Tag: wisdom
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How I Stopped Arguing with People in My Head and Cultivated Calm
“Thoughts fuel emotions. If you don’t like what you’re feeling, step back and examine what you’re thinking. Pain is inevitable, but you’ll suffer a lot less if you disengage from your thoughts.” ~Lori Deschene
The warm droplets from the shower are bouncing off my skin. I could be relishing in the warmth. I could be exhilarated by the cleansing power of this precious water.
Instead, I am entranced by an argument.
I’m animated and tense. Gesticulating wildly and frowning.
In the shower.
There’s no one else there. I’m not shouting or even speaking out loud. This is all happening in my mind.
Over and over, I rehash my position. Imagining my opponent’s rebuttal and conjuring up another defense. Each time I hone my argument feeling more certain that this is the winning strategy.
Finally, I realize I’ve been in the shower for far too long. So I step out and start my day, barely noticing what had just happened.
I’m driving to the shops. I could be singing along to my favorite tunes or discovering a new idea via a podcast.
Instead, I am arguing in my head again.
Yes, I’m paying attention to the road. Driving safely. Yet in the back of my mind the wheels are turning in constant mental warfare.
I’m cozy in my bed, lying next to my beloved partner. I could be enjoying his reassuring presence. I could be calmly drifting off to sleep.
Instead, I am resisting rest by mentally rehearsing conflict. Lost for minutes, hours perhaps? Time slipping away in a fog of hostility.
In these quiet moments that I could be relishing, I’m filled with stress and tension.
Who am I fighting? It doesn’t matter. It could be anyone.
These arguments could be with family members, friends, or even strangers on the internet. If someone, somewhere has said something I disagree with, the mental argument is on!
It took me years to realize how much my mental energy I wasted this way. And once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.
When I realized that these subconscious arguments were occurring, I began to see how frequent they were.
Endless opportunities for calm and clarity were stolen by arguing with people in my head.
Why I Would Mentally Argue with People
In my quieter moments—showering or drifting to sleep—my subconscious thoughts were becoming conscious.
Feeling like my nervous system was on high alert was not a new feeling to me. But realizing how much stress I was creating in my body and mind during these argumentative moments was confronting.
It took so much effort for me to be a calm person, and I had been practicing for years. I thought I was making progress. I thought I was calmer than I had ever been.
But witnessing this internal mental conflict was disheartening. My mind was a merry-go-round of malevolence.
In her seminal book, How Emotions Are Made, neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett outlines a new theory of how emotions work.
Emotions are not a reaction to a stimulus. Emotions are stories that we construct from the internal and external sensory information presented to our brain from moment to moment.
As Lisa says, “An emotion is your brain’s creation of what your bodily sensations mean, in relation to what is going on around you in the world.”
I was constructing arguments to deal with stress I felt on a regular basis.
And that stress? It was from complex trauma.
How My Trauma Gave Rise to Mental Arguments
It’s common to think of trauma as big things. War, violence, abuse, or neglect. But trauma isn’t about the event itself: it’s about how your body processed it.
Trauma is a fundamental feeling of threat. A perceived lack of safety. It is anything that overwhelms your ability to cope. And there’s a lot that can overwhelm a child.
And in the face of overwhelm, without consistent soothing from a calm caregiver, a child will grow up with a model of the world that is unsafe, inconsistent, and uncertain.
Growing up as a highly sensitive person in an insensitive world, coupled with intergenerational trauma, led to a lot of overwhelm, anxiety, and depression for me.
And as a traumatized highly sensitive person, my felt sense of safety was lacking.
So I thought my mental arguments were a way for me to feel safe with other people. If I could get people to agree with me, and think like I did, then I knew they wouldn’t be a threat. We would all get along because we would all agree.
But I misunderstood the purpose of these arguments. I thought I was dress rehearsing conflict in order to create safety.
In reality, I was conflating existing stress with the need to argue.
My body was feeling stress from unresolved trauma, and my brain was constructing stories of similar times I felt stress. During arguments.
I wasn’t stressed because I was arguing, I was arguing because I was stressed.
How I Stopped Arguing with People in My Head
You’ve probably heard the term “safety first.” I couldn’t get to a place of mental calm without first developing a felt sense of safety in my mind and body.
And even though I had been practicing meditation for years, there were a few very specific tools that helped me to find that safe feeling.
1. EMDR
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing. It’s an incredible somatic therapy that is at the cutting edge of trauma treatment.
Finding an EMDR therapist was a game changer. She helped me release many traumatic memories and start to feel safer overall.
2. Cultivating calm
The mind-body connection is well established. So, in order to have calm thoughts, I realized I also needed a calm body. In meditation I would practice embodying calm as much as possible.
How much deeper could I make my calm? How much more could I sink into the bed or chair? How much more could I let go?
3. Self-regulation
A well-regulated nervous system can easily shift from stress to calm. And activating calm is a learned skill, called self-regulation.
Learning to self-regulate as an adult was a difficult practice. First, I needed to pay attention to when dysregulation or stress was occurring.
For me, signs I’m becoming dysregulated are talking more loudly, biting my nails, or constant movement like playing with my hair or jiggling my legs.
Learning to recognize my increasing stress and breathe deeply or practice being still helped me to embody calm outside of my meditation practice.
4. Calm relationships
We are hardwired to need each other. And I think this gets overlooked a lot in the self-help world.
Self-regulation is a vital skill. And there’s lots of ways you can learn to self-soothe. But we also need calm relationships. Calm families. Calm communities.
In fact, regulation can happen through relationships. This is called co-regulation. Ideally, it begins in childhood being consistently soothed by our caregivers.
