Tag: wisdom
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Your Anger is a Guide: Embrace It and Set Yourself Free
“Where there is anger there is always pain underneath.” ~Eckhart Tolle
In the sixth year of marriage, my husband shocked me by telling me that he had decided on an open marriage. This would give him permission to do what he was already doing, having an affair.
In one of my rare times of anger I argued and struggled with him. I can still see myself hitting him in the chest as he tried to put his arms around me to reassure me of his love.
As he defended his position, he reminded me that I wasn’t being rational. I stopped protesting because that charge impacted me immediately. Logic and rationality were my guides.
This surge of anger was new in my life. I had learned to bury my feelings, especially anger, growing up in my Japanese-American family where we hid most emotions.
Adding to pushing down my feelings, I relied on intellect, my head, and dismissed my heart.
When he attacked a vulnerable spot—to be rational—I became silent. It was the first of three betrayals I lived quietly through over the years.
I swallowed two other screams of “No!” when, over the years, I learned about two other women, who intruded not only into my life, but also into my home.
Why would any woman stand for this?
Besides suppressing my emotions, I also learned from a young age to make the needs of the group, the others, more important than my own.
Throughout my life, I let other people’s needs define my life.
I disregarded my anger and I disregarded my needs.
Why Burying Anger is a Recipe for Unhappiness
When you bury anger, more than your anger is involved—you dampen all emotions, including joy.
In my case, I was the model of a well-adjusted successful professional and, after I divorced my husband, a single mom.
Inside a deep discontent lived undetected in my heart. It wasn’t until I slowed down in early retirement that I became aware of it.
When you don’t have anger, you may think that there’s nothing wrong with your life.
Why We Often Choose to Bury Our Anger
You learn in childhood that adults don’t like you being angry. When you throw a temper tantrum, large or small, you get punished for it.
This teaches you that being angry is bad and you should keep it to yourself.
As an adult, when anger gets the best of you and you show it, people around you don’t respond well to it either.
Some get frightened by anger. Others get defensive or angry in return. Exchanges full of anger often lead to regret and shame. They can even end a close friendship–a price you don’t want to pay.
Embracing Your Anger Does Not Mean Throwing Tantrums
When you express your anger, you think that you’re right and that the other person or situation needs to change. Or you say regretful, stupid things fueled by anger.
In any case, you believe that someone or something outside you is the cause of your anger. This stance makes it easy to miss the early signal to go inside and investigate.
Embracing anger is turning inward to know your heart. It means spending time with your anger to learn what is under it—what’s really going on.
Treat Every Inner Disturbance as a Clue
Nothing changed in my life until I started to pay attention to all disturbances in peace I experienced, the little irritations, annoyances that were signs of anger. I began to appreciate whatever anger bubbled up because I saw it as a guide.
Here’s an instance of a little annoyance I would have disregarded earlier in my life. I was talking with my partner on a walk through downtown about some insights I had about an important relationship. He interrupted me to point out how a new hotel construction was being completed, with details that could be barely seen at night.
I felt disturbed, but instead of just burying that feeling like I normally would, I asked myself why I felt that way. I realized the annoyance pointed to anger about attention taken away from me. Needing attention from people who matter is a need I have. If I don’t get the attention, I feel like I don’t matter.
I also recognized that my typical strategy would be to remain silent and let my partner go on. But instead of being silent, I stepped out of the pattern to speak up and stand with a new belief that I am important and deserving of attention.
In this instance, once noticing the disturbance and realizing what it meant, I said, “What I’m saying is more important to me than what you’re pointing out that I can see another time.”
My message was accepted with a small apology.
Attuned to the energy of anger, I found it hidden in jealousy, envy, blame, frustration, disappointment, regret, withdrawal, stubbornness, and shame.
I even found it in my lack of kindness in talking to my partner, my banging cupboard doors, my prolonged silence, and my criticism and judgment of others.
When you follow each sign of anger you will find what is buried in your heart. You will discover what you need to resolve lifelong patterns that limited your growth.
Through Your Anger You Discover Your Needs, Beliefs, and Strategies
I began to know and honor the needs underlying my anger, such as my needs for acknowledgement and attention as I describe above.
I also realized I had many limiting beliefs that stemmed back to my childhood, when my needs weren’t met. This is where my feeling of not mattering came from, but now I could recognize it and deal with it.
Related to these beliefs I also saw the variety of limiting strategies I adopted trying to get these needs met. Some of these were being an over-achiever, a perfectionist, and overly self-reliant.
