Tiny Buddha

Tag: wisdom

  • How Embracing Your Sensitivity Can Benefit Your Relationship

    How Embracing Your Sensitivity Can Benefit Your Relationship

    “Today I want you to think about all that you are instead of all that you are not.” ~Unknown

    If you are a sensitive person like me, you may think being sensitive is problematic. Especially when it comes to love and relationships.

    Maybe you’ve been called “too sensitive” by your partner or a parent. Maybe you feel overly emotional or have strong reactions to things or take things personally that don’t bother your partner, or you are easily irritated or get cranky all too often, or you feel the urge to be alone a lot more than you think you should in a healthy relationship.

    If so, you may believe you really are too sensitive.

    Now, sensitivity can cause problems in our relationships when we’re operating unconsciously and feel at its mercy. That tends to bring out the harder aspects of sensitivity.

    I know this all too well. Not knowing I was a highly sensitive person and not understanding how to work with my sensitivity was the biggest reason my first marriage ended in divorce.

    And even before that, for most of my life, I thought something was wrong with me because of what I now recognize is my genetic trait of high sensitivity.

    I hear the same from so many sensitive women I speak with.

    But I’d like to flip that perception on its head. Because high sensitivity is often misunderstood and totally undervalued. Particularly when it comes to marriage and intimate relationships.

    Think about it: What do most women want more of in their relationship?

    They want their partner to be more attentive to them. To have more understanding of what’s going on for them. To be more responsive to their words and gestures. To be more tender with them. To be more conscious of them.

    I always wanted my first husband to be deeper with me. More caring and empathetic. More in touch with himself and his feelings…

    If you, too, would like more of any of the above in your relationship, then what you want is more sensitivity. All those things are what “sensitive” means.

    Sensitive is defined as: attuned to, aware of subtleties, caring, sympathetic, empathetic, compassionate, understanding, perceptive, conscious of, responsive to, alive to…

    Sensitivity is, in fact, exactly what we need more of in our relationships, not less. It’s an asset in love. 

    And if you are also a sensitive person, you were built to embody it. To bring all of those juicy delights to your relationship.

    If you were born an HSP, it’s a cause for celebration. We are made for love.

    Once we’ve done our own work to develop the best aspects and manage the challenging parts of the trait, we gain access to what we need to have the depth, connection, understanding, love, and passion we want most with our partner.

    In other words, we develop into the best possible role model for being in a loving relationship—one non-sensitive people should aspire toward.

    Of course, there are unhealthy ways our trait can be expressed. Ways that do lead to more hurt and struggle than harmony and love in relationships. These more “negative” aspects (like “touchiness”) are really only expressed when we have not learned how to consciously work with our sensitivity.

    Once we do, the “negative” aspects fall away, leaving us with all the good parts that are most needed for the healing and thriving of relationships—and even the healing of our world!

    Many things keep us playing out the negative aspects, but I’ve found that the biggest thing is believing old, outdated (and frankly wrong) judgments about sensitivity being a bad thing. Because it leads us to being self-critical and feeling bad about who we are.

    When we berate and look down on ourselves for our sensitivity, we feel ashamed, we close off, and we become more negative.

    If we are at war with ourselves like this, we can’t open up our hearts to others or life. We are likely to feel like others are at war with us, so we take things personally and feel gripped by negativity and inner turmoil. We can’t come from sensitivity toward ourselves or toward others because we’re too bogged down.

    I know this because I judged myself for my sensitivity plenty in the past, and it only forced me into a hole, hiding my light under self-judgment and anger at myself. That anger poked out left and right and spilled over onto my husband, hurting our marriage and leaving us miserable with each other.

    After our divorce, I learned about HSPs and that I was one. What an aha moment! I stopped trying to squash my sensitive nature as I learned to accept and even love it. I felt safe to honor it, and much happier and more relaxed in my skin (finally!).

    Then, the best parts of my sensitivity were able to shine through naturally. And I was able to powerfully guide my second marriage into one that is now, by my definition, amazing.

    How to Tap into the Healing Power of Your Sensitivity in Your Relationship

    I bet many things you’ve been self-critical about are actually aspects of your sensitivity! That was the case for me. So consider and answer this question:

    How might the things you’ve judged about your sensitivity be the things most needed to take your relationship to the depth and health you long for?

    Take time to recognize the brilliance of your sensitivity, the healing it can bring to your world. You are naturally wise, so go to your own mind and heart to come up with your answers.

    Here are some hints from my experience and ponderings to get you going:

    Could your emotionality be the antidote to the numbness and disconnection that are so often the kiss of death in an intimate relationship?

    Could your capacity to feel big feelings be the deepest, most sustainable source of love in your partnership, carrying your partner in its tide?

    Could the moments when you are flooded with overwhelming feelings in your relationship be an internal request to pause so you can process deeply—and reap the wise insights that arise from that pause that will take your love and understanding of each other to the next deep level?

    Could your natural tendency to see the little things in yourself and others as flaws or problems help you diagnose the areas that need to be healed or developed in your partner—and inside yourself—so you can thrive together as a couple? Could it be the call to become the most conscious, empowered, loving version of yourself, able to navigate both the joys and challenges of love with grace?

    Could that same tendency to be bothered by little things and get easily irritated because of your subtle attunement to detail also be the very thing that helps you really know and be deeply attuned to your partner, and help him feel really known and loved?

    (My sensitivity helps me know my husband’s inner world without a word from him and allows me to understand what he’s going through. He’s told me many times some version of these words: I feel so supported, seen, and loved for who I am. I feel you really get me. I’m in awe of how in tune we can feel.” Hearing that feels like music to MY ears.)

    Could your people-pleasing tendencies and over-concern about making sure your partner and others in your life aren’t upset be the compassion and conscientiousness we need to survive and thrive as a species? The very thing that inspires others to look out for each other with fierce care and kindness—once you’ve learned to bestow the same grace on yourself?

    Could your need for quiet and space alone to decompress be just the example other humans need in order to put an end to this toxic, fast-paced culture that robs us of actually enjoying life—and is even robbing the planet of life itself? Could it be just the thing our society needs to learn to slow down and de-stress so each of us can access the love, insight, and creative problem-solving we need to thrive in our partnerships and on this planet for generations more?

    When I recognized the asset my sensitivity is, I was able to climb out of the hole of self-rejection and shame and change how I showed up in my relationship.

    I could suddenly pay deeper attention to my partner, offer a little support here, a little insight there, say just the right thing at just the right time because I’m so sensitively aware, come up with creative solutions to navigate those inevitable sticky moments couples have, let my big wide heart out, and be all those things that I want my partner to be for me: loving, reassuring, aware, understanding, and respectful.

    I started living out the kind of love I’d only dreamed of before. And it caught on. My husband has learned to be way more empathetic with me, more caring, and more attuned to me. Way more… sensitive.

    We can pass on our gift of sensitivity to our partners by modeling it, by leading the way.

    Do you see how your sensitivity is an underutilized healing resource in your love life? The highly responsive superpower of sensitivity that you embody enables you to lead your relationship in a much healthier and more loving direction if you honor it.

    It should be a goal to not only feel great about your sensitivity but also to become more sensitive. In a healthy way.

    The lack of tenderness, the instinct to shut down and disconnect, the lack of empathy and compassion and understanding that is so destructive in our marriages and in our world—it can end here with you. Now. Your sensitivity is the remedy!

    We sensitives are the particular variation of human needed to sway our relationships into healing, if only we give ourselves the sensitivity, care, tenderness, and encouragement we need by believing in ourselves instead of berating ourselves.

    We are the ones to lead ourselves and others back to our hearts, back to compassion, care, and being in tune with others. Back to sensitivity.

    Start by telling yourself the truth:

    You are different from the “norm.” But different in just the way that’s most needed for love to thrive in your home and community.

    If you really believed that, would you finally start appreciating the qualities that make you, you? Would you do all it took to cultivate them instead of squashing them? I would. I am. Let’s do so together.

  • Love Yourself First

    Love Yourself First

  • Do You Ever Crave Someone’s Presence?

    Do You Ever Crave Someone’s Presence?

  • How I Live My Life Purpose Without Doing Anything Big

    How I Live My Life Purpose Without Doing Anything Big

    “You know how every once in a while you do something and the little voice inside says, ‘There. That’s it. That’s why you’re here’ …and you get a warm glow in your heart because you know it’s true? Do more of that.” ~Jacob Nordby

    Mornings running the busy roads with the echo of what this one or that one said, lying in my bed in the middle of sunlit days staring at a bamboo plant on my dresser, seasonal jobs, getting all dressed up for waste-of-time employment fairs, scribbling in my notebook when my spirit demanded I fight back—at the rejection letters, at the no responses, at the feeling that I simply wasn’t good enough—this is what a lot of my twenties was made up of, but that’s not all.

