty years ago, in the heartbreak when I sabotaged yet another relationship, and in the yearning to be different.

    In a flash of insight, I recognized—contrary to the self-criticism that had been running through my head—the unchanged me was not a bad self. She is someone who wants to do better, who wants to be better, who recognizes the impermanence of time and seeks to grow.

    As I saw her, I knew this was the me I could totally embrace. I briefly thought about starting a new journal with this great insight, then laughed because I knew, if I did, I’d be reading it in twenty years, shaking my head, and saying “nothing has changed.” Then I would beat myself up for not being who I thought I wanted to be, and the cycle would just continue.

    In this recognition, I knew that those parts of me I so strongly criticized weren’t going to go away. And while I couldn’t embrace them, I could accept them with greater compassion and love.

    I saw the truth that even if I don’t meditate daily, exercise, eat healthy all the time, and have a full and balanced life, the part of me that strives to do those things is always there. She was in every page where I said I wanted to make those choices, and she’s been with me all along. She is the one I need to accept and embrace; it’s not who I want to be, it’s who I am.

    The review of my life helped me understand it’s a process. That timeless part of me may come and go, just like I have my moments of awakening to my wisdom and then forgetting it all. Sometimes the me who struggles to make healthy choices is going to hijack my life. I can accept that is a part of being human. It’s not self-discipline I need, it’s self-acceptance of my duality. Both my wise woman and my saboteur.

    I am a wise and powerful woman. I am a kind, sensitive, and caring soul. I love deeply. I care deeply. I feel deeply. I don’t need to escape from who I am; I simply need to remember. Ultimately, what really needs to change is that I need to nurture self-compassion and self-acceptance at the deepest level.

    My last day at the cabin, I awoke to sunshine and blue skies. I felt good and strong. I spent part of the day shopping in the craft stores of the nearby village, and before I knew it, I was halfway to the liquor store. I kept trying to convince myself it was okay, but recognizing I wanted to make a different choice, I managed to turn around before it was too late.

    I chose a waterfall hike and scrambled past the tourists, up to the top of the falls. The rocks were a slippery slope, but the irony of that and the potential of me drinking didn’t quite register until later. When I reached the top, I sat a moment to meditate. As I closed my eyes, I embraced this timeless essence and felt so much peace and gratitude for her presence.

    My inner saboteur tried to take over again when I got back to my car. Sitting in the parking lot, I asked myself, “What do you hope to accomplish by getting a drink?” Then, I laughed at the quick and witty answer, “A hangover.” I drove back to my cabin, made myself a healthy meal, and drank a glass of water.

    I understand now this journey is a day-by-day, moment-by-moment reclaiming of who I am. I also understand the part of me that has been in control when I’ve forgotten my essence isn’t going to disappear overnight.

    However, I no longer fool myself into thinking anything is wrong with me. I recognize and embrace my commitment to growing in wisdom, strength, and joy. And I embrace all of who I am, while having compassion for the parts of me that struggle.

  • 10 Highly Sensitive People Share What Helps Them Take the Sting Out of Criticism

    10 Highly Sensitive People Share What Helps Them Take the Sting Out of Criticism

    Criticism can be especially hard for highly sensitive people because we try so hard and we care so much. It’s really fascinating how much it can affect HSPs in particular.

    I want to share that because it normalizes our experience, to know we’re not alone in how we experience things. I certainly have developed some tools to help with criticism but can still be impacted at times.

    On an anonymous survey I posted, someone wrote that they find my voice so shrill that they could not stand listening to me. I felt the sting.

    But it’s important to realize criticisms are opinions that vary from person to person, and therefore, we have to be careful about what we take in and what we believe. To provide an example of that, many others have shared my voice is soothing, calm, and nurturing. Notice how opposite those opinions are?

    So the next time you receive criticism, I want you to remember this example and know that criticism has nothing to do with us personally and usually comes from a painful place inside another. People are going to have many different types of opinions. What’s important is that we don’t soak them in.

