Tiny Buddha

Tag: uncomfortable

  • How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed by Other People’s Strong Emotions

    How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed by Other People’s Strong Emotions

    “It is not your responsibility to figure out what someone else is feeling and why. Let go of the illusion that ‘fixing’ their bad mood will make you feel better.” ~Sarah Crosby

    Some years ago, I was talking to my husband on the phone. He sounded annoyed about something to do with his work, but I noticed an intense emotional reaction in myself. Immediately, my heart contracted and my stomach lurched. I could feel a runaway train of emotions activate within me.

    My whole body was awash with nausea, and I felt so very uncomfortable. 

    This was a familiar and old pattern for me. My husband had some feelings and expressed them, and I felt totally overwhelmed by them. It then created a loop of reactivity where he would say something in this annoyance, I would respond with fear that he was annoyed, and it would all become a big mess of emotions being thrown all over the place.

    But what felt worse than that moment, when I experienced his feelings as though they were the end of the world, is what came after. I would sink into a familiar space of despair about my husband and how he was feeling. I would try and think of ways to fix the situation, or feel aggrieved by how he’d reacted.

    This response is something that I experienced not just with my husband, but with most people in my life to a greater or lesser degree. My real or imagined noticing of someone having feelings, and how horrible that felt for me, in my body.

    It was totally instinctive, that someone would seem upset and I would jump in and try to fix, reassure, help, or soothe. And in that process, I would totally subjugate my needs and feelings because of how much I didn’t like how it felt to be around people and their emotions. 

    Sometimes it would feel that people close to me were trying to upset me with their emotions on purpose. When a family member got angry it would totally overwhelm me, and I would end up resenting them for days or weeks. It felt like they were punishing me with their anger.

    When my kids felt disappointment or sadness, I found it unbearable to see them feeling so bad, and I would endeavor to help them by changing their plans, getting them a cookie, or trying to talk them out of how they were feeling.

    The problem here is that, of course, when we are human beings around other human beings, we are going to encounter people having feelings—about us or themselves, or anything else we humans have feelings about.

    When we find other people’s feelings challenging, we aren’t giving them the space they need to have feelings. There is an element of Your feelings are making me uncomfortable! Can you please shut them down because I don’t like them.

    Which is understandable when we don’t know how to deal with our own emotions. If we don’t feel okay around our feelings, of course we struggle with other people’s.

    So how do we learn how to not get intertwined with other people and their emotions? How do we stop having such intense reactions to people having feelings, regardless of what they are about?

    How can we stop letting other people’s emotional responses completely distract us, and throw us off our day—consuming vast amounts of time and activating intensely uncomfortable feelings of our own?

    For me, the first step was learning how to identify what was happening. I felt like other people’s feelings were happening to me, but really, they were having feelings and I was having feelings.

    My feelings are separate from your feelings. 

    One of the reasons why it feels that we get so intertwined and things get so messy in relationships is that we don’t recognize that we all have separate feelings. In so many relationships we don’t give each other space to have feelings, because of the patterns of how we respond to emotions.

    We often think it’s like this:

    Stop being scared! It’s making me scared!

    Stop being irritable! It’s making me anxious!

    But really no one is making us have feelings. Our emotions arise on their own, as do someone else’s. But we can learn how to stop reacting to their emotions as our own.

    If we can see Oh, I am having my own feelings here! we can then use this awareness to create some space and start to pay attention to ourselves and our emotions instead.

    Recognize that no one is having feelings on purpose.  

    Once I had been coaching for a few years and had radically changed how I worked with both my own emotions and how I responded to those of the other people around me, I asked my husband what he loved the most about my work. He said that now he no longer feels tortured by my feelings. And I thought, Wow! That is so fascinating.

    I was so used to feeling overwhelmed by his feelings that I never considered that he was feeling the same way.

    Because my emotional reactions are so different from his, it didn’t occur to me that he was also uncomfortable around my feelings. And it’s the difference in our responses that can provide so much confusion in relationships.

    My go-to strategy when overwhelmed by my husband’s emotions was to chase him down and try to discuss and fix everything straight away. His strategy was to try to disconnect from me and run away.

    Essentially, we both felt challenged by the other’s emotions, and by working to create some space to support ourselves in our own emotions, we created such a big shift in how we now respond to each other.

    People can’t be truly empathetic when they are emotionally activated. 

    What I now know about emotions is that we can’t truly access empathy when we are emotionally activated, so if I am with someone who is having feelings, I don’t expect empathy and understanding from them.

    In order to gain full access to our empathy, we need to move through the emotions, so part of working with other people is letting them move through the anger/fear/sadness or whatever it is they are feeling.

    I don’t engage them in things I am not happy about or talk about their behavior or what they’ve said—until after they have moved through that feeling.

    When we feel any emotion, we see the whole world through the lens of that emotion. Anger sees upsetting things everywhere. Fear sees scary things everywhere. So it doesn’t benefit us to get too involved in what someone might say when they are in the thick of emotional activation.

    Knowing this helps us work on not reacting to what they are saying, doing, or feeling.

    Feelings activate feelings.  

    If we are feeling super calm and someone comes along and is expressing a lot of anger, it can easily activate our own feelings. That’s natural. Maybe we feel fear around anger, or maybe we feel anger at their anger. It’s natural for our feelings to activate around others.