To illustrate, I recently felt angry when I didn’t make the cut in auditioning for a voice ensemble. When I stayed with my anger, I found the pain of a wounded young-child who believed she wasn’t worthy, and saw clearly her strategies of people-pleasing and over-achieving that failed to get her what she wanted.
Not only does your anger guide you to your needs but it helps you recognize the limiting beliefs and strategies that run your life. These were created and adopted early in childhood by a very young child and their limitations deserve examination.
Deeply Exploring Your Anger Involves a Commitment
Taking full advantage of honoring your anger involves taking the time to begin a process of discovery.
This means remembering to remain the adult compassionate witness to what is there, and not identifying with or be taken over by the anger, and finally remaining with the anger long enough until you drop into what is beneath it.
You may discover child-like vulnerability, fears, helplessness, and pain.
When you integrate with lost parts of you, you deconstruct the patterns that run your life and free your original innocent heart to shine through.
You are Richly Rewarded for Embracing Anger
When you are one with your heart, you know not only your needs for safety, love, and community but your deep longings for meaning and purpose.
You consciously make choices true to your heart.
Then your heart opens—to love more and deeply; to reveal its wisdom; to see the world as an innocent child; to be present and accepting for all that shows up; and much more.
Embracing anger may be counter-intuitive, but in doing so you become aware of old, unconscious reactive patterns. In becoming aware of these patterns you free yourself to choose from a place of power.
Fully in your power you allow yourself to be fully present to experience life from the only moment you ever have—this present moment.
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East vs. West: Major Cultural Differences That Impact Our Happiness
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” ~John Milton
I’ve been living in Asia for over a year now, spending six months each in Nepal and Vietnam, with a bit of traveling around India and Sri Lanka in the middle. I wanted to put pen to paper on what strikes me as a few of the major cultural differences between the East and the West. I can see things that each side could do with a bit more of. But here I’m going to concentrate on what I’ve learned and what I’m going to take home with me.
Beware: I am going to generalize a lot for the purpose of this blog, so please take everything I say with a pinch of salt and be aware of my potentially rose-tinted view of Asia!
Family
Family is important no matter where you live; this is simply human nature. But I cannot help but think that the family plays a more important role in everyday life out here.
Where I live, in the UK, people are often encouraged to move out when they hit adulthood. We are propelled to either start focusing on our own future or go explore the world around us. Basically, when we hit eighteen, our parents are ready for a long-awaited break.
In Asian countries, unless you take the increasingly popular choice to study abroad, chances are you will still live at home when you study. Family is life. Particularly in Nepal, they see the idea of living on your own as absurd; people are always around and that is the norm.
There are many festivities throughout the year where feasts and family gatherings are the focus. When a woman gets married, she will go and live with the husband’s family, not like in the UK where you move out to your own house, just the two of you. The mother of the husband takes a big role in helping raise the kids.
Care homes are for the elderly and are extremely hard to come by—what a cruel idea to turf out the people who bought you into this world when they start to become a burden—so houses are always full and bursting with young and old and everything in between. They are often big houses, which will be passed down through generations. This strong and unbreakable family unit breeds love, laughter, and security!
So, if you’re anything like me, you might be thinking, “How is that possible that the families can all live under one roof happily, without killing each other?” As much as I love my family, we are all very different, and I think if we all lived together now, it would be a warzone waiting to happen. Now that we don’t all live under the same roof any longer, to be honest, we get along much better! So, what’s the difference here?
Relationships
I think a lot of it comes down to forgiveness. Being able to make a joke out of things and be light-hearted. Families will argue in every country; that’s pretty much a guarantee. But if your family lets that get the better of them, then they are probably from countries where it is more acceptable for families to breakdown.
We have a culture of separation and divorce in the West—if it’s not working, we often throw the blame at our partner. We think “I can do better.”
That being said, for whatever reason, sometimes partners aren’t a good fit. For example, if you are constantly arguing or your partner is abusive, you should probably not stay together.
You need to listen to your head rather than your heart sometimes. Our hearts have a way of making us think we want someone more when we can’t have them, don’t have them, or when they treat us badly; it somehow keeps us wanting more. This isn’t true love; it’s just a very powerful illusion. In the East I think this is better understood. In the West our hearts and feelings are the ruler of our actions.
How do our feelings rule in the West? When seeking a mate, we must first feel that feeling, and if we don’t feel anything instantly, then that person is not right for us, and we keep on searching. If this person doesn’t tick all of our high expectations, immediately, then maybe they are not right for us.
As well as fancying them, they must also be funny, good looking, interested in the same things as us, hold the same political views as us, like the same films and music as us, wear the right clothes, have the same attitude toward things, and the list goes on and on. This is essentially writing off most people without giving them a chance.
