Tiny Buddha

Tag: survival

  • How I Found Myself on the Other Side of Survival

    How I Found Myself on the Other Side of Survival

    “Until you make peace with who you are, you will never be content with what you have.” ~Doris Mortman

    For most of my life, I believed my worth was tied to how well I could perform.

    If I looked successful, kept people happy, worked harder than anyone else, and stayed quiet about my pain, maybe—just maybe—I would be enough.

    That belief didn’t come from nowhere. I grew up in a home where fear was a constant companion. Speaking up brought consequences. Being invisible felt safer. I learned early to smile through it all, to stay small, to never be a burden.

    I carried that into adulthood—into my marriage, into motherhood, and into the corporate world.

    I became the high achiever who never asked for help. The professional woman who had all the answers. The mother who always held it together.

    I was the one who volunteered for every project, who stayed late to make everything perfect. At home, I kept up appearances with themed birthday parties, spotless counters, and a schedule packed to the brim—all while quietly falling apart inside. I thought if I could hold everything together on the outside, no one would see the cracks within.

    But inside, I was unraveling.

    The Moment Everything Shifted

    One night, my husband exploded in anger. That wasn’t unusual. But this time, something different happened.

    He lunged toward me, yelling, blind with rage. Our young son, who had crawled quietly onto the floor behind me, was nearly stepped on in the chaos. My daughter, just a child herself, began silently picking up the dining room chairs he had thrown.

    No one cried. No one spoke. We had all learned to go silent.

    But in that silence, something inside me woke up.

    I saw myself in my children—quiet, afraid, coping. And I knew: if I didn’t break this cycle, they would grow up carrying the same invisible scars I had.

    That night, I made a promise to myself: This ends with me.

    The Healing Didn’t Happen All at Once 

    Leaving was hard. Healing was harder. But it was also the most powerful thing I’ve ever done.

    I realized I had been performing my way through life. Even in pain, I made everything look polished. I was afraid that if people knew the truth—about my past, about my marriage, about how little I thought of myself—they’d walk away.

    But what actually happened was this: when I finally allowed myself to be seen, I started to heal.

    What I’ve Learned on the Other Side of Survival

    Healing isn’t a straight line. It’s a process—sometimes slow, sometimes messy, sometimes unbelievably beautiful.

    Here are a few things I now hold close:

    1. You can’t heal what you refuse to name.

    For me, that moment came during therapy, when I finally said out loud, “I was in an emotionally abusive marriage.” It felt terrifying—and freeing. Until I gave it a name, it had power over me. Naming it took the first step to taking that power.

    For years I told myself it “wasn’t that bad.” But downplaying our pain doesn’t make it go away—it buries it. And buried pain finds a way to surface in our choices, our relationships, and our sense of self-worth.

    2. You’re allowed to want more than survival.

    I thought I should just be grateful to have a job, a home, healthy kids. But deep down, I wanted joy. I wanted peace. I wanted to feel like I mattered—to myself.

    For a long time, I believed wanting those things made me selfish. I had spent years making sure everyone else was okay, thinking that was my role. I was the people- pleaser, the fixer, the one who didn’t cause trouble. My self-worth was so low that even imagining a life where I felt fulfilled seemed like too much to ask. Who was I to want happiness?

    But wanting peace and joy wasn’t selfish. That was healing.

    3. Small, daily decisions matter more than big breakthroughs.

    Choosing to journal instead of numbing out with TV. Taking a walk after work to process my thoughts. Pausing before reacting in frustration. These choices weren’t dramatic, but they created steady change—the kind that lasts.

    Leaving my marriage was one bold decision. But the real transformation came from the everyday choices that followed: writing down what I was grateful for, saying no without guilt, and consistently reminding myself to honor my values of honesty and integrity—which I hadn’t done when protecting my ex-husband, keeping up appearances, and pretending everything was fine. Those were the moments that helped me reclaim my life.

    4. You’re not broken—you’re becoming.

    For a long time, I saw myself as damaged and thought healing meant changing into a different person. But I’ve come to see things differently. Healing isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about removing what never belonged to you in the first place—shame, fear, silence—and uncovering who you were all along.

    I realized this while sorting through old journals, when I found an entry from my teenage years—full of dreams and hope. That’s when it struck me: she’s still in there. Healing helped me reconnect with that part of myself, not erase her.

    If You’re in That Quiet Place Right Now

    Maybe you’re carrying a silence too. Maybe you’re functioning, performing, doing all the things—and still wondering why you feel so far from yourself.

    Please hear this: You are not alone.

    You don’t have to have it all figured out. You don’t need a perfect plan. You just need a willingness to listen to that small, wise voice inside—the one that says this isn’t the end of your story.

    Because it’s not.

    And then, you have to honor it. Even if it’s with one small act. One honest conversation. One brave decision. That’s how the healing begins—not by knowing everything, but by choosing to move forward anyway.

    I know this because I’ve been there—waking up with a heavy heart, going through the motions, wondering if life would ever feel like mine again.

    But I chose to pause. To feel. To begin again. I hope you will too.

  • How Avoiding Painful Emotions Can Lead to a Smaller Life

    How Avoiding Painful Emotions Can Lead to a Smaller Life

    “Being cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer.” ~Gabor Mate

    Most of us avoid experiences not necessarily because we don’t like them or want them, but because we don’t want to feel how we will feel when we go through that experience.

    Our lives become altered by the emotions we don’t want to feel because we don’t want to move toward the thing that could bring strong emotions like fear, shame, sadness, or disappointment.

    We don’t want to go to that party because we’ll probably feel awkward and embarrassed.

    We don’t want to chase that work opportunity in case we feel disappointed if it doesn’t work out.

    We don’t want to take that trip because it might feel scary.

    We don’t want to slow down our busy lives because it feels too terrifying to contemplate emptiness and quiet.

    And then we get this idea about ourselves that this is just who we are. We are just:

    • People who don’t like parties
    • People who don’t travel
    • People who are fearful
    • People who are procrastinators
    • People who are just busy but intensely stressed

    We have this idea that this is just who we are, and therefore, this is how we should live. Perhaps we feel an anger or an anguish at being “this type of person.” Or maybe it just feels so unconscious, so embedded in our personality, that we don’t do certain things, that we accept it as just the way we are. 

    For most of my life I thought I was a nervous, cautious, fearful person. That was just how I was born. I thought I couldn’t change it, just like I couldn’t change my hair color or my deep love for mashed potatoes. It felt biological. Some people were brave and courageous; I was fearful and afraid of almost everything.

    I carried this with me, this idea about who I was, until I learned that emotions like fear and terror, anger and rage, and despair or sadness are just emotions that we need to learn how to be with. And if we don’t learn how to be with them, they can create an outsized influence on our lives—creating this idea about who we are and what kind of personality we have and causing us to avoid things that trigger these feelings.

    But what we are actually avoiding is not the experience, people, or things but the feelings we feel when we think about that thing or try to do it. The feelings around meeting new people, starting a new work project, being in the thick of the uncertainty of traveling, etc.

    It’s the feelings that are so difficult for us, not the experiences. So we start to make choices on what we are prepared to do and what we are not. We mold our lives around the things that generate emotions we don’t know how to be with. And we don’t head toward things we don’t like because of how we will feel and what we think will happen when we walk toward that feeling.

    Because our body isn’t used to really being with the emotion we are avoiding, or it has proved problematic in the past.

    This is because a lot of our emotions activate our survival network. And when our survival network has been activated, things feel urgent, maybe even dangerous, unsafe.

    Maybe we have sweaty palms, a feeling of doom in our bodies, a racing heart, a desire to escape quickly, panic, or even an abundance of uncontrollable rage.

    So our brain starts to associate this emotion with survival being activated. It’s like it labels “new work opportunity” or “traveling” as an undesirable or unsafe experience because of the emotions that generate around that experience.

    We just don’t know what to do with these emotions.

    Our brains say, “Don’t go near that! It’s dangerous!”

    So we become like a player in a video game, running around avoiding falling boulders, jumping over pits of snakes, maneuvering out of the way of giant fireballs.

    But what our brain perceives as threats are not actually threats but emotions it doesn’t know what to do with.

    The pits of snakes aren’t snakes but fear around traveling. Or the boulders are the fear of disappointment or despair. Avoiding the fireballs is trying to avoid shame.

    The harsh thing, though, is that even though we are trying to sensibly avoid these emotions, these survival reactions, we don’t get to avoid them completely.

    The shame, the fear, the rage, the terror—they are there in our body and popping up in other places. We can’t avoid them completely, and by trying to avoid them, we simply make our lives smaller and smaller and smaller.

    Are we doomed to spend our lives in avoidance mode?

    Do we just have to accept that some things are just  “too hard,” “too stressful,” “not for people like us”?

    No. Way.

    That is the really exciting thing about our brains. We have learned to be this way because of how we learned to deal with emotions. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn a new way. That we can’t ‘rewire’ the responses we have learned.

    By working with my own fear, by learning how to be with it, I stopped feeling so scared about everything in my life. I totally changed how I saw myself.  I no longer believe myself to be a fearful, overly cautious person.

    I gave myself time to learn to be with the energy of the fear in a way that was so gentle and slow that it helped me to feel safe around the emotion in a way I never had before.

    I realized that the problem is not that we are avoiding our emotions on purpose; it’s that we don’t understand them.

    This is what is so hard about how so many of us learn to live our lives.

    We aren’t given the tools to work with our emotions (most of us aren’t anyway), and then we are cast out into the world to just ‘make a life.’

    Have good relationships!

    Be successful! Get a good job!

    Cope with work colleagues / clients / stressed-out bosses.

    Deal with grief, aging, health problems, loved ones dying!

    Be a good parent, even if your parents were a little shoddy, absent, authoritarian, unloving.

    How are we supposed to navigate the world when it generates so much emotion for us and we never learned how to deal with emotion? When we feel constantly pushed hither and thither either by our emotional reactions or other people’s?

    Awakening the act of self-compassion and empathy for the emotions we struggle with is one of the most powerful steps we can take when we start this journey.

    Deciding: Wow, I wasn’t given the tools to navigate the whole myriad of emotions that I encounter every day! And that is tough!

    Giving ourselves a little grace, a little tenderness, a little understanding around this is such a powerful step away from how we normally respond to emotional activation.

    Can we offer ourselves some kindness and understanding instead of blame and judgment? It makes sense I feel like this—I haven’t learned how to deal with emotions like shame, fear, grief, etc.

    Offering compassion in the face of strong emotional reactions is a powerful step because normally we are in the habit of trying to dismiss/justify/vent our feelings: I shouldn’t feel like this! It’s all their fault! I am such a terrible person! Everything is so terrifying! They made me angry!

    Instead, can we decide to start walking toward being on our own side? Can we accept the challenges we have faced with emotions? And instead of blaming and shaming ourselves, can we decide instead to move toward kindness, understanding, empathy, and compassion?

    When we allow our emotions to exist and meet them with empathy, creating a sense of internal safety around them, it’s much easier to support ourselves through experiences that might activate them.

  • When Unhappiness Is the Soul Crying Out for Nourishment

    When Unhappiness Is the Soul Crying Out for Nourishment

    “Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.” ~Dalai Lama

    I had been caught in a web of unhappiness for several months some time ago.

    During those months, each morning looked the same. I would open my eyes, sigh in misery, and sit at the edge of the bed for a few minutes to mentally prepare myself for yet another day. It took all the energy within me, which was little, to stand up and go about the day.

    Although I was unhappy for many months, I had come a long way in healing from severe anxiety. I experienced mild anxiety here and there, but severe anxiety was a distant memory and feeling.

