Tag: wisdom
-
How to Re-wire Your Brain for Better Relationships
“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke
I was eight years old when my father and I somehow ended up in a heated, verbal struggle. I don’t remember what we were fighting about, but I remember that he was yelling at me.
I already knew by then that my father didn’t deal well with anger. It wasn’t uncommon for him to explode into fits of rage. I don’t know what I had done this time that had gotten him so upset, but I must have felt that he was being unfair. As he turned his back on me to walk away, I blurted out, “I hate you!”
It’s not an uncommon thing for a kid to say in the heat of anger, because kids haven’t yet learned how to cope with strong emotions. If you’re a parent, you know what I’m talking about.
My father didn’t respond. In fact, he didn’t say anything to me at all for several days. He gave me the silent treatment. He ignored all of my attempts to get his attention or to try to reconnect with him. He acted as if I didn’t exist.
I felt alone, sad, guilty, and scared. As you can imagine, for a child of eight, it was excruciating to be shut off from him. And that wasn’t the only time my dad punished me with silence.
Obviously, my father wasn’t a good role model for helping me to deal with anger constructively. If he had been, he might have asked me what was upsetting me and would have helped me figure out my feelings. At the very least, he might have apologized for getting so angry.
Instead, he responded in a way that was anxiety-provoking, guilt-inducing, and painful. His tendency to act in this way made an indelible impression on me and my nervous system that I have struggled with for much of my life. The message I got was clear: Anger is bad and dangerous to a relationship; it brings disdain, loss of approval, and abandonment.
It’s not that my father didn’t love me. I know now that he loved me very much. But he had a really hard time managing his emotions. This came from his own early experiences in his family where he learned the very same thing that he ended up teaching me.
During our volatile exchange, I’m sure something deep in his brain had gotten triggered and had gotten the best of him. Some old unprocessed feelings came up, and caused him to withdraw and shut down.
At the time, he didn’t understand what kind of damage his reaction was causing. He was actually doing the best he knew how. Fortunately, he’s grown and changed a lot since then and so have I.
But that kind of treatment affected the way my brain got wired. I grew up feeling anxious about feelings of anger. If I felt angry with someone important to me, I worried that if I spoke up or asserted myself, they would abandon me.
In my adult relationships, any sign of conflict with a partner, friend, or authority figure made me scared that something bad would happen, that I’d be punished in some way, rejected, or abandoned. In romantic relationships, I worried that I would lose our relationship if anything challenging came up.
As soon as anger arose in some way, my nervous system would respond as though I was in danger. I’d feel anxious and panicky. I’d question my feelings and inevitably I’d rationalizing away whatever was bothering me. I avoided the discomfort of honoring my emotions and talking to the other person about how I felt.
My adult relationships followed a typical pattern: They would start out with a lot of happiness and excitement, but as they continued, I’d start to feel anxious, worried, unsure, especially whenever there was any sign of conflict. I felt conflicted about my feelings and had a hard time working with them.
Every relationship has times when partners get angry or upset, and in healthy relationships, the partners can find a way to constructively deal with their emotions and talk it out with one another. But that was not a part of my software. I’d avoid having uncomfortable conversations, I’d repress my feelings, and I’d hide how I really felt.
As a result, I would often wonder why I felt so disconnected to other people. I would keep busy with my work, school, going to the gym and other activities just so I wouldn’t have to slow down and feel my real feelings.
Of course, none of this was apparent to me at the time. It was just how I’d been wired. It took many years before I understood what was going on.
Eventually a skilled and compassionate therapist helped me see how much anxiety was affecting my experience, that I was shutting myself off from my certain feelings because they felt threatening. I had been taught that strong emotions–particularly anger—were dangerous and would result in abandonment and rejection.
Now, many years later, I have a happy twenty-two-year marriage to my husband, Tim, and I’m a therapist, writer, coach, and speaker. Though I still sometimes feel that old wiring trying to take control, I’ve developed some skills to manage the anxiety or fear that can get stirred up when something is off between us or when conflict arises.
I see many clients who struggle with similar issues in their relationships. They feel excited to start out with their new romance, but as the relationship goes on, they start to struggle, they feel disconnected, shut down, or they and their partners fight a lot, or respond in ways that don’t support the health of their relationship.
They often ask me: why is this so hard?
I’ve learned that, while our specific relationship problems may be different, the underlying issue for most of us is the same.
At the core of our struggles, underneath many layers of conflict and complaints, is a fear of being emotionally present and authentic in our relationships. We’re afraid of truly expressing our feelings in a vulnerable way. We worry that the other person won’t like us or want to be with us if we tell them what’s really going on for us.