    With all emotions, we want to work on supporting ourselves through emotional activation. When we can do this, when we can sit with ourselves and provide support, we can move through the emotions with more ease and confidence, and not get stuck in the loop of that emotion.

    By noticing and naming your experience, you are offering yourself some support.

    We can say to ourselves, The best thing I can do right now is support myself in feeling my feelings, and not engage in their feelings. 

    We can acknowledge how challenging this is for us. We can offer ourselves the gift of understanding, and that can help us move with the discomfort of the emotions that have activated.

    Offer yourself some empathy, understanding, and validation.

    Empathy is a very powerful resource when we are in the thick of emotions. Giving ourselves some tender, kind, loving support is a real gift to ourselves when we feel activated.

    Maybe we say to ourselves:

    This is hard for me because…

    I understand why this is so challenging.

    It makes sense that this is tough for me since…

    It’s hard seeing someone feel so disappointed or angry. It’s hard to hold these feelings. 

    If it feels good, offer yourself some physical support.

    Put your hand on your heart, or stroke your arms, giving yourself a hug, while you stay with yourself in this experience of sitting with your feelings.

    Of course, this isn’t always easy! When we have spent a lifetime responding to people’s emotions in a certain way, it takes some effort and focus to start responding differently.

    Other people’s emotional activations are some of the hardest things we deal with, but with awareness and intention, we can learn to see these experiences differently, and then learn to respond differently.

    Now when I hear disappointment or irritation from my husband, or sadness or despair from my kids, or anger or shame from my family, I can recognize that these are their feelings! I don’t need to jump into their pool of emotions and get immersed in their experiences. 

    I can instead stand back and support myself, which in turn supports them because I am not adding to the emotional load they are experiencing.

    I can help by being responsible for my feelings so we aren’t creating a big chaotic mix of messy emotions.

    This is how anyone can create some space and peace in the emotional experiences around them.

  • Why It’s Worth the Temporary Discomfort of Sitting with Intense Emotions

    Why It’s Worth the Temporary Discomfort of Sitting with Intense Emotions

    “Whatever you’re feeling, it will eventually pass.”  ~Lori Deschene

    Can you feel an intense emotion, like anger, without acting on it, reacting to it, or trying to get rid of it?

    Can you feel such an intense emotion without needing to justify or explain it—or needing to find someone or something to blame it on?

    After successfully dodging it for two years, I recently caught Covid-19. The physical symptoms were utter misery. But something much more interesting happened while I was unwell.

    The whole experience brought some intense emotions to the surface. Namely, seething anger about something that had nothing to do with the virus.

    In the handful of days that my symptoms were at their worst, I was absolutely livid. And while on some level it made sense that I was angry that getting this sick was both extremely unpleasant and delaying work on a project I was all fired up about, the anger was manifesting with a deeper-rooted blame.

    I grew up in a religious denomination that had a profound effect on my childhood and adolescence. It taught me through debilitating fear, division, and confusion. It ingrained black-and-white rights and wrongs for living, thinking, and being that had never made sufficient sense to me, no one could adequately explain, and were damaging for me on a number of levels.

    In the past couple of years, I worked through its various effects with shadow work, inner child healing, forgiveness, and even quantum energetic healing. Each of these modalities supported me immensely with healing different layers.

    But the emotion of deep anger I harbored clearly hadn’t gone away, and it simply needed to be felt.

    The more we learn to observe and witness our emotions, the more acutely aware we become of where they’re stemming from, and the more we’re able to notice and catch ourselves when we’re associating our emotions with narratives and situations that are not in fact to blame for how we’re feeling.

    Although I’d initially managed to fashion some connection between being unwell and the church I still harbored so much anger toward, I became increasingly aware that there was none. My inclination to blame the church was part of an ongoing pattern. And it was time to break this pattern.

    At the same time, I’d recently become very aware that whenever I’d hear mention of the church or any of its associated beliefs, a brief surge of anger would leap up in me. I was still feeling triggered.

    I was very ready to move beyond these patterns of blame and anger. And getting to that inner peace I so wanted to feel meant addressing this on an emotional level. I realized that what I needed was to actually sit with these feelings so they could be fully acknowledged and allowed to move through me.

    The only person who is ever responsible for your emotions is you. And your emotions are simply powerful feedback. They show up for one of two dominant reasons.

    Either they’re unresolved past emotions that are surfacing because they’re ready to be acknowledged and felt now, or they’re feelings that demonstrate how a situation is resonating for you—in other words, they’re your own inner compass.

    Sadly, although traditions like Buddhism have been teaching us how to develop emotional awareness for thousands of years, we’ve somehow landed on two dominant, ineffective responses.

    Acting on our emotions or trying to brush them under the rug.

    Brushing an emotion under the rug will only keep it trapped inside of you. Meaning it will resurface to bother you as many times as it needs to in the future until you deal with it.

    And the practices of toxic positivity fall under this category. Write a gratitude list and look for the best-feeling thought you can find, they say. In other words, avoid the “negative” emotion for now and let it fester under the surface a little while longer.

    Newsflash: No emotion is negative unless it’s fueling a negative action or reaction. It’s simply feedback pointing you toward growth or clarity.