    About a few months into feeling unhappy, thoughts began to multiply and scatter, my jaw tightened, my breaths shallower and more shortened, my hands shaky, and my body heavy.

    One morning, I felt a bit different than usual. I still sat at the edge of the bed for a few minutes, but this time, I felt dizzy and nauseous. I knew I wasn’t well. I felt like I really needed a day to simply be and do nothing, so I called in sick to work. However, that day, the distant memory and feeling of severe anxiety felt closer than ever.

    The first half of the day, I found myself all over the house—upstairs, downstairs, and on the front patio, trying to escape the anxiousness by cleaning, doing laundry, cooking, and scrolling through social media.

    I went from needing to do nothing to doing anything that would distract me from the mental and physical pain anxiety brought about.

    Then, halfway through the day, I went upstairs to put away clean laundry. As I walked back downstairs, I felt the urge to sit down on one of the steps in the middle of the staircase. There it was. The severe anxiety attack creeping up to the surface to finally release itself. My heart rate increased. My lips quivered. I dropped a tear, then two, and then countless. I cried in agony.

    I reached my arms out, lifted my hands up, and said with a stutter, “Please,” begging the universe to spare me from the mental anguish.

    About fifteen minutes later, the anxiety dissipated, but I stayed put for an additional thirty minutes, staring down the steps with a blank mind, before I went about the rest of the day with a blank mind, too.

    For the next few days, I felt more hopeless than unhappy. I dragged myself through the days. The only time I looked forward to was the evenings, when I could lie in bed, not having to do anything. It was the highlight of my days because I felt safe hiding in bed, where the silence and darkness were comforting.

    After a few days, one late afternoon, as I was unloading the dishwasher, my husband came into the kitchen and said, “Something isn’t right in the universe.”

    This is our way of trying to figure out why the other is out of balance when we can’t quite put a finger on what the other is feeling and why.

    I replied, “I’m okay,” as I continued to unload the dishwasher.

    He turned me around to face him, but I kept looking down, and he further said, “You haven’t been okay for a while now.”

    I stayed quiet for a minute before I looked up at him and replied, “Yeah, I’ve been unhappy for a while now…I don’t know why.”

    He instantly hugged me.

    At first, still feeling hopeless, I didn’t hug him back. But after a few minutes, I began to feel more unhappy again. My eyes heavily watered before I broke down crying and hugged my husband back as tight as I could.

    He said, “It’s okay; let it out.”

    I collected myself and leaned against the dishwasher.

    My husband held my hands and asked, “Why are you unhappy?”

    It was the first time in several months that I thought about it rather than only feeling it.

    I said, “I’m just tired. I feel drained. I go to work, cook, clean, and repeat. Is this it? Is this life?”

    He replied, “It seems like you aren’t nourishing your soul.”

    I was quiet.

    We looked at each other for a few moments as he continued to hold my hands.

    I said, “Thank you, honey,” as I hugged him once more as tight as I could.

    What he said was all I needed to hear to realize I was in survival mode. I wasn’t prioritizing what sparks my happiness, what helps me thrive, and what nourishes my soul. I was letting surviving take precedence over thriving.

    I enjoy looking for and trying new dessert recipes. I enjoy browsing around in bookstores and reading. I enjoy writing and sharing personal reflections, fictional stories, and uplifting advice. I enjoy spending time outdoors, especially surrounded by nature. I enjoy taking a road trip to visit my family, who are a six-hour drive up North from where I live. I enjoy hanging out with my husband and dog.

    But, for several months, I did none of the above.

    I was consumed by the day-to-day routine of working, cooking, and cleaning, which took up all my time. I was stuck in a cycle of only being and doing what helped me survive.

    My unhappiness was simply the soul, home to the light, joy, love, and peace within, crying for nourishment.

    ___

    The feeling of unhappiness is common for many of us.

    Often, when we talk to other people about our unhappiness, it’s difficult to pinpoint the cause, and the typical responses don’t help us figure it out. People say things like, “You should be happy that you have a roof over your head and food on your table.” Or, “You should be happy that you’re better off than some others in the world.”

    The responses only reflect that we’re meeting our survival needs.

    But just because we’re surviving doesn’t mean it should make us happy.

    Survival mode nourishes our physical body, but if we don’t nourish our soul, we can end up feeling lifeless.

    It’s important that, despite needing to do things that help us survive, like working full-time for a paycheck and cooking meals to fuel our bodies, we create time and space to do things that nourish our souls and help us thrive, too.

    Here are three simple practices that have helped me do just that.

    1. Start with joy.

    I reflected on what truly sparked joy within me. Even if I must dig a little, deep down, I know what I enjoy doing. I thought about when I’m most present, what makes me smile and laugh, and when I feel light and at ease. It’s what checks off all of those boxes that nourish my soul, igniting the light, joy, love, and peace within me.

    2. Write it down.

    I found an old journal I received as a birthday gift years ago. On top of the first blank page, I wrote “Accomplishments” as the title instead of “To-Do” because I wanted to manifest what nourishes my soul and write it into existence.

    I listed five things—write every day (i.e. newsletter or journal), practice self-care every day (i.e. stretch or apply a face mask), read twice a week, take a nature walk twice a week, and have fun once a week (i.e. try a new dessert recipe, sew, or make a DIY candle). I focused on what I knew I could create time and space for. I check in with myself periodically to add to or subtract from the list as I heal, learn, and grow to remain in alignment with my soul’s calling.

    3. Take action and remain consistent.

    I try my best to intentionally create time and space in the week for everything I’ve listed down, and every Sunday, I read over my Accomplishments to note what I could or couldn’t and do. If for any reason I couldn’t do one or more of what I’ve listed, I prioritize it for the next week.

    If there’s a regular pattern of missing one or more things, I simply subtract it from the list to not get down on myself for not accomplishing it and focus on what I did and can continue to accomplish instead. This check-in helps me create time and space to nourish my soul and remain consistent.

    While we must do things that help us survive, we don’t have to lose ourselves in survival mode. We can work, clean, cook, and do any other daily task alongside nourishing our soul.

    Surviving always finds a way to take precedence over thriving, so it’s important to intentionally create time and space for what nourishes our soul, as it often gets pushed to the back burner. When we nourish our soul, we wake up with an uplifted spirit and energy to go about the day and feel happier as a result.

  • Trauma Lies: Why Survivors Feel Like They’re Bad People

    Trauma Lies: Why Survivors Feel Like They’re Bad People

    “Trauma is not the bad things that happen to you, but what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.” ~Dr. Gabor Maté

    I used to have this pervasive empty feeling inside. I tried filling it by eating, working, being a wife, making my life look great on socials—anything really to make it go away. I went to church, worked hard, and tried to be a good person, hoping the hole would fill and my life would feel whole and complete.

    I went to therapy for the first time when I was sixteen years old. I remember telling my therapist about this black hole in the middle of my chest. It was bottomless and hot inside. I remember drawing it for my therapist, and one day we had a session where I went inside to see what was down there.

    Strangely, I don’t remember the outcome of that session, but I do know that hole persisted for years. Well into my thirties. I would have seasons of time where I was more conscious of it than others, but nothing, no matter what I did or tried, would make it go away completely.

    I went to school and became a therapist so I could learn all I could and help myself in ways others couldn’t help. Even with professional training, it still took a long time for me to sort out the bottomless pit that sat on my chest.

    I realize now that the pit was composed of several different things, but the primary motivator behind its ever-presence was the fundamental belief that there was something wrong with me.

    I believed everyone, in general, deserved to have a good life and good things, but I wasn’t so lucky. I didn’t really have a reason for why I believed this, just that this was my reality and I had to learn to live with it.

    I didn’t believe that I deserved to have anything nice or good. My life was meant to be in service and sacrifice to others so they could advance and have a good life. Once I began to study trauma and its impact, I was finally able to put the pieces together for why I felt this way.

    When we are kids, we don’t have any control over anything that is happening around us. We don’t get to say where we live, who we’re living with, where we go to school, or when we eat dinner. Nothing. The locus of control is completely outside of us.

    We are at the mercy of the environment around us. For those of us who were not so lucky to be in an environment where we felt safe and secure and had our needs met, this presents a life-threatening problem.

    We are mammals; we need connection for survival. It’s biological. When our safety and belonging are threatened, it feels like life or death because it is life or death. We need an attachment to our caretakers, our environment, and ourselves to survive.

    Growing up, I wasn’t allowed to express emotion. If I was sad or angry, I had to pretend I wasn’t, or I would not be allowed to be in the presence of others in my home. I was abused by my cousins, and I had to keep it a secret so I wouldn’t upset the connections of the adults who were around me.

    I was taught at church that if any boy was looking at me, touching me, or treating me badly, then I must be doing something to deserve it.

    My world was completely out of my control, and I was drowning in helplessness, pain, sadness, and disconnection. This isn’t a tolerable emotional state to maintain. I couldn’t control any of it, and neither can any other child who is experiencing events that dysregulate their nervous system with no one and nothing available to help calm, soothe, and comfort.

    We have only one choice in this instance. We shift the locus of control from outside of ourselves to inside of ourselves. We decide that we deserve bad things to happen.

    There are many ways this plays out for people. Some people decide they are bad; they were born bad. Some people decide they just don’t deserve good things or to be treated kindly because there is something wrong with them. They, for whatever reason, are unlovable.

    I fell more into the latter. I didn’t know what was wrong with me; I just knew something must be wrong with me, and that’s why so many bad things were happening to me and no one noticed or cared.

    This resolved the conflict of feeling helpless and out of control. This allowed me to stay connected to my family in any way I could and removed the helplessness that left me feeling vulnerable and afraid.

    We adopt the belief that bad things happen to bad people so we don’t have to be confused about why bad things are happening to us. It’s because we deserve it.

    This is something we all do when we are young and in situations that are out of our control. We find a way to shift the narrative to make us in control. If we determine that we are bad, wrong, unlovable, weak, or in any way at fault, then the helplessness and weakness are resolved, and we can move forward creating connections and safety within our family systems and culture.

    This sets in motion a paradigm, a core belief, that shapes all of our choices, interactions, assumptions, values, and practices for our whole life. This paradigm informs how we interact with the world moving forward. Buried inside the paradigm are deep feelings of grief, loneliness, shame, fear, and abandonment. These are intolerable feelings that are too overwhelming to keep in our conscious mind.

    For me, I unconsciously dug a deep black hole in my soul and attempted to bury the insufferable feelings that had nowhere to go.

    Trauma causes our minds and our bodies to split from each other. The lines of communication are severed or distorted in order for our stress response system to work effectively at keeping us alive.

    If you experience a trauma but have the opportunity to process it and have people to help you recreate safety, then the connection between mind and body can be restored.

    For those who experience trauma but don’t have the opportunity to re-establish connection and safety, the mind and body remain disconnected. With this persistent mind-body disconnection, the paradigm shift of internalizing that we are bad or deserve bad things gives us two choices moving forward.

    One choice is to shut down all feelings and go numb to emotion. We live in our heads and work really hard to be perfect, good, lovable, pleasing, and acceptable. We become workaholics, overthinkers, perfectionists, and incapable of tolerating any mistakes we make.

    We do this because we unconsciously want so badly to prove to ourselves and the world around us that we really are lovable and good people. We really are worthy of being loved and accepted. We love others well, struggle to set boundaries, and will do anything to be seen as acceptable.

    I can relate very much to this response to the belief that there must be something really bad and wrong with me. I must have done something to deserve abuse and neglect. These weren’t conscious thoughts, just an internal shift I made as a child to resolve the unresolvable. This isn’t unique to me; every childhood trauma survivor I know has done this.