But co-regulation also continues in adulthood. And it happens through secure attachments with our friends and intimate partners. Co-regulation can even exist in a relationship with a trusted therapist.
Having a few close people that I could co-regulate with was vital for helping me to feel safe and calm.
5. Letting go
The final piece of the puzzle was realizing I didn’t need people to agree with me in order to feel safe. I can have strong values and disagree with people and still be okay.
Letting go of the need to be right… of the need to change someone else’s mind… of the need to create safety through validation… was liberating.
I’m no longer as triggered by differences of opinions. I’ve freed up so much mental energy. My creative output has skyrocketed. And I regularly feel a sense of calm clarity.
Takeaway
Becoming a calm person isn’t easy. We are buffeted by chaos and suffering all around us. But learning to feel safe in my body, to let go of mental conflict, and embodying calm has been life changing for me. I hope that by sharing my story, you can find a greater sense of calm in your life too.
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How to Cope with a Toxic and Estranged Family Relationship
“Letting go doesn’t mean giving up, but rather accepting that there are things that cannot be.” ~Unknown
You two are family. Maybe you grew up with them and were by their side for a huge chunk of their life. There was a lot of laughing, crying, and sharing. Some fighting too.
You know how their brain works probably better than anyone else. But sometimes, in adulthood, those closest to you can become unrecognizable—estranged, cold, and careless. For no apparent reason, you find yourself shut out of their life. Your peace-feelers are increasingly rejected. You’ve been left out in the cold.
There is always a reason why people turn out the way they do. But, sometimes the metamorphosis is so gradual that it sneaks up on you, and one day, you wake up and wonder, “How did it come to this?”
You want them back. So you start to question and blame yourself. Was it the time I chose to go to the party instead of keeping her company? Was it when I used his things without asking? What did I do to deserve this? What can I do to make it better?
While it’s good to ask yourself such questions, sometimes the lesson you are meant to learn is to let go of the memory of who they were and accept who they have become.
This is based on my own relationship with my sister. We’d always been close, and when I was growing up, I looked up to her as my role model. I was shy, nerdy, and runty. She was pretty, popular, and good at sports.
But after she went to college and, four years later, I followed suit on another continent, our lives didn’t really intersect. When we did meet, we’d butt heads about a lot of things. She had grown bitter in the years post high school, while I’d grown up, become assertive, and was impulsively exploring the world. Still, despite our differences, I thought we’d always be there for one another.
Then she got married to a man who doesn’t get along with me or our parents. They began living in a strange emotional autarky.
She grew very cold, defensive, and resentful toward our family and began to cut me out of her life. I tried to reach out and mend the relationship, but she refused to open up. She’s always been proud that way.
One day when I told her I loved her and wished we could be close like before, she replied, “That was a long time ago.”
Over the last few years, the relationship has really gone downhill. I’ve struggled with the hurt of “losing” my sister, as well as feelings of self-blame as I struggled to find a reason for her change. I have racked my brain for memories of what I could’ve done wrong, but my mind draws a blank.
Then, I decided I didn’t want to dwell on feeling hurt any longer. I didn’t want to keep longing for and trying to rekindle the sisterhood we once had.
I have come to realize my sister is not the person I once knew, and I have to accept that, learn to let go, and move on. That is how I decided to take certain decisions for the sake of my own happiness and mental health.
I hope this advice can help those who may be experiencing a toxic and estranged relationship with a family member with whom they had once been close.
1. Identify in what ways the relationship may be toxic and how it makes you feel.
A toxic relationship can manifest in many ways. Perhaps your relative always puts you down, lacks empathy, acts passive-aggressive, or ignores you when you speak.
Once you have pinpointed the person’s patterns of behavior, become aware of how this affects your mood, body language, energy levels, self-esteem, and peace of mind. Knowing how to recognize toxicity and its effects is the first step to understanding your feelings and empowering yourself to deal with the situation.
2. Accept that you may never find the root cause for your relative’s behavior.
People do therapy for years—there’s never a simple answer. You may be able to talk to your relative to find out why s/he acts a certain way. You may not. Sometimes, the reason why a person treats you badly may not have anything to do with what you’ve done, but might just be the way they process and respond to their own life experiences. Hardships may strengthen one person and make another bitter.
In any case, try to reframe toxicity by understanding it tends to come from a place of unhappiness or discontent. People’s hurtful actions will then become less hurtful to you when you realize they reflect their inner state rather than you.
3. Do not normalize toxicity.
If you have done nothing wrong, don’t forget it is not normal for anyone to continually be negative, inconsiderate, and hurtful toward you. It is very easy to lose perspective about what is right and wrong, especially when you are constantly justifying a person’s behavior with stories of their past traumas or hardships.
People tend to make concessions for difficult or estranged loved ones because they wish to forgive and forget, avoid conflict, or do not want to push the person farther away. Empathy is good, but it cannot be used to keep making excuses for terrible behavior. Sometimes you need to set limits and say “enough!” before such behavior becomes the new normal.
4. Don’t expect anything from your estranged relative.
Yes, you might expect your family to have your back because you’d do the same, but don’t count on it with an estranged relative with whom you struggle to maintain a relationship. I’ve learned not to be dependent or expect any help from my sister, even though I grew up believing that’s what siblings should do for one another.
5. Realize it takes two people to fix a relationship.
As much as you try, if the other person is not ready or not willing, you may not fix much. The relationship will remain toxic for as long as the person is unable to change. You cannot blame yourself for it. You have done your best.
6. Decide how much space you want to give them in your life.
You will probably encounter your relative again at family gatherings, or you may need to communicate with them about family matters. In this case, minimize the amount of time you spend in their presence and keep communication to a minimum.