Our society is very individualistic by nature; we can be whoever we want to be, and the choice is endless. Our society is born from people asking the questions “What is special about me? Why am I unique and better?” It’s engrained in us from a very young age and is tied up in our economic culture. The result? A difficulty in finding someone who we are willing to commit our own special, unique life to.
My grandma told me the most important thing in a relationship is chemistry. I was shocked because I assumed she was talking about sexual chemistry, being attracted to someone. It seems in the west our definitions and understandings of lust and love have been blurred. But after living in Asia, I realize chemistry is much deeper than being instantly attracted to someone.
That excited, euphoric, and bloody great feeling we get when we first start a relationship with someone, is, sorry to break it to you, short-lived. The “chemistry” my grandma was referring to is clicking with somebody on a more personal level.
Some people we click with and our interaction is just natural from the offset. This might be because we are actually quite similar to this person. With these people we are often able to be honest without feeling judged or wrong, and we are able to be completely our self. This is the foundation for a fruitful relationship, which is a lot like a strong friendship.
In the West we dismiss this. To love someone, it must be a rollercoaster ride full of highs and lows. Once the honeymoon period is over, we assume we have fallen out of love with that person. We stop trying and resentment occurs.
Real love is a choice, and it is available to all of us. If you aim to understand each other, there can always be forgiveness. This doesn’t happen naturally, though; you have to work for relationships. Make the jump, swallow your pride, see it from the other person’s viewpoint, and apologize. The great thing about wholeheartedly apologizing is it’s infectious, and will usually always end in the other person apologizing too.
That is the one big difference for the relationships that endure in these Asian countries: People don’t have such a warped view of what relationships will give them.
In the East, people don’t go on an endless quest to find “the one.” They recognize that relationships are born out of circumstances and chance, and you make a choice to commit to someone who is right for you.
In the UK, and especially the younger generations, we search and search for the perfect relationship, the relationship that will make our life complete, the thing people talk about in songs and films.
In the West, more often than not, we expect to find a love that will find us complete happiness, but we don’t realize that actually we need a lot of different things to be happy, and relationships are just a part of that.
We should fulfill our needs by being proactive, taking joy from a range of things, and not expect our partner to miraculously be able to give us everything we want. A good, strong relationship is a place of love, happiness, stability, and possibility.
Mentality
People in Asia really know how to laugh. If something goes wrong, rather than seeing it as an awful disaster that is unfixable or highly stressful, people often have that magical gift of being able to see the funny side to it.
This view transforms situations. Rather than seeing a job that you do as crucial to the world spinning on its axis, being able to think “Oh well” is actually a blessing in itself. Especially in Nepal, people are incredibly laid back and take their job less seriously.
I am not saying this doesn’t come without its problems. Believe me, I’m aware that it’s important to value our jobs and understand their value. But I really think it’s something we would benefit from a little bit too.
In Nepal, there is not such a need to rush, and people can go at a more leisurely pace, stopping to talk to each other and appreciate the most important thing around them—the people.
I think in the West often we are so busy getting the job done that we forget we can make our days much brighter by offering a friendly smile or having a chat with the person next to us about some irrelevant news story or how good our sandwich is.
When I’m back in the UK I want to allow myself to slow down some of the time, and maybe put the effort in to go and sit in someone’s office just for a chat. I want to actively go out of my way to make every day a little bit nicer and a little less busy or monotonous.
Living away for a year has allowed me to look at my home from a different angle. I used to think my town was boring, and I couldn’t imagine living there long term. Other cities had better nightlife or had more culture.
In the West, we live in a sort of runaway culture. When things get too much, we want to up and leave. We scroll through people’s vacation pictures and we think we will be happier in this place or that. We blame our unhappiness on things around us—the city, the house, the partner.
We forget that if we want to be happy, it’s in our hands. We have to take practical step toward happiness—having a job that feels important and meaningful to us and having meaningful relationships whereby we feel understood. It sounds simple, and once you find it, you feel it.
Now I’ll return home with fresh eyes. I know what is important now. It isn’t how beautiful my town is, because at the end of the day beauty always fades and novelty always subsides.
It doesn’t matter where you are in the world. It’s ultimately the people that make it, starting with yourself and your willingness to appreciate what’s around you. The rest is just kind of like a backdrop. It’s all about perspective.
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Healing from Childhood Abuse: Get Help and Take Your Life Back
TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of sexual abuse and may be triggering to some people.
