Tag: wisdom
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Transforming Pain into Power: The Magic of Emotional Alchemy
If it weren’t for my darkest moments, I wouldn’t appreciate the life I have today. I’ve overcome a lot, and my biggest battle wasn’t the hurdles themselves but how they made me feel, draining my energy and desire for life until I nearly lost it completely. I’m sharing my story to give you hope. If I can transform pain into beauty through emotional alchemy, you can, too.
I’m not going to lie and say my journey has been easy. Nor is it over; overcoming a lifetime of dysfunctional patterns from a toxic childhood and challenging adult experiences takes time. However, it is so very worth it. Here’s how I perform emotional alchemy, and you can, too.
My “Shawshank” Moment
Although I didn’t always recognize how childhood trauma led to my adult victimization, I now see how it created the conditions. My inner child wasn’t only wounded; I, in many ways, was still a child.
I grew up in a household where anger was the primary emotion, and that seed remained within me. When an adult tragedy struck, I watered it, first directing it at a world I felt was impossibly cruel and finally against myself.
The seed sprouted when I became chronically ill with disabling symptoms that gradually robbed me of my ability to work a traditional job. I lost everything, including my home.
Because I had never learned how to relate to others, I didn’t know where to turn for help and was convinced that I would be ridiculed for asking. Having never learned how to set appropriate boundaries as a child, I pushed away the few people who tried to lend a hand, suspecting ulterior motives.
Accepting assistance was burdening another, something strong, capable, worthy people didn’t do, and the people who offered aid had something up their sleeves.
Homeless and feeling utterly powerless, I had no idea how to go on.
Getting Busy Living
Anger was useful in my recovery. It took well over a decade to find a diagnosis—an underlying heart defect.
I now know that my emotional outbursts at the doctor’s corresponded to one of my biggest complex post-traumatic stress disorder (c-PTSD) triggers. As a child, I was constantly invalidated and dismissed, including when I had health issues.
Any time I got sick, I was told it was a “cry for attention” and an attempt to “manipulate” my parents into caring for me. Experiencing similar suspicion again led to irritation and many tears that no doubt confirmed my provider’s impression of me as “hysterical.”
My anger drove me to prove I was not causing my symptoms, exacerbating them, or making them up. But how? I went utterly straight-edge, taking up a super-healthy, nearly monastic lifestyle of whole foods intended to nurture physical and mental health, regular physical activity, and all the brain-and-soul healing holistic therapies I could find online.
Little did I know I was laying the foundation of my recovery. Although people tend to think linearly, as though one thing leads to another like a straight line, existence is more like a circular mandala with interwoven threads creating the tapestry and holding that giant parachute together. When one thread wears thin, the others pick up the slack during repairs. My work on my physical body began to heal my mind. But how?
1. Diet and Mental State
My diet today still consists primarily of plant-based foods close to their natural forms. I also take care to increase my intake of certain nutrients necessary for brain health through the meals I choose, such as:
- B-vitamins for neurotransmitter production.
- Omega-3s to prevent brain disorders and improve mood.
- Magnesium, selenium, and zinc for improved mood and nervous system regulation.
I also eliminated anything that could adversely affect my mood. That meant cutting out:
- Foods with artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives.
- Added sugar.
- Processed, bleached flour.
- Unhealthy oils.
It’s tougher to eat this way on a budget. I stocked up on dried fruits, nuts, and seeds that last; inexpensive tuna; and fresh, organic produce from the farmer’s market.
2. Movement and the Full Nervous System
While most of your neurons are in your brain, you have them all over your body. Emotional trauma can get trapped in your somatic system, but nurturing practices like Yin and restorative yoga can release it.
I find it’s best to get my heart pumping to burn off some of those excess stress hormones like cortisol before I can dig into deeper release on the mat. Find movement that soothes you, which can include pumping you up to blow off steam.
My yoga mat has become a true home for me. It’s where I go to sit, or passively stretch, with my emotions when they overwhelm me. If you have c-PTSD, you know that your triggers don’t disappear — you train yourself to notice them and react to them less so that they don’t control you. Sometimes, that means creating a necessary pause before responding, and my yoga mat is my place to do that.
3. Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the true key to transforming pain into power through emotional alchemy. I’m convinced it’s the one tool that can help with the epidemic of narcissism American society faces—and I speak as someone who learned such traits from the dubious “best.” People with such personalities have defenses so sky-high that they react to even the most well-intended advice with distrust.
