Tag: wisdom
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Why I Gave Myself Permission to Suck at New Things
“Never be afraid to try new things and make some mistakes. It’s all part of life and learning.” ~Unknown
A few months ago, I was warming up for a dance class. It was a beginners’ class, but the instructor was one of those people who have been dancing all their life, so movement came easy to her. This was the ninth week of a ten-week term, and we’d been working on a choreography for a while now.
Then, the reception girl came in with a new student. She introduced the new girl to the instructor. “Hey B. This is Nat. She is new to the studio, and I offered her a trial class. Do you think you can take care of her?”
“Of course. Hi Nat. We have been working on this “coreo” for a while, but I’ll explain each move as we go. I promise I’ll go really slow. Besides, everyone here is a beginner.”
A little uncertain, Nat came in and took a spot at the back of the class. You could see she wasn’t very comfortable. But everyone encouraged her to stay, so she did.
The truth is that the cues were confusing and the moves were hard to perform. Even though we were all beginners at that particular class, many of us had taken other classes before. Besides, we have been working on this choreography for eight weeks.
Unable to follow the class, Nat burst out of the room in tears after only ten minutes. And on her way out, she said, “I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I’m clearly not good enough.”
Have you ever been through anything like that? Feeling out of place and inadequate?
I know I have. You see, I’ve never been what you call an athletic kid. Mostly because I never had the opportunity to become one.
In my school, during PE classes, only the talented kids were chosen to play. Everyone else stayed in the sidelines. Watching.
Also, I never participated in extra-curricular sports activities because my parents couldn’t afford it. So I grew up believing that I was not good with sports. Just a scrawny girl, uncoordinated and awkward.
And that was my belief until my late twenties. But then, something happened.
When I was twenty-eight, I decided to give the gym another try. Because I had no previous experience, I carefully chose classes that I believed I could follow. But apparently, the universe has a sense of humor.
Through a mistake on the timetable printout, I ended up on an Advanced Step class. Oh my. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my whole life. I was so bad at it that one of the ladies stopped following the class to try teaching me how to do the basic moves. I was mortified, but… I stayed until the end.
At the end of the class, many of the ladies came to talk to me. I explained how I ended up in that class and was repeatedly apologizing for my lack of coordination. But the truth was that no one cared about my inability to perform the moves.
I was welcomed into their group and encouraged to come again. They assured me that it would become easier with practice.
Long story short, I was the one doing all the judging and criticizing. Nobody else. I was feeling inadequate because I believed that making mistakes would make me look bad in front of people. As if I was only allowed to do things that I could do well.
But hey! You only learn through practice, right? And before you become good at something, chances are that you will suck at first. Or were you born knowing how to ride a bicycle?
Anyway, that experience changed my life. Even though, it was “traumatic” in some ways (I still blush when I think of it), I learned so much from it.
Before, I thought that I needed to be perfect at everything that I did. I had this belief that making mistakes was shameful and that people would think that I wasn’t good enough. Consequently, I shied away from trying new things, just in case I, well, “sucked.”
The truth was that this misbelief was holding me back big time. If I wasn’t allowed to make mistakes, that meant that I was stuck with whatever I’d learned when I was a child. But I haven’t learned everything I wanted just yet, have I?
No. I wanted to learn more, to become better, to grow. I was curious about lots of things but at the same time afraid to fail. Can you relate?
I was at a crossroad. Be perfect but still, or imperfect but moving. So I chose growth. I chose to see mistakes as part of the process of learning. I chose to live a life of discovery and excitement rather than perfection and dullness.
The experience at the group class showed me that I was my worst critic, not others. And if I could be kinder to myself, I would find much easier to navigate the world.
When I stopped taking myself too seriously, I started enjoying life more. Taking more risks and getting bigger rewards.
Because of these learnings, I had the courage to continue my fitness path and become a personal trainer. Even though I was never an athletic kid. And despite my lack of coordination. (Which got better, by the way. With practice.)
To remind myself what is to be a beginner, I often take classes that push me way out of my comfort zone. I call them my “vulnerability” classes. I step into these classes with no expectations to perform. In fact, I give myself full permission to “suck.” To look lost, to feel goofy, to not understand the instructor’s cues.
It’s my way of being comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. The more I challenge myself, the stronger I get. This works not only for the body but also for the mind.
So go ahead. Give yourself permission to “suck” and jump into that Zumba class you’ve always wanted to try. There is nothing shameful in being a beginner. No matter how old you are.
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Breaking the Toxic Cycle: My Family Dysfunction Stops with Me
TRIGGER WARNING: This post references physical abuse and may be triggering to some people.
“Forgive yourself for not knowing better at the time. Forgive yourself for giving away your power. Forgive yourself for past behaviors. Forgive yourself for the survival patterns and traits you picked up while enduring trauma. Forgive yourself for being who you needed to be.” ~Audrey Kitching
I will never forget, when I was twelve years old, I went to sit on my father’s lap and he told me, “No! You’re too heavy to sit on my lap!” What does an adolescent girl do with a comment like that? She hides it away and adds it to the ammunition she has begun to store up in her arsenal of self-flagellation. Shame knows no boundaries.
My father was never intentionally cruel to me. He had demons of his own. I knew that he had been physically abused as a boy and he used to tell us, or rather proclaim, “I vow to NEVER hit any of my kids!” He neglected to realize that words can hurt even more than a physical slap. And even more hurtful was when nothing was said at all.
Silence is a killer that there are no words for.
His father used a leather razor sharpening strap to beat him, and my father hung it in the kitchen of our house. I would wonder if it was a reminder of what happened to him, or was it a warning of what could happen to us? I made sure I toed the line so I would never find out. The beginning of my perfectionism.
Growing up, the one message that was crystal clear to me was that my body was not acceptable. It was reinforced in so many ways. The times my father would suggest I attend Weight Watchers meetings with my mother. But the biggest reinforcement was once a month when the Playboy Magazine would arrive in the mail. That was what a real woman’s body was supposed to look like! And the only point of reference I had.
I dealt with this by going within. I hid food and binged in secret. I used running and sports to try to counter the caloric intake. I became the perfect daughter on the outside, knowing it didn’t matter because I would never be acceptable. I fought a battle that there was no way to win. I just didn’t know it at the time. I was a teenager trying to find love in all the wrong places, with all the wrong people. In all the wrong ways.
And I wasn’t the only one. I was the oldest of four children, and my siblings all had their own demons they were fighting as well. Some people would say that the family that plays together stays together. I would add that the dysfunction in a family can not only rip a family apart, but it can also pick them off one by one.
My father was the first to fall victim. He died when I was thirty-six from pancreatic cancer after suffering a massive stroke. I am convinced that his stroke was a direct cause of his drinking and lifestyle.
My youngest sister died when I was thirty-nine years old. She was in a physically abusive relationship for nine years. Her partner and the father to her two children beat her to death.