But why are we afraid of being emotionally present in our relationships?
The short answer is that—as you saw in the story about my dad and me—our adult brains are still operating on wiring that was created in the first few years of our lives. Depending on what our caretakers taught us about how to function in close relationships, we may have learned some unhealthy coping mechanisms.
If you struggle with painful romantic relationships (or even troubled relationships in general) as I have, you may be experiencing the effects of “faulty wiring.” You may have learned ways to cope with your emotions that don’t serve you anymore.
Luckily, there are ways to “re-wire” your brain for better relationships.
The first step is to understand what you learned about expressing your emotions when you were a child. Take some time to respond to these questions (separately for each parent or caregiver):
- How did your parent(s) respond to your feelings?
- Were they generally open, attentive, and responsive to your feelings?
- Did they get uncomfortable or anxious when you expressed your feelings or certain feelings in particular (e.g., anger, sadness, fear, joy, and the like)?
- Did they get distracted or seem to ignore certain feelings?
- Were some feelings okay and others not? If so, which feelings were welcomed, and which weren’t?
- Did they get irritated, frustrated, or angry at times when you expressed certain feelings?
- Did they apologize when they hurt your feelings or reacted in an unhelpful way?
- How did they respond when you were afraid or feeling vulnerable?
- How did they respond when you were angry and asserted yourself?
- How did they respond when you were affectionate and loving?
- Could you rely on them to be there for you emotionally when you needed them?
- Overall, how did it feel for you to share your vulnerable feelings with them?
Now think about whether your answers to these questions reminds you of your romantic relationships in any way. Do you ever see yourself acting in similar ways to one of your parents or caregivers when particular feelings arise in your relationship? Does your partner ever act in similar ways? If you’re in a relationship now and your partner is willing, ask them to answer these questions about their parents as well.
See if you can identify any patterns in how you both share and react to different emotions in one another.
If you’re not currently in a relationship, think about past relationships, especially particularly difficult ones.
After you get a sense of what lessons you may have learned about how to express emotions (or not) with people close to you, you’ll be in a better place to learn new ways of reacting.
Here are some tips for growing your capacity to be emotionally mindful and present when you get triggered by your feelings. .
1. Recognize and name.
When you feel a strong emotion, you may have been triggered by old wiring. You may feel out of control in your response, which is why some people say, “I don’t know what came over me!” when they get really upset.
The first step in regaining control of your emotions is to learn to identify the ones that most often trigger you. Practice observing yourself when you feel those challenging emotions. Name them as they come up. You might even want to write down the emotions that are difficult for you to cope with. This step takes a lot of practice, but it gets easier the more you do it.
2. Stop, drop, and stay.
When we feel triggered, upset, and uncomfortable, we often want to escape that emotion. We may get irritable, yell or criticize, walk away, shut ourselves in our room, or numb ourselves out.
But in order to practice being mindful of your emotions, you’ll need to learn how to stay with them and ride them out. Rather than doing what you normally do when you have those feelings, stop. Pay attention to how the emotion feels in your body. Describe it. Ask it what it’s there to teach you. You may even want to write or draw it so you can become familiar and comfortable with it.
The point is to look at it, stay with, and learn about it.
3. Pause and reflect.
When we’re in a conflict, we often feel like there’s no choice between the time we feel the strong emotion (such as anger, rage, hatred, or fear) and our response to it (yelling, becoming violent, shutting down, or running away).
But in reality, by stretching the space between the feelings arising and responding, we can create some room in which we can chose how best to respond.
So, practice feeling the challenging emotion and not responding right away. If you normally lash out with an angry statement when your partner says or does something you dislike, practice doing something else. Tell your partner you need a moment. Breathe deeply and slowly which will help to calm your nervous system. Go for a walk. Whatever you need to do to calm your distress and choose a more helpful response.
The more often you do this, the easier it will get to make better choices.
In this space that you create, reflect on what you’re feeling underneath the reactivity. If you’re feeling like lashing out, what’s underneath that? If you’re angry that your partner forgot to call you on your birthday, is there more to it? Are you feeling hurt, disappointed, or afraid of losing a sense of connection with them? Does it feel familiar? Might it be linked to feelings you had when you were a child?
Explore the emotion. Give yourself time to figure out what you’re really feeling, what you want, what you desire, and what you’d like to happen in that situation.