Sometimes, though, you may need to cut them out of your life entirely, whether permanently or momentarily. Keeping a space open for them and constantly making the effort to reach out is emotionally exhausting.
Once you have deemed you have tried enough and done your best, don’t feel guilty about drawing the line and deciding that enough is enough.
7. Don’t bottle things up.
Communicate your feelings to people you trust. If the person knows your relative, you may learn that they also share the same feelings of hurt and disappointment in dealing with him/her.
Talking through your feelings is therapeutic and helps you acquire perspective about the situation.
In my case, my parents also have a toxic relationship with my sibling, and I found that letting them talk about it and encouraging them not to bottle things up has been a great release for them.
8. Refrain from frequently gossiping about your relative, especially to a wide circle of people.
There is a difference between sharing your feelings with people you trust and constantly focusing all conversations on this individual and what s/he did or said. You risk getting into the habit of speaking badly of someone, and the conversation will often just keep going around in circles. Also, the negative talk can return to your relative’s ears and feed the cycle of negativity and estrangement.
Instead, decrease the mental and emotional energy spent thinking about your relative, and focus on the positive aspects of your life and your loved-ones’ lives.
9. Don’t give your relative an opportunity to blame you.
People like my sister are often extreme narcissists who blame everyone but themselves. It is important not to give him or her ammunition for this blame-game. If he/she always shows up late, acts rude, never tidies up, or uses your things, resist the temptation to do the same in return. Do the right thing and s/he won’t be able to reproach you for anything.
10. Accept you may not be able to have a frank, heart-to-heart conversation.
My sister goes through life demonstrating a character devoid of vulnerability or weakness. If you are faced with an emotionally inaccessible and excessively proud individual, you may have to accept the fact that you may never have that cathartic moment of truth you so crave. Strive for closure on your side and move on.
11. Shift your focus.
Do not dwell on the pain and hurt of “losing” a relative. Don’t focus on trying to grapple with the toxic relationships in your life. Build upon the positive ones you have instead. Accept the cards that life has dealt you and make the best of them. Live your life and cultivate your soul. Be content and grateful for what you have and who you are, for that is more than enough to fill a heart with happiness!
**This post was originally published in October, 2017.
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How Accepting That We’re Ordinary Opens Us Up to Love
“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” ~C.S. Lewis
I was talking to a mentor of mine several months ago, and they cut me off midsentence and said, “Zach, it sounds like you’re trying to be extraordinary. How about you just work at being ordinary?”
I paused then promptly broke into tears. Yep. Tears. Not ashamed to admit that.
Tears because the meat of the conversation was about self-worth and being enough. In that moment my deepest childhood wound was tapped into, and ordinary sounded horrible to me.
Who wants to be ordinary? Not this guy.
My mentor asked what was coming up for me, and I said my mom. Let me explain.
My mom was a celebrity. She was an Emmy award winning actress that was on the cover of TV Guide, and she dated one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
She died tragically of cancer when I was three-and-a-half years old. One day she was there, the next she was gone.
I interpreted her death the only way I knew how: I made up a story to make sense of it all. Mom left me because I’m not special.
Ever since then, for as long as I can remember, the thought of being ordinary hasn’t agreed with me. Like a taboo subject, I’ve treated ordinary like something society considers a no-no. To me, ordinary equals “not enough,” and not enough equals rejection, aka, abandonment.
In my mind…
Ordinary doesn’t get me love and affection. Ordinary doesn’t get me Facebook or Instagram “likes.”
Ordinary doesn’t get me acknowledged at work. Ordinary isn’t talked about at parties.
Ordinary isn’t interesting. Ordinary is abandoned just like when I was as a little boy.
The thought of being ordinary scares the you-know-what out of me. So much so that I’ve spent most of my life trying to be something more.
It’s been an insatiable quest to fill an empty cup of not enough-ness. It’s been me putting on a mask every day and trying to be someone else.
My hair has to look just right out of fear of you judging me. I have to say all the right things out fear of sounding stupid.
I have to wear the right outfits because I only have one chance to impress you. I have to be the ultimate people pleaser or else you might not like me.
I have to be extraordinary out of fear of you rejecting and leaving me. I’ve been afraid all these years that if you knew the real me, the ordinary me, you would turn around and go in the other direction.
Note to self. Hustling for my worthiness all these years has been exhausting.
And here’s the kicker. The act of me trying to be something is what keeps me alone in the first place because I’m not letting anyone see the real me.
The definition of ordinary is normal. It doesn’t mean rejected or not enough. Just normal.
In other words, it’s me being my normal self and not trying to be something else. Ordinary is authentic. Yet for some of us being authentic doesn’t feel safe. So we put on a mask and try and be someone else.
It’s what our culture does to us and social media glorifies. Status is such a big thing in our lives today.
But when you try to be something other than your ordinary self, whatever you’re attracting isn’t real because it’s not the real you. You’re not attracting real love or adoration.
Therefore, you keep looking and you continue the cycle. Once you change your mind about this (and yourself) you will see change.
Look, I get it. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the stories we tell ourselves. I need to be (you fill in the blank) to be liked and loved.
But here’s the thing, when we do this, we show up differently in life. People don’t want to be impressed, they want to be understood.
At the end of the day this was all about me being disconnected from my own inner wisdom. My inner wisdom is the core of my essence, and I was disconnected from this when I was on the call.
When we try and be something we forget who we are and what love is. Ordinary is your return to love. It’s not you out there looking for love.
It’s a return to what you were born in to. It’s like a return to grace.