The hardest loss was my mother, who died when I was fifty-two. She had suffered from dementia for years. but ultimately it was lung cancer that caused her death.
At fifty-six, my second sister died of an accidental overdose of heroin. She was fifty-five.
And lastly, my only brother, who is still living, is recovering from laryngeal cancer and now uses an artificial voice box.
For the longest time, I would wonder when my time was coming. People would tell me that my family was cursed, and the temptation to fall into that camp was appealing. Just let the chips fall where they may! But the truth of the matter was that, like for us all, there are consequences for our choices. I know that sounds harsh considering that I have lost most of my family, but I cannot make it be anything it is not. And believe me, I’ve tried!
My codependency was strong, and I tried to save them all! And in the process, I was losing myself. I was tired. I was sad, I felt defeated. But enough was enough.
I had made the decision, when my husband and I adopted our only daughter, that the dysfunction was going to stop with me.
I had a lot of work to do on myself. I had to uncover all the lies I had believed about myself. About my life. And then I had to choose new things to believe. I had to unearth all the ammunition I had used to build the walls I had cemented around myself. The walls that would have strangled me if I had let them.
But that is my work to do now. And because I made the decision to do that work, my daughter is a healthy, well-adjusted young woman in her third year of college.
I don’t say that to pat myself on the shoulder necessarily, but why not? I chose to walk a different path then my biological family. And choosing that different path also offered me different choices. And it will also my daughter different choices.
I learned about the boundaries I needed to place around my own family unit, and I was not popular for that. Those boundaries were not popular, and I was ostracized and called out for them.
My work was to take the box down from the closet. You know the one, where the secrets hide. And if I just keep it up there, no one needs to know. But I knew I had to open that box and take them all out. Then I could decide which were real and which were imagined. Which ones had to go and which ones I could work with.
Life is a series of turning points. And we get to decide, at any time whether we keep moving forward or whether it’s time to turn around and begin again. We are never too old to keep moving forward. And we have never made a mistake that cannot be forgiven. A wrong that cannot be made right. I have forgiven myself for many mistakes. Many hurts I have caused. I have made amends. I keep taking the next right step.
I am fifty-eight. I have forgiven those who have needed to be forgiven. I have grieved the family I wished I had. And I continue to grieve the loss of those who have died far too young. And the relationships that will never be.
I no longer run from the loneliness that catches up to me from time to time. I just don’t stay wrapped in it for too long. I have shed the shawl of shame I have carried around me and work everyday to find the light and the beauty within.
And I continue to remind myself, every single day, that it is not too late to become who I was created to be. My work is to keep doing the work and find my way home. Home is a place within. A place of wholeness. A place where self-forgiveness and self-acceptance merge. And beauty abounds.
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Who Are You Protecting? Why Telling Your Story Is Powerful
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ~Maya Angelou
Throughout my childhood experiences I did what every child does and rejected parts of myself. It makes sense because kids depend on adults for survival, so I was in no position to reject my parents. But as an adult I feel it is now my job to reclaim those parts of myself.
While I had two parents that loved me and what I’d describe as a normal childhood, nonetheless I became hyper-attuned to others, over-sensitive to criticism, and a perfectionist, particularly under stress. It led to all sorts of pain within relationships and, upon becoming parent, I could see I needed to address some things. I had little sense of self and had to learn about having and holding healthy boundaries.
I have been fortunate not to have been directly subjected to any of the more readily recognized trauma (sometimes known as big-T trauma), like addiction, violence, or sexual abuse. But my childhood was dominated by the kind of trauma that descends from the big stuff.
The aspects of my dysfunctional persona I mention above come under the heading of developmental trauma. I think it’s important to expose these aspects of who we become in the world as they have been getting perpetuated subtly throughout families all over the world for generations and they prohibit our collective growth.
Yet, for all the personal experiences I have shared, one I have never spoken of until recently is probably the one that shaped me more than anything else. Simply put, I had a mother who did not cope well when looking after us kids on her own. I learned to think ten steps ahead and project into the future in order to avoid any major meltdown. It drove perfectionist behavior in me, and I learned to choose my words carefully.
Why have I never spoken about it? I suspect this is multifaceted and ranges from things like not wanting to air dirty laundry, so to speak, to knowing that both my parents (like most parents) did the best they could with what they knew and the resources they had available to them at the time. Yet these were my experiences, for better or worse they shaped me, and if I tell my story it might help someone else.
To be more specific, mum used to often drop into this hyper tense state when she was alone with my brother and me; something I now readily recognize as a trauma state. She would say she was “up to high doh” (an old Scots expression) with our behavior, then snap at us, scream and yell, and chunter on afterward for a period of time somewhere else in the house.
When she would yell at me or chunter afterward, I now know it was most likely a deflection of her own pain. As my bedroom was above the kitchen I could hear the aggressive slights about me “being a bitch” or a “slut” or “a selfish cow” even though I was only a child.
When my father got home she would immediately approach him using a baby voice, another thing I could hear from my bedroom, conveying just how stressed she was (we kids usually being at fault). In the evenings Mum would then sit in front of the TV sucking her thumb, which I suspect were signs that she was likely regressing into her child self.
Watching this cycle, at the time, made me feel disgust and anger on top of the fear I already felt in being under her watch each day. My nervous system was under constant alert not knowing what aspect of her would show up.
Everything was our fault because we had broken the rules. With hindsight, and far more knowledge of children’s development, I now know we were just going through the normal growth and development cycles that kids go through rather than being bad kids.
Because it was probably a dissociative state that emerged when my mother was in flight-or-fight mode, it is possible (especially since Mum never did any meditation or therapy around this) that she had no clear memory of acting like that, or the frequency with which it occurred. I expect she was too identified with the thoughts of how bad we were and how bad it made her feel.
Dr. Gabor Maté’s words ring true: “It is often not our children’s behavior, but our inability to tolerate their negative responses that creates difficulties. The only thing the parent needs to gain control over is our own anxiety and lack of self-control.”
My mother was not able to do that, and nor are most people to be fair. It is far easier to blame people or circumstances than take a good hard look at ourselves and have a willingness to explore the hidden depths that we are held hostage to.
All this was unspoken with my mum. It is like it never happened, as if my brother and I somehow lived in a parallel universe.
Likely looking after young kids on her own was overwhelming and activated the trauma stored within her, perhaps in response to her own father’s violence and/or possibly the disgust at my grandmother’s passivity about it, or her own guilt in not doing something more (even although she was incredibly young at the time and couldn’t possibly have intervened).
However, when she was diagnosed with cancer my mum did say, “You know how I like to stick my head in the ground” when I tried to share with her the metaphysical possibilities related to the disease. Since my mother was most often too open with her opinions and usually gave us direct answers to questions we asked, sticking her head in the proverbial sand wasn’t something I immediately associated with her.