    It’s helped a lot to do my own personal growth work and build my self-esteem. When my self-esteem was low, criticisms knocked me down hard, and for a long time. When I had no personal value, I believed the criticism.

    It took time to build up my sense of self, and it will take time to build yours if that’s an issue for you too.

    When you feel the sting, acknowledge it and give yourself some compassion. Remind yourself of your value and your intentions. Also, focus on some positives about you so that negativity bias of the brain doesn’t take over. Remember, it takes eight positives to neutralize one negative.

    Not everyone is going to like us, and that’s okay. What’s important is that we learn to love and support our sensitive hearts and know our intentions come from good places.

    I don’t think anyone is completely immune to the impacts of criticism. Case in point, here’s what some HSPs in my Sensitive Empowerment Community commented after reading some of my thoughts on criticism:

    1. The power of self-compassion

    “I remember when I would be hurt when I was a kid my mom would tell me to ‘get over it.’ I remember that being invalidating, unhelpful, and actually hurt me more. I think it would be powerful to teach our sensitive children the art of self-compassion. Can you imagine a whole generation of sensitive children raised with self-compassion? I have found that skill to be one of the best things that I’ve developed. It helps me with everything now. I think that it’s probably a tool that we can constantly sharpen.”

    2. The importance of self-care

    “Criticism is still extremely hard on me to the point where it will put me out of commission for a minute (or days even). I’m working on not letting others’ criticism flatten me. I just know, when my rest and my health are in order, it’s much easier to shake it off. When I feel criticized, I’m starting to immediately make a list of people who support me and think differently than people who criticize me and speak unkindly.”

    3. It’s more about them than us

    “I find criticism extremely difficult. For me, there is a family wound around criticism, so I can have a deep, painful reaction. Self-compassion has really helped me work through those reactions. I heard something once that often comes to my mind these days—what someone says about us tells us more about them and how they see the world than it is information about us. I find this really helpful because I used to take every single thing someone said about me as truth, but seeing that people are seeing us through the lens of all their wounds and experiences takes the sting away a bit.”

    4. Perfectionism vs. our innate drive for excellence

    “What you said resonated so much with me (and a big yes to the knife in the heart analogy!)— especially that the desire to avoid criticism is what has caused or contributed to your perfectionism. I feel exactly the same way. Now I work really hard on trying to figure out when something is just my innate drive for excellence or when it’s more a perfectionism driven by fear/avoidance.”

    5. How it helps to build our self-esteem

    “I used to hold onto criticism much more when I was younger, and it hurt terribly. Working on myself and building up my self-esteem was integral to healing. I used to work with a boss who was critical of everything I did, and I dreaded going to work every day. One day I decided to begin therapy, and soon I built up enough energies to apply to graduate school. Once I got in, I put n my two-weeks notice. Going back to school was an investment in myself.”

    6. Other people’s opinions are none of our business

    “This is still something I’m working on for myself, although I’ve had huge growth in this area. I once read somewhere or heard someone say that ‘what other people think of you is none of your business,’ and I try to remember that if I get that sting.”

    7. People who criticize often lack courage

    “Criticism can indeed be hurtful. It can be good to remember that people who criticize are often either unaware of how much work you put into doing that which they are criticizing, or they are taking out their own frustration on you. For many people, it’s more ‘comfortable’ to criticize others who have the courage to do something than to actually do something themselves.”

    8. Criticism isn’t always true

    “I’ve come a long way working with the deep sting of criticism and feeling the knife in my heart. There are moments I still feel the deep sting, but it doesn’t ‘take me out’ in the way it used to. Often, I ask myself ‘is this really true what they said?’ That helps me to come back to myself, along with breathing. I am soothed when I see the criticism is simply not about me! A work in progress going forward.”