“No one loses their innocence. It is either taken or given away willingly.” ~Tiffany Madison
Childhood innocence. When I think of it I always picture a baby lying on their back, playing with their feet. They are laughing, cooing, smiling, and lost in a sense of wonder. Full of joy, love, curiosity, and awe. When you look at them you can’t help but smile, and their joy and laughter are infectious. At this moment, they are perfect.
Now have all that taken away from them through abuse, abandonment, or neglect, removing their ability to feel safe, joyful, loved, and whole. You have taken their soul and spirit from them. Imagine the handicap that this child has to live with. I’m sure for most it’s hard to wrap your head around it.
Well, let me tell you what I have learned through my experience of being sexually abused, neglected, and abandoned in my childhood. I grew up lost, scared, on guard, and alone. I found it hard to fit in or connect with people. I was unsure of everything, especially myself. I did not know who I was, what I wanted, or which direction to go in.
I bought in to my father’s harsh criticism of most things I did. I never felt like I could please him or live up to his expectations, so I just stopped trying. I didn’t just stop trying to please him; I stopped trying anything. However you want to frame it, I gave up or gave in.
Childhood abuse makes it impossible to sustain all those things that make life worth living. I feel that it was only through the grace of god that I didn’t take my life. Just existing is no way to live. Dragging yourself through your life can be exhausting, tedious, and unfulfilling.
I became a casualty of the abuse I endured. Today I know that without the help that I needed my downfall was inevitable. It was the natural conclusion of the path set forth for me in my childhood.
I hear the redirect all the time—stop being a victim, just get over it, and your parents did the best they could. Do we tell rape victims to stop being a victim and just get over it?
Some might be appalled by this comparison. It’s easy to do when you, yourself, have never suffered abuse or neglect.
When I was sexually abused at age five, I was as powerless as any rape victim. I didn’t have the physical ability to protect myself, or the cognitive ability to understand what was happening to me or put it into words to tell someone.
The same can be said for any child that has suffered neglect. If they have been neglected all their life, it becomes the norm for them. They don’t even realize that it should or could be any different for them. And if they do, there is almost nothing a child can do to change it.
I understand it is hard for those who have never experienced abuse or neglect to wrap their heads around it. What they need to know is that it happens all the time and is more prevalent than anyone wants to admit.
What amazes me about child abuse is how it seems we have ducked our head in the sand about it. Studies show that one in four women have been abused and one in six men. If you average that to be one in five, considering the US population is almost 323 million, that means that there are about 64.5 million child abuse survivors in the US alone.
In the US today there are approximately 22.5 million dealing with cancer at any time. Please understand, I am not comparing the two at all; just using the numbers to make a statement.
More than 65 million people in the US today are suffering the effects of child abuse, and yet it is not really on our radar. Like any horrible disease, child abuse is crippling and debilitating. It affects us emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually, making the problem hard to detect and harder to treat.
It didn’t surface for me until I got clean and stopped managing my feeling with drugs. By managing them, I mean numbing myself.
At eighteen months clean I found myself curled up in the fetal position on my couch in a tidal wave of emotional pain. I felt I only had three options, which I considered in this order: kill myself, get high, or reach out for help. Through grace I was able to call out for help and get myself in to an ACOA (adult children of alcoholics) therapy group and one-on-one sessions with a therapist.
Children who have been abused or neglected were victims. What keeps them in that mode is that they blame themselves for what happened to them, as if they somehow deserved it. No one does.
If your parents or caregivers physically hurt you, sexually violated you, neglected you, or emotionally scarred you through shaming, belittling, or humiliation, you were a victim. And no matter what they told you—no matter what you were like as a child—it was not your fault.
The process of healing and recovering from what has happened to you starts with accepting that you were a victim.
This will allow you to begin releasing your shame and recognize that those who abused or neglected you were responsible for what happened, not you. And that will enable you to work through the negative emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual effects of your abuse.
I used drugs and alcohol to “get over” what happened to me in my childhood. I used the love, compassion, understanding, and support of the people I entrusted to get through what happened to me and reach the other side.
Finding recovery brought me to people that would care about me and love me as I was. These people brought me to the professional help that I needed. That help brought me to people who understood me and have lived in my shoes. Those people brought me back to who I was and wanted to be as a child before my innocence was taken.
If you are dealing with the effects of growing up in a dysfunctional family please, find a support group to attend in your area. If you need more extensive help, the people in those support groups will help you find professionals in the area that can treat your issues.
Help is available to everyone, but you need to reach out and ask for it. I know because I have done it, and I am just like you.