    Which brings me to the next dominant response we resort to. Acting on the emotion (by yelling at someone, for example) will at least give it an opportunity to release but will most likely create consequences that won’t serve you. We’ve all been there and done that, so no judgment here.

    As I emphasized earlier, the only person who’s ever responsible for your emotions is you. And we tend to act on our emotions by deflecting this responsibility. So we learn, understand, and gain nothing from them.

    So, I sat with the anger. I was fully present with it—by itself, separate from any experience or event that I could possibly associate it with.

    I acknowledged it, felt its full intensity, and breathed through it. I sat with the parts of me that felt this emotion with compassion. I surrendered to letting it move through me.

    Despite having felt the intensity of this anger for a few days, it released fairly quickly when I leaned into it. And when it released, I was able to see pretty clearly why being ill had triggered this anger.

    I’ve also noticed that since this whole experience, the little surges of anger I’d previously felt have gone away. So far I haven’t felt those triggers since, which is a relief.

    Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge that many of us are carrying deep trauma that’s often too painful to even fathom triggering. So have compassion for yourself in whatever you feel, and don’t put off seeking the right support to work through your emotions if you feel you need this.

    Now, this might sound counterintuitive, and it’s incredibly uncomfortable to do at first. But real emotional awareness—and maturity—means sitting with the emotion and feeling its fullness.

    It’s identifying what this emotion is and how it feels. Including where you can feel it physically.

    It’s giving yourself some time and space to focus on really leaning into the emotion and separating it from any narrative or incident it may be associated with. Focusing on the emotion by itself in isolation allows us to process it. Without blame, justification, or self-pity.

    When you can truly feel, acknowledge, and breathe through it, it releases. And when it’s released, you’re able to understand what it represented for you. You grow through it.

    This may take time, but a feeling is only ever there to be felt. And until it is, it will be increasingly vociferous in how it tries to get your attention.

    This can require a lot of courage, especially because too many of us have been conditioned to fear feeling our emotions and believe that we can’t handle them.

    But if you need to cry, cry. If it feels intense, this is where deeply buried stuff is surfacing for release.

    And when you let an emotion move through you, you let it move out of you.

    This doesn’t mean that you’ll never feel another “negative” emotion ever again.

    But it does mean that you’ll understand how to respond to these emotions and allow them to be felt and understood with a lot more compassion.

    And that’s more than worth the temporary discomfort.

  • The Cages We Live In and What It Means to Be Free

    The Cages We Live In and What It Means to Be Free

    “Cages aren’t made or iron, they’re made of thoughts.” ~Unknown

    I recently read Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, and like many who have read it, I felt as if it had changed my life—but not because it made me think of all the things I was capable of (as was the case with many of friends who read it), but because it made me realize how capable I had already been.

    The book on the whole is beautiful and inspiring, but the part that stuck with me the most was the story about Tabitha, a beautiful cheetah that Glennon and her kids saw at a safari park and a lab named Minnie that had been raised alongside Tabitha, as her best friend, to help tame Tabitha.

    Glennon watched as Minnie sprinted out of her cage and chased a dirt pink bunny that was tied to a jeep.  Shortly after, Tabitha, who had been watching Minnie, ran out of her cage and chased the “dirty pink bunny” just like her best friend had just done.

    Born as a magnificent, wild beast, Tabitha had lost her wild by being caged. She had forgotten her own power, her own strength, her own identity, and had become tamed by watching her best friend. But remnants of Tabitha’s inner wild came back to life when she walked away from the pink bunny toward the perimeter of the fence that was keeping her caged in. The closer she was to the perimeter, the more fierce and regal Tabitha became.

    Glennon insightfully notes in the book that if a wild animal like a “cheetah can be tamed to forget her wild, certainly a woman can too.” And that’s when I wondered, had I also forgotten my own inner wild?  Was I spending my time trapped inside a cage when I could be pacing the perimeter instead?

    I beat myself up over that story for days while desperately trying to think of how I could break free of my metaphorical cage so I could find my way to the seemingly elusive perimeter that others seemed to have easily found and were already pacing.

    I questioned why I hadn’t worked harder, pushed further, and done more to create the life I truly wanted, especially when it became painfully clear that the one I was living didn’t fit that description.  And that’s when it suddenly hit me. Like a ton of bricks falling on me out of nowhere:

    I didn’t need to make my way to the perimeter. I was already there. Truth be told, I had been there for most of my life, and it was so familiar to me that I didn’t even notice it anymore.

    As I sat there in the midst of this comprehension, I looked back on my life and suddenly the steps to the perimeter all seemed to fall in place.

    When I fell in a bucket of boiling water at two years old and put aside my own discomfort to comfort my mother who had broken down at the sight of my burned body, I took a step towards the perimeter.

    When I moved to America at the age of seven and couldn’t understand the language and was instantly labeled as “stupid” but kept going anyway, refusing to let them define who I was, I took another step towards that perimeter.

    When I watched my younger sister die of an incurable illness and kept her light alive inside of me by recognizing the beauty of her life and not just the heartache of her death, I moved closer to the perimeter.

    When I said no to becoming a teacher or a doctor—an unfathomable and disgraceful choice for women of my culture during those times—I took another step toward the perimeter.

    When I refused an arranged marriage, again disgracing my family in the process, the perimeter was directly in my sight.

    By the time I took off for law school (much to my parents’ continuing dismay), the perimeter and I were practically face to face.