    9. Hurt people hurt people

    “Criticism is so hard, especially because everybody wants to be accepted and respected for who they are, and the judgments of others can be hard to bear. Depending on our mindset and self-acceptance/self-confidence, it can make us see ourselves as less than if we do not have the right tools in place. I always try to remember the simple truth that ‘hurt people hurt people.’”

    10. When criticism gets to you, it’s because you care

    “I found it quite emotional reading all the posts and having my intense and long-lasting reaction to criticism normalized. I have struggled with this for a long time. I had a similar thing to you, Julie, with a comment in a survey. It was a really mean, unthoughtful commentf about a presentation I gave, and coming from someone well respected in my field of work, it was hard to take and still gets to me years later. It is helping so much to reframe it as an issue they have rather than a failing of mine! It’s a very empowering feeling. I am also trying to celebrate the fact I find criticism hard knowing that it’s because I care so deeply about doing things well and with care.”

    What about you? What helps you take the sting off criticism?

    **Some of the community comments have been edited for clarity and grammar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • How I’ve Redefined Success Since ‘Failing’ by Traditional Standards

    How I’ve Redefined Success Since ‘Failing’ by Traditional Standards

    “Once you choose hope, anything is possible.” ~Christopher Reeve

    When I was a child, I wanted to save the world. My mom found me crying in my bedroom one day. She asked what was wrong, and I said, “I haven’t done anything yet!” I couldn’t wait to grow up so I could try to make a difference.

    At fourteen, I joined a youth group that supported adults with disabilities. We hosted dances and ran a buddy program. I helped with projects at state institutions and left saddened by the conditions for the residents. I planned to work at a state institution.

    As a senior in high school, I was voted most likely to succeed. It was unexpected, like so many things in my life. I hoped to find meaningful work that helped others.

    My first year at Ohio State, I fell head over heels in love and married the boy next door. A month after my wedding, newly nineteen, I started my first full-time job as manager of a group home for men with developmental disabilities. I never finished college.

    At twenty-three, I was officially diagnosed with depression after my first baby, but the doctor didn’t tell me. I read the diagnosis in my medical record a few years later. I grew up in the sixties with negative stereotypes of mental illness. I didn’t understand it, and I thought depression meant being weak and ungrateful. I loved being a new mom, and I wanted the doctor to be wrong.

    I was a stay-at-home mom with three young children at the time of my ten-year high school reunion. The event booklet included bios. For mine, I wrote something a bit defensive about the value of being a mom since I didn’t feel successful in any traditional way.

    At thirty, I experienced daily headaches for the first time. I tried natural cures and refused all medication, even over-the-counter ones, while the headaches progressed to a constant mild level. I kept up with three busy kids, taught literacy to residents with multiple disabilities at a state institution, and barreled on. I thought I understood challenges.

    At forty, I went to a pain clinic at Ohio State and received another depression diagnosis. This time it made sense. The diagnosis still made me feel vaguely ashamed, weak. Still, I rationalized it away.

    Which came first, the depression or the headache? Maybe it was the headache’s fault. Anti-depressants were diagnosed for the first time, which managed my depression. Until…

    When I was forty-two, I fell asleep at the wheel with my youngest daughter Beth in the passenger seat. She sustained a spinal cord injury that left her paralyzed from the chest down. I quit my job at the institution to be her round-the-clock caregiver.

    Beth was only fourteen when she was injured. However, she carried me forward, since between the two of us, she was the emotionally stable one. She focused on regaining her independence, despite her quadriplegia. I let her make the decisions about her care and her future. Sometimes we need someone strong to lead the way.

    Every day, every hour, every minute of our new life felt impossibly uncertain. New guilt and anxiety merged with my old issues of chronic pain and depression. Increased doses of my anti-depressants did not prevent me from spiraling down. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. No hope of light.

    I put a tight lid on my feelings, which was a challenge by itself. I didn’t want to give the people I loved more to worry about. I also felt that if I gave in to my emotions, I wouldn’t be able to function. And I desperately needed to help Beth. That’s what mattered the most.