    I had moments in those seasonal jobs that lit my unique spirit and showed me exactly what I loved and cared about.

    In everything I took action on there were hints of a young woman crying out: “This is a puzzle piece of who you are right here. This is important. Take notice!”

    The rejection letters led to setting myself free through concerts, unforgettable trips, and quality time with those closest to me, and they gave me more writing inspiration.

    The time alone, not feeling that I fit in with any of my peers and that my life wasn’t progressing along the traditional trajectory I was witnessing, pushed me to dive into my emotions and think about what I truly value.

    I wrote it all down. It turns out that all the tears and isolated fears pushed me into creating stories and poetry that are all about love and are essentially a quest to understand and care for each other more.

    In spending so much time alone with my feelings and knowing deep down that there must be others who feel this way too, I developed an even more empathetic nature that caused me to want to reach out to others more than ever before.

    But it took me a while to focus less on the destination and recognize the value in the journey.

    The moment I graduated I felt this compulsion and desire, which I believe stemmed from my past imprinted insecurities, to define myself immediately. I needed to figure out right away who I was going to be, lock it all in.

    No one tells you when you’re setting out on your life that no one’s story works that way.

    I thought life would just tick along like checking off items on a to-do list, especially through witnessing the social media highlight reel of my peers. I didn’t make the connection that it was, in fact, their highlights.

    I only saw a part of the character in these peers of mine, and honestly, who would tune into that show? Who would want to see a perfect life played out day after day with no one being challenged to see how they rise to the occasion and come out an even more beautiful form of their unique self?

    I had watched so many soap operas and TV dramas by that time, and yet, I did not understand that this was clearly not the full picture, just as I was only showing my highlight reel. I wasn’t going around telling everyone about the pain and loneliness I felt. I wasn’t posting about the dozens of rejections I had received.

    Maybe if we did post all of these things we would be more mentally at peace, but at the same time, I think that would also cause us to stagnate as we communicated all our troubles and injustices constantly.

    What we want isn’t always what is best for us. If we were able to be so open, I don’t believe we would be propelled into action through having to sit in those feelings and figure out how we’re personally going to step up and out of a situation to create our own unique story.

    I basically played the victim many times when I would see what I thought was my peers so effortlessly checking off milestones on their personal to-do lists. So, what did I do?

    In some indignant notion that I would be missed, I went on and off Facebook more times than I could ever count, thinking when I came back on, things would be different, and I would be validated when joining my community once again. That’s not what I received, and that’s not what I truly needed.

    I believe this loneliness and question of ones’ life purpose can come at any time. This just happened to occur for me in my twenties, and I’m glad I’m beginning to understand why I felt all that I did.

    I believe we are all unique. None of us are replaceable, and we all have the capacity to fulfill many purposes in our lifetimes, through different stages, as our priorities, interests, and values change.

    I am a very different person than the confused young woman of my twenties because I no longer search for my purpose, as if it’s this one big thing I need to figure out. Instead, I follow what I love and fixate on all the good I have in my life.

    I constantly focus in on all that I am grateful for. I keep a record of my achievements. I read my favorite books over and over again. I watch my favorite TV shows, which are still teen dramas, I must confess. I look at art and listen to music that ignites my spirit.

    When I’m feeling stuck, movement is key, whether it’s running or doing household chores.

    I know that I am following my purpose as long as my heart feels that I am being true to myself.

    I still get insecure. I don’t think that will ever go away, and maybe it’s one of those things you don’t want that is in fact good for you. Without my insecurities, I wouldn’t have to keep reaffirming what I am passionate about, and without reaffirming, there’s a chance I could lose myself.

    I found through searching for my purpose in what I refer to as my “crossroads period” in my twenties that it’s not one thing to be achieved, one path to be fulfilled. My purpose is a continuous journey of loving those closest to me and deeply following what my heart tells me.

    I believe in the search for my purpose I was also able to identify the kind of people I want on my team, the kind of people I want in my life. These people are few and rare but as true as can be.

    I know that the overriding purpose of everyone’s life is to discover your people and keep them close. They will be your guideposts and your encouragement to fulfill the passionate enormity your life is meant to embody.

    This family of mine is what keeps me moving forward and holding the belief that I am living a life of purpose simply by loving and being loved by them, regardless of what else I do with the time I’ve been given.

  • The Surprising Strategy I Used to Stop Bingeing (and Why It Worked)

    The Surprising Strategy I Used to Stop Bingeing (and Why It Worked)

    “Sometimes the thing you’re most afraid of doing, is the very thing that will set you free.” ~Robert Tew

    I recovered from binge eating and bulimia by giving myself permission to binge. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

    My decades-long weight and food war started in my teens, immediately after reading my first diet book, about Atkins, to be exact. I spent the following two decades trying to lose weight (only to keep gaining) and struggling with food.

    By my early thirties, I’d finally managed to lose weight, but it hadn’t end the war, it had just started a new one. The war to try to keep the weight off and transform my body even further.

    Thus began the decade of my “fitness journey.” I became an award-winning personal trainer and nutrition wellness coach and even a nationally qualified, champion figure athlete.

    The weight and food war continued through it all.

    I was introduced to clean eating by a trainer I hired before I became one myself. Four days into my first attempt at clean eating, I was bulimic—bingeing out of control then starving myself and over-exercising to try to compensate. Within eight months, I was officially diagnosed.

    Bingeing to the point of feeling like I may die in my sleep became common, and I realized I had two choices: potentially eat myself to death or heal. I chose the latter.

    I sensed that understanding what was driving those behaviors was the key to learning to change it all, so I decided to get busy learning just that.

    And I recognized that meant I had to stop obsessing over (and hating myself for) my food choices. They were not the problem; they were the symptom of whatever was going on in me that was driving those behaviors.

    So I gave myself full permission to eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.

    I even gave myself permission to binge as much as I wanted.

    And I slowly started bingeing less and less. Now it’s been years since I have—the drive is just completely gone.

    I know permission to binge sounds crazy, but has trying to force yourself not to binge or eat “bad things” been working? Is trying to judge, control, criticize, restrict, and shame your way to “eating right” and/or health and happiness working?

    If so, carry on. But if what you’ve been doing hasn’t been working, stay with me while I explain two reasons why permission is so vital, and the helpful versus unhelpful way to practice it.

    Why Is Permission So Vital?

    Permission to eat whatever we want helps reverse two of the biggest reasons we eat self-destructively: restrictions and self-punishment.

    Food restriction (the rules around what we think we should or shouldn’t be eating) caused my cravings, overeating, and even bingeing.

    Science has shown that food scarcity/restriction activates a millennia’s old survival instinct in our brains that triggers cravings, compulsions, and even food obsessions until we “cave.”

    Self-punishment contributes to bingeing because we treat ourselves how we believe we deserve to be treated.

    We’ve been taught that certain foods are good and create “good” bodies, and that certain foods are bad and create “bad” ones. We’re taught that we are what we eat, and to judge weight gain or eating “bad” things as failure, that we are good or bad depending on what we eat and what size we are.

    We punish ourselves by trying to restrict even more, or we go in the other direction and overeat the things we keep telling ourselves we’re not supposed to have, which fuels the cycle.

    How can you want to make nurturing or nourishing choices for yourself when you’re hating, judging, shaming, and criticizing yourself? You can’t.

    That thought, “Oh well, you already screwed up, you may as well eat the rest and start again tomorrow”—that all or nothing thinking, the bingeing, the self-sabotaging—it’s being driven in large part by those two things: restriction and self-punishment.

    Full permission, even to binge, helps start to shift both.

    It stops the feelings of scarcity around certain foods (so they lose their allure), and it helps improve the relationship you have with yourself (so you’re no longer judging and berating yourself for eating “bad things”).

    Now, you may be thinking, but Roni, eating whatever I want got me into this mess. I can’t be trusted to just eat whatever I want.

    Here’s where the biggest lie of all has steered us in such a toxic direction: the idea that our natural compulsion is to “be bad” and eat all that bad stuff is bull.

    We’re not born into bodies that naturally want to eat in ways that make them feel like garbage. We’re not even born into bodies that are “too lazy to exercise.” I call bull on all that too.