But now in retrospect I wonder whether, on some level, she may have been acknowledging her dissociative behavior when bringing us up, and the effects it may have had on us kids. Certainly it wasn’t something she ever directly acknowledged.
Though she did not readily share details during her life, she was simply what I would have called very dark on her father and her eldest brother. Just before she died I discovered her father was an abusive alcoholic. I also knew her eldest brother, a half sibling, abandoned the family as his father before him had abandoned him.
My mum, like a lot of people, never saw any value in revisiting those childhood experiences; she couldn’t fathom why anyone would partake in coaching never mind counseling, perhaps because she felt herself adequate enough and externalized her feelings. She certainly did not believe she was in any way held hostage to her experiences, which is what most of us would like to believe I expect.
As a result, I felt very alone and invalidated. My parents had each other, whereas my brother and I were left to deal with our emotions alone. Certainly it often felt our needs were not important (which was the predominant theme of the “do as I say and do not argue/we know best” approach to childrearing that had gone on for centuries).
While, like anyone, I could express many more things in my childhood that have stuck with me, experiencing my mother’s own trauma when we were alone with her, which was for significant amounts of our early life, elicited a feeling of constantly being on edge.
As I grew I spoke up more, unwilling to accept the emotional load being put on me, which resulted in a lot of raging arguments in my teenage years.
No one except my brother would have much of an appreciation for this, because around others my mother was quite different. In fact, around others, especially my father, she would have felt safer and, therefore, calmer. This Jekyll and Hyde behavior obviously made it very difficult for me to bond with a mum who, for all that I knew loved me, because my internal shields were well and truly up.
While I did not have the words for any of this back then, having caught myself descending into this chuntering state with both my partner and our own kids at times was a red flag for me. I knew I had to address my own reactions to break the cycle.
All that said, I feel blessed with my experiences because they helped shape me and to relate to others’ struggles and other dysfunctional behavior. I feel strongly that I have come into this life to shine a light on this more insidious type of trauma, one that lives in all of us in various guises, and help break the chain of pain that is occurring in pretty much every home across the planet. So in this sense, um was the perfect mother for me.
I also recognize that this was but one facet of my mum, one I have come to see with compassion, and she had many more that were far more positive. As a grandparent she was generous and loving, as a friend she was insightful and loyal, and as my parent she was all those things too; I always knew I was wanted and loved, it just did not always feel that way, especially when she was “up to high doh.”
It seems to me that through shame, guilt, and pain very few of us talk about our experiences, not realizing the person next to us is living their own twisted version of the same. The systemic issues we face in society today are all fed by the ongoing cycles of trauma within us and can only be solved by bringing them into the light.
We don’t all have to share our stories publicly. Even just opening up to a trusted friend or therapist can help us understand what we experienced, chip away at our shame, and break the cycle of pain so we don’t unknowingly repeat the same patterns.
So who are you protecting? What trauma shaped you? Is it time to tell your own story? Maybe sharing is the key to your healing, or helping heal someone else.
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How I’m Healing from Codependency After Growing Up with an Alcoholic Parent
“The only person you can now or ever change is yourself. The only person that it is your business to control is yourself.” ~Melody Beattie
In 2019, I decided to leave my marriage and start over. Although my relationship with my ex-husband brought deep pain and many months of suffering, I felt content with my decision.
In a short time, I began to feel great. I developed a healthy routine, exercised regularly, began meditating every day, spent time in nature, maintained healthy and deep connections with people, and tried to focus on the positive.
For a few months, it seemed to be working. Until I met a man and got emotionally involved with him. I realized then I’d really been living in denial.
The moment I began dating or seeing someone more intimately, my life felt unmanageable. Suddenly, I would abandon my daily routine and spend days preoccupied with what this person was doing or why it would take them thirteen minutes to respond to my message. I’d become obsessed and wonder, “What’s wrong with me?”
I was quick to throw a tantrum to create more drama and fights. In some twisted and weird way, it felt exciting. I had something to resolve and take care of. I was feeding off the extreme lows and highs with people I dated.
As an adult child of an alcoholic, I didn’t understand what it meant to be addicted to excitement, as stated in the famous laundry list. Now I do.
My need to control the other person, the fear of abandonment, my obsession over people’s feelings, and my desire to fix their problems while ignoring mine brought an unbearable pain I couldn’t ignore anymore.
It all broke down this year. I met someone who once again triggered my codependency and challenged my trauma wounds. Shortly after we started talking, I began to feel crazy again. Constant anxiety, fear of loss, desire to control and manipulate situations, were coming to the surface until the relationship ended. Another failed attempt to be in a relationship.
What followed was intolerable emotional pain. I never felt so lost in my entire life. I couldn’t function properly, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t work, and I was paralyzed by desperation, hopelessness, and loneliness.
Meanwhile, somewhere between my pain and inability to see my worth, I broke through.
For the very first time, I was forced to feel my emotions. Although it felt brutal at times, I was at least feeling. The pain cracked me open in my core and didn’t allow me to numb anymore. Anger, worthlessness, guilt, shame, fear of loss, the pain of believing I am hard to love—it all came pouring out full force.
Who would have ever thought that a broken heart, or at least what I perceived as a broken heart, would uncover my codependency and lead to emotional healing and more authenticity?
For the next couple of months, I would come home, lie on the floor in the middle of my bedroom in a fetal position, and brace myself for the emotional outburst that was about to come. I was processing and releasing my emotions, and there was no coming back.
I would breathe heavily and cry uncontrollably for days and weeks to come. I would cry at work, at the store while picking avocados, when I was falling asleep, or watching a TikTok video. It didn’t matter. For the first time in my life, I was feeling my feelings and didn’t push them away.
Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure what was happening. I had no logical explanation for this emotional rollercoaster until I talked to one of my good friends, Gaia. She mentioned a book she was reading, Codependent No More, and suggested I check it out.
I never considered myself codependent. By definition, I was the opposite of it. I had my apartment, paid my bills, lived on my own, worked while building my business, and took care of myself.
However, I decided to give it a shot and read it. What followed was epiphany after epiphany and a few A-ha moments. I began to understand why I felt crazy when entering any intimate relationship or a possibility of one. I began to see how the pain from my codependency allowed me to open up.
As I was sitting in my studio apartment while contemplating everything I’d learned and now understood about codependency, I knew that this was about to significantly transform my life if I did the work and didn’t stop.
Living with a person with chemical dependency shapes you into a control freak with unhealthy survival mechanisms. Codependency is one of them. The only way to change is to be willing to face the truth and commit to deep inner healing.
So, the question was, “What is the next best step I can take right now to heal and recover?”
At first, I needed to take personal inventory and be honest with myself. Who am I? What are my toxic traits, and when does my codependency step in? When do I manipulate people? Am I trying to fix people’s problems to increase my value and prove my worth? How can I stop doing that and rely on myself for approval and validation?