    The other option we have is to stay connected more to our body than our mind. To emote and express all the sadness, anger, and rage inside. People with this response have big emotions. They are explosive, struggle with consistency, struggle to hold down a job, or have addictions. If you ask them why they are struggling, they will usually say, “I don’t know.” They really don’t know because they are in their bodies trying to express all the energy trapped inside, but their minds are checked out.

    Some identify mostly with one archetype, and some relate to being both. This is more of a spectrum than a black-and-white response.

    For me, I was numb 95% of the time and always in my head. If something did ever really get to me, then I would switch to big emotions and not think about what I was doing. I’d get blackout drunk, smoke a pack of cigarettes, buy $30 worth of candy, and eat it all in a half-hour. My behavior would be extreme until I could get back to my head and shut it all down. Can you relate?

    While neither response is good or bad, our society definitely rewards one response over the other. We praise the children who sit in the front of the class and act like “teachers’ pets.” We reward the workaholics and praise the overthinkers. This makes me really sad now that I am in recovery from being a pleaser.

    My recovery took years longer than it should have because it took so long for me to figure out that all the things that people told me were good about me were not actually me at all. They were all an attempt to prove my worth, and as long as I stayed connected to being seen as good and acceptable, I was playing a role based in shame rather than being myself. I couldn’t see it because the role was reinforced everywhere I went.

    There are some specific steps we need to take to set ourselves free.

    The first is to accept and feel the deep pain of realizing we were innocent children who had no control over the uncontrollable things that were happening.

    We didn’t cause it and didn’t deserve it. We were innocent children who deserved love, protection, and safety. There is no reason inside of us that we didn’t get that.

    This is often hard to accept. For me, it felt like I was going to die when I began to allow the pain to surface. This is because at the time of the events, the pain was threatening my connection, which threatened my life. That isn’t true anymore, but my younger self holding all the pain inside didn’t realize that until I began to let myself feel it.

    No one cries forever, and no one rages forever; it does eventually pass. It didn’t kill me, and it won’t kill you either, even though it feels like it might.

    My favorite quote from Dr. Colin Ross, the founder of The Trauma Model Theory, is “Feeling your feelings won’t kill you; it’s your attempt to not feel them that will.” I have found this to be such a helpful reminder in recovery from trauma.

    The second step is to allow ourselves to fully grieve.

    Expand your tolerance level for being uncomfortable and sitting with uncomfortable emotions. Learn to feel all your feelings without activating your stress response and going into fight, flight, or freeze. Be present with them in mind and body.

    This can take some significant work for those who have had complex trauma in their histories. It often requires the support of a professional in the beginning. What helped me most is grieving what didn’t happen as much as what did. The connection and support I didn’t receive. The protection that wasn’t given to me, etc. Grieve the life you thought you should have had but didn’t.

    The third step is shifting the responsibility (not blame) to where it belongs.

    If we stay in the mindset of blame, it keeps us stuck in victim mode. We are working now to be responsible for our lives and how we move forward.

    I hold my cousins responsible for their behavior. I hold my family responsible for the support they were not able to provide. I don’t blame them, but I don’t let them off the hook either. I don’t need to know if they’ll “pay” for what they did or didn’t do. I shift the responsibility for their behavior onto them and am not really bothered with their consequences or lack of them. It doesn’t matter to me.

    It took me a while to be able to say that. For so long I wanted them to get it. I wanted them to understand, take responsibility, or say they were sorry. Waiting for these things to happen keeps us stuck and tied to them. It doesn’t allow us to move forward and create the future for ourselves that we want and deserve.

    I am no longer taking responsibility for their choices, and I don’t need to think about or see how their future plays out.

    The fourth step is to take full responsibility for ourselves.

    This was a difficult step for me. I wanted to blame my past for my inability to speak up, be bold, take action, or feel someone’s disappointment.

    I can’t take responsibility for myself and create the life I want to live if I refuse to accept that my life is a series of choices I make from here forward. I am empowered now to decide who will be around me, what I do with my time, and how I show up.

    I have shifted the paradigm from the belief that I’m unworthy to the belief that I am just as worthy as anyone else. I can tolerate people being disappointed in me, frustrated by my choices, not liking me, or anything else. I decide how I want to show up every day, and I am the only one who can create my life.

    I have never thought of myself as a victim. In fact, I hated the concept, but I did have to accept that living in pleasing mode meant I was also acting like a victim, and that alone was my motivation for change. It was messy and took a while, but eventually I was able to build my strength and resilience to a point where I was comfortable getting to know and expressing my authentic self.

    The fifth step is giving ourselves the tools, grace, and time to let all this play out.

    Continue to get to know who you truly are; continue to feel and express difficult emotions as they come up without pushing them away or dramatizing them. And learn to hold more than one emotion at the same time.

    I can now feel true, genuine love for my family while also being sad and disappointed by the way some things went down. For me, it wasn’t all bad or all good. It was both, and through healing I can genuinely feel and connect to both.

    I have also had to grieve the loss of time. It took many years for me to recover from the black hole that drove my choices and decisions for most of my life. I sometimes wonder what could have been if I had been able to be my authentic self earlier. When these thoughts come, I grieve them, let them pass, and then go do something I love to do.

    It doesn’t matter how old we are when we recognize the paradigm. It can shift, but we are the only ones who can shift it for ourselves.

  • Coming out of Survival Mode: How I Healed and Found Peace

    Coming out of Survival Mode: How I Healed and Found Peace

    “I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.” ~Audre Lorde

    I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when I realized that I no longer needed to fight for my survival, but I do know that it came after several years of prayer, healing, and intensive work. It wasn’t an event, but rather the feeling of peace and calm that comes after a storm.

    For me, the storm dissipated slowly. It was the kind of storm that kept swirling and re-emerging until I finally realized that it would take concentrated effort and work on my part to eliminate the threat.

    By threat, I mean anything in my inner and outer world that was wreaking havoc on my nervous system. This included things on the inside (such as trauma, subconscious beliefs, childhood wounds, and energetic and nervous system damage) as well as things on the outside (people and things in my environment that were having a negative impact).

    When your mind, body, and spirit are under attack for a prolonged period of time, there’s no one solution that will bring you out of the dark. Rather, you must practice a variety of healing methods and make the conscious choice to free yourself from the chains that bind you.

    For me, the freedom did not just come from leaving my unhealthy, toxic, and codependent marriage of nineteen years. It didn’t come solely from the fact that my oldest son finally stabilized and was no longer in danger of losing his life. Nor did it come solely from separating myself from the people, places, and situations that held my nervous system in a constant state of turmoil.

    It was a combination of many things.

    The reprieve came gradually over time, as I learned to listen to my body, understand my nervous system and its relationship to my emotions, and what people and situations threatened my inner peace.

    Each time I would notice that I did not feel safe in my body, that someone’s words or actions were causing harm, or that a relationship or situation was adding stress or creating an imbalance in my life, I would make adjustments as needed.

    This meant setting firm boundaries around who and what I was allowing into my headspace and heart space. This meant releasing people, places, and situations that were no longer healthy for me or serving me in a positive way. This meant working in therapy to heal childhood traumas that were still living in my body.

    For starters, I left a long-term relationship that, on the surface, seemed to provide stability but, in reality, kept me in a constant state of anxiety, resentment, and emotional chaos.

    The relationship was a textbook example of two unhealed people recreating their childhood wounds with one another, with no awareness of what they were doing. The impact trickled down to our children, who unfortunately suffered the negative consequences of their parents’ wounding.

    It wasn’t until months after our divorce, when my oldest son was diagnosed with PTSD, that I realized the environment I had been living in was not only toxic but also abusive. Sadly, the relationship with my former partner so closely resembled the patterns and behaviors I had witnessed as a child that I had somehow normalized them. I hadn’t put the puzzle pieces together soon enough.

    In fact, the moment that I read my son’s psych evaluation results, I was hit with the reality that I had lived in that kind of environment (chaotic, unhealthy, toxic) for most of my life. In my childhood and then later in my adult life.

    I was shocked.

    Why hadn’t I connected the dots before? The reason I felt anxious, the reason I was crawling in my skin, feeling on edge and unable to relax or find stillness, was because my nervous system had been under attack by the very people who were supposed to make me feel safe.

    I had been existing in survival mode for as long as I could remember.

    From that point forward, I made a pact with myself to never go back to people, situations, or environments that created chaos inside. I promised myself I would do whatever it took to protect myself from further harm, regain my stability, and break the cycles of toxicity and abuse that had been passed down through my lineage.

    These are the methods I used to free myself:

    • Subconscious reprogramming
    • EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
    • EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) Tapping
    • Brainspotting
    • Meditation
    • Somatic healing
    • Energy healing
    • Boundaries
    • Cutting Relationship Cords

    To some, my methods seemed extreme, selfish even. And in some ways, they were. But not in the typical way one would think.

    The fight to find my peace was only selfish in that I cared about myself and my well-being so much that I was not willing to stay stuck in cycles of suffering any longer. Nor was I willing to pass my wounding along to my children.

    I had a choice, and I chose myself. I chose my peace.

    And I would do it again if the time ever came.

    To anyone who is struggling with the suffocating feeling of living in survival mode, please let this be your reminder: you must choose yourself. You must do something, because doing nothing will only keep you in the eye of the storm.

    Even if it means letting go of close relationships, or removing yourself from certain environments, the hard decisions you make will eventually create the peace and freedom you seek in your life.

    Of course, leaving people and places behind is going to hurt. It’s going to cause some discomfort. But remember, you cannot heal in the same environment that is harming you.

    You have to be willing to get radically uncomfortable for a period of time until your nervous system stabilizes and you are able to invite healthier, more supportive relationships into your life. Once you are able to look in the rearview mirror at your distant past and see that you have left behind all the things that were harming you, you will realize it was all worth it.

    You will be proud of yourself for having the courage to take these brave steps. You will be proud of yourself for taking your happiness into your own hands. You will be proud of yourself for choosing YOU.

    Make peace your priority. Your nervous system will thank you. Your children will thank you.

    Sending you love.

  • One Thing We Need to Survive Crisis, Loss, and Trauma

    One Thing We Need to Survive Crisis, Loss, and Trauma

    “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” ~Viktor Frankl

    A couple of years ago, I was sitting in my little mountain cottage, writing away on a new novel. It was a cold and dark February afternoon. So, first, I felt pleasantly surprised when I saw something bright lighting up behind me: I thought it was the sun coming out. But when I turned around, I noticed that my porch was on fire!

    Before I knew what was happening, I was standing out in the snow in my slippers, looking back at the entrance and facade completely engulfed by flames.

    It was like a near-death experience. My mind quickly took an inventory of all the things that were inside the cottage now burning down—pretty much all of my personal belongings. However, in that moment, I realized that nothing else mattered but the manuscript I’d been working on.

    Hours later, after the fire-brigade had left and I took one last look at the charcoaled ruins of what used to be my home, I finally got into the car with Marius, my border collie. (The car key survived by nothing short of a miracle.)

    I was on my way to my mother’s house, nearly 100 miles away, where I would, or so I thought, crash, cry, get drunk, whatever. Any sort of self-care—bathing in chocolate or drugs, massive allowance for self-pity— seemed justified under these circumstances.

    Luckily, it occurred to me that some meditation and self-hypnosis may be a good idea also. And as I tried, I immediately received some deeper intuition about what to do.

    A voice of inner wisdom (or Higher Self, if you want to call it, that has access to cosmic intelligence) gave me some rules to follow in order to remain in a high state of mind, despite the misfortune that had happened.