4. Mindfully relate your feelings.
Once you know what it is you’re really feeling and what you’d like to happen, try relating that in a calm and open way to your partner. If your partner forgot to call you, rather than yell that she doesn’t really care about you at all, maybe you can say, “I’m realizing that I feel hurt that you didn’t call me. I worry that you don’t really care about me. I would like to understand what happened.”
This will help you and your partner connect with one another, open yourselves up to one another in a more authentic way, and share your true feelings and experiences. This way, you are less likely to fall into old patterns where you may trigger one another and cause each other pain.
By being vulnerable, open, and unafraid to express your true self, you’ll connect better to your romantic partner and you can develop a better understanding of what you want in your relationship.
I speak from experience. Once I learned how to better express my emotions and what they were saying to me, I decided that I wanted a partner who would be willing to do that as well. I made the painful decision to end a 5-year relationship I’d been in which was full of conflict and, on a deep level, I knew wasn’t all that I longed for.
But in doing so, in listening to and trusting my feelings, I was able to move forward and eventually meet my husband, with whom I’ve found the space disentangle myself from my old wiring and have a healthier, satisfying relationship. To love and be loved like I mean it.
-
The Negative Impact of Not Feeling Your Feelings
“If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.” ~Sidney Banks
I spent most of my life scared of my feelings. Having feelings and expressing them made me mentally ill—or so I was led to believe by a large number of mental health professionals. When I felt sad, they labeled me as depressed. When I showed any signs of anxiety, they gave me another list of mental health disorders I needed medication for. And if I was angry? Oh well, that was the absolute worst. That clearly proved how insane and utterly out of control I was!
I didn’t understand how they couldn’t see what was really going on for me. I couldn’t understand how everyone saw me as the problem when what was happening to me was the actual problem. But that’s a story for another time.
I was brought up to be a good girl, which meant that any angry expressions were forbidden, shamed, and punished.
I wasn’t allowed to express disappointment because that made me ungrateful.
I couldn’t ask for what I wanted because that made me greedy.
I wasn’t allowed to disagree with anyone because that made me difficult.
I couldn’t express frustration because that meant I was out of control and needed to be left alone to think about my shameful behavior.
I didn’t ask for help because good girls don’t inconvenience other people.
I couldn’t be happy either because that made me attention-seeking and annoying.
I felt all the feelings, but I was taught that they were wrong, forbidden, and shameful, so it didn’t feel safe to feel them. And so I tried to suppress them. I inhibited them, pushed them away, avoided them, shamed them, and feared them.
Every time I felt something, I saw it as more evidence for how bad I was. Later on, I saw it as evidence for how broken and mentally insane I was. It drove me crazy. But it was thinking that having feelings made me insane that actually drove me insane.
I believed that what I was experiencing was wrong. I saw my feelings as problems, so I tried to hide them and not feel them. So much so that I don’t even recall feeling very happy or excited about anything. All I remember is feeling tired, lethargic, and bored. I wasn’t even fifteen years old at that time …
I continued like this for a very long time. My life felt lifeless and bleak. I don’t recall having any fun, adventures, or exciting experiences. Everything just seemed so hard. Life was something to endure, not enjoy. Enjoyment seemed to be reserved for a lucky few, and I most certainly wasn’t one of them.
It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I learned that my feelings weren’t problems, and that they didn’t make me insane. My feelings only made me one thing—human.
Feelings Lesson 1: Feelings aren’t evidence that we are broken or insane. They are evidence that we are human.
I know now that I had always been perfectly healthy, but others taught me to believe that being a little human with feelings was somehow wrong and shameful.
My feelings were a problem for others. They were inconvenient to them. And as a result of them not dealing with their own feelings—their own irritation, intolerance, and impatience—they tried to control and eliminate mine.
But what happens when we try to control or eliminate our feelings is that we deprive ourselves from experiencing the richness of life. We numb them all because we cannot selectively numb. We feel it all or nothing at all.
So if I am unwilling to feel my anger, I will eradicate other feelings with it—apart from maybe one or two that will be expressed more strongly than they would if we only let ourselves feel whatever it is that we actually need to feel.
Feelings Lesson 2: We are meant to feel all our feelings and can’t selectively numb them.
In my professional work, I have noticed that sad people usually suppress their anger and angry people usually suppress their sadness. It’s a simplistic generalization, but it is largely true. The problem is that the displaced feeling will be way more powerful and destructive than it would be if we didn’t try to control or avoid it. We avoid a feeling when it is shame-bound, when every time it arises we feel shame for feeling it.