I remember the day when my mum called and let me know that our dog, Aida, had suddenly passed away. Shortly before her call, I’d had one of my emotional relapses and picked a fight with a person I was seeing at that time. I then used this disturbing news and my sadness as a tool to manipulate the other person. The victim façade I put on made them forget about my toxic behavior and feel sorry for me instead. What can I say? Manipulation at its best.
Honestly, it was not easy, admitting to myself that I manipulated people, that I was emotionally dependent on them and wanted to control them. This was not the type of resume I would want to show around, but at least it was real.
I was standing in my authenticity, and it felt incredible.
Once I became aware of my behavior, it was time to forgive.
The tricky part about growth and healing is that once you become aware of your shortcomings and trauma sabotaging techniques, it is easy to move from practical awareness to self-judgment.
So, I needed to forgive, forgive, and forgive some more. Therefore, I incorporate forgiveness into my meditation practice. I didn’t understand how utterly guilty I felt until I sat down to practice forgiveness through meditation for the first time.
After I closed my eyes and said out loud, “I forgive myself,” I had to pause the recording. My emotions came pouring out. It felt as if I had been holding my breath and finally exhaled after many years of keeping things inside. The guilt and shame came washing over me, and I began to release them.
I finally gave myself a break and instead of harsh judgment and criticism, I offered myself acceptance and empathy.
One of the most common patterns of codependent people is that we constantly feel guilty and not enough, and we limit ourselves from anything good or loving since we don’t believe we deserve it. The only way through this madness is to use compassion and understanding toward what we have done or who we believe we are. It’s about empathizing with our past, becoming aware about what happened to us and the impact it had.
No one is born to manipulate and control. It’s not who we are. It’s who we become as a survival mechanism. We adopt these toxic traits until we are brave enough to look in the mirror, admit to our mistakes, and break our patterns. And the only way is through self-forgiveness.
I started to work the 12-step program for codependents. I also learned that recovering from codependency is a journey, not a destination. Healing codependency is about self-control, constant self-care, practicing detachment, surrendering, and developing a healthy relationship with power.
As I learned from Melody Beattie, an author of numerous books on codependency, recovery is the only way to stop the pain.
Growing up in a household with chemically dependent people or in a home that doesn’t provide safety and proper nurturing, you may develop an unhealthy relationship with power as a coping mechanism. You may believe that if you can control and predict everything and fix people’s problems, you’ll be fine. You’ll be in control. You’ll be loved and enough.
But the only thing you can fully manage is yourself. Any time you try to control things or people, you’ll experience pain when they don’t meet your expectations. As you may already know, people do what they want, and many situations don’t play out the way we envision.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned this year is to find my power by looking into a mirror. Stopping the pain is about practicing detachment, letting go, working on my recovery to overcome the fear of loss and abandonment, and giving myself as much love as I possibly can.
The need to control often results in desperation that brings suffering, while practicing detachment and caring for yourself brings peace and allows healing.
Today, I say with confidence, “I am codependent.”
I am aware that to live healthier, I must stay truthful to my recovery. Sometimes I win, and sometimes I fail. Over time, there will be fewer losses and more wins. It comes with practice. I am mindful of the emotional and mental relapse that comes with the process. I know that I will fall into my old patterns and then struggle to get back on track.
However, I know I have the power to make different choices. When things seem to fall apart on the outside, it’s time to go inside, feel, process, and forgive. That’s my new way of life. Although it challenges and triggers wounds I need to heal, it gives me hope to believe those good things can happen for me too.
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The Six Ps: What to Do and Not to Do When Dealing with Setbacks and Failure
“Sometimes you get what you want. Other times, you get a lesson in patience, timing, alignment, empathy, compassion, faith, perseverance, resilience, humility, trust, meaning, awareness, resistance, purpose, clarity, grief, beauty, and life. Either way, you win.” ~Brianna Wiest
“Good as gold,” the cab driver replied as I nervously handed him the $20 bill and asked, “Okay?” He jumped in his cab and drove off.
I was pleasantly surprised by his politeness, as I was expecting him to argue with me for extra money because we’d gone around in circles searching for the address that I had given him at the airport. These were the pre-GPS days, of course!
This was the start of my emotional rollercoaster upon arrival in New Zealand as a new migrant.
The first few days were filled with excitement and happiness. Discovering a new country, meeting friendly people, learning new things—all these experiences made me a wide-eyed migrant seduced by the charms of my new surroundings.
After a few weeks, the rollercoaster took a downward dive as I started getting frustrated with a spate of rejections. All my job applications brought forth polite rejection letters. The message I was getting was that my lack of local experience made me very unappealing to prospective employers. Nobody was willing to even interview me.
How was I going to break out of this Catch-22 situation? I couldn’t get local experience without a job, but I couldn’t get a job without local experience!
After months of fruitless searching, the rollercoaster finally took an upward turn. Driven to despair by the unwillingness of employers to grant me an interview, I decided to enroll in a university to acquire a local qualification in the hope that it might open a door for me. This out-of-the-box thinking got me my first job through a contact from the university. At last, a feeling of joy!
I felt that my problems had ended, and now I was set for a long and successful career in my adopted country. How wrong I was! It was time for the emotional rollercoaster to start its downward journey again.
Within a few months, my joy turned to confusion when my employer went from being very pleased with me to finding fault with everything I did almost overnight. I struggled to understand what had changed.
A little while later I realized that my employer had hired me only to take advantage of a government scheme that subsidized (for a fixed term) employers who hired new migrants.
My employer blamed me for things that had nothing to do with me and attributed other people’s mistakes to me. His cunning plan was to make my life so difficult that I would quit. That way there wouldn’t be any awkward questions from the government department about hiring me and then firing me within a few months.
I felt an overarching sense of sadness and disappointment when I realized that my initial thoughts of everyone in my new country being friendly was just an illusion. I learned the lesson that people were people, some good and some not-so-good, no matter what part of the world they were in. I parted ways with my first employer in rather unpleasant circumstances.
The long period of unemployment that followed created self-doubts in my mind.
“Did I do the right thing by moving to another country?”
“Will I ever succeed in finding decent employment?”
Feelings of regret began to run riot in my mind.
“Why didn’t I find out more about my employment prospects in this country before deciding to move here lock, stock, and barrel?”
“I shouldn’t have taken such a big risk.”
Every time I heard about someone that I knew doing well back home, I felt sorry for myself. I started feeling like I’d made a mistake by moving to New Zealand. As I had burned bridges before migrating, I felt there was no way of going back and restarting from where I had left off.
By the time the rollercoaster took another upward turn, I had already been in the country for quite a while. It took four to five years for my career to stabilize and for me to start feeling satisfied with my decision to move. When you migrate to a new country, it’s not just the flight that is long-haul!
I’ve shared the story of my emotional rollercoaster so I can also share my consequent learnings with you. My hope is that if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, you might be able to alleviate your feelings of hopelessness with the realization that you’re not alone and you can get out of any difficult situation with the right mindset.