    These were the rules given to me:

    • Do not, under any circumstances, drink alcohol.
    • Eat a vegan, fresh fruits and vegetables-based diet. Cut all sugar. Your system is under shock and won’t be able to eliminate the toxins without further damage.
    • Go to the gym every day and work out for an hour, vigorously. That will flush out the stress hormones and make you stronger.
    • For now, forget about the house. Live as simply as you can and concentrate on the project that carries the highest energy and greatest hope for the future; i.e., writing your novel. Make it your highest priority, give it regular time and attention, and protect the space in which it is happening.

    For sure, these were words of tough love. Wouldn’t it be, in moments of a great crisis, loss, or trauma, only natural to seek comfort and distraction? However, I’ll remain forever grateful to have received this different kind of inspiration at the right time. Otherwise, it would have been too easy to fall into a dark pit of self-pity, victimhood, and destructive patterns.

    In Andersen’s fairy tale The Little Match Girl, the orphaned child is trying to make a livelihood by selling matches on the street. It’s winter and she’s suffering from the freezing cold, so eventually gives in to the temptation to light one of those matches to warm her hands.

    In the moment of ignition, she feels like being back in her late grandmother’s living room, cozy with a fireplace, roast dinner, and a luminous Christmas tree. Her short-term escape, however, has a price. She gets addicted to lighting the matches; eventually, she wastes all her merchandise and dies. So can we, if we give in to temporary temptations of relief, live up all our resources, and slowly waste away.

    There is, however, a high path out of a crisis. Etymologically, the word crisis goes back to the Ancient Greek κρίσις, which means decision. In moments of great danger, loss, or threat, we are forced to focus our attention and see what really matters

    To me, it was in the moment when I stood there out in the snow, watching my house burn, that I realized what was the most important thing. Even before that, I took writing seriously, but only in the crisis did I learn to prioritize my soul’s calling against all odds.

    The essential question of decision that arises from the crisis is:

    Do we let our lives be determined by the trauma of the past, or do we have a future vision strong enough to pull us forward?

    Once I was at a conference on consciousness where a very interesting idea was brought forward.

    Many of us have heard of entropy: the tendency of closed physical systems to move forward in time, toward increased levels of chaos. (For example, an ice cube being heated up to liquid water (increased entropy as molecules are freer to move) and then brought to a boil (as the molecules in the vapor move around even more randomly.)

    It is, however, less often discussed that—following from the mathematical equations—there also must be a counterforce to it.

    This counterforce is called syntropy. Being the symmetrical law, it moves backward in time toward increased levels of harmony.

    It has been suggested that if entropy governs physical (non-living) systems, syntropy must be true for consciousness (life), which hence, in some strange and mysterious way, must be (retro-) caused by the future.

    Although intriguing, first, this sounded very much like science-fiction to me…

    However, when I began to think about it deeper, I realized how much practical truth there was in this. Psychologically, the future indeed can have a tremendous harmonizing and organizing effect on our present lives.

    Think, for instance, of an athlete who spends several hours a day swimming up and down the pool. When you ask them why they do that, they say because they are training for the Olympics. The Olympics is in the future, but it causes the swimmer in the present to follow an organized and structured training regime instead of just fooling around all day long.

    The life-saving effect of having a worthwhile future goal has been documented ever since the early days of psychology.

    World famous psychotherapist Viktor Frankl observed his fellow sufferers while incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps. Later, he taught that those who had a purpose to keep on living (e.g., a study or manuscript to complete or a relationship to rekindle) were also the ones most likely to survive even under those horrendous circumstances.

    Having worked for years with battered women, I made similar observations. In hypnotherapy we have a set of techniques under the umbrella of future life progressions, which gives the subconscious mind a chance to explore alternative futures. In one exercise, the women were asked to just imagine that overnight a miracle happened, and they were now waking up in their best possible future.

    Shockingly, the individuals most resistant to change were the ones who could not imagine any future day different from their current reality. As it turned out, even more important than healing the trauma of their past, was to teach their brains to imagine a new future. 

    If we want to take the high path out of a crisis, we must learn that—to imagine our future in the best possible way. It begins by focusing not on the trauma, the pain, and the past, but on the single thing that feels most valuable and worthwhile to pursue in our lives. Once we have found that, our worthwhile goal will serve as a light tower for us to safely sail into the future, no matter how obscure our present circumstances are.

    And what is my most worthwhile goal, you may ask. Ultimately, as Viktor Frankl also said, that is not something we must ask, rather realize that in life it is we who are being asked: “In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

    What will your best response be?

  • 5 Life Lessons from a Brain Tumor That Could Have Killed Me

    5 Life Lessons from a Brain Tumor That Could Have Killed Me

    “Life is a balance between what we can control and what we cannot. I am learning to live between effort and surrender.” ~Danielle Orner

    I was slumped against a wall at Oxford Circus Station early one Sunday evening when an irritated male voice suddenly barked, “MOVE!”

    Moments beforehand, I had lost my vision.

    Without conscious thought, I muttered, “RUDE!” and staggered off without clearly seeing where I was going.

    It was only months later, on retracing my steps at Oxford Circus, that I realized I’d been blocking his view of some street art.

    I’d allowed a guy to bully me out of the way while in a vulnerable state so that he could take a picture for social media.

    Lesson 1: Not all disabilities are visible.

    We can never fully know what someone else is experiencing. Mental health, chronic pain, and disabilities are not always apparent. So, when we come from a place of not knowing and are patient with others by default, we open up a window of possibility that exists outside of our judgment.

    Minutes prior, I’d stepped off an underground train and onto an upward escalator. A pain hit my right temple like a bullet. It took my breath away, everything went black, and I felt I might faint.

    Desperately, I clung to the railing. And as the top of the escalator approached, my right foot went floppy, and my vision disappeared. I could see light and color, but the world was blurry, lacking definition.

    I used what little vision I had to follow the distinctive white curve of Regent Street down to a spot where I’d arranged to meet a friend

    Panic finally set in when I realized that my friend was walking toward me, and I could recognize his voice but I could not see his face at all.

    We sat down in a restaurant, and a concerned waitress brought a sugary drink.

    My mind went into overdrive: “Had I cycled too much? Was my blood sugar low? Had I eaten/drank enough? Given myself a stroke? Was I just stressed?”

    Twenty minutes later, my vision slowly returned.

    Relieved but freaked out, I asked my friend if he thought I should go to A&E (ER). He said, “Only if you think you need to.” I felt silly. Scared to take up space. Afraid of being a drama queen. I didn’t trust myself or my experience.

    LESSON 2: Don’t seek external validation.

    The opinions of others are helpful, but only you see and experience life from your own unique perspective. Learning to trust and validate our own experience first and foremost is how we step in our power.

    Later I went back home but couldn’t shake it off.

    The next morning, I visited my doctor, who sent me straight to A&E (ER). The hospital admitted me overnight, concerned it was a mini stroke or aneurysm. But the following morning they discharged me, citing dehydration as the cause.

    One week later, I was back in A&E. More dizziness, more foot numbness, more blurred vision. A doctor described it as “classic Migraine Aura.”

    My gut leapt; that didn’t feel right. “I don’t get headaches,” I protested. “I rarely take painkillers. Why so many all of a sudden?”

    They seemed confident it wasn’t serious, but booked an MRI scan, just to be certain.

    Twenty-five minutes of buzzing, clanking, and humming later, I glided out of an MRI scanner.

    I thanked the technician. “All good?” I asked.

    “It’s very clear,” she replied.

    LESSON 3: Listen to your gut.

    If your gut says that something is off, listen to it. A gut feeling is typically a lurch from your stomach rather than chatter from the mind.

    My gut knew it wasn’t migraines; it told me so, and if I hadn’t strongly advocated for myself, then I may not have got that MRI scan.

    A week later, I was back with my local doctor, experiencing vertigo and earache.

    Did I have an ear infection? Was that the issue all along, some sort of horrible virus affecting my sight and balance?

    The GP opened my records up on his computer and his face immediately dropped.

    “Do you mind if I take a moment to read this?”

    “Of course,” I said.

    He composed himself but his face was ashen.

    “Has anyone spoken to you about your MRI result?” he ventured at last.

    I found myself detaching from reality, like I was watching a movie.

    He told me that they’d found a lesion on my brain and there was a possibility of brain cancer. “I’m so sorry,” he offered finally.

    I left and immediately burst into tears.

    Six days I lived with the idea of having brain cancer.

    Had it spread? How would they treat it? Could they treat it?

    More dizziness, more vertigo ensued, and a wise friend firmly told me to go back to the emergency room and refuse to leave until I got answers.

    Reluctantly, I entered A&E (ER) for the third time.

    After a long wait, a neurologist sprang from nowhere, took me to a room, and showed me my MRI scan. I was shocked by the large white circle in the middle of it.

    “How big is that?” I gasped.

    “About the size of a pea,” the doctor said casually. “I believe it’s a colloid cyst, a rare, benign, non-cancerous tumor. It can be removed by operation, using a minimally invasive, endoscopic camera.”

    Relief flowed through me. “It’s not cancer?”

    After reassuring me it was not, the doctor sent me away, telling me to await further news.

    Outside the hospital I hung around updating loved ones by phone. Suddenly a withheld number rang.

    It was the neurologist: “I’ve spoken with neurosurgeons, and they think you should be admitted to the hospital for emergency surgery. If the cyst bursts you have one to two hours max, or that’s it.”

    “Okay,” I stammered. “I’m actually still at the hospital.”

    “Not this hospital,” he said. “A different one.”

    A taxi ride later, it was 5 p.m., and I was in an emergency room for the second time that day and fourth time that month. Despite the chaos around me, I eventually curled up and got a little sleep.

    Suddenly it was 3.30 a.m. and I was still in A&E. Staff rushed in, grabbed my bed, and hurtled me through corridors. Bright lights from London’s skyscrapers flashed past windows, everything surreal and movie-like again

    The next day, surgeons explained that they wouldn’t be sure that they could reach the tumor until they operated, and there were four different options for surgery, ranging from a minimal endoscopic camera through to opening my skull up with major surgery.

    I hoped and prayed for endoscopy but wouldn’t know the outcome until I woke up.

    The operation was planned for 8 a.m. the following morning. I said an emotional goodnight to my sister. Suddenly a lady interrupted us and said, “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I saw you earlier and you don’t look sick enough to be on this ward.”

    And there it was—the trigger again, the gift, the insight, the lightbulb moment:

    “Despite how bad I feel on the inside, I don’t look ill enough to have a brain tumor.”

    I didn’t look ill enough to the guy at Oxford Circus taking a selfie.

    I didn’t look ill enough to my friend.

    I didn’t look ill enough to the doctors who turned me away initially.

    And now I didn’t look ill enough for this lady’s expectations of who should be in a head trauma ward.

    I breathed into that pain. Into the feeling of not being seen. Of not being heard.  Of not being validated. Of feeling like a fraud, an imposter. Of not deserving to take up space. Of not trusting my experience.

    And when I found my center, I quietly replied, “Actually, I’m having surgery to remove a brain tumor tomorrow morning.”

    Her face fell, then she wished me luck and moved on.

    LESSON 4: Our triggers are our gifts.

    When we are triggered, it shows us what needs to heal.

    It was me who felt unworthy of taking up space. It was me who felt like a fraud. She was simply my mirror. It’s up to me to heal those aspects within myself and to believe that I’m worthy of taking up space—and to then take it.

    The next morning, my operation got pushed back. It was a major trauma hospital, and bigger emergencies took precedent. I engaged in mindfulness to stay centered.