    For a while I stayed at the perimeter, quietly stalking my surroundings with the same pride and inner fierceness as the cheetah who inspired these ramblings. But I now realize I was never meant to stay at the perimeter—I was always meant to go beyond it.

    Until I did, I would remain trapped inside my own inner chaos. And the calm I was so desperately seeking would continue to evade me. That inner restlessness that just wouldn’t go away, that indescribable lack of fulfillment and the hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach… those were all signs that I was ready to move beyond the perimeter. I was ready to uncage more than just myself—I was ready to uncage my soul.

    That’s why I was repeatedly drawn back to certain people, programs, and even books. I was ready to free myself of all restrictions and for that matter, all perimeters.

    The process hasn’t been easy. And at times, it has been beyond lonely. But it has also been rewarding, deeply healing, and transformative at the same time. And perhaps most importantly of all, it has allowed me to understand that in one way or another, we are all here to break free of the cages that have encased most of us for the majority of our life.

    Some cages are imposed upon us by the thoughts and ideas of those around us, and other times we put ourselves into them, willingly. So we can avoid discomfort, pain, suffering, change, growth, and our own rebirth.

    Sometimes they can even be helpful, but other times they do nothing but hold us back. The steel cages often tell us who to be, where to live, what we “should” do for a living, how to behave, and even who to like or dislike.

    Often, the cages come in different colors, shapes, and sizes. Some are made of gold and filled with expensive toys and bribes to keep us from going outside of them.  Their allure is simply too hard to resist for some people, even though they are often accompanied by gold shackles.

    Others are sparkly and filled with all that glitters. The shine is so intense that their occupants don’t even know they’re in a cage. They’re so fixated with the glitter that they spend their entire lives confined inside and never even realize they’re no freer than the people they’ve been looking down on as being “trapped.”

    And of course, there are some who live in small, dark, and dingy cages that they desperately want to escape but dare not try to because they’re so convinced that it’s safer, easier, and more comfortable to just stay.

    Those are the people that are so afraid of their own power and the taste of true freedom that they probably wouldn’t leave even if the cage door was opened for them.

    And then there are the brave. Those that are truly courageous and have no desire to be confined by any cage or any limits. Those are the people who will do whatever it takes to break the cage so they can set themselves and all of humanity free.

    Those are the people who are roaming beyond the perimeter and have uncaged far more than their physical body—they have uncaged their very soul, and along with it, the many lifetimes of memories, wisdom, and truth it holds inside.

    Those are the people I want to run with. Those are the people I want to call my tribe. Those are the people that, when I meet them, I’ll know I have found my home.

  • Why I’m Trying Harder to Be Kind to Strangers

    Why I’m Trying Harder to Be Kind to Strangers

    “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” ~Leo Buscaglia

    From uttering unkind words to sleeping with unkind men, I’ve had many moments of shame in my life. Still, there is one particular moment of shame that stands out from the crowd. It happened at least ten years ago, but I remember it as if it were yesterday.

    I was strolling around downtown Toronto with a visiting friend when a rough-looking fella suddenly approached me. What he was planning to do or say to me, I’ll never know, because my knee-jerk reaction was to take the widest of wide births in order to avoid a face-to-face interaction.

    My girlfriend laughed at how quickly I’d dodged him. While she managed to keep her observation light and non-judgmental, I knew she wasn’t just talking about my ability to spin on a dime. Rather, she was commenting on how this human being had so obviously scared the living crap out of me.

    It’s not as if we were walking down a deserted alleyway. It wasn’t dark outside. The guy wasn’t wielding a knife or coming at me with raised fists. For all I know, he wanted a quarter, or a cigarette, or directions.

    Maybe he wanted to hurl some verbal abuse at a stranger because he was having a bad day. Possibly, or quite likely, he was a resident of the mental health facility across the street. Is that a crime? The fact is, I didn’t know. So I chose to pretend that this human being wasn’t even being.

    How often do you walk down the street and avoid the gaze of a stranger because it feels uncomfortable?

    Here’s what I’ve realized in the years since that incident.

    My discomfort is nothing compared to the discomfort of the panhandler who’s parked day after day in his wheelchair outside my local grocery store because finding work is tricky when you have no legs.

    It’s nothing compared to the discomfort of the physically disfigured man who can’t hold somebody’s gaze for longer than a couple of seconds and knows exactly why.

    And it’s nothing compared to the discomfort of the lonely old woman who wants but fails to find someone to chat with on the bus because when she gets home, there’ll be nobody to talk to. For hours. Maybe days.

    My big moment of shame has been top of mind since returning from vacation.

    My husband and I have just come back from Newfoundland, where we spent one of seven nights bunked up in a teeny blue cabin looking onto a fisherman’s wharf. The cabin was sweet. The view before us was stellar. The community was one I would never choose to live in.

    Behind and adjacent to our cabin were twenty or so simple homes. None had the charm of our picture-perfect Airbnb. As I sat outside sipping wine, enjoying the view before me, and contemplating life, an older, heavy-set, weathered-looking woman stopped at the end of our driveway and started chatting.

    I could barely understand her, partly due to the noisy ocean waves and partly due to her thick Newfie accent, so I rose from my Muskoka chair and greeted her halfway down the drive.