Here are four questions that I have found to be extremely helpful in shining a light on this subject:
- Where in your life do you feel like you are struggling to be extraordinary?
- Where in your life do you want to apply the healing balm of normalcy?
- Where are you putting pressure on yourself to be extraordinary?
- Who are you comparing yourself to?
If you want to explore this area of your life, in a very human and grounded way, journaling around these questions might serve you, if you’re open to it.
Put down the weight of extraordinary and be your beautiful, ordinary self. Extraordinary people exist within people with the most ordinary lives.
We’re all unique in our own right and that’s the beauty of being human. We’re all ordinary and we’re all extraordinary.
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How I Healed My Body and My Life by Embracing My Sensitivity
“I used to dislike being sensitive. I thought it made me weak. But take away that single trait, and you take away the very essence of who I am.” ~Caitlin Japa
“You’re making people uncomfortable,” my mother would say. “Stop being so sensitive,” she would then quip.
I have always been sensitive for as long as I can remember. Now I understand there’s a name for it: highly sensitive person (HSP).
The scientific term is sensory processing sensitivity (SPS). As it turns out, 15-20% of the population has this trait.
As a highly sensitive person, my nervous system filters less information. I take in more from my environment.
It’s theorized this can often be a survival mechanism set up during early developmental years—particularly if the environment the baby is in does not feel safe.
Often, this can be due to the emotional state of the parents, especially if they exhibit emotional unpredictability or volatility.
This isn’t always the case, but it’s very common. It was the case for me.
Babies can’t regulate their own nervous system. They need their caregivers to attune to them in order to regulate. If they don’t get that, their little systems figure out what they can do to adapt. Like develop a high degree of sensitivity so they can pick up on any threat at the earliest possible moment.
It left me highly emotional. I cried a LOT. And got shamed a lot for it.
I had a hard time with clothes. Seams and tags left me with painful rashes.
I struggled with loud sounds. They were just too much for my little ears (and still are!). And any new, unexpected loud sound still startles me to this day.
I had a hard time with people. Anyone upset affected me deeply, and I didn’t know what to do with all of those big feelings.
It was overwhelming. And I thought something was wrong with me.
I carried shame, guilt, and doubt around with me for years.
I tried to hide myself. Make myself small so no one would notice me. So that I wouldn’t make people feel uncomfortable.
I tried to be who people expected me to be so that I could feel accepted. Because, as a highly sensitive person growing up, I didn’t exactly fit in with my peers. And it left me feeling deeply ashamed of myself.
So I had to be what others were so that I could fit in. That’s how it works, right?
Year after year I did the things that I thought would help me fit in—with my family, friends, and society.
I stayed quiet and kept my thoughts to myself to detract attention.
I tried to mimic what others were doing so that I could appear “normal.”
I prioritized others’ needs before my own, because if I could just make sure others were happy and taken care of, then maybe I would be more likely to be accepted.
I made life choices based on what others wanted and expected, hoping that would lead me to the mysterious normalcy that society advertised.
But I wasn’t happy.
I was overwhelmed, confused, tired, and resentful
I often felt like I was drowning.
I started to get sick.
It started with bone-crushing fatigue. Life felt impossible to get through.
Then the migraines started. It was so hard to think, let alone function.
The sinus infections followed suit.
And then the hives, rashes, and weird swellings that doctors had no idea what to do with.
All non-stop. And none of which could be rectified with any amount of medication. Doctors told me I’d just have to “live with it.”
I figured out through my own investigation that by cutting out dairy and gluten, my physical symptoms improved. It opened my eyes to a whole new way of thinking about my body and what I put in it that I had never before considered.
But the anxiety remained.
That feeling I was drowning worsened. Even though my body felt better. Not great, but better.
It took going through a dark night of the soul to realize that the path I was on was not right for me. It was not my own. I was doing what other people wanted me to do.
And ignoring my own personal truth was destroying me.
I had to make a change. I didn’t have a choice at this point.
I had to find my own True North instead of trying to comply with what others wanted, because it was making me sick.
And what a journey it’s been.
I learned many things along the way, including the fact that I’m an HSP. And that those with HSP have a higher chance of developing conditions of immune dysfunction, like autoimmunity and endometriosis—both of which I also discovered I have.
When the nervous system is highly active, as is the case with sensory processing sensitivity, messengers called inflammatory cytokines can be produced, which cross-talk with the immune system, triggering over-activity and increasing chances of conditions like autoimmunity and allergies, and worsening their symptoms or progression.
What I’ve discovered on this journey is that the best way to help all of it is to understand my nervous system, embrace the sensitivity, and find my own personal True North.
When I stepped into my own uniqueness rather than shaming or hiding from it, everything changed.
It was a journey to get here.
To learn that when others react to me with their judgements and opinions, it’s actually about them. They’re reacting to something about themselves they haven’t yet healed, accepted, or integrated.
It’s not about me at all. It took a long time to learn that lesson. But when I finally did, it liberated me. To follow my own path, despite what the naysayers say. And to take responsibility for my own life, letting go of the need to soothe or heal others. Even if I could feel their pain. Even if they expressed their discomfort.
The only way I could truly find my own healing so that I’m not suffering was to heal me first. To find my own way first.
Focusing on trying to keep others happy and comfortable didn’t work, nor would it ever work.
I learned through my journey that embracing my sensitivity as a gift—as a superpower—is what healed me.
Improving my diet and lifestyle choices has helped me physically feel better. But only got me so far. They are important, but not the entire solution.
What got me the rest of the way was learning to love, accept, and embrace myself for who I truly am, sensitivity and all. Find my own unique path and follow it.
That’s what holds up the light for other souls to follow suit. That’s what can heal the world.