THE SIX Ps
I’d like to encapsulate this journey of going from where you are to where you want to be in terms of “The Six Ps”—three Ps for what one shouldn’t do, and three Ps for what one should do.
Let’s first take a look at the three Ps to avoid.
1. Don’t take setbacks or adversities PERSONALLY.
It’s important to separate your failures from your identity.
If we take every rejection, setback, and problem personally, our self-esteem takes a beating and we can easily go down the rabbit holes of despair and depression.
I was rejected over 200 times, without even getting an interview, before I got my first job. While I would never want to be in that situation again, or ever wish that upon anyone, I realize that I was fortunate not to allow myself to get dragged deep into the swamp of feeling worthless. In hindsight, I believe that this tough phase played a key role in building my resilience.
2. Don’t allow a failure to become all-PERVASIVE.
A failure or setback in one area of your life should remain contained to that area and not spill over into other areas.
When my emotional rollercoaster was on a downward slope, it felt natural for me to start linking my failure in landing a job to every other aspect of life in the new country. Negative thoughts started doing the rounds in my mind.
“I’m a misfit here.”
“This place is not right for me.”
“I am doomed.”
The unfortunate consequence of such pervasive thinking is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy unless you stop this vicious cycle before it becomes too late. Enrolling in a course was the best step I took at that time as it gave my mind something else to focus on.
3. Don’t think of any adversity as PERMANENT.
Every crisis in the history of the world has ended. However difficult your challenge might seem, there will always be light at the end of the tunnel. You may not be able to see it from where you are now, but take comfort in the history of the world and assure yourself that your crisis will also have an end.
My challenge with finding a job as a migrant went on for a long time, but eventually, it did end. If I had adopted a mindset of permanence with thoughts like “I’m never going to succeed here,” my efforts would have waned. When our efforts start to taper off, the desired results start moving further away from us.
Now for the three Ps to adopt!
1. Have PATIENCE.
I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “good things take time.” Have faith in that!
Some things take longer than we would like. That’s just life. Have the willingness to wait as you keep following the process. Dedicate yourself to the process and allow the results to happen.
2. Develop PERSEVERANCE.
Too often people give up just before they’re about to crack the code. The ability to continue our efforts in the face of difficulty or forge through delay in the way of their success is what separates the winners from the also-rans.
Life is like an obstacle race. Get better at tackling the obstacles and continuing your journey toward your objectives. Take help, reach out for support—do whatever it takes to keep going.
3. Find your PURPOSE.
I believe that this third P underpins the other two Ps that you should do to achieve success.
Without a strong purpose, it becomes easy to give up when the going gets tough. Purpose provides the fuel for motivation.
Figure out why you want what you want. What is driving you? Go deep, look beneath the surface—sometimes your real WHY can be hidden under superficial WHYs.
It can be difficult to have patience and perseverance if you don’t know the true purpose behind your goals.
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Life is a journey of ups and downs. Realizing and accepting this fact puts us in a much better position to handle adversities. Most of our disappointment in life comes from having unrealistic expectations.
If you’re ready to handle the ups and downs of this rollercoaster of life, buckle yourself in and enjoy the ride!
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Why the Right Choice for You Isn’t Always an Immediate “Hell Yes”
“If our hearts and minds are so unreliable, maybe we should be questioning our own intentions and motivations more. If we’re all wrong, all the time, then isn’t self-skepticism and the rigorous challenging of our own beliefs and assumptions the only logical route to progress?” ~Mark Manson
I often hear people encourage others with the following advice: “If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.”
Don’t get me wrong: I see where they’re coming from when they say it. Far too often we are dissuaded from listening to our gut feelings. Often, we follow the tyranny of shoulds. We compromise on our true needs and desires. We talk the inner voice away in favor of what’s expected of us.
And yet I also see how this well-intended nugget of wisdom eliminates grey area. The more black-and-white view of the world that it inadvertently espouses may not be entirely helpful to everyone, especially those who struggle with depression or anxiety.
Sometimes a maybe or an underwhelmed response means I don’t really want to do this. Other times it can mean I’m having complicated feelings that are worth unpacking and investigating.
We often feel ambivalent about taking part in experiences that are outside of our comfort zones, even if those experiences may help us to grow. Our moods or current struggles can affect our commitment to activities we might ordinarily enjoy.
Back in college when I was in the throes of a serious depression, for instance, I felt no pull to do anything—not even hobbies that I used to love. I said no to jogging and running. No to preparing nutritious meals. No to any experience that might bring me outside of my safe cocoon.
The only activities I said hell yes to were invitations to go out and get wasted at house parties with friends—which, needless to say, made my depression even worse and perpetuated a vicious cycle.
I wasn’t hell yes about healthy things. Drinking and escaping my pain were the only activities that elicited anything close to a passionate response from me.
If I had misapplied the above advice, I might still be drinking in problematic ways and eschewing more mindful activities that align with my values, simply because I don’t always feel hell yes about doing them.
Another example: a friend of mine told me there are weeks when she reads an hour before bed, and that the experience is lovely. When she becomes embroiled in a Netflix show, though, that habit dissolves. The thought of reading loses its appeal. Does this mean she doesn’t like reading? Is it a sign that she inherently prefers TV?
I don’t think it is. What I do think it means is that activities involving passive consumption often have addictive properties.
As David Foster Wallace wrote: “Television’s biggest minute by minute appeal is that it engages without demanding. One can rest while undergoing stimulation. Receive without giving.”
Other examples: I’m drawn to sugar. Consuming it “feels right.” Picking up a celery stick feels more difficult. It doesn’t come as naturally.
At certain points back in 2012 (before I moved to Uruguay), I wavered in my decision to teach abroad in South America.
In 2019, when I considered the work and planning involved (as well as the money it would require), I even felt hesitant to take a vacation to Mexico City. Doubts and conflicting feelings dampened my “hell yes” into a “I don’t know, maybe….” shortly after my friend invited me.
Did I still go, though? Yes! Did I have an amazing time? Also yes. Do I wish I could go back? One hundred percent.
My point is this: don’t let ambivalence or a lack of “hell yes” convince you that you must just not really want to do something.
It’s important to develop trust in our inner knowing; however, it’s also important to remember that our not always benevolent impulses sometimes masquerade as wise intuition.
Even though we might pick up on a bad feeling, we never know what that bad feeling means. It could mean so many things. Instincts never come with clear instructions.
That’s why it’s so hard to “just listen to them.” Listen to what? What action do we take in response to “this feels bad”?
As for the hell yeses: especially for those of us with mental health struggles, immediate impulses and strong instantaneous reactions at times warrant further unpacking before being acted upon or blindly obeyed. It’s just not always true that they unequivocally have our best long-term interests in mind.
A lack of an instant “hell yes” doesn’t necessarily signify that something isn’t right for us. It’s important that we allow room in our lives for the grey area, so as to ultimately act in alignment with our highest selves.