    Her name was Patricia, she told me. She loves it when new guests check into the blue cabin. “Yesterday, there was a couple from France. I meet all kinds of people. I love meeting people.”

    She asked me where I was from. I answered, “Toronto.” Detecting my accent, she responded, “that’s where you’ve come from but is that where you were born?” I explained that I was born in Toronto but grew up in London, England, and moved back to Canada as an adult.

    She held her hand to her chest. “Seriously, you and your husband are from England?” I nodded yes. She beamed a big grin. “For the love of God!” I’d blown her mind.

    Patricia insisted that I step inside her humble house. She wanted to show me something she was positive I’d never seen ever before.

    After walking through her gloomy vestibule and being greeted by Charlie the dog, I saw no fewer than 500 coffee mugs. About 450 were hanging on her kitchen wall. Fifty or so had been relegated to a table in her living room because real estate was lacking.

    I laughed with delight. Patricia laughed with me. “Crazy, right?” she said. Crazy hadn’t even entered my head. Charming had. I was instantly smitten by Patricia and the cups that adorned her bright orange, wood-panelled walls.

    I had Patricia pegged for eighty or so. She told me she was sixty-six and that she’d lived in that house since birth. She was raised by her dad after her mother died when she was five months old. Her dad died twenty-five years ago. She’s lived alone ever since.

    The nearest shop is fifty kilometres away. Patricia pays someone to pick up groceries for her. It’s a pain, she admitted. And lonely. That’s why she loves it when the tourists come to stay.

    I asked if she had ever considered leaving her small community. “God, no!” she said. “I love it here. In two weeks, the whales will come into the bay. When you walk to the end of that pier, you can feel the spray from their blow holes, they come in that close.”

    Did I mention Patricia has no teeth?

    I didn’t? Well, now you know. Patricia has no teeth.

    After our most memorable encounter, I imagined a similar but different scenario.

    I’m on the streetcar in Toronto, heading downtown. A heavy-set women gets on carrying a large plastic bag. Her skin looks old and leathery.

    She’s wearing an orange Dollar Store T-shirt. If she’s wearing a bra, it’s not a good one; her breasts hang low and heavy. She plops herself down in the seat next to me.

    I can smell the cigarette she just stubbed out. She smiles a big toothless grin and asks if she can show me what’s in the bag. What do I do?

    Do I say yes and then make eye contact with other passengers to ensure someone sees me engaging with this ‘crazy’ woman. You know, just in case she decides to grab my purse and run?

    Do I pretend I didn’t hear her and just keep checking my Instagram?

    Do I ring the streetcar bell, get off at the next stop and jump on the one that’s following close behind?

    Or, do I respond to her exactly as I responded to Patricia? By that I mean do I give her my full attention, embrace her with curiosity, and treat her like a human being?

    Because here’s the thing. Whether she’s living in the cabin next door to my hut by the beach or sitting beside me on a streetcar, she’s exactly the same woman reaching out for exactly the same thing: just a little human warmth.

    Be kind to strangers.

  • Now is Not Forever: Weathering Uncomfortable Feelings

    Now is Not Forever: Weathering Uncomfortable Feelings

    Weathering the Storm

    “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ~Alan Watts

    I recently found myself ruminating about a difficult situation at my new workplace. Considering my high-flying, achievement-oriented personality, the recipe for my malcontent was predictable: A supervisor had disagreed with me, and I left work that day feeling melodramatic and like I wanted to quit… that day.

    I thought, “I am so misunderstood. No one ‘gets’ what I am doing. I am not cut out for teamwork. Why do I hate working so much? I thought this job was the one. Will I ever find a job that satisfies my inner longings for connection and creativity?” And so on.

    I wore the little thundercloud around my head all evening, until I remembered the birthday of a good friend and contacted her to wish her well. As we talked, we began to reminisce about her birthday the previous year, and our conversation viscerally triggered a flood of memories.

    In the twelve months between her succeeding birthdays, I had left a toxic work environment, started a business with my husband, self-published a short book, launched a commercial website, and had also been accepted into my first-choice graduate program. Suddenly, my work conflict seemed a bit less dramatic.

    I was left feeling humbled and filled with gratitude. Due to the nature of life itself—change—and with the help of significant work on my part, the current “weather” in my emotional life was only partly cloudy, not a hurricane. However, I had become so accustomed to my newfound peace that I expected perfection rather than stability.

    I have often heard the emotional landscape compared to weather—we cannot control it, but we do have power over our reactions to it.

    Rain is not a disaster if I remember to bring an umbrella… or don’t mind getting wet. Similarly, my conflict with my supervisor was a fluffy rain cloud scuttling across a generally blue sky—passing as quickly as it arrived, but not fast enough for me!

    Being mindful of the transient nature of feelings and events is very important for our emotional health. I can summarize it in one phrase that has helped me tremendously: “Now is not forever.” Addressing this principle in my life has consisted of three primary concepts:

    1. Embrace the evolving, shifting nature of life to help gain perspective instead of making generalizations.

    When I am in the funk of a bad day (or month, or year), it is dangerously easy for me to create “Aha!” moments in which I diagnose the source of my most acute problems and focus all blame on people, places, and things. I can become surprisingly creative!

    For me, perspective means adjusting my lens. Instead of allowing a difficult situation to consume my entire field of vision into eternity, I must gently remind myself that whatever is current will expire.