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The Wind That Shakes Us: Why We Need Hard Times
“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” ~William Arthur Ward
I live in the windiest city in the world—Wellington, New Zealand. Perched between the North and South Island, this colorful little city gets hammered by wind. The winds from the south bring cold, and the winds from the northwest seem to blow forever. My body is regularly under assault. But amid all that blustering lies the answer to one of life’s great questions: How do we feel at home in the wind? Or better phrased, how do we live with the hard things that blow our way?
This research can shed some light.
The Biosphere 2 was a scientific experiment in the Arizona desert conducted in the eighties and nineties. A vast (and I mean massive) glass dome housed flora and fauna in a perfectly controlled environment. It held all of nature: trees, wetlands, deserts, rainforests. Animals, plants and people co-existed in what scientists thought was the perfect, optimal environment for life—purified air, purified water, healthy soil, filtered light.
Everything thrived for a while.
But after some time, the trees began to topple over. When the trees reached a certain height, they fell to the ground.
This baffled the scientists at first. That is until they realized that their perfect environment had no wind, no stormy torrential weather. The trees had no resistance. The trees had no adversity.
The scientists concluded that wind was needed to strengthen the trees’ roots, which in turn supported growth. The wind was the missing element—an essential component in the creation of tall, solid, and mighty trees.
What can this science experiment teach us about real life?
Everything.
A life without storms is like the Biosphere 2. Sure, it sounds idyllic. But that’s just a perception. And I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
I thought a perfect life would make me happy. And it did, for a while. Good job, great husband, lovely home. But I knew deep down that something was missing. I always had a sense that life was incomplete. I longed for something; I just didn’t know what. It baffled me, just like it baffled the scientists.
Without knowing it, I, too, had placed a biosphere around my heart. If any pain, any resistance, blew my way, my biosphere stopped it from penetrating. That is until I was diagnosed with blood cancer, and things began to crack.
Sitting in the office of a psychotherapist a few months after my diagnosis, nervously hunched and with hands under my thighs, I simply said, “I am really scared about my cancer.”
That moment that I assumed was weakness turned out to be the exact moment my biosphere, my armor, began to crack.
My diagnosis, my adversity, was nothing more than an opportunity to step outside of comfort and tell someone I’m scared. It jolted me enough to put me on an unexpected path of inner enquiry.
Was it scary to open up? Hell yes! I wanted to stay in the biosphere. I really did. I kept searching for comfort within it, but I was unsatiated, and the wind crept in anyway and just grew stronger: I lost someone I loved to cancer, a close friend backstabbed me, my postpartum body broke, more wind, more pain, all while dripping in very small children. Just like those felled trees, I, too, toppled to the ground.
When I could no longer withhold the wind, when I had to step out of the comfort of my biosphere and talk about my fears and look at my darkness, only then did I grow tall enough to find what I was looking for: I was longing to know the fullness of myself.
I knew my old habits of perfecting and controlling life to avoid pain, numbing pain, or distracting myself from pain no longer worked. Those strategies did not lead me to the thing I wanted most: completeness. I had to go through the pain. Sit in it. Let it wash over and into me. I had to feel what it’s like to have cancer, be lonely, get hurt, lose someone I love, have a broken body. Only by going through it did I realize I could transcend it.
Liberation was on the other side of pain. It existed outside of my biosphere. One therapy session at a time, one book at a time, one podcast at a time, one meditation at a time, one hard conversation at a time, slowly, things began to crack. Inch by vulnerable inch, eventually (like, years later), my biosphere crumbled to the ground.
Brené Brown calls life outside the biosphere “living in the arena.” She said, “When we spend our lives waiting until we’re perfect or bulletproof before we walk into the arena, we ultimately sacrifice relationships and opportunities that may not be recoverable.”
She also said, “I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both. Not at the same time.”
The courage to be vulnerable is the springboard out of the biosphere.
If you’re in adversity right now—in lockdown, or the doctor’s office, or separated from a loved one— perhaps your biosphere, too, can no longer protect you from pain. COVID-19 has cracked open our collective armor and shown us how little control we have. It’s hard. It’s painful. But it is also an opportunity. When the outside world is crumbling, the only way is inward.
When I look back, I see that pain or resistance only ever asked one thing of me—to look at it. It was a nudge (or a shove in my case) to look inward, get vulnerable, talk about my feelings, unpack my darkness, cry, unearth, read, listen, meditate, move forward in my awareness, expand my consciousness.
And with time, I grew beyond the safety of the biosphere to a height that was inconceivable while I was in it. Without the wind, I would never have seen the height I could reach.
This process of unearthing all my fears and darkness eventually lead to a place of power. Now I have the awareness and power to choose when to act from fear and when to ignore it. The wind no longer rules me. I am at home in it—figuratively and literally.
Living in the middle of Middle Earth has proven one thing: the wind is constant. We can’t avoid hardship any more than we can avoid day turning into night. The hard things in our life will keep on coming—more lockdowns, more sickness, more hurt—and the only way to be at home in the wind is not to fight it, to learn to live with it.
We have a saying here in Wellington: You can’t beat Wellington on a good day. It’s true. When the sun is shining, Wellington is the most glorious city on earth. The wind has blown away the cobwebs, and majesty remains. The craggy coastlines glitter and the city’s heartbeat thumps and vibrates and enters the hearts of all who live here. On these days, the thrashing wind is forgiven, and we fall in love with our city again. And again. And again.
Without the wind, there’d be nothing to forgive. There’d be no falling in love process. Life would exist on a flatline. Yes, there would be no gale. But we’d also miss out on awe. Life is both wind and sun, pain and beauty. By staying in the biosphere, we risk missing the magic that sits outside of it.