    We’re born into bodies that know how to eat and naturally want to move. We’re born into bodies that want to feel good and are actively working to try to keep us healthy 24/7.

    But we’re actively taught to ignore or disconnect from them, and we get so good at ignoring and disconnecting from our bodies’ natural cues that we can’t even hear them anymore.

    We learn patterns of thinking and behaving that get programmed into our brains and end up driving our choices, rather than the natural instincts we were born with.

    It’s not your natural instinct to chow down on a whole bag of potato chips just because they’re there. Nor is it your natural instinct to ignore your body’s cry for some movement. Those are learned behaviors.

    By the time we get to adulthood, the ways we eat, think, and live just become learned patterns of behavior—that can be changed when you stop trying to follow other people’s rules and start understanding how you got where you are.

    When you spend your life stuck in that “on track” versus “off track” cycle you’re completely disconnected from yourself, your body, and what you actually want and need.

    The two things that are driving you and your choices when you live in that place are either:

    1) learned patterns of thoughts and behaviors from old programming (when you’re “off track”)

    or

    2) fear and other people’s rules about what you think you should be doing (when you’re “on track”)

    Neither have anything to do with you—with what you, at your core, actually need or want.

    By giving yourself full permission to eat what you want, when you want (yes, even permission to binge) you’re given space to reconnect with yourself and what’s best for you.

    What You Think Permission Is Vs. What It Actually Is

    There are two ways to do this whole permission thing: the way you think you’re doing it when you’re “off track” and the helpful way.

    Typically, when we “fall off track” or binge, we start “allowing ourselves” all the foods we can’t have when we’re on track, but the whole time we keep telling ourselves it’s okay because when we get back on track, we won’t have it anymore. Then we feel bad and guilty the whole time.

    That’s not permission, it’s a clear example of the food restriction/self-punishment cycle that fuels feeling out of control around food/overeating or bingeing.

    How? It’s restrictive and punishing. We know at some point we won’t be “allowed” to have it anymore—ya know, when we start “being good”—and since we’re already “being bad” we may as well just eat all of it, then we end up not feeling great.

    That’s a food restriction/punishment fueled diet mindset that perpetuates those old patterns.

    True permission means losing all the food rules and judgments. I know it sounds scary and wrong, but it really is key to learning to want to eat in ways that serve you and hearing your body when it tells you what makes you feel your best.

    Begin noticing the things you’re saying to yourself around your food choices and start noticing how the foods you’re eating make you feel after you eat them.

    Do you feel energetic and good when you eat that thing, or do you feel bloaty, lethargic, and sick? How do you want to feel?

    If you’re eating lots of things that are making you feel the latter, just notice that, get curious about why, and most importantly, extend yourself compassion and kindness.

    The next time you’re about to eat something that you know makes you feel terrible, remember how it made you feel last time and ask yourself, do you really want to feel that way right now?

    If you think, I don’t care, ask why? Why do you not care about treating yourself and your body well? Don’t you want to feel good? If you keep hearing, I don’t care, that’s a sign more digging is likely required, but permission is still where you start.

    Notice how often through the day you judge yourself for eating something you think you shouldn’t. How does that judgment affect the choices you make next?

    Remind yourself that what you eat doesn’t determine your worth, and you’re an adult. You’re allowed to eat whatever you want.

    Giving myself permission to eat whatever I wanted, even to binge, was the first step toward a binge-free life because it helped me learn to change the biggest reasons I was bingeing in the first place: destructive thoughts, habits, and behaviors that were caused by food restriction and self-punishment.

    It’s how you start learning to end the food war, to trust yourself and your body, to stop feeling out of control around food, and to start making choices that make you feel your best, because you deserve to feel your best.

  • Spread Love as Thick as You Would Nutella

    Spread Love as Thick as You Would Nutella

  • How to Get Through Your Darkest Days: Lessons from Addiction and Loss

    How to Get Through Your Darkest Days: Lessons from Addiction and Loss

    “You are never stronger…than when you land on the other side of despair.” ~Zadie Smith

    In the last years of my twenties, my life completely fell apart.

    I’d moved to Hollywood to become an actor, but after a few years in Tinsel Town things weren’t panning out the way I hoped. My crippling anxiety kept me from going on auditions, extreme insecurity led to binge eating nearly every night, and an inability to truly be myself translated to a flock of fair-weather friends.

    As the decade wound to a close, I stumbled upon the final deadly ingredient in my toxic lifestyle: opiates. A few small pills prescribed for pain unlocked a part of my brain I didn’t know existed: a calm, confident, and numb version of myself that seemed way more manageable than the over-thinking mind-chatter I was used to.

    At first the pills were like a casual indulgence—I’d pop a few before a nerve-wracking audition or first date, the same way other people might have a few drinks before going out on the town. But my casual relationship to opiates was short-lived: soon the pills were no longer reserved for awkward dates or nerve-wracking auditions, and instead necessary for any type of outing or interaction.

    I knew I’d crossed an invisible line when I began to feel sick without a “dose” of medication. The physical pain they’d been prescribed for had long subsided, but they’d created a need that only grew with more use. Soon I became sick if I didn’t take any pills, which is when I began going to any lengths to get more.

    I wanted so much to stop but felt trapped on a terrible ride: I’d wake hating myself for what I’d done the day before, and with deep shame I’d vow earnestly to quit—then afternoon would come and with it, withdrawal symptoms. As my stomach would turn and my head would spin, I’d lose the resolve to stop and begin searching for my next fix. With that fix would come a few hours of relief, followed by another cycle of self-loathing, a vow to quit, and more failure.

    It was a spin cycle that likely would have killed me had life not intervened in ways that at the time felt devastating; in a span of two weeks my “normal” façade collapsed and, with it, most pillars in my life. Like a house of cards toppling, I lost my job, car, relationship, and was evicted from my home.

    It felt like a cliché country song where the singer loses everything, except in those songs that person is usually likeable and innocent—but in my story, I felt like the villain.

    As I watched my entire life crumble around me, I felt no choice other than to return home and seek the shelter of the only person who had always been there for me—my mom.

    The mom who had raised me with morals like honesty, accountability, and kindness, although I hadn’t been living them for a while. The mom who had struggled raising two kids alone, gotten us off food stamps by going to nursing school, and who watched helplessly as I descended into the same cycle of addiction that had taken the life of my father.

    She told me I could stay if I was sober; I vowed to try, though I’d stopped believing my own promises long before.

    In the recovery program I found soon after, there was an oft repeated saying on every wall: “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” If taken literally, it makes you think about how dark the night sky is before dawn breaks… how heavy, looming, and consuming. Before the light returns, it can feel like the darkness will never end.

    That was how my early days sober felt.

    But as I cobbled together a few weeks and then a few months, I began to feel the faintest bit of trust in myself. Through abstinence and therapy, mindfulness and a sober community, the hopelessness that had seemed so all-consuming began to crack open and let in some light.

    I moved out into my own apartment, returned to school to complete a long-sought college degree, and had a waitressing job that I loved. Then, just after I achieved one year sober, I got a phone call from my brother that would change everything.

    “Melissa, you need to come home,” he said, his voice thick with tears. “It’s mom.”

    My stomach dropped as I gripped the phone, suddenly feeling about five years old. I’d find out later it was a heart attack.

    I felt the darkness descend again.

    —

    In the days that followed her death I felt like a dependent child that was unable to care for myself. I dragged myself through brushing my teeth, dressing, and arranging her funeral; it felt like my heart had stopped along with hers.

    The same thought kept circling the drain of my head—how can I live the rest of my life without my mother?

    I couldn’t imagine not having her at my graduation, wedding, or when I became a parent. Her disappearance from my future brought up a dread much worse than that of the previous year— but as I began to settle into my grief, I realized I had a path through this moment, if I were willing to take it.

    The tools I’d forged in sobriety would prove to be useful in the dark days that followed. I share them below as an offering for anyone who travels through a dark night of the soul: simple steps to keep in mind when you can’t see a path forward.

    Take things one day at a time.

    In sobriety, you learn that imagining your whole life without another drink or drug can be so daunting that you just give up and get loaded. So instead of borrowing future worry, you learn to stay in the week, the day, and the moment.

    I didn’t have to know what having a wedding without my mother would be like—I just needed to eat breakfast. I didn’t need to imagine my graduation—I just needed to get myself through one more class. As I pieced my future together one moment at a time, I found that I could handle the emptiness in bite size pieces. I didn’t have to figure it all out—I just had to keep going.

    Allow feelings to come and trust that they will go.