    Also, because it is my tendency to externalize blame, it is important for me to welcome difficult situations as a part of my life’s journey.

    These teachers, whether they are challenging work environments, personal relationships, or illnesses, are constantly in flux, for all of us. Our problems today will not be our problems next year.

    2. Take mindful action.

    When we take mindful action, we take advantage of opportunities to improve our lives.

    Sometimes I suffer from one of life’s storms because I am unnecessarily subjecting myself to pain, as though I am standing outside in a hurricane and complaining about the wind!

    Sometimes action can be tiny steps that transform your entire outlook. I have deeply developed my resilience through my practices—yoga and intentional self-work. These skills help me to weather tough times.

    However, occasionally a situation calls for more dramatic change. For example, my former job was like a house with a leaky roof—every time it rained, I got hit with the deluge, and no amount of mindfulness or yoga could change that. Changing jobs was a positive way of acknowledging that I was not in control of my work environment, but I could choose to put myself in the best one possible.

    3. Give service.

    Sometimes we need to enlarge our world and our perceptions by putting our time, effort, and talents into improving the lives of others.

    For me, service work both connects me to other people who share similar life wounds and reminds me to practice gratitude. When I move my focus from my own frustrations to helping others, whether it is volunteer work or simply meeting a lonely friend for coffee, I gain an expansiveness that calms my angst.

    It makes my world bigger, but it’s not just about making my problems smaller. It’s about the power of connection.

    Suffering may be part of the human experience, but our problems, flaws, and tragedies pull us closer to other people and to the divine.

    Whether I struggle with the trauma of grief or the garden-variety frustrations of stress, giving to others reminds me that my individual story line intersects with thousands of others in a web of common experience, as well as common transcendence.

    This—whatever this is—is not everything. But it is inevitable. Just as dark storm clouds roll across the horizon, experiences pass in and out of our lives with regularity and seeming unpredictability.

    When we make the decision to embrace change, we give ourselves the gift of truly enjoying the present, because it is essential to remember that the sunny weather comes and goes, as well.

    This year, when my reminiscence was sparked, my circumstances had dramatically improved, and I was reminded to be thankful for the positivity that currently surrounds me. I was able to see a small work conflict for what it was—a temporary cloud that would soon slide away, probably within a day. The sky is blue, warm, and waiting behind that cloud.

    But next year when I call my friend for her birthday, she will be preparing to relocate across the country. I am not looking forward to her eventual absence, but when I accept change as a consistent part of life, I see the next twelve months with a renewed perspective.

    The result is that I am inspired to celebrate the present, rather than cling to it, because, to be frank, what are my other options?

    The story of my life is going to evolve with or without my permission, and I would prefer to be involved and engaged in its processes rather than unexpectedly find myself in an unfamiliar life that somehow changed form while I was looking away.

    I cannot (nor can any other human on the planet) predict which days, months, or years will hold more sunshine than rain, or vice versa. But when we enlarge our perspective, engage in active participation, and give service to others, we allow ourselves to move with grace, wisdom, and resilience in the shifting emotional horizons of our lifetime.

    Photo by eddi van w

  • Living an Exciting Life When You Fear Leaving Your Comfort Zone

    Living an Exciting Life When You Fear Leaving Your Comfort Zone

    On top of the world

    “One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.” ~Unknown 

    What if you realized on evening of December 31st, that the past 365 days were the best yet? Imagine a single year in which you scared yourself into your deepest fears and faced more challenges than you ever had from all the previous years combined?

    Moving forward, how would you feel about one-upping that year? Overwhelmed? Anxious? Scattered? Yeah, me too.

    This was the question that I asked myself on the last evening of 2013 that left me thinking back on distant memories, adventures, and the beginning of true uncertainty.

    The Best Year Yet: 2013.

    Last year began my personal journey of fully embracing the uncomfortable.

    I decided to seek the truth and hoped to eventually have enough courage to share my experiences with those who were curious. I left with no travel plans, but only a mission. Adventure.

    Thailand. Cambodia. Malaysia. Singapore. Laos. Vietnam. Hong Kong. Japan. Hawaii. San Fran.

    I experienced most in backpack form over the course of 108 days.

    My reality was completely shaken. I moved from confusion to clarity. What I believed to be important in my life no longer mattered. Returning home, I was filled with a deep sense of appreciation, gratitude, and really wide eyes.

    I leaned into what I thought was once impossible due to the laundry list of excuses I had created. Not enough money. No one will go with me. It’s not safe. This isn’t the right time.

    Those were only four of the hundreds of thoughts that swirled through my monkey brain, which was doing its best to protect me, right?

    This is the short form of the journey that scared the pants off of my fears. Along the way, I learned quite a few lessons. Some the hard way, others rather easy, but all well worth it.

    You’ll never have everything figured out.

    Imagine for just a moment that you stopped allowing your excuses to own you. There’s a part of you that wants to embrace change, yet every time you think about going after your vision, you’re dumbfounded with objections.

    Unfortunately, the only time that you won’t have an excuse will be when you’re six feet under. The fear that resides within each of us will always create a story; yet, we are the ones with the power to make the decision. Ready. Fire. Aim.

    It only takes one second to be courageous.

    Think about how long it actually takes to do anything you’ve ever wanted to do? It takes one second to make the decision.