You don’t have to live your life feeling depressed, unworthy, or dependent on unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as drugs, alcohol, or food, which will only temporarily numb your pain. You don’t need to spend the rest of your days following the trajectory chosen for you when someone else took away your innocence.
It is possible to reclaim who you could have been, but you have to first acknowledge that you were a victim, confront the pain and the shame, and let other people in so they can help.
Are you willing to reach out for help so you can take your life back?
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How Defensive Pessimism Can Help Ease Your Worries
“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.” ~Corrie Ten Boom
You know if you’re a worrier.
You worry about all kinds of negative things happening, without any evidence that they’re likely to happen.
I’m a recovering worrier.
It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve become conscious of the extent of my worry and the impact it has on me, and of how ineffective it is.
My worry paralyzes me, making it hard to think, plan, or act.
But, as anyone who is prone to worry knows, worry can feel productive. It feels like you’re doing something useful.
When I’m told to relax and stop worrying about something, I will defend my worry. Justify it. It feels right!
But here’s the problem.
Worry is the most useless habit, a decoy, a waste of precious time, energy, and attention.
And it completely undermines your self-confidence.
Worry doesn’t actually do anything to help prevent the future outcome you’re afraid of.
In fact, in some cases, it can make it more likely to happen.
I had my first serious relationship in my early twenties. The more serious the relationship became, the more afraid I felt.
I hadn’t felt so vulnerable before. It felt like such a risk. I was opening up to someone and showing them who I was, when there was a chance that they could decide that they didn’t like what they saw.
I started to worry more and more that he would leave me.
I became more insecure and jealous. When we went out, we would inevitably end up fighting.
I felt so out control, and the more I worried, the less in control I felt.
Over time, I recognized that my lack of trust in myself to cope if he should leave was at the heart of my worry.
The more I became conscious of what I was doing with my worry, the more ridiculous I realized it was.
I was spending so much time and energy worrying about what could go wrong that I wasn’t enjoying what was in front of me.
In fact, it was quite likely that if I kept on doing what I was doing, I would contribute to the relationship ending.
Developing Trust in Your Ability to Cope with the Worst
While many people encourage positive thinking, it turns out that for people prone to anxiety, this may not always be the best advice.
It’s far better to think negatively.
Huh?
This is a strategy called defensive pessimism. It’s a way to help you manage your worry so that you can plan and act effectively, and build your confidence in your ability to cope with challenges.
Here’s how it works:
When you notice yourself worrying about something, stop.
Ask yourself what you’re worrying about. When left to its own devices, your worry will just run on autopilot, bringing you all kinds of negative possibilities, but you probably won’t even realize that you’re doing that.
All you’ll be aware of is that you don’t feel good.
So becoming conscious that you’re even worrying is a difficult but important first step.
Say, for example you’re worried about a presentation at work. If you tell someone that you’re worried about it they’ll probably offer some well-intentioned: “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll be great.”
To which you’ll responds, either aloud in in your mind something along the lines of: “But what if I’m not? What if it goes terribly and I humiliate myself?”
That’s where defensive pessimism kicks in.
Instead of trying not to think about it, you allow yourself to think about all the things that could go wrong. Then you start figuring out how you’ll handle things if they do go wrong.
What if I do humiliate myself? How would I deal with that?
Asking yourself those questions and developing plans to cope has been shown to help anxiety-prone people feel more in control, and is a far more effective worry strategy than “Don’t worry.”
For me, being reassured by my boyfriend or other people that he loved me never seemed to be terribly effective. But when I started allowing myself to think about what I would do if he did leave me, how I would cope with the pain and grief, I started to worry less and be more present and real in the relationship.
I realized that I was allowing my whole sense of self-worth and value to hinge on someone else’s approval.
If I was rejected, then I would see myself as not good enough.
Once I realized this, my plan became working on my self-worth. I practiced recognizing when I started feeling vulnerable and would change the story I was telling myself and the assumptions I was making. Therapy played an important part in helping me shift the beliefs that were making me feel insecure and inadequate.
I practiced changing my self-talk to become more encouraging and supportive. I’d say things like “Even if we break up, it doesn’t mean there is something wrong with me. We’re both learning and growing all the time, and our needs may change.”
I also realized that I was underestimating my ability to cope with and recover from challenges.
Just reminding myself of my own strength, the challenges that I’d overcome in the past, and my network of supportive family and friends helped me realize that although I would grieve the end of the relationship, I was far more capable of coping with it than I was giving myself credit for.
Focusing on these aspects, rather than on endlessly and unproductively worrying, has been key to shifting my confidence, both in my value and my ability to cope with challenges.