If we feel something excessively and intensely, it’s a sign that we have shame-bound another feeling, which means that this feeling was not tolerated in our childhood, and every time it arises, our anxiety level rises. We then try to push it down to stop ourselves from feeling it, but then the energy of that feeling gets displaced and added to a feeling we believe to be more acceptable to feel and express.
The ‘more acceptable’ feeling then takes on a bigger form, and we end up having panic attacks instead of expressing our frustrations about someone. Or we get depressed instead of setting boundaries with people who treat us in disrespectful ways. Or we explode in a rage because we don’t allow ourselves to admit to feeling hurt, alone, and unsupported.
There are thousands of examples like the above. Sadly, we always believe that our misdirected expression like rage or depression is the problem we need to fix, and so we focus on the result of the problem and not on its actual cause, which means that we cannot solve it.
If we want to work through our issues, we need to identify which of our feelings are shame-bound and then reconnect with them in healthy and compassionate ways. This is a process. We are going against a lifetime of conditioning, so we need to be gentle with ourselves while persevering and getting honest with ourselves.
But it is possible. We can remove the shame-binding from all of our feelings by reminding ourselves that our feelings aren’t problems, and that feeling our feelings is what makes our human experience special.
Feelings Lesson 3: Shame-bound feelings express themselves in different and destructive ways, meaning we simply can’t not feel.
When we inhibit what we are meant to express to protect others from our feelings, because we perceive that they’re a problem for them, we reinforce the message that our feelings are problems and that we are wrong to feel them. Believing this will negatively impact our mental health and enjoyment of other people and life in general, because feelings exist for our benefit.
Our feelings exist to guide us through life. They show us what we want and what we don’t want so we can create more of the former and move away from the latter. When someone shames our feelings and encourages us to disconnect from them, they encourage us to disconnect from our emotional guidance system, which serves to help us create a great life for ourselves in which we can grow and thrive. This inevitably leads to creating an inauthentic, unfulfilling life, and stunted development.
Our feelings also show us when we believe something harmful that isn’t true: a lie of the mind.
If I believe that my anger is a sign that I am an inherently flawed human being, I feel distressed because this isn’t true. My guidance system is trying to tell me that I’m on the wrong track.
Because just like the physical pain we experience when touching something painfully hot, emotional pain tells us to move away and let go of a harmful thought. And so, our emotions highlight our state of mind. They encourage us to let go, drop, and move away from anything that doesn’t serve us or promote our personal growth.
Feelings Lesson 4: Our feelings tell us when we engage in harmful thinking.
Once we understand the purpose of our feelings, we begin to see the beauty in them. We are made to have feelings—all the feelings! We are meant to feel our feelings. Our feelings aren’t problems. They are just here to give us the full human experience. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! We have the potential to experience it all. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!
But we cannot make the most of this opportunity if we go in blind. Being cut off from our feelings is just that. It’s like trying to sail the oceans without a compass, hoping to find paradise to live in. It’s navigating life without any sense of what we want or what is good and healthy for us. As a consequence, we make many wrong choices and keep believing all the wrong things.
Our attention then goes into fixing our mistakes instead of creating a life that is most suited to who we really are. Because we simply don’t know what’s good for us and what isn’t because we don’t know what we are feeling. We are emotionally disconnected.
We have feelings that try to move us toward what’s good for us, but because we don’t like how some of them feel, we disregard them all. We try to create a successful life without any sense of what successful actually looks like for us.
Let me outline this with an example:
What was my anger during my childhood trying to tell me?
It definitely wasn’t that I was a bad and ungrateful child who was inherently flawed and devoid of any tender human qualities. My anger didn’t mean that I was disrespectful or manipulative and deserved to be hit, shouted at, shamed, and punished. My anger was trying to get me to act, to stand up for myself, to protect myself. Only I was too little.
Then.
Not now.
But I lived by those shame-bound rules for most of my life. I hated my anger. I avoided conflict. I didn’t stand up for myself when it mattered and then got myself into situations that were abusive, full of conflict, draining, and traumatic—but also unnecessary.
If I had been attuned to my anger, if I had responded to it immediately, nothing would have ever needed to escalate. I would have stood up for myself and moved away from whoever and whatever wasn’t healthy for me and didn’t contribute positively toward my growth.
I would have made very different choices and I would have lived a very different life.
Being cut off from my feelings and disconnected from my internal guidance system deprived me of the experience of life I wish I’d had.
I was doing it the hard way. I was trying to succeed going in blind. It doesn’t work. I know you know that too.
Feelings Lesson 5: Our feelings ask us to act in ways that are good for us.
So why am I going on about feeling our feelings? Because it’s the solution to many of our problems.