    I started counseling several months after the car accident. At the first session, I thought I would find a little peace, with more ahead. It wasn’t that simple. I felt like a failure, and thought I failed at counseling, too, since I didn’t improve for some time. I should have reached out for help right after Beth’s injury.

    Weekly counseling helped me, along with my husband always being there for me. However, Beth was the one who showed me how to choose hope. I watched her succeed after failing again and again, over and over, on her quest to be independent.

    Beth and I shared unexpected adventures, from our small town in Ohio to Harvard and around the world. She has had the most exciting life of anyone I know. She’s also the happiest person I know because she finds joy in ordinary life, and that’s the best kind of success.

    Since I was voted most likely to succeed in 1976, I learned that success encompasses so much more than I originally thought. Things like being married for forty-five years to my best friend. Raising three great kids. Working meaningful jobs and helping others. Volunteering and mentoring. And learning meditation to better cope with chronic pain.

    Today, my depression is mostly managed with prescriptions, which also feels like a kind of success. I’m no longer ashamed of my depression. It’s part of who I am, and I know for a fact that I’m not weak or ungrateful. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, a bright light.

    Hope is an incredibly powerful thing. And if you never give up? Hope wins.

  • A Gentle Reminder to Anyone Who’s Struggling This Holiday Season

    A Gentle Reminder to Anyone Who’s Struggling This Holiday Season

    “It’s okay to want to be alone. It’s okay to take time for yourself.” ~Kate Allan

    It’s the holiday season, the most wonderful time of the year, they say, but it’s not for all of us. For those of us coping with the loss of a loved one, family estrangement, loneliness, financial difficulties, or health struggles, the holidays can be one of the hardest times of the year.

    For some of us the holidays can feel as if we have been cast out in the cold. As if we are forced to look through a window of a happy, loving family.

    Many of us are filled with feelings of longing for things that can never be, such as more time with a loved one we have lost or a supportive family. We find ourselves swept into memories of holidays past or lost in fantasies about what the holidays would be like if we had a different life.

    We find ourselves feeling pressured to hide our problems, bake a dozen cookies, put on a happy smile and an ugly Christmas sweater, and attend that office holiday party. There, we smile and engage in exhausting small talk, and do our best to avoid the subject of what we are doing for the holidays.

    These events can leave us feeling totally depleted. We buy obligatory gifts for our friends or coworkers, and we spend hours trying to figure out what they might like. After the gift is purchased, we second guess ourselves and worry that we missed the mark.

    Some of us might host parties and obsess over making our tree look absolutely perfect in a desperate effort to please others and give people the impression that everything is fine.

    Society has filled our heads with unrealistic notions about perfect gifts, immaculate homes decorated with lavish matching decorations, endless resources to spend, and happy times spent with family. Some of us find ourselves exhausted and stressed trying to live up to social pressures or expectations of others.

    Over the years, as I have struggled with various losses in my life or felt cast aside by family members, I have learned that the most important thing we can do over the holidays is take care of ourselves.

    As an altruistic person who goes out of the way to please everyone, taking care of myself does not come easily to me. In the past I felt guilty for putting my own needs first, but over the years I’ve learned that our own needs are just as important as everyone else’s. If we sacrifice ourselves to please others, it can not only be harmful to ourselves but those around us as well.

    If you are struggling this holiday season, take time to reflect on how you would like to spend the holidays. Remember, you don’t have to buy the perfect gift for everyone, put up a tree, decorate the entire house, spend hours baking cookies, or even attend that family gathering.

    If you are worried that a friend will be disappointed that you are not attending an event, you can suggest that you meet up for coffee when you’re feeling up to it.

    In the past I worried that a friend would judge me for not attending a holiday event. However, over the years I have learned that true friends are empathetic and do not judge us for needing to take time for ourselves.