I’m so glad I took that first vulnerable leap of faith all those years ago. Life outside the biosphere isn’t scary like I imagined. I didn’t remain on the ground like a rotting felled tree. I grew.
I grew to a place where the air is clearer. I can breathe. Frustration or hurt or pain isn’t held onto for any sustained length of time. The waves of emotions come in, then go out. I observe it all without a sense of lasting entanglement. Fear is in the backseat. Pain is softened. Beauty is heightened. Love is everywhere, even in the wind.
Deepak Chopra said, “The best way to get rid of the pain is to feel the pain. And when you feel the pain and go beyond it, you’ll see there’s a very intense love that is wanting to awaken itself.”
That’s what is waiting for you outside the biosphere.
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Why Highly Sensitive People Make Amazing Life Partners
“Our relationships are a reflection of the relationship we have with ourselves.” ~Iyanla Vanzant
Looking back at my life I see that all of my romantic relationships up until now suffered because I didn’t recognize or value my sensitivity.
For much of my life I thought there was something wrong with me. I was too quiet, too shy, not interesting enough in group settings, too easily hurt, too easily overwhelmed and stressed. I judged myself for being irritable when I didn’t feel rested. I was easily bored with surface conversation and craved deep intimacy, but thought maybe that was silly and unrealistic.
For years, all of this made my love life challenging and downright difficult to navigate.
Though I did find a good match in my first husband, eventually my own self-contempt and inability to accept and honor of my own qualities—the guilt and shame I walked around with much of the time—along with my lack of insight into how to work with my trait, led to my first marriage’s demise.
My ex had the exact same experience within himself (I happen to know this because we are still wonderful friends). As you may have guessed, we’re both highly sensitive people (HSPs).
HSPs often reject themselves, as my ex and I did. When we don’t understand our trait well enough, we tend to not value ourselves.
This is not a surprise, really, because our culture doesn’t yet fully recognize and celebrate us for our strengths—it actually does the opposite—so why would we know how to value ourselves?
The heart of most relationship problems for everyone—HSPs and non-HSPs alike—lies in a sense of insufficiency on some level. To have thriving, loving, healthy relationships we need to deeply love and accept ourselves.
It took me some hard lessons and some real courageous work on myself, but now I am so proud of who I am, and my partnership reflects that health. I have a joy-filled, fun, deep, lovingly connected relationship with the man of my dreams.
When I look at what enabled me to feel so sure of myself as a wonderful person and wife, I know the key was learning to see, appreciate, and honor my sensitivity.
Because we HSPs are amazing. We make the very best partners when we take our well-being seriously, rid ourselves of our insecurity, and feel deep down good about ourselves.
I’ve made it my mission to help other HSPs accept and nurture their trait so they can have the relationship they really want. I want you to see your own value and beauty!
Here are some of the many ways you make an amazing partner, when you are healthy, centered, and honor your trait:
~You are naturally conscientious, compassionate, and very caring, so you are great at being supportive or loving when your partner needs it. You want the best for them. They feel and appreciate this.
~You are aware of your partner’s feelings and subtly attuned to what they’re experiencing (almost as if you can read their mind, sometimes before they can!). You easily pick up on their subtle cues, which helps them feel understood and cared for. With good skills in place, this ability can also help de-escalate conflict quickly, keeping your relationship harmonious.
~You see the best in others, even the subtle beauty and goodness that others easily miss, and you believe in that part of them strongly. Because of this you can draw out your partner’s gifts and be a great source of confidence building and affirmation for them. They will feel very loved.
~Your love of meaning and beauty in all forms enriches your partner’s life. You point out and expose them to beauty and depth they may have missed otherwise (including their own inner beauty).
~You are loyal, great at listening, creative, and dynamic. You are complex. This makes you a fascinating and safe person to spend one’s life with.
~You experience love and joy intensely, as well as other positive emotions. You are full of life and share that with your partner.
~You are a loving, calming, grounding presence. You emanate this to your partner and it nourishes them.
~Though it can take a long time to make choices, you are so thorough and intuitive, when you finally do reach a decision it’s usually a good one that benefits both you and your partner.
~You reflect and work things out inside yourself at length. This can lead to great self-awareness, which can enhance your ability to grow and flourish in your relationship, especially as you learn to be honest and open with your partner.
~You like to process what’s going on in your relationship and get to the heart of the matter with your partner, which you do well because you are deeply insightful. This helps you both better understand yourselves and your relationship.
~You have a knack for seeing the big picture—all sides of the coin. This gives you strength and perseverance to work through things when relationship challenges arise.
~You thrive on depth and complexity. In a love relationship this means you will be dedicated and willing to work hard at creating truly meaningful connection, making it more likely to have a rich and healthy committed relationship!
See how amazing you are? I could go on and on…
You really are worth celebrating and loving deeply. Right now, pause for a moment and just take that in. Let it fill you with a sense of pride. Let it touch and start to wash away old pains of not being good enough.
It’s essential to believe in ourselves. We must do this so thoroughly that we can honestly look at and accept the less ideal parts of our trait, as well. From there we can muster the courage and commitment to address those more challenging aspects and work with them wisely.
Otherwise, we risk bringing out our worst side: someone who can be grumpy, judgmental, intolerant, demanding, anxiety riddled, resentful, picky, needy—someone our partner needs to walk on eggshells around, which is a death sentence for intimacy.
When we do honor and manage it well, we show up beautifully.