    I did an hour of breathwork to calm my nervous system. I listened to uplifting music to raise my vibration. I watched emotionally safe movies to collect warm, fuzzy vibes. I drew on my iPad and alchemized my head tumor into a cute pea cartoon character—benign, polite, and cute, not threatening at all.

    A porter arrived at 5.30 p.m. and whisked me away for surgery. After weeks of surrendering to the unknown, it was now time for the ultimate surrender of any illusion of control. I took a deep breath as anesthetic filled my veins.

    LESSON 5: Surrender.

    We can’t always control what happens to us or the outcome. We can only control what happens inside of us and how we choose to show up. We take our power back when we lean into the unknown and surrender. When we resist our current reality, we suffer more.

    I woke up two hours later and got sick.

    My brain was rebalancing after months of increased head pressure. Clutching a blue plastic bag, I looked up to see one of London’s best neurosurgeons waving cheerfully at me. “Your operation is over. We used an endoscope. Minimal invasion. We think we got it all, and it’s not likely to come back.”

    Relief, nausea, and gratitude flowed in abundance.

    I dozed a little while morphine played tricks on my mind. Delicious little dreams filled my head, and I saw the world as one big, animated garden with flowers as cartoon characters.

    I giggled at the thought of plants acting as humans do and imagined an aggressive rose bush declaring war on all of the other plants and throwing bombs. It seemed ridiculous. Humans should be more like flowers, I thought—less ego, just growing, flourishing, blooming.

    I enjoyed this magical trip a little longer, a welcome respite from the hell of the last month, and eventually they wheeled me back to the ward.

    I arrived in time to see the sun setting across London from the twelfth floor.

    It was magnificent. Its beauty, color, and intensity moved my weary body to tears.

    A nurse came to check that I was okay, and I assured her that I was crying happy tears.

    I silently watched the sun as it made its final slip over the horizon, safe in the knowledge that I’d survived another day.

  • How To Keep Moving Forward When You Feel Like Shutting Down

    How To Keep Moving Forward When You Feel Like Shutting Down

    “I can’t believe what I’m managing to get through.” ~Frank Bruni

    My worst fear was inflicted upon me three months ago: a cancer diagnosis—non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Out of nowhere!

    Truth be told though, lots of awful things that happen to us come suddenly out of nowhere—a car accident, suicide, heart attack, and yes, a diagnostic finding. We’re stopped in our tracks, seemingly paralyzed as we go into shock and dissociative mode.

    My world as I knew it stopped. It became enclosed in the universe of illness—tiny and limited. I became one-dimensional—a sick patient.

    And I went into shock. To the point where I didn’t feel. As a person who values mental health and understands the importance of emotions, I seemingly stayed away from the feeling part. It wasn’t intentional; it’s how I coped.

    I dealt by mindlessly and mindfully (yes, that seems like an oxymoron) putting one foot in front of the other and doing what needed to be done, like a good soldier, plowing through the open minefields.  Actions and intentional mindset were my strategies.

    My biggest fear was: Will I make it through the treatments? What if I don’t?

    So I started reigning myself in to not let myself think too far ahead, down into the rabbit hole of fear and anxiety. Being a small person with no extra weight, I was scared of the chemo crushing me. Terror would rear its head when I allowed these thoughts to enter my thin body. What if I shrivel up and die? What if I can’t do it?

    And so my mind work began. I became very intentional about putting up that stop sign in my head so as not to get ahead of myself and project into the unknown, scary future. I began taking everything one step at a time.

    I stop now and digress. I had been in the depths of despair and darkness when, many years ago, my middle daughter, Nava, was diagnosed with lifelong neurological disabilities.

    I had a noose of bitterness and anger pulled so tightly around my neck that I couldn’t even go to the park with her. My envy of the other babies who could sit up and start to climb out of their strollers was too much for me to bear; to the point where I stopped going to the playground.

    My therapy at the time was a life-saver and helped me move from the unanswerable “why me/why her?” questions to the “how” and “what”: how to carry on with a major disappointment and blow, toward creating new expectations and goals, and what to do with this to still build a good life.

    Changing the questions helped me cope and move forward. This has served me well in other challenges throughout the years, such as my divorce and Nava’s critical medical issues years later, for which she was hospitalized for a year.

    So with the cancer diagnosis, I went to the “how” and “what.” How can I deal with this in as best a way as possible? What can I do to optimize my coping skills? How can I minimize my anxiety and fear?

    Having studied positive psychology, resiliency-building, and mindfulness, I’ve gleaned some tools over the years that are serving me now through my personal medical crisis.

    Let’s look at a few.

    Anxiety and Staying Present

    We know anxiety is caused by worry of the future. So staying present is key. Working on our mind to be in the moment and not spiral outward is crucial. I know my PET scan is coming up, and I’m naturally anxious about the results. I tell myself to take today and make it as good as possible and not think about the end of the week. There’s a lot of intentional work that goes into controlling the mind.

    And when we spiral, as we humans naturally do, we allow for that too. “Permission to be human,” as positive psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar states. The important thing is bringing ourselves back. It’s not that we don’t go to dark places; it’s that we notice it and don’t linger and get sucked down into it. We recognize it and can pull ourselves out of it.

    Expansion

    Once the shock and horror of illness begins to settle and we see some pattern or predictability, we can look to expand our identity and role beyond a sick person, or in my case, a cancer/chemo patient. I begin to step outside myself, my illness, toward others and other things that are important to me.

    Connecting with who you are beyond your sickness opens you up and reminds you of the bigger You. We are more than our difficult circumstance.

    I always remember Morrie Schwartz in the book Tuesdays With Morrie—how he cried each morning (as he was dying from ALS) and was then available and present for all his visitors, to be of help and service to them.

    So I reach out to a couple of clients to offer sessions during my seemingly better weeks (in between treatments). I create some (generic) social media posts. I haven’t gone personal with this online, so this blog post is a big (public) deal.

    Meaning in Your Life

    Doing things that are meaningful, however small, and that make you feel good is a sure way to stay engaged and moving. It’s the ordinary things that keep us going. Since I love colors, I wake up and match up colorful clothing and makeup (unless I’m too weak), as that makes me feel good.

    Nature and beauty are my greatest sources of soothing and healing. When I feel okay, I go to a park, sit by the water/ocean, and visit gardens, just get outside and look at the expansive sky.

    I deal with my indoor and outdoor plants. I cut off the dead heads, water them, take some pictures, and check on the veges. This represents growth and beauty.

    I get inspiration and uplift from words, and love non-fiction books of people transcending their adversities. I read, underline, and reach out to authors.

    And I learn. I started a creativity class with someone I actually found on this site. I figure it’s a good time to incorporate creativity and natural healing.

    What infuses your life with meaning? What is important to you? What expands you? Who are you beyond your difficult situation?

    Response and Choice

    Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist, logotherapist (therapy of meaning and purpose), and author of the renowned book Man’s Search For Meaning, is instrumental in the foundational concept that it’s not our circumstances that define us but rather our response to our situations that determine who we are and who we become.

    “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

    And another one: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

    These ideas have been life-changing for me and propel me to avoid an all-too-easy passive and victim-like mentality.

  • How to Thrive in Life after Surviving Cancer

    How to Thrive in Life after Surviving Cancer

    “Have a little faith in your ability to handle whatever’s coming down the road. Believe that you have the strength and resourcefulness required to tackle whatever challenges come your way. And know that you always have the capacity to make the best of anything. Even if you didn’t want it or ask for it, even if it seems scary or hard or unfair, you can make something good of any loss or hardship. You can learn from it, grow from it, help others through it, and maybe even thrive because of it. The future is unknown, but you can know this for sure: Whatever’s coming, you got this.” ~Lori Deschene

    Isn’t it amazing how some days are etched in your mind forever and other days are just lost in the wind? One day that is etched in my mind forever is December 27, 2006. This is the day I was told I had breast cancer. While breast cancer is common, being twenty-six years old with breast cancer isn’t that common.

    So here I was, twenty-six years old with breast cancer saying to myself, “Well f*ck, that sure throws off the plans I had for basically anything.” I quickly fell into fear, worry, and “why me?”. I will spare you the details of treatment; it wasn’t any fun. I lost my hair and my dignity and fell into depression when life returned to “normal.”

    Whatever normal is, I was living it. However, nothing was normal. I didn’t know how to live without a doctor’s appointment to go to. I mean, all I wanted was an end to the endless appointments and here I was without them, and I couldn’t figure out what to do.

    So, I took lots of naps because I was exhausted, or so I thought. Well, it turns out I wasn’t exhausted; I was depressed. I was alone with thoughts of wondering when my cancer would come back. I was sucked into a pit of despair that I had never seen before. Who was I becoming? The person who sat in their pajamas all day while I worked from home—yep, that was me.

    I wanted to scream, “I survived cancer, now what?” Where was the manual on how to live after cancer? Who helps me get back to living? I just go back to what I was doing, as if nothing happened? I was tired of saying to myself, “But I’m supposed to feel better, right?”

    As the stream of appointments, scans, lab draws, and phone calls from friends and family continued to slow, I tried hard to be well and remain optimistic. Continue doing my job, walking the dogs, and dragging myself to the gym. Life just didn’t seem real, and depression overwhelmed me for days or weeks at a time. A quick nap turned into a four-hour slumber; my physical body was healing, and my mental body was spiraling downward.

    The difficulty of shifting back to life was not what I expected, and thank goodness for friends. My dear friend Rebecca asked if I wanted to run a half-marathon, but my visceral reaction was no. Then I learned the race took place one year to the date after I finished chemo, so I thought, “Heck yea, take that cancer!” It was perfect timing. One foot in front of the other, I trained for my first half-marathon.

    I kept myself going by trying to run when I could. Running was my go-to mental health fix pre-cancer, and it was starting to work post-cancer too. I remember there were days when I would drag myself to run and come back home in minutes. Then there were days I felt like I had superpowers and it felt so good.

    Rebecca and I crossed that finish line, hand in hand, and celebrated with margaritas and Mexican food, my other go-to mental health fixes.

    So why do I feel inclined to share my story? It’s not just about cancer, depression, running, and margaritas. It’s about making something good come from something bad. 

    Cancer taught me a lot of things. The biggest lesson was to control what I could. That looked like taking a long way home instead of sitting in traffic, not getting worked up about long lines in the grocery store, taking risks like rock climbing in Utah, trying new things like fly fishing in the mountains of North Carolina, singing in my car on the way to work to pump myself up for the day, going on camping trips with my girlfriends, and leaving behind a soul-sucking career.

    I can’t say I am exactly happy I had cancer, but I can’t imagine life without it. It’s a love/hate relationship. Looking back, it was an opportunity for growth and learning that I can do hard things. It was a reminder to focus on being truly alive.

    There is not a guidebook for cancer survivors, no way to time travel to the person you were before your diagnosis, no way to return your body unscathed, or quick way to restore your trust in your body again.  It’s a journey that you must figure out for yourself, one minute, hour, and day at a time.

    You must accept what has happened and discover a new self.

    I learned more in the year after cancer than I had in the previous twenty-six years. You don’t need a cancer journey to do this.

    Life is short; learn to live life to the fullest. However, if cancer is part of your journey back to living, you are not alone in your quest to learn to live again. You can do this. One tiny step at a time, you will learn to truly live again. You will stumble back and take huge leaps forward.

    You can have a life full of purpose, happiness, gratitude, and adventure. Don’t merely survive cancer, thrive after cancer! What are you waiting for? Let’s do this.