    The most important thing you can do if you are struggling during the holiday season is pay attention to your own needs and do what you feel is best for you.

    If you feel like curling up on the couch with Netflix or a good book and a pet instead of going to a party or a family gathering, give yourself permission. It can sometimes be better for our health and well-being to decline an invitation and rest.

    If you are someone who is used to keeping busy, the holidays can become more difficult because our workplaces are often closed or slower than other times of the year.

    In order to cope, I create a to-do list filled with new recipes I want to cook or bake, household cleaning that would be helpful to do, movies/shows I want to watch, places I want to go to see Christmas lights, and other things I have wanted to do. I also buy myself something that I have always wanted but don’t necessarily need as a form of self-love and self-affirmation.

    I also engage in volunteer work because when I am helping others I feel less alone and have less time to ruminate about the past or events that are outside of my control.

    I have discarded holiday traditions that did not bring me joy. I don’t go to church or make desserts with dried fruit or decorate my tree with handmade ornaments that are unsafe for my pets. I try not to buy material gifts for all of my friends. Instead, I treat friends to events such as concerts, art gallery exhibits, or museum shows we can enjoy together.

    I have held onto a few traditions that have made me happy. A childhood friend used to buy me a hallmark ornament as a gift, and now I buy one for myself. I donate to a charity, and I buy a gift for a for a child in need.

    I have also started to create my own traditions such as making my favorite cake and taking a break from digital communication. Each day I take time to feel grateful for the things that I have and the people and pets that help to make my life magical.

    I don’t force myself to do anything I am not feeling up for, and I do not spend time with people I do not feel comfortable being around. Once I started doing this, the holidays stopped being draining, exhausting, and socially challenging and started to become relaxing and peaceful.

    When I find myself feeling down, I remind myself that all situations are temporary, and the future could look very different. There may be other holiday seasons when I feel upbeat, excited, and eager to spend time with people who love me. But for now, I need to love myself, and that means doing what’s best for me.

    The best thing that any of us can do this holiday season is be kind to ourselves and take care of ourselves like we would our closest friend. This is the best holiday gift we can give ourselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Cognitive Dissonance of Emotional Abuse

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

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

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

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

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

    The Moment I Knew It Was Emotional Abuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Trauma Bond

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Waking Up and Leaving

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

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

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

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

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

    Alarm Bells and Red Flags

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

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

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

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

    Controlling Behavior

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Making the Decision to Leave

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • How I Got Sober and What I Now Know About the Impacts of Alcohol

    How I Got Sober and What I Now Know About the Impacts of Alcohol

    “Sometimes deciding who you are is deciding who you’ll never be again.” ~Anonymous

    May 13th, 2011. I finally surrendered to the fact that I had a drinking problem and desperately needed help. The comments from acquaintances, the concern from friends, the complaints from my flatmates, the intensity of my depression, the conversations with my therapist—they all culminated in the decision that I had to break the chains from my liquid abuser.

    It was one of the hardest decisions of my life, one that entailed waving goodbye to the life that I had led before and diving into a new one where I didn’t have any points of reference and safety handles to grasp.

    At that time, the only option I thought was available to me was AA, so I emailed their helpline on that Friday at 2:43 p.m. Only an hour later I received a response from someone who seemed to care and understood my turmoil and despair, who took the time to share some of her own story, which I could relate to.

    I began going to meetings right away, and my friend Federica held my hand for the first two. I felt blessed to have her calming and loving presence next to me while I was full of fear and confusion. I will forever be grateful to her.

    Stopping

    I stopped drinking as soon as I joined AA. I started going to three meetings a week. I was aware that my levels of drinking were quite below the average threshold of most of the fellowship members, but I was advised to look at the similarities, not the differences, so I did.

    My quiver was now equipped with shimmering new arrows: I had the strength of my resolution, my meetings to go to, the opportunity to mix and match them when I wanted to, a whole community of people I could connect with, and, very quickly, a steady group of friends to go out with after our regular meetings and on weekends.