    Much of what I’d been running from as an addict was the discomfort of my feelings. I didn’t want to feel rejection, so I contorted myself to be liked; I didn’t want to feel sadness, so I busied myself with the next activity. In recovery I learned that we can run from feelings all we want, but eventually they catch up to us in some form. Instead of running I’d learned to allow; instead of busying myself I’d been taught to turn toward pain and trust that it wouldn’t last forever.

    Though this was easier said than done, some part of me knew that running from the grief of my mom’s death would only snowball into a freight train later. I’d scream in my car as I seethed with the unfairness of it all; I’d rock with sobs on my couch when the sadness became too much. It wasn’t pretty and it felt terrible, but when I let the grief shake through me. I found that there would always be an end… that at the bottom of my spiral a thread of mercy would appear, and I would be able to go on.

    Tell the truth.

    From a young age, I felt much more comfortable in a mask of smiles and jokes than sharing how I was actually doing at any given moment. Though getting sober had helped me shed layers of the mask, I still found myself trying to likeable, approved-of, and “good.” But as grief zapped my energy and ability to make myself palatable, when people asked how I was doing I started to be honest.

    Sharing the pain I felt after my mom’s death was like standing naked in the middle of the street—I wasn’t used to crying in front of people and didn’t think they’d like me when they found out I wasn’t always “fun and easy going.” But it was exactly this type of vulnerability that allowed true friends to materialize, old connections to deepen, and the support I longed for to appear.

    Allow yourself to be forever changed.

    In recovery from addiction, I began to think of my sobriety date as a second birthday—the start of an actual new life. Though the way my former life had burned to the ground was painful, I welcomed the chance for a new start.

    But when my mom died, I didn’t realize that losing her would again scatter me into a thousand unrecognizable pieces—pieces I kept trying to fit back together but weren’t ever going to be the same, because I wasn’t.

    Once I allowed my life, relationships, and priorities to be changed by my grief, I found a self that was stronger, more resilient, and somehow more tender. I never would have chosen the form of this lesson, but I came through these experiences a more authentic version of myself… an overarching goal of my life.

    *

    It’s now been seven years since my mom’s death, and I’ve been sober for eight. As my journey continues to unfold, I never lose sight of how broken I once was and how dark things seemed. I also know that the struggles of life aren’t over; they’re part of being human and living a full life.

    But something I now keep in mind is that it’s always darkest before the dawn—I know I don’t have to always see the light…

    I just have to keep going.

  • Accept, Let Go, Have Faith

    Accept, Let Go, Have Faith

  • Conscious Escapism: The Benefits of a Spiritual Cheat Day

    Conscious Escapism: The Benefits of a Spiritual Cheat Day

    “The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom… You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.” ~William Blake

    Many people discover spirituality through suffering. I found the path due to years of depression, anxiety, and psychosis. Part of the awakening process is identifying behaviors, traits, habits, or thoughts that don’t serve you. As your behavior changes, so does your diet. Not just what you eat, but everything you consume, including what you listen to, watch, read, and pay attention to.

    Orthorexia is the term given to an unhealthy focus on eating in a healthy way. This sounds like a paradox, as a healthy diet improves overall health. However, there’s a tipping point—eating well can become an obsession. You might develop anxiety around eating junk food, and your desire to eat well influences your social life, or you feel guilty for the times you indulge.

    Your spiritual diet isn’t free from its own form of orthorexia. A healthy spiritual diet—such as a practice of meditation, reading spiritual texts, spending time in nature, serving others—boosts your spiritual health. But there is a tipping point.

    What if you guilt yourself for wanting to spend an evening watching Netflix? Or eating without being mindful? Or being distracted and unfocused? Or not having the energy to serve? Or not catching yourself before reacting in anger?

    What if when you feel anxiety, you don’t want to journal or meditate or unpick and dissect its root cause? What if you don’t want to spend the energy to “raise your vibration” or reframe your thoughts? What if all you want is to eat ice cream or go out with friends or have a glass of wine or watch the Champions League?

    The time will come where you no longer crave junk food, for the nourishment of the path itself satiates you more than anything. Until this point, rather than trying too hard to resist, it’s much more beneficial to allow yourself to indulge, and give yourself the occasional treat, without guilt or shame.

    Unconscious Escapism vs. Conscious Escapism

    In psychology, escapism is defined as a behavior or desire to avoid confronting reality. I place escapism into two categories: unconscious and conscious. This is an important distinction, because most people who practice meditation and mindfulness are, to some degree, aware of when they are engaging in unhelpful behavior.

    Unconscious escapism lacks self-awareness. It is a default, auto-pilot reaction to certain uncomfortable feelings. It’s not wrong, or bad, it’s just a way we learn how to cope. But in the context of spiritual growth and healing, unconscious escapism perpetuates suffering. It distracts us from discomfort and ultimately distracts us from ourselves.

    However, conscious escapism explores and acknowledges underlying emotions with compassion, before choosing to indulge. Maybe you’re just tired or require a feeling of comfort, or simply want to enjoy a movie. All of these options are okay, and don’t make you any less “spiritual.” Quite the opposite: choosing to do a mindless activity can be a great act of self-compassion.

    Conscious Escapism Is the Cheat Meal

    Conscious escapism is choosing conventional distractions, knowing the occasional cheat meal doesn’t reflect your overall diet. It’s acknowledging where you’re at and allowing yourself to lean on mechanisms behaviors that provide temporary solace, fully aware this isn’t the ideal solution.

    To get physically fit, a manageable and balanced routine and diet are better than an extreme, high-intensity routine and crash diet. Start off with high intensity, you’ll likely burn out and return to old habits. Instead, as you progress and form new habits, you might increase the intensity, or find that eating well becomes easier.

    There’s no reason the spiritual path has to be any different. Over the years, I’ve experienced the extremes of depriving myself due to the belief around a spiritual person wouldn’t… (get angry, eat nachos or other unhealthy food, binge watch Netflix when feeling down, argue with their partner, enjoy buying new clothes, curse, procrastinate on tackling their finances…)

    It’s only when I allowed conscious escapism that I’ve discovered what really benefits me.

    Mostly, I was encouraged to try this route by supportive friends and family who could tell I needed time off. I’ve always pushed myself, I’ve always placed high standards on myself, and these traits of perfectionism were absorbed into my spiritual practice.

    Over time my need for conventional escape has reduced. But that doesn’t mean I won’t skip a meditation session or watch a few episodes of Community to lighten my mood if it feels right to do so. Going too far in the other direction creates a feeling of stress or even resentment towards my practice, a result of spiritual orthorexia.

    The Spiritual Diet and Discernment

    A word of warning: Conscious escapism isn’t an excuse to choose the path of least resistance. The ego can hijack this concept, too, weaving a narrative of deceit that finds excuses and reasons as to why you deserve to not meditate, or why your unique spiritual path is finding enlightenment through Game of Thrones.

    Be cautious of this and apply the principle of a standard diet. Understand which foods are good and which aren’t. I know that a healthy diet requires me to eat well most of the time. I know that if I always indulge in high-fat, high-sugar junk food, it’ll lead to reduced health. But I know the occasional treat is fine.

    Knowing when to indulge and when to do the work is a matter of trial and error. It takes time, practice, and self-honesty. It requires self-compassion for the moments you over-indulge, knowing sometimes the road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

    When you find momentum with your practice, you might experience a tendency to go all-in. The joy and inspiration that comes from meditation, or spiritual discussions, or insights, or noticing areas of growth or healing, create a sense of wanting more. You might feel the spiritual path is your life’s calling, and you’ll do all you can to honor it.

    This is beautiful, and it’s worth appreciating the innocence of this intrinsic motivation. However, I’m here to tell you—you can take the day off. You can breathe, pause, and take time away from growth or development.

    You can, unashamedly, give yourself permission to indulge in conscious escapism.

  • How You Light Up Rooms and Inspire People Just by Being You

    How You Light Up Rooms and Inspire People Just by Being You

  • The Joy and Power of Realizing I Am More Than My Job

    The Joy and Power of Realizing I Am More Than My Job

    “Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.” ~Brené Brown

    “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

    “It’s so nice to meet you. What do you do?”

    These are the questions we are asked our entire life. When we’re children, everyone always asks about the future. They excitedly ask, “What will you do?” The subtext of this questions is:

    “How will you be productive in society? How will you contribute?”

    Being asked those questions all the time as children turned us into the adults that ask them. We are in the same cycle and do not seem to know to ask instead, “Who are you?”