Instead of putting all our energy into avoiding, controlling, and eliminating our feelings, we have to become attuned to them. We have to reconnect with them so we can make better and healthier choices for ourselves. We need them. We are meant to have them. And the more we let ourselves feel them, the more easily we learn to respond to them in healthy and life-enhancing ways.
Because our feelings aren’t problems. They are not inconvenient. They are trying to move us into the direction of health and well-being on a physical, emotional, and mental level.
And in that way, they help us create a life we can actually enjoy. But only if we allow ourselves to feel them.
-
The Art of Slow Living: How to Reclaim Your Peace and Joy
“In today’s rush, we all think too much, seek too much, want too much and forget about the joy of just being.” ~Eckhart Tolle
We’re going to start with a visualization exercise. Set a timer for one minute, close your eyes, and reflect on your happiest childhood memories…
I was born into a family of wanderers, individuals who held a deeply rooted love of travel, and an even deeper sense of adventure. My happiest childhood memories are the times when we packed up our suitcases and hit the road (or the sky or the sea).
In the quiet stillness of my mind, I float away to a Hawaiian beach. Suddenly, I am once again a young adolescent lying in the sand with the ones I love as we watch the leaves of a large palm tree sway overhead, moving in front of the sun and casting long, warm shadows on the seemingly endless stretches of beach on either side of us. The crash of the waves reverberates through our ears, and a sense of peaceful stillness permeates our entire beings.
Here, we have no responsibilities, and our attention is simply focused on being present with one another.
Maybe for you, the happiest childhood memories that come to mind revolve around a favorite holiday when friends or loved ones laughed together without distractions, or spending time with brothers and sisters talking about everything and nothing, growing closer to one another.
No matter the memories that come to mind, they undoubtedly had one thing in common—in those moments we (and those around us) were free.
That’s the secret to intentional, or slow, living; when we practice patience with ourselves and others, and allow the busyness of our lives to fall away, we can feel the emotion that exists in every moment, and truly connect to the people and things around us.
Childhood is, by its very definition, an opportunity to practice slow living. When we are children we do not have the stress of our jobs, our social status, or providing for others weighing on our shoulders. Not only are our days free from responsibility, they are also free from anxiety and worry.
As we age, we have a tendency to forget the purpose of intentional living, and instead allow our days to be managed and monitored by the incessant beeping or text and email alerts and the allure of amassing social media likes.
We allow our souls to be turned away from spiritual clarity and light, believing instead that the more “stuff” we allow to fill our days, the happier we will be.
But the truth, friends, is that the happiness we so desperately seek on our busiest days is not found in the countless distractions of the world around us, but in the innocence of our hearts—the stillness and presence that has dwelled within us since we were children.
Of course, I’m not recommending that you quit your job tomorrow, forgo all of your responsibilities, and craft some sort of bubble-like lifestyle for your days.
I am suggesting that you evaluate where your priorities lie, and if you find your life has become too fast-paced to truly connect with yourself and others, that you take small action steps toward decluttering your spiritual core—the part of you that knows the answers to life’s greatest mysteries do not lie in the rush, but rather, in the moments of connection.
Living intentionally is an art, and is not something that we can master overnight, but by committing to a practice of cultivation, we can encourage relaxation of our nervous systems, begin to avoid the people and things that take our time and energy without giving us anything in return, and create a life we love—a life that is full of peace and genuine joy. Here’s how to get started:
Evaluate your life.
What do you truly want out of your life? If there were no barriers like money or power, what would you want to do and with whom would you want to do it? Consider the answers to these questions to be your sense of inner wisdom and trust the messages you receive.
Identify the people and activities that you desire to willingly surround yourself with, as well as those to whom you feel obligated, and notice how you feel when you think about these people and tasks, responding to your thoughts without judgment. Then, work on increasing the amount of time you spend doing what you love with those you love.
Little by little, you will find that you are able to take control of your life and live in a way that fulfills you, allowing you to practice intentional presence in all areas.
Understand that busyness does not equal importance.
Answering all the emails in our inboxes while we sit at the dinner table is not going to mean anything to the people who mean the most to us. While many responsibilities are unavoidable, there is something to be said for committing to presence of mind, no matter how much we may struggle with feeling like we’re missing out on something that only our devices can tell us about.
Generations ago, when professionals did not have electronic tools like cell phones or tablets, they somehow managed to complete all of their tasks and were considered by others as having contributed to society.
Somewhere along the way, that understanding became skewed, and now, we have lofty expectations for how quickly we can respond to a summons and the number of commitments we can successfully juggle at one time.