However, mindfulness creates space for deep truths to bubble up from inside. You aren’t being “lectured” by someone else who threatens your sense of self and the worldview that protects you. Simply focusing on your inhales and exhales provides a sense of separation and objectiveness that lets you realize two critical truths:
- You are not your thoughts.
- You are not your feelings.
You have thoughts and feelings, but you also have the you that’s sitting with them on the mat, deciding how to best manage them. Recognizing that you have power and choice over how you direct your energy teaches you that if you want anger or distrust to grow, you water those seeds through your actions and decisions.
The beautiful part? You also realize if you want to nurture love, hope, health, camaraderie, faith, optimism, joy, and happiness, then you water those seeds.
One small act of goodness can start a ripple effect. Think of it like the frayed strands of a worn tapestry weaving themselves back together, one string at a time. It starts with self-love.
I didn’t fully realize when I began my journey that I was essentially reparenting myself from scratch, but that’s what I was doing. My higher self was acting like a good mother, ensuring I had healthy foods, the right amount of exercise and sunlight, and plenty of nurturing.
Creating Emotional Alchemy
Mindfulness also helped me manage the overwhelming anxiety I felt without my usual coping mechanisms to handle stress. Anyone who has experienced morning-after hangxiety knows that withdrawal from alcohol ramps up this emotion, and my life stressors hadn’t magically disappeared. I was still battling housing insecurity, trying to earn enough money to keep a roof over my head while managing necessary medical appointments and the associated travel time.
However, I couldn’t have transformed my pain into power through emotional alchemy without identifying my feelings and learning how to manage them in healthy ways. For that, I dug into everything I could learn about human psychology. I engaged in therapy whenever possible. Although there was limited help available, I briefly found someone who listened to me rehash my childhood without judgment.
Mostly, though, I self-directed my treatment, making use of the resources I had available. I engaged in the following practices, often more than once per day, to slowly heal my central nervous system. These activities decreased my emotional reactivity and helped me make wiser choices based on mindful contemplation instead of a panicked need to do something, anything:
- Yoga: Not all styles require high energy or physical fitness, and many poses have modifications for differing skill and mobility levels. Try Hatha, Yin, or restorative if you’re new.
- Meditation: While there are many styles, I find that guided meditations are best for beginners. They acclimate you to sitting quietly with your thoughts while providing just enough direction to prevent falling into a rumination trap or taking a dark trip down anxiety lane.
- Nature walks: Oodles of studies show nature’s healing power on your body and mind. Hike, or better yet, go camping. It’s free or close to it.
- Grounding: Grounding or earthing puts your skin in contact with the earth’s natural magnetic field. While it sounds new age, it works.
- Nutrition: Although I give myself more dietary leeway today, my meals are still primarily plant-based. I continue to avoid unhealthy substances, including alcohol, knowing what it does to my neurotransmitters.
- Learning: Educational materials and online support groups are invaluable resources.
I’m not a celebrity and certainly not among the elite. However, my message of hope is that you don’t necessarily need an expensive retreat or inpatient care to transform pain into power through emotional alchemy.
Use what you have. YouTube is a fabulous resource of free nutrition and exercise videos, and the internet abounds with information. It’s a matter of feeding yourself the right input instead of getting sucked into social media. Seek websites and channels by credentialed individuals to ensure the information you receive is accurate and helpful.
Emotional Alchemy: Transforming Pain into a Beautiful Life
Today, my life continues to improve. Working on myself made it much easier to get the other pieces of my life under control.
It might take reparenting yourself if you have severe c-PTSD. You might have to actively decide to stop doing the things that hurt your mind, body, and emotions and start nurturing yourself like you would a child. However, over time, you can create emotional alchemy and transform your pain into power, sharing what you have learned in your journey to bring hope to others.
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How Our Emotional Triggers Can Actually Be Great Gifts
“Be grateful for triggers, they point to where you are not free.” ~Unknown
Your triggers are your responsibility. I know, it doesn’t land so nicely, does it? But it’s the truth. The moment you truly understand this, you let others off the hook and you’re able to actually see triggers as gifts pointing to where you’re not whole.
I’ve heard this many times before and felt like retorting with, “But, he/she/they did….” Just because your triggers are your responsibility doesn’t mean that others won’t do hurtful or infuriating things. It just means the only thing you can control is your side of the street. EVER. That’s it.
Recently, I was out of town and my husband stayed home with our two younger children. I was at my oldest daughter’s softball game when he texted pictures of sushi and asked me to guess where they were. I could tell right away. It was a restaurant near our old house that we used to go often that had shut down during the pandemic.
I found myself so triggered by the mere memory of it that I responded with, “I remember THAT place quite well.”