    For a long time, my focus and self-identity was tied up in what I did. I would tell people, “I am a filmmaker.” When I was young, I knew I wanted to make films. I loved to tell stories. “I want to be a movie director!”

    When I grew up and actually got jobs in Hollywood, I realized that most people are not movie directors. Most people are not even filmmakers. They work in film. It takes many people to make one, but only a handful of people get any recognition or able to consider themselves filmmakers.

    “What do you do?” people would ask. I would struggle to figure out how to explain that I was a production assistant who worked on films. I was basically a glorified secretary, a personal assistant. But I was not a filmmaker.

    I worked on other filmmaker’s films. I personally had not made any art or films for over six years. I was so busy and tired of trying to work in the industry I wanted to work in that I forgot about myself.

    When I could no longer define myself as a filmmaker, I became disillusioned. If I wasn’t one, then what was I? People always got excited when I said I worked on movies. Their eyes would light up, and they would pester me with questions about the famous people I knew or inside secrets.

    They never wanted to know how much sleep I missed or how many friends and family events I sacrificed for the bragging rights of Hollywood. They didn’t want to know what excited me about life or who I was. They only wanted to know “what I did.”

    This discontentment grew. I became angrier and angrier at the film industry as a whole. I felt used. Worthless. The world was nothing but egos and money. I would never be them unless I sold myself and played their game.

    I wasn’t willing to play the game, find the back doors, penny pinch, or be downright cruel. I was beginning to see that the industry was soulless. The art and stories were being dictated by companies that wanted to earn as much as possible.

    The stories were not chosen for their value and need in the world, but by which would make the most money. They profited on these stories and off the handwork and sacrifices of the below-the-line workers that were seen as disposable.

    Celebrities made millions, and I made minimum wage, but I didn’t have the luxury of a free jet ride back home and an apartment for my girlfriend. I was reprimanded for refusing to work on a Saturday after only five hours off.

    Slowly, I began to question if this was who I was. If this “works in the film industry” was really. me. And I felt guilty! I felt like I was being ungrateful. I was working on big movies! How could I not be happy? I had “made it.”

    I could only go up from here. I could get to be the next Stephen Spielberg, the next Tarantino, the next Lucas? Then I worked for one of these types of famous guys. He was just a human. He wasn’t the god I held him up to be. He was flawed.

    Sure, he got the adrenaline rush of making art, but at my expense. I was lucky to have my name in the credits. I wasn’t part of the golden ones, the actors and producers who were the “real” movie.

    If I didn’t want to play the “Hollywood” game I could go independent. But I felt guilty that I called myself a filmmaker when I hadn’t made a film in years! I didn’t even have any desire to even come up with one.

    I had friends who were making films on the weekends. They dedicated every free second to it. All I did was sleep. Then drag myself for dinner or a date and pretend I had a social life before I had to be back at work. I felt guilty and afraid that if left the industry I would be seen as a failure.

    I was afraid that I would be seen as weak or people would think that I couldn’t hack it. The more angst I felt, the more I turned to my unhelpful habit of Googling advice.  There is nothing helpful about hours of reddit and self-help blogs. They are all contradictory.

    This Googling, however, led to some articles with actual facts. This is when I started to read about Americans’ tendency to identify with our jobs. Our self-worth and identity are wrapped up in what we do.

    We say things like, “I am a lawyer.” “I am a physicist.” “I am a teacher.” We don’t say, “I practice law.” “I study physics. “I teach.” We put the emphasis on the job and not the I.

    I started the long, tedious process of separating myself, the me, from the filmmaker and the woman who worked in film. I realized that I was uncomfortable calling myself a filmmaker because I wasn’t one.

    I struggled to define my title to other because I didn’t really believe that it was who I was. I am a woman who enjoys movies and stories. More importantly, I am energized by stories.

    Filmmaking was just a job. The intense zealotry aspect of the film industry had always sat wrong with me. Now I know why. I am not a job. I am more than the work I do.

    Through this process I came to slowly accept that I wasn’t happy with the work I was doing. There was a disconnect between it and the way I saw myself in life. I needed to walk away for a bit and allow myself to heal from the harm I and the toxic industry had infected upon my soul.

    It is not just the film industry that is toxic. American work culture is. We have created an environment where work has to be our passion. Confucius said, “Choose a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” I disagree. Work is work.

    You might enjoy it, but as long as you are giving your time for money you are participating in a business transaction, and it is work. Just accept it as work and accept that you can be a whole person outside of your job. Your job is only a small sliver of the much larger person.

    Our work culture throws around the phrase “We are like a family.” It is encouraged and suggested that your team members and colleagues are family. They aren’t.

    You can get along with them, be friends with them, but by labeling them as family there is a pressure to feel loyal and not let them down. Our alliances are manipulated to be given first and foremost to work. Any time spend doing something for yourself or your actual family is seen as selfish.

    A year after my last film job I still struggle to see myself outside these identities. I am now enrolled in grad school and I want to label myself as a student. But I am not. I am Dia. I study mythology.

    Sometimes I am a storyteller, but that title does not and cannot encompass the whole and vastness that I am as a person.

    Identifying ourselves by our work is like trying to fill a mug with the ocean. At some point the ocean will overpower the mug, and we will be left wet and feeling bad about ourselves.

    The next time you are at a party, after the pandemic, and you meet someone new, maybe don’t ask, “What do you do?” Instead ask, “Who are you?” Create the space to meet the real, whole person; the person who is vast, deep, and full of wonder for the world.

  • Things to Be Grateful For

    Things to Be Grateful For

  • Why Curiosity Is My Love Language and How It Makes Me Feel Seen

    Why Curiosity Is My Love Language and How It Makes Me Feel Seen

    “Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.” ⁠~David W. Augsburger

    The five love languages—a framework for how we give and receive affection created by psychologist Gary Chapman in 1992⁠—include quality time, gifts, acts of service, words of affirmation, and physical touch.

    As much as I love receiving all five demonstrations of care, I’ve always felt that my truest love language was missing from this list.

    My love language is curiosity. I show others I care for them by asking questions, learning their experiences, and being hungry for the essence of them beneath the small talk and the pleasantries. I want to see them for who they are and know what makes them tick. And I, too, want to be loved this way.

    Like many recovering people-pleasers, I spent most of my life over-attuned to others’ moods and needs, accustomed to relationships in which I did all of the seeing but rarely felt seen.

    While I know that people-pleasing is usually an outdated coping mechanism from childhood, I also know that my ability to get curious about others is my superpower. Regardless of its origin, it is just as much a part of me as my eye color or my heritage.

    This desire to deeply understand others is a quality about myself that I love, something that I do just as much in service to myself as in service to others.

    For years, my curiosity often led me to play the role of confidante and cheerleader in my relationships. Friends, partners, and acquaintances said I was an “exceptional listener.” And while I appreciated their praise, I often felt that folks cherished my companionship the way they would cherish a finely polished mirror—a smooth surface in which they could admire their own reflection.

    As I’ve gotten older, I’ve determined that I’m no longer willing to be a part of one-sided relationships in which I know others inside and out, but they regard me as a foreign language. I want a person who can put their ego aside and get curious. I want someone who maps my terrain eagerly, who crests the peaks and sprints into the jagged valleys of my tales, who overturns stones for what lies hidden beneath.

    As someone who spent much of her life feeling unseen, I notice when someone really makes an effort to see me.

    I notice when people look directly into my eyes and ask, “But really⁠—how are you feeling today?”

    I notice when people share a story and then pause to ask, “Have you ever experienced anything like that before?”

    I notice when others seem just as comfortable holding space as they do taking up space.

    I notice when folks treat conversations like opportunities for co-creation instead of pedestals from which to preach.

    I also notice when people ask perfunctory questions and, moments later, check their phones or stare off into space.

    I notice when others use my stories as springboards to leap into their own experiences.

    I notice when I’m interrupted repeatedly by someone who is so eager to speak that they can’t fathom making room for anyone else.

    I notice when people use me as a sounding board or a therapist with no reciprocity in sight.

    With time, I have learned to leave these relationships behind. They drain me energetically and, by participating in them, I teach myself that I am not worthy of more.

    I distinctly remember a friendship where, after every afternoon spent together, my body craved a two-hour nap. I remember other connections that left me feeling hallowed out and sunken, like a withered plant that hadn’t seen a glimpse of sun in weeks.

    Ultimately, it was my responsibility to shift this pattern and make space in my life for healthier connections. I could continue to feel victimized by one-sided relationships, or I could leave them behind and trust that I deserved better⁠—and that better existed.