  • People Raised on Survival

    People Raised on Survival

  • From Bombs to Bliss: Peeling Off the Layers of Childhood Trauma

    From Bombs to Bliss: Peeling Off the Layers of Childhood Trauma

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post mentions bombs and executions and may be triggering to some people.

    “Into your darkest corner, you are safe in my love, you are protected. I am the openness you seek, I am your doorway. Come sit in the circular temple of my heart, and let yourself be calm.” ~Agapi Stassinopoulos

    I was six years old. My mother and I entered the bus to head home from downtown. Suddenly the sirens went off.

    I felt a knot in my stomach. People started running around. A cloud of dust formed in the air. I could taste the panic. Sirens meant that it was time to seek shelter. They were the very loud sound of the thin veil between life and death. A moment in time where our brief existence on earth felt palatable.

    My father and twelve other family members had been in one of the worst political prisons for almost five years. Ever since his arrest and as far as I can remember, the bitter taste of fear and distrust has never left my side.

    I caught a breath when my mother squeezed my hand. I could feel my little heart racing in my chest. When we finally got home, I saw my grandmother running through the yard. Tears were rolling down her face.

    “I was worried sick,” she said.

    We weren’t sure they had made it either. We all felt temporary relief. We had survived.

    It’s hard to think about life without smartphones in the eighties. You never knew if someone was going to make it back home alive. Not until they physically walked through the door.

    For the years to come, the government ordered the execution of all political prisoners. My father miraculously survived while his family was executed. The war ended when I was eight years old. The sound of the sirens and terrifying moments passed. As a young girl, I witnessed a lot of physical beatings, oppression, and abuse of young people by the religious guard in my country.

    Experiencing war and turmoil in Iran as a child shaped my adult life in so many ways. The feeling of not being safe never left my body, and I continued to live in survival mode as my body carried years of trauma like a heavy weight.

    Living in survival mode meant that I was in a constant state of fight, flight, or fawn. I was angry. I lashed out at people very easily. When things got tough, I either fought or froze.

    For years, I had a tough time getting out of bed in the morning. I also had a tough time with my identity. I didn’t know who I was. I was a people-pleaser. I did anything to keep the peace around me, and when it got chaotic, I got angry and threw whatever I could get my hands on at the wall.

    Suffering was the only thing that made me feel alive. It was the only thing that made sense.

    We immigrated to Germany when I was fourteen years old. A whole lot had happened to me up until that point, but now there also was the added pressure of surviving in a new culture. Two worlds collided. German kids weren’t very nice to the foreign girl from Iran. Once again, I was in complete survival mode.

    Years passed. My family immigrated to the United States, and I met my American husband (a male wounded version of myself) as a twenty-five-year-old exchange student in Arizona. We instantly connected over our childhood traumas.

    Six years into the marriage I got pregnant. I didn’t know it back then, but becoming a mother was the best thing that ever happened to me.

    The birth of my daughters became the turning point in my life. Symbolically speaking, I gave birth to a new me. The process was physically and mentally difficult, and when my first birth didn’t go as planned, I struggled with my post-partum recovery and suffered from depression.

    Experiencing a difficult time meant that I was feeling all my emotions including the anger that already lived within me. And as my anger got louder, I realized that I had given birth to a child who now was depending on me to survive. I saw love for myself through the eyes of that child, and for the first time I saw the possibility of a new life.

    The possibility of a life where I would find the real me underneath all the layers of trauma. The possibility of a life where I could see my childhood in a new light: A light of appreciation. A light of love for who I had become. A celebration of my strength and perseverance.

    I didn’t have to hate myself anymore. “It is safe for me to be me,” I declared to myself.

    Becoming a mother gave me the strength to push through everything from my past that was holding me hostage for so many years. I was determined to break free the cycle of suffering for my daughter. It wasn’t just about me anymore. Healing doesn’t happen overnight, but life conspired to make it happen for me.

    While I was pregnant with my second child, tired from many sleepless nights with my first baby, and stuck in a stressful job in finance, the climate at my corporate job took a turn for the worst. I got rejected from a promotion I was more than qualified for because I was pregnant (or at least that was my perception at the time).

    At the same time, my husband received an incredible out-of-town job opportunity. It was an easy decision. I quit my job, and we packed up and moved.

    Not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, I got my real estate license in hopes for a new career that would allow me to have a more flexible work schedule. This was the beginning of my healing journey.

    Although real estate and healing have nothing seemingly obvious in common, what led to my new journey was the fact that for the first time ever, I was depending fully on myself. 

    I wasn’t going to have a consistent paycheck, PTO, and personal days. I was the only one in charge of what my days looked like. I was in charge of my own mind. If I didn’t wake myself up in the morning, aside from my children, no one else would.

    On the day of my orientation at my new real estate office, the company owner played a motivational video for the class. I remember thinking, wow, this makes me feel good on the inside.

    I felt a fire burning in me that I had never felt before.

    YouTube became my best friend after that. I consumed every motivational video compilation that I could find. I felt alive. Possibly for the first time ever. What came after this time, aside from my childhood, turned out to be some of the hardest but most rewarding times of my life.

    As I learned about how my thoughts and emotions create my reality, I became more self-aware. I was able to distinguish between what was my trauma and what was truly me by observing how certain situations and people made me feel

    I understood that what triggers me comes from a subconscious part of me that needs to be heard and seen. I started to take radical responsibility for my own feelings and emotions.

    For example, if my daughter did something that triggered anger in me, I would explore what within me was unhealed to cause such a reaction. Was it because I wasn’t heard or seen as a child? Was it because I didn’t feel safe to process my anger in a healthy way?

    I would sit with these thoughts and give myself permission to feel my anger, my fears, and my sadness. It was all going to be okay. I am safe. I am loved. I am supported. These became my new daily mantras.

    Underneath the weight of anger, there was that little six-year-old. I could finally see her with new eyes and wrap her in a soft blanket of pure love. I started to appreciate my childhood for making me the person that I am today. Brave. Strong. And worthy of a happy life!

    This work isn’t over yet. It probably never will be. If you have experienced trauma like I did and you have embarked on a healing journey, know that it takes time to become whole again. And that is okay.

    This work is ongoing because the subconscious mind has many layers, and there are always opportunities to explore what is deep within them.

    Just as the layers start peeling off, just as you hear, see, and hold your wounded inner child, you will start to see yourself and your life more clearly and feel safe in your body. By bringing those dark aspects of yourself to the light, you’ll start recognizing and addressing your triggers so you won’t feel so emotionally charged all the time.

    As you try to visualize a different life for yourself—one less limited and defined by your trauma—you will see what emotions pop up to the surface. You will need you to sit with those emotions so you can identify the harmful self-beliefs that aren’t yours. Beliefs about your worth, your capabilities, your potential. Ideas that are hidden deeply in your subconscious mind that you only adopted as your own because of what you endured in the past.

    The more you up level your life and the bigger your dreams get, the more you will unpack. You will unpack all the lies that were fed to you to hold you small, and you will start finding the strength and confidence required to become the person you want to be.

    Healing is a journey, don’t rush it. Trust the process and take time to sit with your emotions to feel them fully. And if things get tough just keep going. One foot in front of the other. One moment at a time. The past is behind you, and it made you who you are today. Love yourself and honor your journey. You can overcome the darkness and see the light. If I did it, so can you!

  • Now It’s Time to Live

    Now It’s Time to Live

  • Why I Relied on My Ego to Survive but Now Need My Soul to Thrive

    Why I Relied on My Ego to Survive but Now Need My Soul to Thrive

    “Create a life that feels good on the inside, not one that just looks good on the outside.” ~ Unknown

    Since childhood I have been a high achiever. As a kid I was a perfectionist, driven to succeed, to be the best at what I did. I wanted to do well so that both my parents would be proud of me and love me, especially after they divorced.

    At school and college I worked hard to get straight A’s. Anything less seemed like a failure to me. I was always top of my class, and I won awards. However, this didn’t do me any favors with my classmates. They teased me for being a teacher’s pet and bullied me to bring me down a peg or two. I found it difficult to make friends, and I was often left out.

    I spent a lot of my time alone reading, drawing, and painting. These things helped me escape into different world. However, my real passion was dance and my dream was to be a dancer, but I knew how difficult it was to be successful enough to make a career at it.

    My ego’s job was to protect me and make sure my needs for survival, safety, and security were met.

    It told me I needed to be practical, to go to university and get a degree that would help me get a job with good career prospects and income. However, I found my studies difficult, I struggled, and the voice of my ego, my inner critic, told me that I wasn’t clever enough.

    After university, I didn’t have a gap year to go off traveling or to find myself, like a lot of people did. I did what was expected of me—use my degree to get a good job straight away to start earning my way.

    I wanted to do well in my new job and impress people. However, when I was given feedback in an appraisal, if nine things were positive and only one was negative, I only remembered the one negative. My ego did not handle criticism well. I took everything personally and would get upset.

    I continued to progress in my career, but I felt insecure, and my ego needed praise and recognition from others that I was doing a good job.

    I lived by the saying “Dress for the job you want, not for the job you have.” The managers dressed in smart, expensive clothes, which put mine to shame, and I felt inferior and not good enough.

    I wanted to look the part so I’d have the confidence to apply for promotions and new jobs, so I started to dress like them too, even though I couldn’t afford it.

    When I started a new job, I wore my new clothes as armor, to make a good impression, so that I looked like I could do the job, even though on the inside I was worried that I would fail.

    Society and the media judge success on beauty, thinness, qualifications, wealth, status, and popularity. I compared myself to others and felt I was lacking.

    My self-esteem was tied up in external and material things—getting the highest marks, awards, the best career; how many promotions I got, how much money I earned, weight loss, my appearance, romance, what type of car and house I had… I falsely believed that if I had more, I was worth more.

    By listening to the voice of my ego, I had made my life all about being a successful career woman; however, that came at a price. It was very stressful, and the higher up the ladder I went, the less I liked my job. I didn’t have any friends at work to socialize with, so I used to go shopping at lunchtime and buy things to make myself feel better, although that feeling didn’t last long.

    As I reached middle age, younger people were biting at my heels for my job and started to get the promotions I wanted. They ended up overtaking me and became my boss, even though I felt I was better qualified and more experienced for the role, which was humiliating. I got overlooked and became invisible, excluded, ignored, and bullied. I felt devalued, unappreciated, and worthless. This led to anxiety and depression, and I was let go.

    The rug had been pulled out from under me: I suddenly found myself out of a job. Life events had beaten me down, and my ego was bruised. I went into a downward spiral, I lost my self-esteem and self-confidence, and I wasn’t in a good place mentally to be able to look for another job.

    I felt that I had lost my identity, as it had been built around my career. My ego had always presented my best self and best life to others, so that they could see how well I had done and would be impressed.

    Now that I had no job, my ego told me I was a failure, I was useless, I had no value. My life felt meaningless. I was suffering from depression and anxiety and believed everything my inner critic said.

    As I now spent most of my time at home, I knew I needed to use this time wisely, to take stock of my life, to find out what I truly wanted deep down inside—what would make me happy—but I also needed to start looking after myself.

    I now listen to relaxing music and do guided meditations. I enjoy swimming, as it helps me switch off. I take long walks with my dog in nature or along the beach. While walking, I often talk to myself about what’s on my mind or what’s worrying me, and I pay attention to what’s around me.

    The answers to my problems or ideas just pop into my head, or I see a sign that means something to me, or I have a dream that gives me a message or shows me what I should do next. I realize that this is my intuition talking to me.

    Intuition is an innate sense that we are all born with, but often we don’t know how to connect with it. It is an ability to understand or know something immediately based on our feelings rather than facts.