That’s the place we ran into someone my husband knew. Someone I would eventually dislike, maybe even momentarily hate. Someone who years after this innocent run-in would, along with my husband, participate in causing me great hurt.
It stung, the blindness of it all, the complete disregard for my feelings just as if it had happened yesterday and not close to a decade ago. Interesting how this was the image in my mind’s eye and not the dozens of other times we enjoyed sushi as a family.
My husband then proceeded to tell me they had reopened and the kids were enjoying themselves. Well, here I was, triggered, feeling this anger rising from my gut and moving into my heart, and they were stuffing their faces with sushi. How nice. I wondered if he even knew, if he had picked up on that sly remark. Did he even remember? Could he sense the change of energy from afar?
Normally, when I’m triggered, I will lash out, say something snarky, and maybe say or do something that would only lead to a fight. He would absolutely know I was triggered, and I would graciously remind him it was hisfault.
This time, I walked myself off the ledge, reminded myself that my trigger is my responsibility, took a breath, and made a mental note to dig in at a later time. For the time being I would sit and watch softball and shove this firecracker of a trigger to the side. It seems silly that a sushi restaurant could trigger so much underlying anger, but let me tell you, it did.
The following day I took the four-hour drive home. I had two teenagers in the car with ear pods in their ears and their faces glued to their phones. This was the perfect time to dig in, as there was nothing but road ahead of me and time to kill.
I started a mental conversation with myself about this trigger, the same process I would undertake with a client in this same predicament. What about this place was so triggering?
The memory of being in the restaurant and running into this person flashed in my mind’s eye. There was a back and forth of questions and answers, like a ping pong match happening inside of my head. The mind asking away and the answers rising up from below.
I peeled layer after layer, until I found myself at the bottom of the dark well, the root of it all, “It’s my fault. It’s my fault I trusted someone enough to hurt me.”
There it was, this decades old root that had enough charge to take down an entire city, enough charge to strike back and hurt someone deeply when provoked. The present moment so tightly wound in a much deeper, far more ancient wound.
Aah, it was never about the sushi, never about what anyone else did or didn’t do; it was only ever about me. It was only ever about this false belief that was wrapped in responsibility and armored with guilt and shame. The map is absolutely not the territory.
Tears streamed down my face. I tried to hide them behind my sunglasses and keep my composure in the silence of the car. I grabbed from the stack of Chipotle napkins in the center console (I know I’m not the only one), dabbed my face, and blotted my nostrils.
The tears kept coming; they were the release of trapped emotion and relief. They were the realization of the amount of ownership and responsibility for the actions of others that I had decided to take so long ago in order to self-protect.
When someone’s actions hurt me in either benign or malignant ways, I blamed myself for not having armored up enough to prevent the “attack” from happening in the first place. I should have known and done better, but I hadn’t and, hence the trigger, the subconscious reminder of the pain and shame. It’s unrealistic; there’s no amount of armor one can wear to prevent themselves from ever getting hurt by someone else.
Our triggers are our responsibility. They point to where we are not whole, where we are wounded, and if we have the courage to unravel them, we find liberation. Our liberation. We find the truth beyond the story or the incident.
It’s not easy to let others off the hook. It’s not easy to turn the tables on ourselves, to ask what is this bringing up in me? What belief lies buried deep in the unconscious yet, ultimately, has immense control in my life? Oftentimes, it something painful we’ve kept ourselves from looking at—something we, more than likely, have no consciousness around.
Triggers are a gift only if you have the courage to unravel the tight hold they have on you, only if you choose to uproot the belief that holds the charge. Awareness is everything.
What I now know is that if I ever hear this restaurant mentioned or brought up again, I won’t be triggered in the same way I was that day on the softball field. The charge will have dissipated. I would know that I am only ever responsible for my circus and my monkeys, not the hurtful actions of others.
I am also aware this process isn’t a one and done. It may take continual reminders until the trigger ceases to carry any charge at all. Healing, after all, is a journey and a process.
So, next time you find yourself triggered, I invite you to stop, take a breath, and ask yourself a series of “why” questions followed by “because” statements to see if you can’t get to the root of it all, which is where you’ll find your gift.
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How Admitting Your Weaknesses Could Actually Make You Stronger
“The first step towards change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.” ~Nathaniel Branden
Do me a favor and don’t tell my wife what I’m about to share with you.
I have an absurd number of weaknesses.
Just kidding. My wife, of course, knows this. She is well aware of my many shortcomings. While she would be happy to add to the growing Encyclopedia of dumb shit I do, I will keep this short and sweet out of respect for your time.