    We co-create these healthier, reciprocal connections by communicating, clearly, what we need in order to feel seen. The love language framework is so valuable because it gives us a simple, casual way to do so. After all, we can’t expect others to read our minds and know automatically what’s best for us.

    This is why I’ve learned to say to friends and prospective partners early on, “My love language is curiosity. I feel most loved when others ask questions and want to understand me.” By offering this simple truth, we give others the information they need to love us well. Whether they choose to act on that information is up to them.

    If we find ourselves in relationships that are one-sided, we need to be willing to let them go, and embrace the initial loneliness that comes from leaving the old while awaiting the new. We need to learn to trust that we are interesting, that our experiences are valuable, and that our words are just as worthy of space as anyone else’s.

    With every new relationship that makes space for the essence of us, the more believable these truths become.

  • Maturity Is When…

    Maturity Is When…

  • The Day I Found Out from the Internet my Estranged Father Had Died

    The Day I Found Out from the Internet my Estranged Father Had Died

    “The scars you can’t see are the hardest to heal.” ~Astrid Alauda

    On a lazy Sunday morning as I lounged in bed, I picked up my phone, scrolled through my news feed on Facebook, and decided to Google my parents’ names.

    I am estranged from my parents, and I have not had much of a relationship with them in over fifteen years; however, there’s a part of me that will always care about them.

    I Googled my mother’s name first and found the usual articles about her dance classes, and her name on church and community bulletin boards. From what I was able to find, it appeared she was doing well.

    Then I went on to Google my father’s name. The first item I came across was an obituary posted on the website of a business that provides cremation and burial services. However, there was no actual obituary, only a few pictures of a much younger man and a profile of a much older man.

    Was this my dad’s obituary? It couldn’t be, could it? In shock, I convinced myself that it wasn’t his obituary, but I could not shake the nagging feeling that it was.

    For the last month I had a feeling that something was off, that something terrible had happened or was going to happen. At the time I attributed these feelings to work stress and the global pandemic.

    When I learned of the death of one of my mentors, who had been like a father to me, I attributed these feelings to this experience. Could I have been wrong?

    Later that morning I decided to search for my dad’s name in the obituary section of the online local paper. His name came up instantly, and much to my horror, this was how I learned about his death.

    Shock washed over me as I read the obituary. He had been dead for a month when I began having those intense, unsettling feelings of foreboding, as if something terrible had happened. It all made sense.

    My full name, which I had legally changed several years ago, was mentioned in the obituary under his surviving relatives, which quickly turned my feelings of shock into rage. Did my family think that I didn’t care about him? Did they think that I didn’t have a right to know about his death?

    I reached out to members of my estranged support group only to learn that many others had found out about a parent’s passing in the same manner.

    Years earlier I had feared that I might find out about one of my parents passing through Google; however, I had dismissed the fear and forced myself to believe that someone in my family would tell me if one of my parents had passed.

    In the days and weeks that followed I continued to Google my dad’s name. As I read tributes written by friends and other family members, I was hit with the realization that I did not know the person they were describing.

    He was described as a “simple religious man who was a welcoming neighbor, a devoted friend, family man, and an excellent father.” To me, however, he was none of those things, and as I continued to read the tributes, sadness and anger washed over me, and I was forced to reflect on the painful relationship that I’d had with him.

    In kindergarten I remember him telling me over and over, “You are as dumb as a post.” Later, after a visit to see his father, he repeated his father’s hurtful words, “You’re a wild hair, and you’re going to come to a sad end.”

    He continued to repeat these words on a regular basis throughout our relationship. Every mistake I made was met with harsh judgements, such as “You will never be good at that, you were just wasting your time, you were never going to amount to anything.”

    When I failed, he rubbed my failures in my face, and to this day failure is one of my greatest fears despite becoming a somewhat successful professional and academic.

    Time and time again, he told me:

    “It would be much easier to care about you if you did well with your studies.”

    “You’re illiterate, you’re a delinquent, you’re a dunce, and you are an embarrassment.”

    “You are never going to amount anything; you are going to end up working a minimum-wage job with angry, stupid people.”

    “You are fat, you are lazy, you are unfocused, and you are wasting your time with that stupid piano; you will never amount anything with that hammering.”

    After I broke up with my first serious boyfriend, my father told me, “What do you expect? A person like you is naturally going to have problems with their relationships, I fully expect you to have serious problems in your marriage as well.”

    When I was preparing to move away to go to university, he told me, “When you flunk out, don’t expect to come back here, just find a minimum-wage job and support yourself.”

    It’s taken me years to realize that comments like these are verbal abuse!

    Verbal abuse can be disguised in the form of a parent insulting a child to do better, to push themselves to be more, to lose weight, or enter a particular field. It can be disguised as caring or wanting to push someone to be a better version of themselves. Regardless of the parent’s motive, insults and put-downs are, in fact, verbal abuse, and no number of justifications can change this.

    Verbal abuse can have devastating effects on a child’s life, and these effects can be felt well into adulthood.

    Throughout my childhood and into my teens, my parents’ abusive comments caused me to believe that no one would want me and that I was not good enough for anyone. This limiting belief inhibited my ability to form friendships. As a result, I spent much of my childhood and my teens alone, playing the piano or spending time with my pets.

    The friendships that I did form were often one-sided because I made it very easy for people to take advantage of me, because I believed that I had to give and give in order to be worthy of the friendship.

    I also feared failure more than anything else and became very anxious in any environment where I might fail. This inhibited me from trying new things, and I only engaged in activities I knew I was good at.

    It was not until my mid-teens that I met a mentor who not only saw my work but loved me and nurtured me as if I was his own daughter. For the very first time in my life, I had an adult to support me apart from my grandmother and my grandfather, who believed in me and reminded me every day of my value and my abilities.

    “You are good, you are smart and highly intelligent, you’re capable of doing anything you set your sights on,” he would tell me. At first, I did not believe him, but in time I slowly began to see myself through his eyes.

    He talked to me the way a loving parent would have. When I failed, he didn’t make fun of me; instead, he encouraged me to reflect on what I’d learned from the experience and how I could do better in the future.

    He instilled in me the foundation of shaky self-confidence that enabled me to have the courage to apply to university. Without this relationship, I would likely not be where I am today because I would not have had the courage to break free from the verbally abusive narrative my parents had taught me to believe, or to challenge this narrative.

    As I was reading attributes about my father in tributes from people who knew him, I was filled with a sense of longing. Had my dad been the man who was described in those tributes we could have had a healthy relationship, and I would not have had to make the painful decision to cut him out of my life.

    At the same time, these tributes forced me to accept that we are many things to different people. To some people we are a wonderful friend, a kind neighbor, and a loving parent, but to others we are a rude jerk, a self-centered person, and verbally abusive or neglectful parent. Each one of us has the right to remember the dead as they experienced them and honor their memory as we see fit.

    Years after cutting my parents out of my life I silently forgave them for the hurt they had caused me, and I worked to let go of the pain from the past. However, at times, I found myself fantasizing about what a healthy adult relationship could look like with my father.

    I imagined mutually respectful philosophical discussions, long walks, trips to far off places, and most importantly, being seen not as an unlovable failure, but as a successful adult worthy of love and acceptance.

    My last conversation with my father before my grandmother had passed away was positive, which only fueled these fantasies. Yet in these fits of fantasy, I was forced to accept my father for who he was and acknowledge the painful fact that some people are just not capable being who we need them to be.

    We can choose to plead for a relationship that will never be, or for the person to be something they are not, or we can choose to accept them as they are and accept ourselves in spite of their abuse. But this means we must let go and accept that the future holds time we can never have together.

  • You Can’t Save Someone Who Won’t Participate in Their Own Rescue

    You Can’t Save Someone Who Won’t Participate in Their Own Rescue

  • People Who Make Healthy Boundaries Seem Absurd

    People Who Make Healthy Boundaries Seem Absurd

  • 7 Things You Need to Know If You’re Going Through a Painful Breakup

    7 Things You Need to Know If You’re Going Through a Painful Breakup

    Last year my uncle died shortly after someone I love went through a pretty traumatic breakup. I love all my family, but I wasn’t really close to my uncle and didn’t know him all that well, so I was more grieving for my mother and aunt than myself.

    As I bore witness to the deep pain around me, I started thinking about the expectations we often hold of people when grieving a breakup, as opposed to grieving a death. We often expect them to feel sad for a while and then just get over it. Because the person didn’t die, after all.

    I would never compare the loss of someone’s life to the loss of a relationship, but I wonder, do we even have to? Can’t we just honor both types of losses as difficult in their own way and respect that healing takes time for each?