Understand that being busy does not make us successful or important; in fact, often, being too busy serves no purpose other than to detract from our connection with the people that are nearest to us.
Choose a place in your home where you will stow your cell phone and other electronics upon entering the house. When our phones are out of reach, they will almost automatically leave our minds, and we can focus on being present with the people who are physically with us.
If you find that spending all your time at home without your phone is too difficult or not reasonable for your lifestyle, establish small blocks of time (five to ten minutes maximum) that you are allowed to check your phone before re-stowing and returning your attention to the present. Over time, you will find that your need to have these phone breaks becomes less and less frequent.
Find silence.
Our world is noisy—there is no other way to describe it. Yet, we’ve become so accustomed to the din of our environment that we have seemingly become immune to noticing how this constant chaos negatively impacts us physically and spiritually.
When was the last time you spent a moment in silence? It’s probably been quite some time, if you can even remember a moment free from noise at all. Our culture perpetuates trepidation around quiet, wanting to fill every pause with some sort of sound effect or reverie, so it’s important for us, as we pursue a slower lifestyle, to create a space in our lives that is free from distractions.
Find a way to bring calm and quiet into your life whether it comes through a daily practice of meditation, a walk through the silence of nature, or a peaceful moment spent in bed before you close your eyes to rest. Pursuing peace will lead to a regular commitment to quiet and allow you to grow in your understanding of what it means to be truly present.
—
I’m not the little girl on the Hawaiian beach anymore. I have real responsibilities and accountabilities just like you do. But, by committing to a practice of slow living, of practicing intention and presence in my days, I am helping her to continue to grow and thrive.
No matter your age or where you are on your journey, you can reclaim a piece of your innocent joy as well—the childhood version of yourself is still inside you, waiting for you to commit to their well-being.
-
3 Practices That Help Ease the Pain of Being Highly Empathetic
“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” ~Walt Whitman
Empathy is the ability to put yourself in another’s experience and understand with depth the gravity of their situation. In general, I believe the world needs more empathy.
But I’ve learned over the course of my twenty-nine years that sometimes being a highly empathetic person is incredibly painful. And sometimes too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
Hearing stories of the pain that people experience can be extra painful when your mind tries to carry their pain around with you. Empathy is healthy when it’s useful and helps a wounded person feel understood and validated and release their pain. But it’s unhealthy when you carry it with you as if it is your own.
Feeling sorrow for someone who is suffering is part of our humanity and connection to each other. Carrying the sorrow as if it belongs to you ends up feeling traumatizing and can cause you to disconnect from others.
I’ve always struggled with holding on to the pain of others. From the stories of suffering I hear on the news to the people I run across in my everyday life, I’ve found it difficult not to get lost in their pain and end up holding on to it. When that problem hit even closer to home, I reached a breaking point that ended up teaching me how to stop it.
My sister is a nurse who was working on a trauma unit floor the day she was assaulted by a patient. Seeing the bruises covering her face and her eyes swollen shut was a gut wrenching experience. For months after that my mind turned over and over again how she must have felt.
I’d see the surprise and fear on her face in my mind’s eye. I’d feel the terror and the pain. And the overwhelming relief when he was finally off of her. Followed by the sense of humiliation and vulnerability at being alone on the floor.
She was wounded. My overly empathetic brain created me as the second wounded one.
I am a highly sensitive woman who struggles with both ADHD and Anxiety. These three challenges come together into the perfect storm to torture me with too much empathy sometimes.
High sensitivity makes me more attuned to others. ADHD makes it extra difficult to control my runaway thoughts. Anxiety creates a sense of ongoing vulnerability that keeps the wound open. This perfect storm has required a strong internal set of resources to combat it. In the traumatic aftermath of my sister’s assault, I finally found the recipe for that resource.
These three things have helped me reduce the internal wounding of being too empathetic.
Mindful Attention to Words without Pictures
I was on the phone with my mom as she was processing what happened to my sister, and I noticed that the most painful part of it all was the movie reel playing in my head as my mind interpreted her story in pictures.
I couldn’t bear the emotional onslaught that I could feel coming and somewhat intuitively picked up on a mindfulness tool that I now swear by. As she continued, I made a conscious effort to hear only her words. To only focus on her words.
When my mind started to create the overwhelming pictures, I would return my focus to the sound of the words themselves. I tried to hear the words and only understand them to the extent of their definition—devoid of the extra meaning and emotional context I had been attaching to them.