    I had found almost everything I was lacking and more in the space of a few weeks. I know that finding those people was what made it so easy for me to stay sober, because we enjoyed each other’s company and everything we did was not alcohol-related; also, I was never physically dependent. I was an “emotionally dependent” drinker.

    What I didn’t know then was that this bubble I had created was a very fragile one because it lacked my personal foundations of sobriety.

    Nine months after I quit drinking, on a dating website, I met the man that would become my beloved life companion and husband. I made space for him in my bubble, and he opened up to me the portal to his life.

    I became part of an outside world that I had not interacted with and had unintentionally kept at distance since I had quit drinking. I started to feel like the odd one out, and I began to resent everyone else who “could” drink.

    I could recognize other people who were problem drinkers but had not made the same decision as me, and I felt it was unfair that they got away with it, that they were the ones considered normal, and that I was the one with the problem.

    I was a ball of anger that was seeping out toward everyone, but I didn’t know how to process it. I had also started a job that was very demanding, and most of the time I was out of my depth.

    Gradually, I convinced myself that I could revisit that decision I made on that day in May and that I was ready to welcome alcohol back into my life, but in smaller and more reasonable doses.

    The day I decided to drink again was so uneventful that I don’t even remember it. I know it was almost two years after I had quit and that I had a small glass of wine. I didn’t even enjoy the feeling of being tipsy, and I took that as an assurance that alcohol would have never turned into my nemesis, but a presence that I could keep at bay and out of my life when I wanted to. I was proved wrong. Again.

    Breaking

    After approximately six months, those synaptic pathways had been retriggered. I was self-medicating my stress and depression caused by a job that I could not stomach, and the familiar shortcut was in a liquor store.

    What I later learned is that I didn’t start drinking again because I had a disease. I started for the same reason that I was able to ride a bike years after I last rode one.

    On one hand, I had learned through repetition that the quickest way to find relief from my problems was to drink alcohol, and that the pleasure I gained from it activated the reward circuit in my brain; this motivated me to repeat that behavior over and over again by reactivating the neuropathways that had already been established many years before.

    On the other hand, I had not built new, healthier ways to address those problems, I had not created new habits, and that’s why I was back standing in the alcohol aisle.

    I don’t know how I managed to drink heavily, still holding down that job successfully and completing a one-year life coaching training program. But I did both, and when I moved from London to a smaller town on the coast, I solemnly promised myself and my husband that my drinking would change.

    I had left the job I hated so much, and I was studying, searching for employment, and living in a town that I loved. I had no more excuses this time. But, instead of decreasing, my drinking increased because I didn’t have the constraints and responsibility of a job, and that freed up more time.

    My Way Out

    This time around, though, I knew I didn’t want to resort to AA because I felt that it wasn’t the right solution for me. I saw AA as a Band-Aid to stem the bleeding of my alcohol use, and if it were torn off, the wound would start bleeding again.

    AA also did not delve into the reasons I was making these poor decisions, nor did it prepare the future me for an alcohol-free life. I also was not comfortable with the idea of being in recovery and going to meetings forever; I wanted to be free.

    I didn’t know what my solution was going to look like, but I was open to trying other ways. I made a decision to stop and contacted a local organization. I got myself an appointment, had a brief assessment, and was invited to attend groups and activities there.

    I attended a women’s group a handful of times, but I felt in my bones that it wasn’t an environment where my sobriety would have thrived. But by contacting them, I had made the official step to accept and see my problem in full scale before my eyes, and, in my mind, I could not backtrack after that.

    The second step was to educate myself on what alcohol really was, and I dove into anything I could find—books, podcasts, courses, videos, and online communities—like a fish to water.

    I learned the impact alcohol has on our physical and mental health; the extent to which it interferes with the neurotransmitters in our brain and affects our central nervous system; how, as a consequence, it causes anxiety and depression; how it kills our confidence bit by bit under the mask of giving us “courage.”