    I know from personal experience that breakups can evoke all kinds of complicated emotions.

    They can trigger the pain of past traumas—times when people we trusted betrayed, neglected, or abandoned us.

    They can conjure up deep feelings of shame and unworthiness, particularly if we blame ourselves for everything that went wrong.

    They can ignite all our fears about being alone and what we believe that means about us and for us—maybe that we’ll never be happy because we’re unlovable, and no one will ever want us.

    And they can force us to face parts of ourselves we’d rather avoid, pieces of a puzzle we’ve tried to complete with other people’s love, affection, and approval.

    Then there’s the pain of accepting someone’s cruelty, if they weren’t emotionally mature enough to end things well, taking responsibility for their part and offering some sense of closure.

    None of this is easy to get past. And there’s no set timeline for healing.

    The truth of the matter is, it takes as long as it takes. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do to help ourselves heal and move forward. It’s just means that even if we do all the “right” things, the pain may still linger, and that’s okay.

    It’s also totally understandable—in general, and especially now, when we’re far more limited in our options for getting out in the world, doing things we love, and engaging with other people. All things that help when you’re trying to empower and focus on yourself.

    If you’re feeling the pain of heartbreak right now, I hope you know you deserve a ton of credit for doing your best to get through this, especially during this crazy, surreal time. I hope you’re kind to yourself as you navigate the emotional landmine that is healing. And I hope the following pieces of advice, from Tiny Buddha contributors, help ease your pain, even if only a little:

    1. It’s okay if you’re not over it yet.

    “Healing takes time. Give yourself grace because it is the loving thing to do.

    Would you keep asking your best friend why she isn’t over her heartbreak yet? No! That would be unloving, she needs grace. Feeling impatient with your progress or beating yourself up? GRACE. Just cried for hours on the couch even though you’ve had two amazing weeks? GRACE. Behaved in a way that you later felt bad about? Those are old habits arising, my friend—GRACE.”

    ~Lauren Bolos, from How to Come Out Stronger After Heartbreak

    2. You won’t feel this way forever.

    “There is, in fact, a light in the end of the depression tunnel. But the only way to get to that light is to walk through it. There is no way of getting around the process, and the earlier you begin the journey of mourning and healing, the sooner you will reach peace.

    The journey is long, but there is no race and no competition. It’s a journey with yourself. There will be days when you will feel stronger than ever and some days will bring you back to your knees.

    Just remember: The rollercoaster is the journey. So even when you are down, feeling as if you’ve made no progress, remember that progress is being made every day you choose to be alive.

    Progress is being made every day you choose to not call the one who left you.

    Progress is being made every day you choose to take another breath.

    You are alive. You are strong. You will survive.”

    ~Brisa Pinho, from Grieving a Loss That Feels Like a Death

    3. You deserve a lot of credit.

    “Take credit for the good that came out of this relationship. No, it wasn’t all perfect, and there are some things you can take responsibility for in your past relationship, but what can you take credit for?

    If you blame yourself for all the bad things, don’t you also have to take some credit for the good things that happened?

    What positives came out of this relationship?

    How did you grow as a person in your past relationship?

    How did you mature and become a better version of yourself?”

    ~Vishnu, from How to Stop Punishing Yourself for Your Breakup

    4. Your ex wasn’t perfect.

    “Remember the bad as well as the good. Brain scientists suggest nearly 20% of us suffer from ‘complicated grief,’ a persistent sense of longing for someone we lost with romanticized memories of the relationship. Scientists also suggest this is a biological occurrence—that the longing can have an addictive quality to it, actually rooted in our brain chemistry.

    As a result, we tend to remember everything with reverie, as if it was all sunshine and roses. If your ex broke up with you, it may be even more tempting to imagine she or he was perfect, and you weren’t. In all reality, you both have strengths and weaknesses and you both made mistakes.

    Remember them now… it’s easier to let go of a human than a hero.”

    ~Lori Deschene (me!), from How to Let of a Past Relationship: 10 Steps to Move on Peacefully

    5. No relationship is a failure.

    “Our society seems to put a lot of pressure on the idea that things will last forever. But the truth is, everything is impermanent.

    After a recent breakup, I found myself feeling as though I had failed the relationship. Then I stepped outside of my conditioned thinking and discovered that love and failure do not reside together. For when you have loved, you have succeeded, every time.

    It was Wayne Dyer that introduced me to the rather practical concept that ‘not every relationship is meant to last forever.’ What a big burden off my back! Of all the souls hanging out on this planet, it seems to make sense that we might have more than one soul mate floating around.

    Relationships can be our greatest teachers; it is often through them that we discover the most about ourselves. In relationships, we are provided with an opportunity to look into a mirror, revealing what we need to work on as individuals in order to be the best version of ourselves.

    Each relationship will run its course, some a few weeks, months, years, or even a lifetime. This is the unknown that we all leap into.”

    ~Erin Coriell, from How to Love More and Hurt Less in Relationships

    6. If you change your perspective, it will be easier to heal.

    “Whatever story you’re telling yourself about the relationship, you need to retell it. You may be holding onto the sad and tragic version. You were left behind as the victim, as your ex was the heartbreaker who didn’t give the relationship a chance.

    Shift the story to the one that is the most empowering for you. How about a story of how you both gave it your best? You fought, you loved, you laughed, and you cried. You tried over and over when things didn’t seem to work. You fought, forgave, broke up, got back together, and finally called it off for good.

    You both gave it your all, but it didn’t work out. It wasn’t for lack of trying. It was you coming to the conclusion that you were different people, both good people, who were incompatible for each other. You both helped each other grow and become better versions of yourself.

    The more you can flip your perspective on your ex and the relationship, the easier it will be to move on.”

    ~Vishnu (from How to Move on When Your Ex Already Has)

    7. Sometimes you have to make your own closure.

    “Closure is something everyone would like. We would like validation and understanding.

    We can accept that someone doesn’t want to be with us. We can accept that the relationship has changed or that they want something else. What we can’t accept is our partner’s inability to communicate that fact effectively and tell us what went wrong.

    Unfortunately, sometimes your partner does not have this same need, or they may have the same need but they’re better at hiding it and pretending they don’t. They would rather just push you, and their feelings, away.

    In my experience, people can’t always be honest with you because they can’t be honest with themselves. It isn’t about you. We always want it to be about us and our flaws and failures, but it isn’t.

    Many people don’t know how to deal with the emotions that come with a breakup, so they prefer to avoid their feelings altogether, and this is the most likely reason they won’t talk to you. It has nothing to do with you or the relationship or something you did wrong or that you weren’t enough.”

    ~Carrie Burns (from How to Move on When Your Ex Won’t Speak to You)

    —

    I suspect that last one is something many people need to hear. You may have played a role in your breakup, but if your ex hasn’t treated you with empathy and respect, it’s not your fault. No one deserves to be ignored. No one deserves to be treated like they don’t matter. And just because someone treats you that way, it doesn’t mean it’s true.

    I know when I was in the depths of heartbreak I needed a reminder that, regardless of the mistakes I’d made or how my ex saw me, I was still a good person who was worthy of love and healing. You are too. So love yourself and give yourself the time and empathy you need to heal.

    You are strong, you are doing the best you can, and you can and will get through this!

  • Becoming Less Reactive

    Becoming Less Reactive

  • How to Motivate Yourself with Kindness Instead of Criticism

    How to Motivate Yourself with Kindness Instead of Criticism

    “I don’t always make the best choices, but today I choose compassion over intolerance, sympathy over hatred, and love over fear.” ~LJ Vanier

    It’s crazy to me now, to look back and realize how freaking hard I was on myself for decades.

    Had I ever talked to anyone else the way I talked to myself, it would surely have left me friendless and jobless, and I definitely would have been kicked out of school.

    Basically, I was a bully. Just to myself.

    If I said something awkward, I called myself an idiot.

    When I couldn’t find the motivation to clean my house, I called myself a lazy slob.

    If I wasn’t invited to a party, I told myself it’s because no one liked me.

    When work projects were hard, and I had to make it up as I went, I told myself that I was going to get fired as soon as my boss figured out that I had no idea what I was doing.

    My parents set high expectations of me. A’s were rewarded and B’s were questioned: “Why didn’t you get an A?”

    They are successful, intelligent people (who somehow also are able to keep a clean house, like all the time), so if I did anything that didn’t meet what I assumed were their expectations, I told myself, “I’m not good enough, I’ll never be good enough.”

    At a certain point, I realized this “strategy” wasn’t working out for me.