Even though this practice was difficult to do, I was able to leave that conversation without feeling re-wounded. And that was a first.
A Mindful Mantra
It wasn’t just the conversations and specific triggers that created the wounded feeling. My anxious ADHD brain would recreate the story on its own. It would play that movie of what my sister experienced start to finish. In those moments, there were no words to attend to. There was only me and my sometimes-torturous brain.
It was out of that experience that I developed what I’ll call my mindful mantra. It starts with the recognition that my thoughts have run away from me. When I see that, I imagine that it was all playing out on a picture book that I can see myself firmly shut. I even imagine the sound of a book being forcefully shut.
Then the mantra. Every time I catch myself in this place I use the same mantra, and over time it has become helpful in its own right. This could be anything, but for me, my mantra goes like this:
“Nothing good goes down this path.”
It serves as a reminder that there is nothing useful to me or to the wounded person (in this case my sister) in fixating on their painful (now past) experience. It’s also a subtle reminder that choosing to stop the internal battle isn’t hurtful to the person who’s been wounded.
With that, I find that I can practice the next skill before re-engaging myself in something else.
A New Visual for Letting Go
Sometimes the mind tries to hold on as if it’s not quite ready to let go. My ADHD mind has extra trouble with this. It’s in those moments that I practice this mindful visual exercise. I sometimes need to practice it several times before my brain is ready to transition on to something more helpful.
But like any mindfulness practice, I find that the more I bring my mind back to the exercise, the better it gets at using the exercise for letting go.
I see my thoughts (or sometimes the book in which I closed them up) floating down a river. I grew up in an area with a ton of amazing waterfalls that debut in this visual exercise. I visualize a powerful, tall waterfall like the ones I grew up with and I see my thoughts fall over the edge.
Then I stand and watch them flow on the river beneath until they are completely out of my sight.
After this, I’ve found that it can be helpful to engage myself in another activity to help my brain transition. Sometimes that looks like a good movie or a walk with my husband. Other times, it’s a hobby or project I’m interested in that helps grab my attention.
If the movie reel starts to play again, I send it back over the waterfall.
With these strategies, I’ve been able to finally find some peace with my mind. Even though they are challenging strategies that sometimes take practice, I’ve found them to be well worth the effort.
-
Understanding Is Love (and the World Needs More Love)
“Understanding is love’s other name. If you don’t understand you can’t love.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
I recently attended a weekend workshop, and there was a man in the group who always had a strange look on his face whenever we had to look for a partner to work with. I noticed that some people avoided him, like they didn’t want to work with him. Perhaps it was the vibe he gave off because of the way he looked at people.
At some point later in the weekend I sat with him. It was hard to put my finger on it, but there was something about him that did feel a little strange, and I could see that other people were put off by him.
After the weekend had finished, we happened to be sitting next to each other and started talking, which somehow led to him telling me that he is almost completely blind. With his contact lenses in he can see okay, but the low light of the room made it very hard for him to make out faces.
In that moment I understood. That was why he gave off a weird vibe—because he was having trouble seeing. The “look” he gave was simply a result of him trying to see and ultimately connect with someone.
The internal label I’d given him of “strange” dissolved in an instant, and in that same moment I felt an opening in my heart. It was an unconditional level of understanding that brought with it a sense of peace and connection.
Understanding and Letting Go
We often get frustrated or angry with the people around us, projecting our emotions and frustrations onto them when we don’t understand them. The moment we understand, it can change our whole attitude, creating a space of opening.
Imagine you’re driving your car, and the car in front of you starts slowing down. You don’t know why they’re slowing down, so you get frustrated and possibly impatient. Maybe you start verbalizing your frustration, or perhaps you even honk your horn in an effort to release some of your tension.
Then you see an elderly woman crossing the road, moving very slowly.
In that moment your frustration softens, because you now understand why the driver in front of you was slowing down. They saw something you didn’t.
We can take understanding in this example even further. You also understand the woman moving slowly. Perhaps you have a mother or grandmother who moves slowly, or you realize that one day, as you age, this could be you, and you’d appreciate drivers slowing down for you. Or maybe you’re young but injured.
Understanding creates a mental shift enabling us to replace reactive emotions and disconnection with compassion and connection.
Understanding Is a State of Mind
Understanding is more than something we do, as in trying to understand someone else’s perspective or how they feel. Yes, this is part of it, but understanding is also a state of mind that we can cultivate. Just like joy, enthusiasm, sadness, or frustration are states of mind that govern the way we experience life.
When we feel joyous, we think, act, and respond to life in a certain way—joyfully. When we feel frustrated, we think, act, and react to life in a different way—finding reasons to justify our frustration everywhere.