    One second to click the submit button. One second to say hello. One second to smile. One second to jump in. One second to leave no chance for regrets. One second to hand over your two week notice. One second to say, “This isn’t working.” One second to believe. One second to choose. It only takes one second to be courageous.

    Befriend uncertainty.

    Whether you’re ready for it or not, the unpredictable will show its face. While we have a tendency to negatively associate with the unknown, realize that you can make the empowered decision to accept the reality.

    Byron Katie says this best, “When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100% of the time.” Try bringing uncertainty along for the ride. You may notice a greater sense of meaning and fulfillment finding its way into your life.

    If it makes you feel safely uncomfortable, please proceed.

    If you find yourself in a situation that makes you feel safely anxious, awkward, nervous, and/or uneasy, it very well may be the best thing for you. As Tony Robbins says, “The quality of our lives is directly related to the amount of uncertainty we can live with comfortably.”

    Remember, though, these uncomfortable experiences must also align with your preferences and values. When in doubt, intuitively listen to your soul.

    As you continue to slowly build your uncomfortable muscles, you’ll gain more clarity around what feels right. Each adventure will not only contribute to rapid personal growth, but will also increase your threshold for dealing with such unsettling feelings.

    Replace “What will they think of me?”with“What’s really important to me?”

    Say hello to your ego. And now, please ask him/her to keep quiet. When we find ourselves in moments where we might be exposed to internal feelings of nervousness, embarrassment, or anxiousness, we usually tend to run the other way.

    We’ve got this incredible internal system that was designed to protect us from real danger, the fight or flight response. Unfortunately, our brain can’t distinguish the difference between our fear of public speaking versus being chased by a bear.

    However, you have the ability to differentiate between the two situations. When you find yourself safely immersed within an uncomfortable situation, try sitting with it. Before you know it, the related negative feelings will disappear.

    Each day, we get to paint our own canvas. What will you be remembered for, soul sibling?

    Give yourself permission to live uncomfortably. I dare you.

    Photo by Lara Cores

  • How We Can Reduce Our Suffering by Feeling Uncomfortable Feelings

    How We Can Reduce Our Suffering by Feeling Uncomfortable Feelings

    “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    Just about everyone experiences sorrow at times. I know I do.

    The other morning, in fact, I was caught off guard by a very particular sorrow. Nothing happened, per se; but from the moment I awoke, I felt an aching sense of sadness and loss at the fact that my career path has taken me away from the field of mental health counseling.

    As I became aware of my sorrow, it filled my heart and mind like a cup, and eventually spilled over into a rather woeful consideration of the many changes my life has undergone over the past several years.

    It was uncomfortable while it lasted, but it was also quite fascinating, once I became aware of what was happening. As such, I emerged intact and, ultimately, quite proud of myself for waiting out and weathering such an unexpected emotional storm.

    I haven’t always dealt with my emotions this way—sorrow, fear, uncertainty, inadequacy, and guilt in particular. Indeed, I still slip into old habits at times.

    My life has proven an excellent instructor, however, and I am pleased to note the above-described scenario is becoming more commonplace.

    Vocation has been extremely important to me. In fact, I clearly recall a moment in my childhood when I declared to myself (in so many words), “I want my work to be meaningful and enjoyable.” That notion has informed my life ever since.

    When it came time for me to declare a major in college, I mulled my options and settled on theatre. I knew it wasn’t practical, per se, but it was meaningful to me and I enjoyed it. Besides, I trusted that the act of honoring my passion would lead me down the road I needed to travel. I think I was correct.

    A year or so following graduation, I took the next step and moved to New York City to pursue my career in acting. It was an exciting time at first. After several years, however, I was exhausted, disillusioned, and burned out.

    The things I needed to do to pursue my career as an actor—“pound the pavement,” rehearse nights and weekends, and work day jobs to support myself—had become nothing short of onerous.

    My originally hoped-for payoff (earning a living as an actor) was no longer worth the commitments and sacrifices necessary to taking an honest shot at it.

    Once I accepted that truth, the decision to stop was a relatively easy one to make. Waiting for me on the other side of that decision, however, was the ominous question “Now what?”

    I had the luxury of avoiding the question at first, because I was attending to other aspects of my life, which, in many regards, was on auto-pilot: I got married, my now-ex-wife and I moved, she entered law school, and I started working full time to help support us.

    Life settled into a routine, and, to my dismay, the urgency of the still-unanswered question “Now what?” intensified. I approached it with a sense of helpless, dire urgency; as such, I soon descended into a full-blown existential crisis.

    Whereas my path forward had once seemed so clear and exciting and full of promise, it was now almost entirely hidden from my view. I was tormented by the uncertainty. Full of fear and bereft of experience and perspective, I did the only thing I knew how to do: avoid change.

    I helped maintain my status quo by, alternately, complaining; losing my temper—usually with my ex-wife—over trivial frustrations; pretending to most of my family and friends that everything in my life was going well; and performing what I call “mental gymnastics”—attempting to trick myself in so many ways that I did not, in fact, hate most things about my life, including myself.

    The fact that I had no compassion for myself in view of my vocational confusion, and that I could not accept my own discontent and act accordingly, ensured a certain spiritual toxicity.

    The result, of course, is that I viewed the world through a lens of sadness and anger and darkness.

    Finally, I had the good sense to say, “Enough.”