    It wasn’t making me any smarter or more successful.

    It wasn’t making people like me more.

    It wasn’t getting my house any cleaner.

    What it was doing was making me feel like crap. Every day. And it got old.

    Looking back, I realize now my catalyst for change was when I finally pushed past my social anxiety and found the courage to take classes at the gym.

    I found that I performed better when in a group because of the positive energy of people cheering me on.

    After a while I noticed I didn’t cheer people on quite as much as they cheered me on, and since it felt good for me to hear it, I busted through my fears and started cheering on everyone else in the class.

    It felt really good.

    It felt even better when it dawned on me that I could talk to myself that way too.

    And that is what self-compassion really is.

    What is Self-Compassion, Anyway?

    Self-compassion is speaking to yourself as kindly and empathetically as you would a friend.

    It involves consciously directing kindness inward.

    Self-compassionate people recognize that being imperfect, failing, and experiencing challenges are all inevitable parts of life, so they’re gentle with themselves when confronted with painful experiences rather than getting angry when life falls short of their expectations.

    Therefore, they speak in kind words—intentionally—to themselves.

    It is recognizing the shared humanity in our suffering and difficult experiences.

    When we’re being compassionate toward someone who is going through a hard time or has made a mistake, we say things like:

    • “You’re not alone.”
    • “Everyone makes mistakes.”
    • “You’re only human.”
    • “I’ve been there too.”

    Because there is comfort in recognizing that pain and making mistakes is part of life, it’s part of the process, it’s how we grow, and we all do it—literally every human.

    When we don’t take the time to say that to ourselves when we misstep, we feel isolated, and isolation breeds shame and separation and makes us feel worthless.

    Why We Are So Darn Hard on Ourselves

    We live in a success-driven, “no pain no gain,” “win at all costs,” “if you have time to lean you have time to clean,” “failure isn’t an option” kind of culture.

    There is nothing wrong with pushing ourselves and driving success.

    The problem is, we are a mimicking species, and when all we see are examples of people being hard on themselves and few or no examples of people being kind to themselves, we don’t know what that looks like.

    So the idea of self-compassion is foreign to most people. As such, we have these misconceptions that keep us from being self-compassionate.

    Myth #1: I need high self-esteem to feel good about myself.

    One of the biggest misconceptions about self-compassion is that it is the same as self-esteem.

    We grow up believing that high self-esteem is the key to feeling good about ourselves.

    The problem is, in our culture, to have high self-esteem, we have to be above average or special in some way.

    It’s almost an insult to be considered “average.” If someone were to say, “There’s nothing special about her” that would make a person feel especially bad.

    So, by this measure, self-esteem is conditional to everyone else’s status in comparison to ours. Our self-esteem (and therefore self-worth) go up and down as those around us go up and down.

    That’s why there are so many bullies in our society—because putting others down is one way to make your self-esteem go up.

    (There are literally studies showing an increase in bullies and narcissism in our society in the past several years, and many psychologists point to the “self-esteem” movement as a big factor.)

    Myth #2: I need to be hard on myself, or I’ll let myself get away with anything.

    A lot of people have the misconception that self-compassion is self-indulgence.

    They worry that they could be too self-compassionate and too soft on themselves, that they need to be hard on themselves in order to keep on track.

    But self-compassion enhances motivation, it doesn’t hinder it.

    Let’s say your friend is upset that she texted someone, and they haven’t texted her back.

    Do you say to her, “That’s probably because you did something wrong. I bet she doesn’t like you anymore, or maybe she never really did. You should apologize even though you don’t know what you did wrong, since she is most likely mad at you for something.”

    Absolutely not!

    Not only is it a mean thing to say, you know objectively that this is almost certainly not true.

    You would likely say, “I know that feeling too. I get disappointed when I don’t get a response from someone. But she likely forgot or is busy, just like a lot of people. Her not replying isn’t a reflection of you, it’s an inaction by her. Don’t worry, she still might message you back, or you can message her again later!”

    Which one of those feels more motivating? Which one feels more stressful?

    Which way do you talk to yourself when you slip up?

    The motivational power of your inner bully comes from fear, whereas the motivational power of self-compassion comes from love.

    How to Practice Self-Compassion

    1. Mindfully recognize when you hear your inner critic talking.

    We get so used to using negative self-talk that we don’t even notice it. We just run with the critical stories we’re telling ourselves.

    But you can’t change anything unless you recognize when you’re doing it by mindfully bringing attention to your thoughts, without judgment.

    First, notice how you feel. Because self-criticism feels crappy. That’s your sign that you need to do a little mindful digging.

    Now, the best tool you can use when you get that sign is to ask, “What is the story I’m telling myself?”

    • The story I’m telling myself is that people at work think I’m a fraud because I’m making everything up as I go, and I’m not giving myself any credit for all that I do know and have achieved.
    • The story I’m telling myself is that I’m not a good mom because I let my house get messy, and I’m not thinking about how happy and healthy my kids actually are.
    • The story I’m telling myself is that I’ll never lose weight because I ate those cookies, and I’m not giving myself permission to make a mistake.

    What is the story you’re telling yourself, and what language are you using to tell it?

    2. Understand the positive intent behind your negative self-talk.

    This is going to help you reframe your negative self-talk into self-compassion.

    Let’s say you’ve been wanting to lose weight, but you look down and realize you just ate an entire box of cookies.

    And now your harsh inner critic is saying, “You’re disgusting, you’ll never be able to lose weight, you have no self-control, this is why you’re so fat.”

    Again, words we would never say to someone else.

    What is the positive intent, what is that self-critic voice trying to achieve?

    • It wants me to be more conscious of when I’m eating and what I’m eating.
    • It wants me to be a little stronger when I have these cravings so I can lose weight.
    • It wants me to make a better choice in the future.

    Right? It’s not trying to beat you up for the sake of beating you up. That voice has a purpose, it’s just using the wrong words.

    3. Reframe that positive intent with self-compassion.

    Restate what your self-critic is saying with the voice of self-compassion by talking to yourself as you would a friend or loved one, recognizing the shared humanity in the experience, and consoling in the fact that this too shall pass.

    Can you look inward and say, “I see what you’re doing here. Thanks, subconscious, for the reminder, I know you’re just looking out for me. Now that we’ve heard what you have to say through the self-critic voice, let’s hear what the self-compassion voice has to say…”

    What would that sound like?

    “I get it, I’ve had a stressful day, I skipped lunch, and I’m tired, so I just fell back on an old habit—I made a mistake. Now that I know why I ate all those cookies, I can make a better decision tomorrow. All is not lost.”

    Which one of these feels better? Which one would motivate you to do better tomorrow?

    4. If you think you can’t be self-compassionate…

    If and when during this growth process, you find yourself thinking, “I just can’t stop talking to myself in that negative way, it doesn’t feel natural to speak positively to myself,” I want you to understand two things…

    First, self-compassion is a habit.

    That negative self-talk you’ve been doing for years has simply become a habit.

    It’s become your habitual reaction to stress, adversity, and failure. And that’s what we’re doing here: breaking old habits and creating new ones.

    It will be a challenge at first, as are all new habits. But with some practice, this is going to get easier and easier. It’s making self-compassion your new default mode.

    It will feel weird and unnatural at first. Don’t let that make you think it isn’t working. The more you practice this, the more you are training your brain to focus on compassionate self-talk instead of criticism, meaning you’ll spend less and less time with that critical language and more time with the compassionate language. In time, this will become your new, natural response.

    Eventually, you’ll reach a point where you say, “Hm, if I did that a year ago, I would have beat myself up for days. Good for me!”

    Second, you have a natural negativity bias that is working hard right now.

    When you feel like you can’t be self-compassionate, understand our natural negativity bias.

    We all have a negativity bias. It’s there with the intention to keep us safe. Your ancestors who were on the lookout for mountain lions lived longer than those who sniffed flowers all day.

    But we are centuries beyond the point in our evolution where we need to be on guard in order to keep safe at all times. When you’re living with chronic stress and anxiety, your negativity bias is sticking in the on position.

    Meaning, all you can see are threats. What could go wrong. What is wrong. What might be wrong. If you get a ninety on a test, you look at that ten that you missed and not the ninety that you achieved.

    Know that you have blinders on to positivity, that your negativity bias is making you focus solely on challenges instead of achievements.

    It’s what I call wearing poop-colored glasses instead of rose-colored glasses. Mindfully notice when you’re wearing them. Then take the glasses off! (They smell and they aren’t helping anything, anyway!)