I interviewed my husband one day about what he loves about me. As you see, most of what he said has a big connection to my sensitivity:
“With you I feel so cared for, seen, and loved for who I am. I feel you really get me. You are so kind, loving, and caring; you sparkle with life. You are so compassionate. I’m in awe about how deep we can go in conversation and how in tune we can feel. Life is so meaningful with you, and being with you makes me not just want to grow into a better and better person, but to really do what it takes to actually do so.”
I feel so much love. The tenacity and effort it took to get here was more than worth it. I would do it over and over if I needed to. Because, as an HSP, being in such a flourishing, deeply loving relationship is so fulfilling.
**This post was originally published in February, 2019.
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The Grief We Can’t Run from and Why We Should Embrace It
“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.” ~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Grief creeps up on you when you least expect it. It reminds you of the person you have lost when you’re out for coffee with friends, watching people hug their loved ones goodbye at the airport, and when you’re at home thinking about people you should call to check-in on.
Even when you think that enough time has passed for you to be over it, grief pulls at your heartstrings. You think about all the ways that life has changed, and your heart longs to have one last conversation with the person you have lost, one last hug, and one last shared memory.
A wise person once told me that when you love someone the hurt never really goes away. It grows as we do and changes over time becoming a little bit easier to live with each year.
Grief is not something we can run from. I know this now from trying to run, hoping I would never have to feel the pain I was carrying deep within my heart.
In November of 2020 I lost my godfather, a person I loved and cared for deeply. I also learned about my estranged father’s death when I googled his name. The reality that my estranged family had not had to decency to tell me of his death stung. I also lost people I had known and were connected to in my community.
The news of these deaths hit me with an initial shock—they did not seem real. For a day after discovering the news of each loss I found myself walking around in a blur, unable to eat or sleep. The next day I was able to force myself to function again. It was as if the people I had lost were not really gone.
When friends and family learned of the losses I had faced they reached out to me and offered support. I assured them that although I was sad, I was fine. Growing up in an unsupportive family I did not know how to accept their support, as it felt foreign to me. So, to avoid talking about my feelings and facing my pain, I turned the conversation back to them and asked about their work and/or their children. Slowly, people stopped asking how I was doing or how I was feeling because on the surface I seemed more than fine.
I was functional in my professional roles, writing articles, engaging in research, mentoring students, collaborating with colleagues, and making progress in my PhD program. I appeared like myself during online work and social events. I continued to support my friends and neighbors as if nothing had changed. Silently, I was fighting a battle that even I knew nothing about.
Each day I would force myself out of bed and tackle a lengthy to-do list comprised of personal and professional work and obligations. In the evenings I would force myself to work or engage in physical activity so that I did not have time to feel. In the initial darkest moments, I convinced myself that if I kept going, kept moving forward, I would not have to feel the pain I carried in my heart.
I became more productive than normal. I wrote more academic and non-academic articles, I volunteered and provided support to online communities, and I readily volunteered to edit colleagues’ work. In the few moments of downtime I gave myself each day I would either sit blankly staring at my computer or find myself crying. I couldn’t feel sad, I did not have time to feel sad, I needed to keep going I told myself.
The pandemic made it easier to live in denial about my losses and pain because normal rituals associated with death, like funeral services, had either been postponed or restricted to a select number of individuals. Perhaps if these rituals had been in place, I would have been forced to address my grief in a healthier manner.
I continued to run from my pain by adding accolades to my resume and taking on as many projects as I could find. Spring blurred into summer, and I found myself becoming irritated by the slightest annoyance. Sleepless nights and reoccurring nightmares became normal. I had less patience for my students, and I struggled to be there for the people who needed me.
I found my mind becoming slower, and by the end of June I was struggling to function. Yet, because I knew what was expected of me and did not want my friends or family to worry, I hid it.
As pandemic restrictions began to ease, and other people’s lives began to return to normal, I became painfully aware that my life could not. I saw my friends hugging their fathers in pictures on social media. Friends recounted seeing family for the first time in over a year and shared pictures of them hugging their loved ones. People in my life began to look forward to the future with a sense of hopeful anticipation. Work began to talk of resuming in-person activities.
I could no longer use the pandemic to hide from my grief, and I became paralyzed by it. I had to feel the pain. I had no choice. I couldn’t function, I couldn’t sleep, and I could barely feel anything except for the lump in my throat and the ominous weight in my chest.
My godfather, my biggest cheerleader and the person who made me feel safe, was gone. It felt as though anything I did or accomplished didn’t matter the same way anymore. I longed for conversations with him I would never be able to have. The passing of time made me aware of the changes that had taken place in my life and how much I had changed without him.
Throughout July I found myself crying constantly, but I was compassionate with myself. I no longer felt I had to propel myself forward with a sense of rigid productivity. Instead, I focused on slowing down and feeling everything. I asked work for extensions on projects, which I had previously felt ashamed to do. Other obligations I either postponed or cancelled.
I found myself questioning my own life’s purpose. Had I truly been focusing on the things that mattered? What mattered to me now that the people I cared about most were gone? How could I create a fulfilling life for myself?
There were days I didn’t get out of bed from the weight of my grief. Yet there were also days when I began to feel again—feelings of sadness, peace, joy, and even happiness that I had been repressing for months.
I allowed myself to cry when I needed to or excuse myself from a social event when I was feeling triggered. When feelings of longing washed over me, I accepted them and acknowledged that a part of me would always miss the people I had lost. Within the intense moments of pain and loss I found comfort in the happy memories, the conversations, and the life we had shared.
Slowly, the nightmares disappeared, and I began to sleep better again. Although I was sad, I also began to experience moments of happiness and feel hopeful again.