    It is the voice of our heart and soul, the voice of truth and love. Since it is quiet, calm, and peaceful, I didn’t used to hear it. I only heard my ego’s loud, dominant, critical voice and believed everything it said. We can often feel our intuition in our stomach area as a “gut instinct.”

    My soul told me I was loveable. I didn’t need to be perfect or prove myself to others, I was valuable and good enough just as I was, and I was necessary to this life. I could never be worthless, because worth is part of my true self, and no one can take that away from me. I just had to start believing in myself.

    I am a logical, analytical person and good at solving problems and coming up with rational solutions, which made me very successful in my career. I never used to pay attention to my intuition, as it didn’t make sense logically.

    So many times, when going for a new job or buying a house or a new car, I have had a gut instinct that this was not right for me, but my ego has ignored that and done it anyway. My ego’s decision was based on what would look most impressive to others and not what was best for me. Most of the time I later regretted it and wished I’d gone with my gut instinct.

    Problems begin when our soul and our ego are in conflict or out of balance. We feel one thing but do another; we self-sabotage. Our actions are not in line with our true values. We need to align our inner and outer selves to lead an authentic life. Knowing the difference between our soul talk and our ego talk can be the key to finding fulfillment. 

    Our soul knows our true needs before we do. It can clarify what we really want and improve our life. It can point us in the right direction when we don’t know what to do. If we feel off about something, most often that’s our soul telling us it’s not something we should do.

    All we have to do is listen to our intuition and trust it enough to go where it leads. When we are on the right path everything feels effortless and starts to fall into place. The right people, places, and circumstances often turn up just when we need them because we’re putting ourselves in the path of what’s best for us.

    When I first met my husband, he wasn’t my usual type, but I had a good feeling about him. My intuition told me to give him a chance, and I’m so glad I listened to it. He loves me and wants what’s best for me. He is my greatest supporter and is there for me through difficult times, as I am for him.

    Now I just need to work out the other areas of my life.

    I have learned that it’s important when making a decision to base it on logic and facts, but also to listen to my intuition. What is my gut instinct telling me? If all three are aligned, then this is the right decision for me.

    I now recognize when my ego is talking to me, as it is loud, negative, critical, and the voice of doom and gloom, and I try not to pay attention to it. The more I slow down, quiet my mind, and hear and trust my intuition, the stronger and more noticeable it becomes. 

    My intuition told me to start writing as a way to get in touch with my inner most thoughts and feelings, understand myself better, learn from my experiences, and try to make sense of my life, something I hadn’t done before.

    Once I started writing, I couldn’t stop. Words started pouring out of me and triggered strong emotions. I realized that I had unresolved issues from my childhood—fear of abandonment, low self-esteem, and other insecurities—which I had buried and now needed to work on to heal myself.

    I know now that my ego is just my outer self, it is not who I really am. It’s the mask I wear to face the world, to hide my imperfections from others. It’s my position in society, all my titles and roles.

    My soul is my inner self, who I really am behind all of that. It’s my true self. It is something we are all born with; it doesn’t change and it will be with us forever.

    Our soul knows what’s best for us. It is always there for us, to love, protect, and support us, to give us answers and guide us onto the right path, once we learn how to hear and trust it.

    In the first half of my life my ego was in the driver’ seat, and I focused on my outer self. However, it was not a wasted journey, as I learned valuable lessons along the way, and it brought me to where I am today.

    I have now reached a crossroad. It’s time for my ego to take a back seat and for my soul to take over so I can focus on my inner self and begin the journey of finding more meaning in my life.

    I hope whatever journey you are on, you can follow your soul’s wisdom too.

  • The Fascinating Reason We Sabotage Ourselves and Hold Ourselves Back

    The Fascinating Reason We Sabotage Ourselves and Hold Ourselves Back

    “Sometimes we self-sabotage just when things seem to be going smoothly. Perhaps this is a way to express our fear about whether it is okay for us to have a better life.” ~Maureen Brady

    Have you ever decided to try something new—like getting into a new relationship or doing something that would help you experience success in your career/mission or offer you more vibrant health and well-being—and you were able to follow through for a bit, but then you stopped? Was this self-sabotage? Was it procrastination?

    Did you know that self-sabotage and procrastination can be survival mechanisms, and they’re actually our friends? They’re meeting some type of need, and it happens to all of us to a certain degree.

    Every behavior we do serves us in one way or another. We self-sabotage and procrastinate for many reasons, and it’s different for everybody; most often it’s coming from a part of us that just wants to feel safe.

    The key is working with these parts, not against them, and not trying to get rid of them. When we work with them and integrate them, we experience more energy, and they become a source of great strength and wisdom.

    The “symptoms” of self-sabotage and procrastination carry important messages; most often they’re a cry out from our inner child.

    Sometimes what we think we want isn’t what we truly want. Self-sabotage and procrastination may be our inner guidance saying, “Hey, I have another way.”

    Sometimes we’ve had many disappointments in the past, so our subconscious puts the brakes on and says, “What’s the use? I never win; I always lose.”

    If we’re overindulging in alcohol and food, using distracting activities, and not doing what we say we want to do, then there’s a reason. The key to healing and shifting that energy patterning is discovering the reasons and what that part of us needs.

    We often experience self-sabotage and procrastination when our unconscious needs aren’t being acknowledged or met.

    Trying to change the outer and/or push through with positive thinking takes a lot of efforting, and it often wears us out. Why? Because we’re fighting against our own biology, which creates self-doubt, self-judgment, inner conflict, fear, and insecurity. They all play together “on the same team” in that same energy.

    Most of our programming was created before we turned seven. This was when we formed our beliefs about who we are, what we deserve and don’t deserve, and how life works.

    When we want to experience something new, our subconscious goes into its “memory files” to see if what we want is “safe.” Safety can mean many things—maybe familiarity, or not speaking our truth or sharing our creativity, or using substances, like food, cigarettes, drugs, or alcohol, to numb our feelings and/or keep pain away.

    If we’ve had painful experiences in the past that were similar to what we want now, that may be the reason a part of us is procrastinating and/or self-sabotaging. Why? We have a built-in survival system, and when we’ve had a negative/painful experience, our protector part will keep that from happening again.

    We learn through the law of association, and this gets stored in our subconscious. If, as a child, we put our hand on the stove and got burned, our brain then created neurons that associated a stove with pain, so the next time we got close to a stove, we’d remember that pain and we’d be more careful.

    Our brain operates the same with physical or emotional pain. The problem is the brain may misinterpret the amount of danger we’re really in by operating on a neuro pattern that’s outdated.

    If the experience we want brought us pain in the past or we don’t feel good enough to experience it, we’ll either sabotage it or our brain will provide us with a list of reasons why it won’t happen. (But keep in mind it may not be in your best interest anyway.)

    If we found a way to soothe ourselves or find relief through addictions in the past, then we’ll automatically go back to those substances when things seem challenging if we haven’t learned how to comfort ourselves and feel, process, and express our emotions in healthy ways.

    When I was a child, my dad constantly told me, “If you don’t do it right, don’t do it at all.” The problem was, in his eyes, I never did anything right. He also told me that I wasn’t good enough or smart enough, I would never amount to anything, and I was a selfish human being.

    He blamed me for everything that happened, even if it wasn’t my fault, and if I “talked back” or shared how I felt, he either punished me or gave me the silent treatment.

    These experiences became my blueprint; I became fearful of myself, everyone, and everything, and this affected me greatly. I ended up disconnecting from my authenticity, and I became a very lost and confused being.

    The fear became so strong that if I had a thought about buying myself anything, asking for what I wanted or needed, expressing what I was thinking or feeling, or doing anything self-loving or self-nurturing, I’d self-sabotage, procrastinate, and feel anxiety and a sick feeling in my stomach.

    I wasn’t doing this consciously; my subconscious was signaling to me that wanting anything wasn’t safe because I may be punished, abandoned, or even hurt if I did any of these things I mentioned.

    As a child, I used food for my comfort and safety until age thirteen, when I was told to go on a diet and lose weight. At age fifteen I became a full-blown anorexic. Then my new comfort and safety became starving myself and exercising all day.

    From that point on, whenever I was faced with new choices or ways of being, I would push them away. I thought I was dealing with the fear of failure or not doing it right, but it went even deeper; I recognized it was really the fear of being punished, rejected, not loved, and abandoned, and to a child that’s the worst experience.

    I was stuck in an internal prison, thinking, “What’s the use of living? If I can’t be me or do anything, why even be in this reality?” This led to almost twenty-three years of self-abuse, suppression, anorexia, anxiety, and depression.

    My mom used to say to me, “Debra, you always climb halfway up the mountain, then you stop and climb back down.”

    This is what many people do: They stop before they even start, or they start something new and don’t continue to follow through, and this is because of our “emotional glue.” What’s emotional glue? Unresolved issues “buried” in us; it’s where our energy patterning is frozen in time, and it’s from where we’re filtering and dictating our lives. 

    Most often we don’t even know it’s there; we’re just living in the energy of “I can’t,” “beware,” or “it’s just not fair.” And/or we become judgmental of ourselves because we’re not able to do what we say we want to do.

    None of our symptoms are bad or wrong, and neither are we if we’re having them. In fact, “creating them” makes us pretty damn smart human beings; it’s our inner guidance asking for our attention, to notice what’s really going on inside that’s asking for compassion, love, healing, understanding, resolving, integrating, and revising.

    When I was struggling with anorexia, self-harming, depression, and anxiety, going to traditional therapy and spending time in numerous hospitals and treatment centers, nothing changed. Why? They were more focused on symptom relief than understanding what was going on inside of me.

    I was afraid, I was hurting, I didn’t feel safe in my body, and I didn’t feel safe in this reality. I didn’t need to be forced to eat and put on weight; that only triggered my traumas of being teased for being fat and unlovable when I was a child.

    I would gain weight in treatment centers and then lose it when I left; some may have called it self-sabotage; I call it survival.

    My deep-rooted fear about gaining weight, which meant “If I’m fat, I’ll be abandoned, and no one will love me,” was the driver for most of my life journey. All my focus was on controlling my food and weight.

    I was numbing and suppressing; I was existing but not living; I was depressed and anxious. I was running away from life and myself. I didn’t want to feel hurt by those negative things that were said to me, so I stayed away from other human beings.

    I didn’t want to face the hurt and pain I was feeling internally, especially the fear of being punished and abandoned again; but really, I was doing this to myself. I was punishing and abandoning myself, but I couldn’t stop the cycle with my conscious thinking.

    Self-sabotaging, procrastination, and the anorexia, anxiety, and depression, well, they were my friends; they were keeping me from being punished and abandoned. They were keeping me safe in kind of a backwards way.

    I wish I knew then what I know now—that in order to help someone, we can’t force them to change their unhealthy behaviors; we need to be kind and gentle and notice how the symptoms of self-sabotage, procrastination, eating disorders, anxiety, addictions, and depression are serving them. 

    What’s the underlying cause that’s creating them?

    What needs healing/loving, resolving, and revising?

    What do we need that we never got from our parents when we were little beings? How can we give this to ourselves today?

    When we see our symptoms as catalysts to understanding ourselves better and we integrate internally by giving ourselves what we truly need, we’re able to heal and overcome self-sabotage.

    All parts of us are valuable and need to be heard, seen, loved, and accepted unconditionally. Each part has an important message for us.

    If you’re experiencing any of the symptoms I mentioned, please be kind and gentle with yourself. Instead of feeling down on yourself for sabotaging yourself, dig below the surface to understand what you’re really afraid of and how your behavior may feel like safety. When you understand why you’re hurting yourself and holding yourself back, you’ll finally be able to let go of what doesn’t serve you and get what you want and need.