    I understood that it’s a solution to a problem, and that the problem can be different for any one of us. And that some people decide to suppress their problem with alcohol, others with food, shopping, or other substances.

    I learned that alcohol is a toxin, a carcinogenic psychoactive drug, and a highly addictive substance, and that the reason we get emotionally addicted to it is because it taps on the reward system in the brain.

    I came to understand that the effect it had on me was the result of a chemical reaction, not a disease, and it is explained by science, and that it developed into a problem because it was the easiest shortcut I had to solve my issue.

    The third step was attending to my emotional recovery and looking at the problems that alcohol had solved for me. This, for me, was the key where freedom from alcohol truly lay.

    Setting my sobriety against something that was outside of me and being dependent on a structure to maintain it was one of the things that pushed me away from AA. So, for me, there was only one thing to do. Go back to the source, me, and understand where the pull of alcohol came from.

    A few months before I stopped drinking, as part of my endeavor to find a career that had purpose and meaning for me, I had completed the EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) certification. As part of my training, I had to carry out practice sessions with other certified colleagues.

    I met a lady who introduced me to the concept of being a “highly sensitive person” and realized that I was one too. I finally found the validation of my being “too emotional,” “too intense,” and “too sensitive,” epithets that had been used to describe me and that made me feel wrong.

    In my sessions with her, she helped me to uncover layer after layer of emotions, thoughts, and memories that were connected to my drinking and to the pain that I was trying to erase with it.

    We started with the most superficial ones, then reached the deeper and most ancient, which is the safest and recommended protocol to use EFT.

    The work I did by myself, with her, and with other colleagues along the way helped me to relieve my cravings when I had them and release the triggers that used to make me run to the liquor store like a brainless bullet. It also helped me recognize when I’d started to believe that alcohol turned me into the confident and self-assured person I struggled and strived to be.

    I experienced numerous shifts along the way. One of them is that I no longer resent people who drink. I can still recognize when someone has an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, but instead of feeling like they got away with it, my perception has changed. I feel like I am the lucky one who got away because alcohol has no place in my life, and there is not one tiny cell of me that would ever want to drink again.

    I know that there is nothing positive that alcohol can add to my life and that all I need is within me.

    I would like to show this to people who struggle with alcohol and tell them how wonderful, rich, rewarding, fun, and relaxing life is without it. And that their body has the capability to do all of the above without it, and that the fun, the excitement, or the relaxation they find in it is short-lived, but the consequences are not.

    But I know that we all have our own journeys, and it’s not my place to interfere with theirs.

    I already told the most important person I needed to tell, and that is my younger self.

    When I went to find her in my memories, I told her that she didn’t need alcohol to be the amazing and lovely girl that she was. I told her that I loved her with all my heart, and that she had all the resources she needed within her to find her way back to herself.

    She cried, then she smiled and thanked me for reminding her and for believing in her.

  • I Cheated on Him with My Higher Self (and We’re Still Going Strong)

    I Cheated on Him with My Higher Self (and We’re Still Going Strong)

    “It’s okay to let go of those who couldn’t love you. Those who didn’t know how to. Those who failed to even try. It’s okay to outgrow them, because that means you filled the empty space in you with self-love instead. You’re outgrowing them because you’re growing into you. And that’s more than okay, that’s something to celebrate.” ~Angelica Moone

    “How could you do this to me? It’s obvious you’re with someone else.”

    That was the third and final message I received from my partner of nearly three years, several weeks after we had finally decided to break up. I say “we” because initially it seemed that the decision was mutual, although it would later be revealed that it was me who wanted out.

    He was right, by the way. I had left him for someone else.

    No, not the lover that he had conjured up for me in his own mind. In fact, what had pulled me away was much more powerful and seductive than that. I had cheated on him with my higher self. And she had been trying to win me over for quite some time.