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How to Really Live In the Moment and Appreciate Life
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” ~Albert Einstein
Just when you think you have the whole living in the moment thing down, a four-year-old comes along and shows you how it’s done.
I’ve been working hard on this, actually, keeping a gratitude journal and everything. I was feeling pretty good about my progress yesterday when I decided to take said four-year-old on a walk rather than rushing through the to-do list burning a hole in the back of my mind.
“I’m going to be totally present,” I reminded myself as we headed out. I took deep breath and said a silent thanks for the beautiful day.
Like I said, I was feeling pretty proud of my progress. Then my daughter blew me away. She schooled me in everything I have been working so hard on, and she wasn’t even trying.
Her commentary on the walk went exactly like this:
Ohhhhhh, what an amazing house!
What an amazing garbage can!
Oh wow, what a wonderful tree!
Look at the rocks!
I hear a bird!
I hear a wind chime!
Mom, do you hear that dog? It’s perfect!
I hear a truck!
Do you feel the wind? It is so soft!
Look at the beautiful cactus,
Look! Two trucks.
She was so amazed by things that I never notice or worse, complain about.
Now, I wasn’t completely unaware. I was thankful for another spring day before the summer heat, and I was enjoying this rare one-on-one time with her.
But I had no idea that the neighbors had wind chimes. I have never looked at a garbage can and called it amazing (at least not since I was four). This perfect dog is the same one that I complain about to my husband. The wind was messing up my hair.
There were at least a thousand other concerns competing for my attention while she was content to watch ants on the sidewalk.
Sometimes I wish I could be a little more like her.
She didn’t care if I sent out that attachment with that email. She didn’t care about how many calories we burned on our walk. She didn’t mind that her clothes didn’t match because she picked out exactly what she likes.
I was not going to let this fade from my memory to be overtaken by another thousand concerns.
“Be amazed,” I thought.
I repeated it to myself the way you do a telephone number.
“Be amazed,” I scrawled as fast as I could on the first piece of paper I found when we got home.
Be amazed.
I set a reminder in my calendar. I made a post-it. I wrote it down in my journal.
Be amazed.
I don’t want to forget this feeling. This absolute clarity.
My mind can be the most hardened criminal against my own happiness. It snatches the joy right out of my hands. It confuses busy with important, urgent with significant, and difficulty with meaning.
My mind gives the future and the past too much space. It wanders over to what the neighbors are doing. It reminds me of what I have yet to accomplish. It wants to speed up time, and it plows right through those moments to be amazed by.
With this clarity also came sadness. My heart broke for the lost opportunities to just be and appreciate.
I guess that’s the bittersweet part of life. You can’t wait until this one tough part is over, but then it’s gone and you can’t go back. There’s a new stage to take its place, and the cycle continues.
Soon, you find yourself telling wide-eyed new parents and self-conscious teenagers (and basically anyone in one of those stages that you wanted to rush through when you were there) that these are the best years.
“Enjoy this while you can. It goes so fast,” you say.
Be amazed.
Looking back, the times that I once wished would pass by quickly actually turned out to be the hardest to let go. I could scold myself for this, or I could remember to be amazed now.
One way or another, time marches on. Old becomes new, new becomes old, and you get another chance to be amazed.
Each new stage is also another chance to be nice to yourself about the whole thing. It isn’t humanly possible to love every second of life while it’s happening. Even four-year-olds aren’t amazed all the time.
This little walk with my four-year-old reminded me that even the simple things are amazing, and the things I complain about? They’re life, and they’re doable. Sure, life now is different from life pre-kids (and pre-husband), I’m doing different things than my friends, and maybe my life doesn’t measure up to someone else’s definition of amazing.
So what?
I can be amazed anyway.
Be amazed.
Starting now, these two words will be a compass guiding me when it feels like I don’t have it all together. They will remind me what direction I want to go even when I feel completely lost.
Be amazed. Take a step back and look at your life with gratitude every now and then.
Be amazed. Squeeze every last ounce of goodness out of what is around you. Savor it. Soak it up. Luxuriate in it.
Be amazed. When you’re burned out, bone weary, and bedraggled, use amazement to fill yourself back up. Seek out those situations, people, and activities that remind you of what it means and how it feels to be amazed.
And those painful parts? You know, the ones that really, really hurt. The ones you barely survive. Maybe there’s a little room for amazement there, too.
Amazement when you make it to the other side.
Amazement for how much the heart can hold.
Amazement for your resilience, your ability to heal, and your capacity to keep loving and hoping.
Be amazed by your spirit. Your tenacity. Be amazed by that part of you that refuses to give up.
You only get one shot at life, and you don’t have a whole lot of control over what happens to you in it. Take advantage of the choices that you do have.
I will choose to be amazed.
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I Thought Meditation Would Fix My Anxiety – Here’s Why It Wasn’t Enough
“Your mind, emotions, and body are instruments and the way you align and tune them determines how well you play life.” ~Harbhajan Singh Yogi
The earliest memory of my anxiety was at ten years old in fifth grade.
I remember it so vividly because in middle school the bus came at 6:22am exactly in the morning.
Each night I would look at my Garfield clock and think, “If I fall asleep now, I’ll get five hours of sleep…. If I fall asleep now, I’ll get four hours of sleep… If I fall asleep now, I’ll get three hours of sleep…”
And without fail, my sister would slam my door open at 6:15 because my alarm didn’t wake me, yelling that we’re going to miss the bus, and this is the last time she’s going to wake me up.
I didn’t know I had anxiety.
When my doctor asked my mother, “How is she sleeping?” the answer was always “She’s never been much of a sleeper.” And that was that.
Or when I couldn’t concentrate in school and do my homework, the “answer” was ADHD and I was given medication, which helped a little but didn’t solve the problem.
In high school, the anxiety about going to school was worse. I couldn’t eat breakfast because I was too nauseous in the morning from stress.
By college, my TMJ was so bad that there were months when I could barely open my mouth because my jaw was so tight. I had started scraping at my knuckles with a dull butter knife as a physical distraction from the angry swirl of anxiety in my stomach.
More of this as the years went on.
In my late twenties, after panic attacks that sent me to the emergency room, codependent relationships driven by the fear of rejection, and a wreck of a body with daily tension headaches, stomach issues, and a barely existent immune system… I finally figured out that this was all anxiety.
It was starting to make sense why my pursuit of symptom relief for all my physical ailments was not working—I wasn’t getting to the root of the problem.
In came meditation into my life.
And it helped—a lot!
It helped calm me. It taught me how to breathe properly. It gave me time every day to care for myself.
And because I was also practicing yoga, eating a healthy, vegetarian diet, going to the gym, smoking pot, and taking medication, my anxiety symptoms improved. But my anxiety didn’t go away… yet.
Without really understanding what anxiety is and why meditation helps (and what is missing from the equation), I was stuck from progressing further in my recovery.