  • How to Befriend Our Unhealthy Survival Mechanisms

    How to Befriend Our Unhealthy Survival Mechanisms

    “Wounded children have a rage, a sense of failed justice that burns in their souls. What do they do with that rage? Since they would never harm another, they turn that rage inward. They become the target of their own rage.” ~Woody Haiken

    Survival mechanisms are ways of being that we picked up along the way to help us cope with what was happening in our reality.

    Getting mad at ourselves for doing what we do only promotes self-hate. We’re not bad or wrong; in fact, we’re pretty damn intelligent. We found ways to help us soothe our traumas, hurt, and pain and perhaps get love and attention. That’s pretty intelligent, wouldn’t you say?

    I should just stop eating so much, drinking alcohol, smoking, exhausting myself through compulsive exercise, being busy, procrastinating, people-pleasing, etc. Easy peasy—just stop, right? Not when we have an “internal fight.”

    What do I mean? Part of us believes it needs to do these things in order to feel safe or be loved and accepted by others. That’s why they’re called “survival mechanisms.” That part of us doesn’t understand logic and reason; it understands emotions and feelings.

    It has a need to be loved and feel protected and safe, and it uses these things to get these needs met. Letting go is like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. Pretty damn scary, eh?

    That’s what happens internally: the fear of letting go consumes us, and most often appears as an anxious feeling; then we pick up our survival mechanism again to soothe that feeling. It’s like running on a hamster wheel but not really getting anywhere.

    When I was little, I used food to cope with the environment I was living in. I was constantly told I was bad and wrong, and food helped soothe my feelings of insecurity. It actually became an obsession and the only thing I cared about.

    My whole focus in life became how I could get food to comfort me. I was teased for being fat from the popular girls, and I heard it at home from my father calling me “fatty, fatty two by four.”

    I didn’t know what was going on at the time; all I knew was that eating was all I wanted to do. Then, when I was thirteen, my doctor told me to go on a diet, and at age fifteen I entered my first hospital for anorexia.

    For the next twenty-three years of my life, anorexia, my coping mechanism, became the only thing I cared about, and I also had sub-symptoms like anxiety, cutting, and depression.

    I was existing but not living. My days and nights were consumed by trying to cope with life through eating and exercise. What a life, eh?

    I thought I was protecting myself, but really, I was living in a prison; I was the prison guard and the prisoner of my own creation. But I couldn’t stop; it was like this ‘thing’ had a hold on me.

    I cried and cried for it to go away, but it took control of my life every day. I wanted someone to save me from this thing, but the more I tried to let go, the more it had a hold.

    Even after twenty-three years of therapy and hospitals and treatment centers, it was still my savior.

    So, how did it finally let go? I took my healing into my own hands. I was determined to experience happiness, love, and inner peace.

    This was a process, not an overnight fix, but I started healing the unresolved issues that caused me to not feel safe, understanding my survival mechanisms’ purpose for me, and loving and accepting myself unconditionally. By doing so, the anorexia, anxiety, cutting, and depression no longer needed my attention, and I released those symptoms. 

    You see, that thing that had a hold on me, it was really my friend; it was my protector, and it worked until it no longer did. So instead of trying to get rid of it, I integrated it. Now it didn’t need to pick up another survival mechanism; instead, we became loving friends.

    Unhealthy coping mechanisms don’t free us; they’re just a way to numb our trauma, hurt, and pain, but they also keep us from truly living.

    By understanding what we’re trying to cope with instead of running or numbing, we’re able to see what we really need, get those needs met, and experience inner peace. This is called loving re-parenting. Because that’s what loving parenting looks like: offering kindness, understanding, compassion, and caring instead of judgment, criticism, and abandonment.

    Trying to get rid of a symptom—like overeating, cutting, or smoking—is fighting against our own biology. By making peace with it, by listening with compassion and understanding, we can help that part of ourselves get its needs met, and most often the symptom naturally goes away.

    This is how I’ve been able to free myself from the symptoms that had a hold on me, and here’s a way for you to get started today, if this resonates.

    1. Move into acceptance of who you are and what you’re experiencing. Replace judgment with compassion, knowing that you’re doing the best you can with what you know today, and you’re learning and growing as you go.

    2. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and imagine you’re talking with your unhealthy survival mechanism.

    3. Ask it, “Why are you here? What’s your purpose?”

    4. Ask it what it needs so it no longer has to get your attention through the symptoms you’re having.

    For example, the part of you that’s binge eating may let you know it needs a safe place to process and express your feelings, somewhere that you’re seen, heard, loved, and accepted unconditionally. It may also let you know that it’s time to learn how to set healthy boundaries.

    Or the part of you that’s experiencing depression may let you know that it’s tired of trying so hard to meet other people‘s expectations of how you should be, and it’s time for you to honor yourself and find ways to get your needs met so you don’t feel so powerless.

    For any “symptom,” it may also be helpful to understand secondary gain. Ask yourself, “How is being this way getting me love, attention, and someone to take care of me so I don’t have to take personal responsibility or fail as a human being?”

    5. Find ways to get your needs met. Tell yourself, “I give myself permission to take loving care of myself and do good things for my body and health. I am loved. I am safe.”

    6. Practice consciousness, which is becoming aware of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. This allows us to see what’s really going on internally that may be asking for compassion, love, healing, and a new understanding.

    When we ask ourselves, “Why am I thinking, feeling, and acting this way?” we may become aware of core beliefs like “I’m unlovable” or “I’m unworthy.” It’s because of these core beliefs that we’re feeling, thinking, acting, and perceiving the ways we are. Of course we’d treat ourselves badly if we believe we’re fundamentally bad.

    When we understand what the driver really is, we can start healing the childhood wounds that created those beliefs and then shift how we see ourselves. By doing so, we naturally start to think, feel, and act differently.

    —

    This is a process, and it’s different for everybody. The key is to be compassionate and loving with whatever you’re experiencing and to remember that there’s nothing wrong with you. Even if you’re experiencing “symptoms” that seem unacceptable to society, the truth is you’re a beautiful, valuable, lovable being who deserves to heal and is worthy of a wonderful and fulfilling life journey.

  • 7 Steps to Move Through Sadness (and What We Can Learn from It)

    7 Steps to Move Through Sadness (and What We Can Learn from It)

    Crying Man

    “Our sorrows and wounds are healed only when we touch them with compassion.” ~Buddha 

    He had been ignoring the symptoms for months, possibly even a year. When my husband came home from the doctors, he told me his PSA score was high, and he needed to have a biopsy. That date came and went, and we were waiting for the pathology report.

    The doctor assured us it was nothing.

    The image of standing in the car dealership parking lot, talking with my son and son-in-law will be forever etched in my memory. When the phone rang, I saw that it was he, and expecting it to be good news that I could share with my family, I answered it quickly.

    These were the words that I heard: “It’s not good; I have cancer.”

    Still holding the phone to my ear, I looked at my son. A million thoughts were racing through my mind. Should I tell him? I felt the weight of my husband’s words pressing me into the pavement.

    My son and son-in-law were carrying on their conversation as if the world had not stopped. In my mind, it had. How surreal.

    As I lowered the phone to my side, and I said, “Dad has cancer.” From that moment on, life as I knew it changed. I am well acquainted with the definition of sadness.

    “Sadness is emotional pain associated with, or characterized by feelings of disadvantage, loss, despair, hopelessness, and sorrow. An individual experiencing sadness may become quiet or lethargic, and withdraw themselves from others. Crying is often an indication of sadness.” ~Wikipedia

    Over the past three years I have had to make multiple adjustments to the story I had envisioned for my life.

    I have a beautiful mobile with birds carved out of driftwood. It was as if someone had flicked one of the birds, sending the others (still tethered together) flying in all directions.

    Just as the birds seemed to settle down, they got flicked again, and then again, and then again.

    Did you know grief is an actual physical process that our brain goes through after a significant change? 

    The limbic system in our brain holds an internal image of life as we know it. When a major change takes place, new neuropathways must be built in order to accommodate an updated version of reality.

    Building a new picture literally takes a lot of energy and time depending on the nature of the change.

    If we didn’t understand that grieving is a necessary process in order to move forward, we might become impatient and want to skip this unpleasant period of time.

    Numbness, shock, feeling unsettled, and sadness are among the symptoms of grief.

    Out of the hundreds of emotions we experience, sadness is one of the basics. 

    From a survival perspective, it has been said that sadness was hardwired into us to keep us safe after significant loss. It is associated with a feeling of heaviness, sleepiness, and withdrawal from activity and social connections.

    That makes perfect sense when you consider that grief (or the time your brain is updating) causes impaired short-term memory, decreased concentration and attention span, absent-mindedness, forgetfulness, and distraction.

    After a major loss it would be unsafe to go hunting or gathering.

    Having said that, sadness remains the one emotion people try to avoid the most, and understandably so. To be sad is to be vulnerable, and again, from a primitive perspective, this is a threat to our very survival.

    We need to remind ourselves that our minds have evolved, and though it is unpleasant, we can survive sadness. Not only can we survive sadness, it can be our teacher if we let it.

    It is impossible to think of any benefit of sadness while in the midst of it, but pondering it before the fact can go a long way in lessening the blow when it occurs. Understanding is powerful.

    We can’t make sadness feel good, but we can navigate it better and even learn from it.

    What Can Be Learned from Sadness?

    • Sadness can help clarify our identity by showing us what we value.
    • If we are mindful of the visceral sensations of sadness, we become aware it is an emotion; it’s not who we are.
    • It is a signal that we are processing something we don’t want to let go of. We can explore our attachments from a non-judgmental stance.
    • As we become acquainted with sadness, we are able to have empathy for others, which strengthens our connections.
    • We are better able to appreciate the good times when we have something to contrast it with.
    • When we have the courage to handle sadness, we expand our capacity to handle other hard things.
    • When we honor our sadness, we learn that passing through it is expedited.

    “Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” ~C. S. Lewis

    Navigating Sadness

    1. Identify the source of your sadness.

    Emotions have more power when their triggers are kept secret. Name what is making you sad. It doesn’t have to be one thing.

    2. Determine if it is justified.

    Do yourself a favor and ask if what your sad about is true. If it is not, let it go. Usually if you are sad it is legitimate, even if the reason isn’t what you thought it was to begin with.

    3. Validate your emotion.

    Allow yourself to feel sad. What you are feeling is real.

    4. Practice self-compassion.

    Show yourself some love. Don’t be angry with yourself. In Tara Brach’s words say, “It’s okay, sweetheart.”

    5. Accept. 

    Unconditionally accept your new reality. You don’t have to like it, approve of it, or give life a pass. Acceptance allows you to manage change more effectively.

    6. Create a survivor’s picture. 

    Paint a new picture of your life with you being a courageous survivor. Find the meaning in your suffering. 

    7. Remember that every day deserves a new picture.

    Stay in the here and now, and allow a new picture to unfold each day. When you are flexible enough to allow for small changes regularly, big changes, though shocking, are easier to handle. 

    —

    Navigating rather than running from sadness has deepened my perspective on life. It has helped me savor time with loved ones, be more compassionate with others who might be struggling, and not become unsettled over small things.

    It has taught me that I have little control over what comes to pass in my life, but I have courage to pass through hard times, knowing the sun will shine again, if I allow it.

    Most of all, I have learned that time and being compassionate toward myself are the most reliable healers.

    I can feel vulnerable and still know I will survive.

    Disclaimer: This article is in reference to non-depressive sadness. If you have been excessively sad for an extended period of time for no apparent reason, please seek professional help.

    Photo by Anders Ljungberg