Understanding is a state of mind that makes us feel more peaceful, compassionate, and connected, creating an attitude of “us” as opposed to a “me vs. you” mentality.
When we proactively nurture an understanding mindset, we approach people with openness—even if they’re difficult—because we’re committed to always looking beneath the surface instead of making judgments and assumptions.
We may not always know why someone acts the way they do. But an attitude of understanding does not actually require us to know the exact details of other people’s story.
Understanding at its deepest level is just like love—an unconditional understanding of another’s humanness. We don’t have to know their story, but we can appreciate they’re going through the human experience, just like us.
Cultivating an Attitude of Understanding
There are various ways to cultivate understanding in your life, but I’d love to share a reflective exercise here to help you understand and connect more deeply to yourself and humanity.
Think of a time when you lost it. A situation when you got angry or frustrated. Maybe a family member did something that really upset you, or maybe someone undermined you at work. The reason why does not matter here; you’re not trying to justify it, and you’re definitely not judging it as right or wrong.
When you have that memory in mind, just feel it. Feel the sensations in your body—the intensity, the heat, or the thoughts and emotions that come with it. If it’s uncomfortable, that’s okay.
Don’t try and change it. Just feel it.
As you feel it, notice that in that moment you were unable to maintain peace inside yourself.
We can’t be at peace inside while reacting with anger.
I’m not suggesting there should be a suppression of anger in any way. This is about recognizing the truth of what’s happening inside us when we react with anger. When it happens unconsciously there’s nothing we can do about it—the result being we act mindlessly. But when we consciously pay attention, we deepen our self-awareness, and this gives us the opportunity to choose how we act.
I had an experience at a coffee shop where I was returning my drink because they’d made the wrong one. When I told the woman at the cashier they’d made the wrong order she was quite rude, and told me bluntly, “That’s what you ordered!”
It caught me by surprise. Her attitude made me feel like I was being accused of something I didn’t do. I could feel myself getting angry and ready to defend myself.
I felt a wave of intensity come up inside me.
As I was about to react and get into an argument with her, there was a moment where instead of feeling my anger, I could feel she was stressed. Something was bothering her, even before our interaction. I don’t know what it was, but it was enough for me to pause, reflect, and understand that we often don’t know what’s causing someone to act the way they do. We can never know what’s happened in their lives just before we began interacting with them.
There are so many different reasons why someone might be stressed or upset—an argument or breakup, chronic back pain, the death of a loved one, or inability to pay their mortgage to name a few possible explanations.
That moment of understanding her human nature allowed me to let go of my reaction. I’d taken her reaction personally, and it put me in a state of “you vs. me” where I was ready to fight to defend myself. And I would have felt quite justified in doing so because I felt falsely accused. But if I had, it would’ve just been me reacting to her reaction, and we likely would have ended up in an argument.
Reaction versus reaction = conflict.
The world is already so full of conflict. If we want to create more peace in the world, we have to choose not to take things personally and instead respond with understanding, compassion, connection, and peace.
I’m not suggesting it’s easy, but I believe moments like these offer an opportunity to live from our heart when a natural reaction is conflict.
For me, in this case, the shift to understanding opened my heart and created a sense of peace and connection to the woman.
She must have felt it on some level, because without me pushing back at her with my own reaction, she also softened. Something dropped, and she simply asked the barista to make me a new beverage.
Whatever was bothering her before was still there, but I could feel she wasn’t projecting it outward onto me.
A moment of understanding can change everything.
The World Needs More Love (Understanding)
We often judge or complain about other people’s actions, but if we can pause and be honest with ourselves, we’ll realize we often do something of a similar nature ourselves.
Everyone has different life stories and traumas that condition their unique personality, but we all experience moments when we’re unable to maintain peace inside, so even though we may not know someone’s exact story, we’re still capable of understanding.
Instead of wasting our energy judging or complaining about others, we can put ourselves in their shoes and understand that we struggle with similar emotional challenges. This allows us to be more present and compassionate, cultivate deeper self-awareness, and connect on a human level.
Imagine a world where more people chose understanding and truth rather than reaction and conflict.
But ultimately imagining it is not enough; it’s a good start, but we need to act. We need to live and engage life from our heart.
“Understanding is love’s other name…”
“Understanding is an avenue into love. It’s also an expression of love in action. When we enter into understanding we are entering into love… and “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” ~Jimi Hendrix
What kind of a world do you want to live in?
Will you choose understanding instead of reaction today?