The grief I had tried so desperately to run from became a strange source of comfort. Grief reminded me that the people I had lost had loved me, and the fabric of their lives had intertwined with mine in order to allow me to be the person I am today.
The questions that plagued me, about what mattered to me, gradually evolved into answers that became action plans toward a more fulfilling life. In running toward grief and embracing it I made myself whole again and discovered a life I never would have otherwise known.
We instinctively want to avoid our grief because the pain can feel unbearable, but our grief is a sign we’ve loved and been loved, and a reminder to use the limited time we have to become all that we can be.
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Afraid of What People Think? Free Yourself by Realizing How Unimportant You Are
“You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt
It’s natural to think that we’re always in the spotlight.
We think that people care about the way we dress, but they don’t.
We think that people notice our nervous habits, when in reality, they’re worried about whether people are noticing their own.
We tend to go through life as if our every move is being watched, judged, and evaluated on a moment-to-moment basis by the people around us. Here’s a reality check—you’re not that important.
I don’t mean that in a brash way. This shouldn’t make you feel small or inferior, it should liberate you. And if it doesn’t, I have a feeling that what I’m about to talk about will.
The Truth About Funerals
As you guys know, a funeral procession is broken up into two parts: the funeral and the burial.
During the funeral, spiritual leaders read various snippets from religious texts about the meaning of death, and close family members are allowed to get up and say a few words about the deceased.
The burial takes place directly after the funeral, although some religions operate on a different procedure. During the burial, the body is transported outside, and the deceased is put to rest in the grave site.
Now, you’re probably wondering why I’m spending so much time talking about funeral procedures. I’d probably be asking myself the same question reading this article, so here’s the bottom line.
The burial takes place outside on grass.
Do you want to know the number one factor that determines how many people attend the burial after the funeral procession is over?
The weather.
If it happens to be raining outside, 50% of people who attended the funeral will decide not to attend the burial and head home.
That doesn’t mean those people don’t care, just that they’re first and foremost focused on themselves and their own lives and needs, as most of us are. Which means they’re focused on what they’re doing than what you’re doing.
So why would you worry about what others think of your life choices? Why would you care about what other people say about you if you haven’t done anything to harm them?
Why would you live life being bogged down by the opinions of others if half of the people attending your funeral will skip the burial because of bad weather?
Coming across this information struck me like a lightning bolt. And no, I’m not going to sit here and lie to you by saying that reading this factoid about funerals led to some life-changing epiphany and now everything is sunshine and rainbows.
What I will say is that it had an impact on my mindset. It forced me to really look at my day-to-day life and analyze where my actions were being driven by the opinions of others.
Realizing just how little people cared about the decisions I made was one of many factors that influenced me to start shutting down the inner critic—that voice that tells you that everything you do is being judged by others.
The Confessions of a Chronic People-Pleaser
For most of my life, I let the opinions of other people stop me from living a rich, fulfilling life.
In social situations, it was more comfortable for me to agree with what was said than express my own beliefs.
It was more comfortable for me to sit back and watch instead of calling one of my friends out for something that he shouldn’t be doing.
It was more comfortable for me to avoid the situations I was afraid of instead of diving into them head-first and stretching my limits. The fear of failing publicly in front of other people was absolutely terrifying to me.
One particular instance from my high school years illustrates this perfectly.
It was my freshman year, and our first dance of the year had arrived. I showed up in all-white, trying to keep consistent with the “white-out” theme that had been planned for the dance.
As the dance started and music started playing, students began rushing to the middle of the gymnasium and dancing their hearts out.
That’s when the fear hit me. My insides felt like they were twisting around each other.
My breathing matched my heartbeat. It wasn’t calm and collected, it was frantic.
My mind went into full “stop him from taking action” mode by conjuring up a bunch of scenarios in which I look like a total idiot on the dance floor.
For the rest of the night, I was glued to that wall. Only thirty feet away, there was a bunch of care-free teenagers having the time of their lives.
I went to the bathroom about seven or eight times just to make the time go faster. I talked to other people who weren’t really dancing, and we were all playing it off like we were too cool to express ourselves in public.
The truth is that we were all just terrified of being ourselves in front of other people.
That moment set the trajectory for the rest of my high school experience. I wish I could go back in time to my fifteen-year-old self and tell him to wake up. I wish I could tell that shy, insecure person that rejection, public failure, and the opinions of other people don’t matter.
I wish I could tell him that at the end of someone’s life, the biggest factor in determining whether or not people attend their burial comes down to whether or not the sky cries more than the congregation does.
But I can’t do that. I can only look forward to what’s in store for me now that I’ve finally realized how unimportant my actions are. It’s not a shameful thing to admit that you’re unimportant, it’s liberating. It gives you the freedom to take risks and challenge yourself.
Life becomes a lot more fun when you realize that everyone around you is so absorbed with their own thoughts and feelings that they couldn’t care less what you do.
So next time you see someone that you want to talk to, don’t let the fear of rejection stop you, go introduce yourself. I promise you that if you embarrass yourself and the conversation goes nowhere, the person won’t even remember your name tomorrow.
The next time you feel the urge to call a friend that you haven’t spoken to in a while, but feel like it might come across as “weird,” I promise you there’s a 99% chance that the person will be extremely grateful for the call.
And if the person isn’t grateful and gives you the cold shoulder? Well, let’s just say that you’re not the one with the problem if you’re trying to be friendly and warm and are flat out dismissed.
I encourage you to write down the things in your life that you’re scared to do because you’re afraid of what other people will think. And then each day, cross one of those things off your list.
Constantly remind yourself that everyone is busy thinking about one thing—themselves.
Going through life with this mindset will make you much more likely to face down the demons that are stopping you from living the life you want.