    With some assistance, I slowly reconnected with myself.

    I rediscovered my talents and positive attributes, which, along with the consideration of several of my interests, led me to pursue graduate studies in social work.

    I felt it was finally time to enjoy my life, fulfill my destiny, and settle into a contented peace. In reality, everything was about to change.

    Yes, grad school was transformative and exhilarating, but it was also the backdrop for what was, perhaps, an even greater learning opportunity: my divorce.

    In the immediate aftermath of my separation, I stuck with my old habit of experiential avoidance. Cracks in the armor quickly appeared, however; and besides, my work as a practitioner-in-training ensured I couldn’t realistically hide for long (thankfully).

    I had the good sense to seek counseling.

    Over the next few months, I learned that I have the tendency, as do many of us, to “jump” out of experiences I deem to be “bad” and into other “good” experiences I would prefer.

    In my case, I was experiencing feelings of deep guilt and sadness in the wake of my divorce, but instead of acknowledging my guilt and sadness, I jumped headlong into self-hatred and shame.

    That might seem counterintuitive at first glance; after all, how could I, or anyone, ever prefer or deem good the acts of self-shaming and hatred?

    What I’ve come to discover, sadly, is that many of us, consciously or not, do just that. We find it safer to attack ourselves than it is to abide certain experiences—such as vulnerability, guilt, fear, and sadness—that we believe may hurt us even more.

    Each of us, I would argue, has these types of emotional sore spots that, when triggered, send us into a basic sort of survival mode.

    While that looks different for each person, one factor remains constant: something about that “emotional sore spot” experience seems fundamentally unacceptable; and, after all, what does one do with something fundamentally unacceptable but reject it somehow?

    For my part, I discovered my “jumping” into self-hatred and shame is a learned behavior.

    It is a well-intentioned one, perhaps, in that it is designed to guard me from what I perceive to be the dangerous experience of acknowledging my (real and imagined) limitations and imperfections; but it is one that ultimately prevents me from fully dealing with, and taking ownership of, the myriad truths of my life.

    I learned to appreciate the validity of the statement “what you resist, persists.” I saw how that which remains unacknowledged and unprocessed can grow toxic, thereby greatly exacerbating the original problem and greatly amplifying suffering.

    I recognized deeply held irrational beliefs about myself, namely, that if I don’t always get everything right, I’m a total screw-up who is unworthy of any positive regard, let alone love, and a propensity for labeling (i.e., “good” and “bad”). These had been the real cause of my extreme suffering, because they incited reinforcing, harmful behaviors.

    I realize now the experiences of sadness and pain itself are just that: experiences of sadness and pain. They are not some fundamental threat to my well-being or a rubber-stamped comment on the quality of my personhood.

    If I acknowledge these experiences, sit with them, explore and express them, I can choose my actions accordingly without jumping into shame, self-hatred, or other unhelpful behaviors.

    So when I woke up the other morning and felt sadness wash over me, I was able to welcome it. I was able to give myself compassion by telling myself, “You’ve been through a lot, buddy, and it’s okay to feel that.”

    And that’s just it, you know? That’s the antidote: compassion.

    I’ve found that by giving myself compassion—the literal and metaphysical space to abide the emotional experiences I generally deem “threatening”—I am able to discover catharsis, forgiveness, peace, acceptance.

    In sitting with our feelings in this way, we are able to live, truly—to be open to the experiences of our lives.

    Photo by Almonroth

  • Emotional Blind Spots: On Feeling Uncomfortable Feelings

    Emotional Blind Spots: On Feeling Uncomfortable Feelings

    “Feelings or emotions are the universal language and are to be honored. They are the authentic expression of who you are at your deepest place.” ~Judith Wright

    On March 12th of 2006 I faced an important decision: life or death? From my perspective, death seemed reasonable, logical, and easy. Life on the other hand was difficult and full of disappointment.

    That was the day I realized I had no idea how to be happy or live with my true self. All I knew and felt in my soul was aloneness; an emotional black hole that consumed me.

    Being Emotional vs. Being Emotionally Connected

    How I got to that point is a long story, full of addictions, failed relationships, lost jobs, and victimization. Looking back, I realize I hit the bottom as a result of not being connected to myself.

    To be perfectly clear, I’ve always been an emotional person. You know—touchy feely, crying when Old Yeller died, etc.

    But being emotional and emotionally connected to self are two completely different things.

    Being emotional meant I took everything personally. This made intense relationships with the opposite sex agonizing. Every little argument meant she didn’t love me and was walking out the door.

    I realized early on it was just easier to avoid them; or at least bolt when they starting getting too serious.

    Avoiding Uncomfortable Emotions

    I had too many emotional blind spots—out of the way places I’d shove uncomfortable feelings, in some corner of my soul. I’d keep moving just fast enough to keep them unseen in the rearview mirror.

    If it was uncomfortable, I didn’t want anything to do with it.

    I avoided conversations that might include, “What are you thinking?” or “What are you feeling?” My closest friends were co-workers and anyone who frequented the same bars I did. I refer to that period as my “five dollar life” because I would never put more than $5 worth of gas in my car at one time.

    Not because I lacked the funds so much; I just couldn’t stand still long enough. I was in a hurry to get things done, change the world, and make my mark. I was going places while getting nowhere in a hurry. (more…)