What is Anxiety, Really?
We often confuse stress and anxiety.
Stress is an important bodily system.
Stress happens when a triggering event (like a bear or a tight deadline) activates our sympathetic nervous system to send cortisol and adrenaline through our body so that we can fight or flee our situation in order to keep ourselves safe.
It diverts energy and resources from “non-essential” systems like digestion and reproductive and immune systems so that it can divert it to our heart, lungs, and large muscles.
This is a reaction that lasts give or take twenty minutes (or until the immediate danger is no longer present).
Anxiety is when our thoughts continually activate our stress response.
While our bodies are built to recover from acute stress, they were not built for prolonged stress.
And that’s why we end up with symptoms like:
- Exhaustion
- Muscle tension
- Gastro-intestinal disorders
- Immune suppression
- Fertility and menstrual disorders
- Headaches
- (and like a hundred other things)
How Meditation Can Help with Anxiety
Like I said, I was definitely seeing the benefits of meditation, but I wasn’t seeing more progress with my anxiety.
That’s when I realized I had to change how I meditated and learned how to “practice” even when I wasn’t meditating.
Meditation is more than just focusing on your breath. It is a training exercise for your mind.
The goal isn’t to relax (though that is often a wonderful side effect), it is to change your relationship with the thoughts that come into your head.
That was the first lesson that made a world of difference in my practice, learning that “you are not your thoughts.” It blew my mind at first, but then it made sense. I have thoughts. I have ideas, stories, and sentences constructed by my brain to try to explain a situation. They are not me or the truth, just neurons firing off ideas.
A focused-attention meditation, like mindfulness meditation, teaches us three main things: notice, acknowledge, and redirect.
When we meditate, we notice when our attention has been taken away from our focal point (like our breath).
Then we acknowledge this without judgment, maybe even label what we were thinking about like “planning” or “worrying.”
And then we gently release our hold on that thought and redirect our attention back to where we want it—our breath.
This process of noticing, acknowledging, and redirecting teaches us how to:
- Be in the present moment
- Become consciously aware of our thoughts
- Choose curiosity over judgment
- Practice self-compassion and patience
- Let go of control
These are all skills essential to learning how to relate differently to the thoughts that cause our anxiety.
Once I started thinking of meditation as practice—like football practice—I began to realize that each two, five, or twenty-minute session of meditation was really preparing my mind to handle the real-world stressors off of my meditation cushion.
So, when I texted a friend and she didn’t text back (an old trigger of mine), I was learning how to:
- Notice: “Ah, I’m feeling anxious because I am thinking the reason she hasn’t replied is because she doesn’t like me as much as I like her, and I’m believing that her reply would prove that I am good enough and likable.”
- Acknowledge: “This is an uncomfortable feeling, but I will allow it to be here until it has passed. Even though she hasn’t replied, I choose to love and accept myself.”
- Redirect: “I open to the possibility that her lack of reply could have another explanation—she may be busy or sick or forgot to reply. I can wait or I can message her again. Even if she is angry with me, I can make amends because I am a good person.”
Instead of swirling down the rabbit hole of “what is wrong with me?”, I was learning to recognize these thoughts as just ideas that my brain served up based on a habit I’d cultivated after years of believing I wasn’t good enough.
While this understanding didn’t stop me from having those thoughts, it reduced them, and it taught me to change my relationship with them. Instead of believing them as truth, I was now able to see them for what they are—a defense mechanism to try and keep me safe.
But even after I understood that meditation is really a training practice, I was still missing an important piece of how it can help with anxiety.
Even though I had made huge strides with my anxiety, I still kept feeling some of the physical symptoms that went along with it like tightness in my chest and a constriction in my throat.
This is when I learned that meditation engages our parasympathetic nervous system—our rest and digest mode.
We have a sympathetic nervous system to engage our defenses, and a parasympathetic nervous system to disengage that defense system.
That’s why we often find meditation relaxing. Anxiety keeps our fight-or-flight mode engaged, so by slowing down, focusing on the breath, and relaxing our body, we’re able to tell our nervous system that we’re safe and it’s okay to chill out.
Our Emotions Get Stored in our Bodies
Even though I’d made huge progress in disengaging from anxious thoughts, and I was able to stop believing the ideas that “I’m not good enough and no one likes me,” I still felt that physical anxiety tension in my body.
That’s the piece that was missing for me for many years—the knowledge that our emotions get stored in our physical body. By that I mean we carry a muscle memory of how our body responded to our stress triggers in the past.
Have you ever had a meeting coming up that you know you are ready for, yet still you feel nervous? Or you try to relax, and you have nothing to be stressed about, yet your body is still tense? That’s what I’m talking about.
While meditation helped me reduce these physical symptoms, I still held that tension. I came to realize that we each need find the right tools for us—beyond meditation—to continually and regularly engage our calming systems.
There are lots of ways to do that. Practicing yoga, walking or dancing, laughing, singing, petting a cute puppy… all of which helped me some.
There are other embodiment practices as well that can send sensory information directly to our vagus nerve (a huge part of our parasympathetic system) that we are safe and we can relax
I found it fascinating to learn that it is our nervous system that creates our muscle tension. For example, if you were put under anesthesia, your muscles would go limp. Once you woke up, your nervous system would remember where it was tense and tighten back up.
This feeling of physical tension sends a signal back up to our brains that we are not completely safe, and that’s why it’s hard to shake that feeling of anxiety even when all is well.
The practices in addition to meditation that helped me personally to release that lingering tension were things like:
- Acupuncture (I had a huge physical release after a session once that blew my mind!)
- Tapping (EFT)
- Reiki
- Kundalini breathwork
- And a few simple vagal nerve stimulation practices that send sensory information directly to the nervous system
One example of vagal nerve activation is to lie on the floor with your nose pointed toward the ceiling. Using just your eyes, look to the right and hold the gaze until you notice a shift in your energy, a need to swallow, a sigh, or a deep breath. Then relax back at neutral and repeat by looking off to the left.
If you’ve practiced meditation to help with your anxiety and it didn’t work, or didn’t completely work, try the notice, acknowledge, and redirect technique I mentioned above to take power back from anxious thoughts. And if you still feel the emotions trapped in your body, perhaps trying new embodiment practices can help you release that stored tension.
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How I’ve Dealt with the Shame and Embarrassment of a Failed Career
“If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.” ~Brené Brown
The embarrassment you feel upon realizing you don’t actually have what it takes to make a success of yourself. The shame of knowing you spent years training to do one thing and then you bailed right at the finish line. The fear of what to tell people when they ask you what you’re up to.
Of course, you don’t tell anyone how you feel, as you’re too embarrassed to admit you even have these feelings, so you just bury it all away.
I know these feelings all too well, as I’ve been through them all. It took me years to finally face up to what I actually felt and deal with it. As a coach once told me, “Buried emotions never die.”