    My higher self: AKA my intuition, AKA my inner badass that will never be ignored. Yep, she’s the one I had left him for.

    Much like when I was nearing the end of my marriage, she had started off with a gentle nudge, a tap on the shoulder every now and again. I’ve noticed throughout my life that if I don’t stop what I’m doing, these attempts to get my attention will become more consistent, until what was once a whisper finally becomes a roar.

    Such was the case three years ago when she decided that I should shave my head. At that point, I had invested a lot of money turning my naturally dark brown hair into a platinum blond mane. This was before the pandemic, when I couldn’t imagine anything coming between me and my monthly visits to the salon.

    As with most suggestions that come from my higher self, my ego was not impressed.

    If the two of them had been sitting across from one another, the conversation would have gone something like . .

    “You want to do whaaaat??”

    “Shave it.”

    “Excuse me?”

    “Take it all off.”

    “All of it?”

    “All. Of. It.”

    So I attempted a compromise by shaving a bit off the side. I knew I was kidding myself when I thought that would be the end, but at least it was a start. Over the course of the next twelve months, I felt equal parts admiration and jealousy whenever I caught a glimpse of someone with a shaved head. This peculiar mix was familiar to me, and it signaled what was destined to happen next.

    When I had finally made the decision, it was a random Tuesday morning, and it made absolutely no sense to my logical mind. Unlike the ego that thrives on being booked and busy, the higher self loves white space. When we give ourselves the opportunity to tune out and tune in, our deepest desires have a funny way of being revealed.

    That fateful day I had decided to take an extra long walk with my dog through one of the parks here in Barcelona. There’s nothing like nature, movement, and a bit of solitude to help you cut through the noise and get to the heart of what you really want. Instead of returning to my apartment, we headed to the salon.

    As I took a seat at my hairdresser’s station and looked at myself in the mirror, my ego had a full-blown tantrum while my higher self popped open the proverbial champagne.

    In those moments of feeling the clippers pass over my scalp, watching my shoulder-length hair fall to the floor, I finally felt free. Whether it’s our hair, our jobs, or a relationship we’ve long outgrown, the higher self seeks our liberation, no matter what the cost.

    That day when I told my then partner what I had done, the conversation didn’t go as I had hoped but exactly like I had imagined.

    “You’re bald.”

    While this was indeed a fact, the tone made it feel like a personal attack. He asked me why someone so beautiful would intentionally make herself so ugly. For once in my life, being “pretty” hadn’t been the deciding factor. I wasn’t so concerned with how I wanted to look but rather how I wanted to feel. As I’ve come to learn since, life really changes when this perspective starts to shift.

    If his thoughts and feelings were any indication, I was no longer much to look at when it came to the male gaze. Ironically, all he could see was “a weirdo” while the person I saw with my own eyes was a queen. 

    While my ex couldn’t get past my shaved head, I couldn’t get over the luminosity and the brilliance that could fully shine through. As he continued to fixate on what I had lost, I knew the truth of what I had gained: freedom, courage, and beauty on my own terms.

    Perhaps I always knew that he would leave me over a haircut. No one likes to think that the future of their relationship comes down to the length of their hair, but he had told me from the beginning that shaving my head was the one thing I should never do. Funny the rules we’ll follow in an attempt to belong to other people while we strategically abandon ourselves.

    I had spent nearly four decades of my life searching for safety in the fulfillment of everyone’s expectations. I used to be an expert at figuring out what they wanted and becoming exactly that. Until one cold, cloudy morning in February 2021, when I decided I was done. Done with the pretending. Done with the pleasing. Done with the denial of what I knew to be true.

    I was finally ready for a different kind of love. And this time it was all my own.

    You could say that I cheated on my ex with my higher self, or maybe she was the one I was meant for all along. Either way, I’ve chosen to be faithful to my inner wisdom. And from what I can tell, we’re still going strong.