We live in a weird culture that’s afraid to admit any of us have weaknesses or struggles. We’re terrified because none of us want to look stupid or unqualified.
We pretend to be squeaky-clean specimens of perfection, but inside, our minds are on the verge of exploding as we obsess over questions like: What will people think of me? Will they think I’m dumb? Will I be passed up for a promotion? Will others discover that I’m struggling? Am I actually a fraud?!
What makes this even more challenging is that it’s a silly game we all willingly play.
Think of a typical job interview.
HR: “So, Terry, we’re really impressed with everything you shared today, but we have one final question. What would you say is your biggest weakness?”
Terry: “This one’s really hard to admit, but it’s got to be that I work too hard. I’m always willing to go above and beyond to get the job done.”
HR: “Wow, thank you for being so vulnerable, Terry. You sound like you’d be a great fit for mentoring our new hires as they navigate the challenges of working in a fast-paced environment.”
Here’s the truth: We both know Terry is full of crap. Like, c’mon, Terry, is that really your biggest weakness? That you work too hard? Are you sure it’s not that you’re an emotional black hole since your divorce, which is why your kids don’t talk to you?
I’m aware that what I’m about to share sounds contradictory, but it’s true. Admitting you have weaknesses is a sign of strength, not weakness. You must know what you can do and what you can’t, your powers and limitations, your strengths and vulnerabilities, what’s in your control and what isn’t.
There are obvious circumstances that make admitting our weaknesses easy. In fact, not realizing you are outside the scope of what you know in these situations makes you look about as bright as a jellyfish.
Break your leg? You go to the emergency room.
Car alternator blows? You go to a mechanic.
Time to do your business taxes? You go to an accountant.
But here’s where we all start to fall apart. What about when you’re depressed, hopeless, or emotionally drained, and you don’t know how to help yourself?
What do most of us do in the above scenario?
Sweet eff all.
Actually, that’s not true. We double down on negative habits like drinking, eating, shopping, or mindlessly scrolling on our phones, hoping something will change our state.
We’re not weak, right?
We don’t have a problem, right?
Who cares if we’re not addressing our emotions? There’s work to be done. I already don’t have time to get everything done, so why would I waste time on crap like this?
It’s embarrassing to admit that I believed not addressing my weaknesses was a sign of strength.
My depression only made me weak because I kept it hidden in the shadows—not because mental health struggles are signs of inherent weakness. I endured relentless suffering, tormented by the belief that I was a worthless bag of flesh who subjected my loved ones to my endless mistakes and would be better off dead.
What was I trying to prove?
Why was I so afraid of looking weak?
Would I be less of a man?
And here’s the irony. By asking those questions, I realized that I was the one labeling these weaknesses as such. That shift empowered me to confront these challenges head-on, seeking the support of a therapist and coach, and hold myself to a higher standard.
I’ve discovered that these “weaknesses” are sources of extraordinary growth. Therefore, acknowledging our weaknesses is the key to becoming stronger.
I was blind to the cost of my denial until I gained a different perspective. I needed a new pair of glasses to show me that how you do anything is how you do everything.
When I viewed these moments as gravity problems—things I couldn’t do anything about—I felt hopeless about everything in my life. But when I realized that these were challenges that I could overcome, I was given the opportunity to see that I could conquer any obstacle in my path if I was willing to embrace imperfection.
Don’t let the subtlety of this shift in thinking race past you as you read the rest of this story. Understand first that you and I are having this conversation because I chose life.
If you don’t address a broken leg, you’re going to hobble around like a pirate for the rest of your life.
If you don’t fix your alternator, you have a 3,000-pound paperweight.
If you don’t get an accountant to handle your business taxes, you will pay dearly to the tax man.
And if you don’t address your emotional issues?
You will forever be anchored to a tiny, scared version of yourself. Never capable of reaching your potential.
It’s not enough to know that you have weaknesses; you must know when you’ve reached the limit of what you can figure out independently. You’re outside your boundaries if you don’t know which side of the line you’re on, or if there even is a line at all.
I’m not here to tell you what to do, but you can bet I will leave you with a question.
Six months from now, what will you wish you had spent time on today? What action would help you get the support you need to overcome something you’ve been struggling with?
Calling a friend?
Grabbing breakfast with your mom?
Booking a therapist appointment?
That, my friend, is what matters most.
And nothing else on your to-do list will fulfill you if you don’t prioritize it.
Choosing not to act now is delaying a better future. So, whatever you’re going to do, do it. Do it now. Don’t wait.