I knew I always wanted to be in the arts. I loved dance and drama, and I wanted to be an actor. I could feel it so strongly that I never even considered a different career.
I started dance classes at the young age of six, and at eleven years old I went to a performing arts school. So my training began.
After school I went to a reputable college where I did a further three years of training. I was sixteen years old and was told to lose weight and wear heels and make-up. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this wasn’t the healthiest thing to tell a teenager.
After three exhausting years I graduated. All the training, the hard work, the sacrifice had led up to this moment. I was going to get an agent, start working in theater, and move into TV and film.
But that didn’t happen.
Instead of going full steam into my career, I froze. The last term of college crushed me.
The last term all led up to our final show. The show ran for a few weeks in different locations around the city, and it was meant to be an opportunity for us performers to show off our talent. Everyone was meant to invite agents in the hopes of getting signed.
However, I didn’t invite anyone. I was so ashamed of my performance. I felt I had been cast in utterly the wrong role, and no matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t make it work, and no one seemed to care.
I remember wishing I would fall down the stairs of the tube station so I would break my leg and not have to perform; I was so humiliated.
Rather than leaving college confident and excited, I left with my confidence at rock bottom.
I never did anything with my training. All those years, all those dreams, all those aspirations, but when push came to shove, I didn’t do anything with it.
For years I told myself that the last term was so tough that it broke me, and that is why I never continued after college. I blamed everyone else.
It took me years to admit that it was actually my decision to quit. It took me even longer to understand why that was. I realize now I was scared.
In fact, I was petrified that I wasn’t as talented as I thought I was. I knew if I put myself out there and tried to make a career out of it and failed, I would have proof that I wasn’t talented.
If I blamed everyone else and quit before I got started then, in my head, I could always be amazing and could have always potentially had a career in the arts.
Emotions are so complex, though, that it took me a long time to dig deep enough to find this truth.
Thus, I found myself aged eighteen years old, with no formal education, and all I had ever wanted to do was perform, so what now? I was totally lost.
I just froze. I didn’t get an agent; I didn’t go to auditions. I just quit.
I had spent my entire life working toward this moment, and at the final hurdle I fell. It really shook me up; I felt like an utter failure and was humiliated.
I was so ashamed and embarrassed that I stayed in contact with no one from college, except two friends.
I remember walking down Oxford High Street and seeing two of my former classmates. I jumped into a shop to hide from them because I was afraid they would ask what I had been up to.
All I could think was, “What would I tell them?” They were probably off in West End Shows, and what was I doing? I was a failure. Of course, this was before social media, so no one knew what I was or was not doing.
Eventually I decided I would take some time out and go to Thailand. I ended up spending a year there. I became a diving instructor, and I met the man that would become my husband.
Once back home, I got a job in recruitment and my career went from strength to strength. I thought I had moved on and was happy with my life.
Yet whenever I would meet someone who asked about my education or what I did at school, I would panic. “What do I tell them? How do I explain that I trained, but never turned it into a career?” They would know my dirty secret, that I was an untalented failure.
I would lie and make up stories as to why I decided to change careers after my education.
I couldn’t understand why I still cared so much about this. Why did I feel I had to lie? Although life was great, deep down I felt that something was missing. It sometimes felt like there was a dark mass in the pit of my stomach.
I had a session with my coach about this feeling, and what came up? The arts, my love for dancing, my failed career, my shame, my embarrassment. I remember breaking down in tears. I was so angry that twenty years later I still hadn’t moved on.
I was so angry that this was still such a big thing in my life. That it was still there with me. I just wanted it to go away. It felt pathetic that it still had such a huge hold over me; what was wrong with me? I just kept saying, “This is so ridiculous, why can’t I just let it go?”
But remember what I said earlier? Buried emotions never die. They never leave you; they’re just festering
I was so confused by it all, I didn’t understand why it still had such a hold on me. Why I felt so embarrassed and full of shame. My coach helped me unpack it all.
The lies I had told myself had become so much a part of me; I had to work hard to pick it all apart to find the truth.
After so many years, I was finally able to face up to what had happened. I was just a scared teenager. I was so scared of failure and rejection that I found a way to protect myself by making up a lie and quitting.
I needed to make peace with this, and I needed to accept responsibility. I found this hard to do, as I didn’t like this version of me. It was much easier to blame everyone else than to see it was my fear that stopped me.
I needed to forgive myself.
I stopped telling myself lies and admitted that when I graduated, I was petrified of failure, so I quit before I could fail. I realized I still had a love for the arts and I needed to find an outlet in my life.
It was hard work and took many sessions to really dig into the truth, but once I did, I was finally able to talk about the arts and my past without shame or embarrassment. I could finally move on.
I did a lot of work re-connecting with teenage Alice. Writing letters to her, forgiving her, and showing her compassion. I also did a lot of work on acknowledging what I had achieved and who I had become.
I know I’m not alone in what I felt and what I went through. I wish I could have started this healing process a long time ago because as much work as I have done, I know there is still more to do.
For anyone who is experiencing what I did, know that you’re not alone and you’re not silly for feeling the way you do. Also know, you can change it.
I learned so many things in the process.
You can’t just ignore what you feel.
At the time I was so confused by what I felt. Instead of trying to understand what was happening, I just buried everything.
Eventually I had to look my shame and embarrassment in the eye and understand what they were telling me about myself. What was the message?
There is always a message behind your feelings and emotions; you just need to be brave enough to hear them. I found journaling really helped with this.
It takes time.
If, like me, you have already spent years ignoring what you felt, that also means you’ve likely spent years telling yourself lies. What you are feeling is complex, and it will take time to work through it. Don’t expect an overnight change.
Things still come up now that I have to work through. Human beings are extremely complex, and it takes time to break through all our barriers.
Share what you’re feeling because you won’t be alone.
I remember telling my old manager about how I felt. He had the same background as me, and he said, “Alice, I felt exactly the same way.” He told me he moved cities just to get away from people he knew.
Just hearing that made me know I wasn’t insane. It was amazing to hear he understood.
We hear it all the time, but sharing what you’re going through really does help. So share your story.
Stop punishing yourself and have fun.
For anyone reading this who can relate, you have likely boxed away something you loved. It’s time to take it out of the box and allow yourself to have fun again. You don’t need to keep punishing yourself.
I didn’t allow myself to dance for years. It was too painful. However, my body was screaming out for it. I realized it wouldn’t be a career, but that didn’t mean I had to cut it out of my life completely. I could still enjoy it.
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It’s been a long journey for me. Mainly because when I quit twenty years ago, I had a rush of feelings and emotions, and I didn’t know how to deal with them, so I pushed them away and lied to myself. It took a long time to undo all the stories I had told myself.
You don’t need to be embarrassed or feel ashamed, but also know it’s okay if you do feel this way. Just don’t hide from these feelings. Understand them, embrace them, and make peace with them. That way you can allow yourself to move on.
