Tag: wisdom
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Dysfunctional Family Survivors: 7 Myths that Hold Your Healing Hostage
“I have never known a patient to portray their parents more negatively than they actually experienced them in childhood but always more positively–because idealization of their parents was essential for their survival.” Alice Miller, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child
If we’re born into dysfunctional families and, by some miracle, manage to recognize there’s something really wrong there, we can end up devoting a huge portion of our time on Earth (if not all of it) to piecemealing a life not defined by the despair and pain we felt as children.
This is as challenging a feat as it gets.
The institution of family is universally recognized as sacrosanct. But when this unquestioned bubble becomes a breeding ground for trauma, neglect, or abuse—be it covert or explicit, emotional or physical, subtle or extreme—then naming a breach, taking a stand, protecting ourselves, or even deciding to proactively heal can be seen as a betrayal.
After a lifetime of some version of this, I want to share with you seven family myths that, for years, held my healing hostage.
It was through gradually unwinding these myths one by one that I mustered the strength and resolve to go no-contact with my mother and set necessary boundaries with other members of my family, which cleared the way for a difficult but true healing process.
It hasn’t been an easy road; in fact, it’s been an almost entirely off-road journey involving enormous patience, grief, truth, and courage. But I can tell you, cross my heart, I owe it my life.
Admittedly, this is a confronting topic. We’re unpacking an aspect of being human that’s rife with open wounds, loyalty, heartbreak, and primal bonds.
My intention here isn’t to rebuff the natural ties of family but to validate your longing to feel safe, whole, and seen as you are and to shed light on the enormous potential for healing that can happen within the family structure when these myths are dismantled.
Let’s begin.
MYTH 1: Blood bonds are a free pass for bad behavior.
The pervasive refusal to address our trauma and do the work to actively heal it plays out in the family like nowhere else.
Because this is an institution that we take for granted as just and loving, it’s one in which our worst behavior can run rampant, completely exempt from checks and balances.
In these cases, the measure for love seems to be how much we’re willing to endure and how much they’re willing to endure from us. This is not okay. Family members treating each other in ways we’d be ashamed to treat virtual strangers is only the norm for one of two reasons. We’ve either taken it for granted as the only way (it isn’t), or we’re invested in not taking responsibility for healing our trauma and would rather keep open the channels to unconsciously play it out.
If the only thing binding us together is our fear of going against this institution, if the only thing that keeps us in each other’s lives is fear, guilt, shame, or the hope for a change that never materializes, and if we don’t bring these conditions to the light and question them, we sign our lives over to more of the same and enable the problem.
Refusing to play by the rule of ignoring and enduring dysfunction is the only way to end the pain chain. Repeat after me: Blood bonds are no excuse for bad behavior. Not our own, not anyone else’s.
MYTH 2: This dysfunction is what’s real and primary; well-being and sanity are fantasy and secondary.
One of the most painful parts of my experience growing up and throughout my twenties was that, despite investing more time, money, effort, and faith in my healing than I did on anything else, at the end of the day it was the energy, dynamics, and unspoken rules of the dysfunction that defined the baseline of my life.
How I wanted to live, the boundaries I was setting, and the way I was able to conduct my life were dismissed as fantasy or denial. My needs weren’t real, the relational code was. Reality was fighting, bending the truth, manipulating, worrying, speaking behind each other’s backs, enabling, blowing up, and pretending it was all okay. I was wrong and in dreamland to suggest that this wasn’t okay and that something else was possible.
Here’s what I want you to know:
You are real. And if you’re able to live without abusing others, if you’re able to take responsibility for your healing, if you’re able to create peace and harmony in your life, if you’re able to take any window of personal freedom to grow and thrive, it’s absolutely real. It can be done and it’s 100% legitimate, not to mention preferable as a way of living.
Just because your predecessors haven’t made the same choice, that doesn’t make it make-believe or a fantasy.
You make your healing and a whole new set of rules to live by true by living them out. If you’re doing it, it’s not make-believe, it’s reality.
MYTH 3: If they don’t recognize my wounds or my right to heal, I don’t get to heal.
I’ve been working on myself forever. And for a long time, while I was working on myself, I was also furiously trying to find ways to be understood and help or change my family.
I needed them to be the bridge that facilitated my healing. Only once I got them sorted or got them to understand me would I get my permission slip to live the way I was here to live. That permission slip didn’t come.
Eventually, I did the unthinkable: I gave that permission to myself.
I figured out exactly what it was that was costing my sanity, expressed it every way I could, and when it became clear that ignoring my non-negotiable needs was an implicit expectation, I said, “No more.” And in the case of my mother, I even decided to go no-contact for good. It wasn’t easy, but that began the process of healing a lifetime of parentification, erasure, and trauma.
Giving up the need to have my right to heal legitimized by family (and even friends) was the single most pivotal, empowering, and positive turning point in my life.
This shift allowed me to validate myself in the way I’d always needed. For the first time in my life, I stopped negotiating the reality of my lived experience, and in hindsight I can say without that shift, healing would not have begun.
Asserting my right to choose and protect my safety and sanity, no matter what, created the inner trust required for the magnitude of my grief and wounding to come to the forefront so I could work with what I was packing.
Healing our real wounds is a vulnerable process that requires the safety to come undone and the assurance that we won’t knowingly put ourselves back in harm’s way as we build ourselves up to wholeness.
MYTH 4: If it’s in the name of love, it’s as good as love.
When, in the name of love, we hurt, belittle, or abuse each other and demand that the flow of toxicity remains intact, we’re ultimately saying that real love doesn’t exist, or that love and truth cannot coexist.
Real love is coherent, straightforward, and present. Real love sees and honors the other as a whole, separate being with a will and truth of their own. Real love doesn’t picket someone’s right to peace, safety, and healing.
Abuse or denial in the name of love wounds, creates vortexes of remorse and resentment, and compromises our ability to recognize healthy love in ourselves and from others.
We must begin to take notice of sanctioned behaviors that are actively un-loving in the name of a love that never or rarely manifests or registers as true in the here and now.
We can all do better, and I believe, with every fiber of my being, that deep down it’s what we most long for.
MYTH 5: Whatever healing you muster is owed to the dysfunctional dynamic.
This was another big piece for me. After an abusive or painful event, the expectation was that I’d take a little break to recoup and then come back for more, rinse and repeat. This held my healing in a vice because I could never heal further than the fear of being torn to shreds again.
I knew there was a ceiling I had to break through to become the woman I knew in my heart I was, but I’d always end up at square one when I circled back to the toxic dynamics.
It wasn’t until I decided my healing was final, until I was sure I wasn’t available to siphon it back into the scheme, that my healing ceiling began to shatter and I started feeling what’s on the other side.
Repeat after me: “I’m not healing so I can be hurt again. I’m healing so I can move forward whole.”
MYTH 6: Your job is to change your NO to a YES.
This is another big one.
The truth is that most of us that have incurred substantial wounding in the family bubble have also learned to de-legitimize what’s true for us.
Because being chronically wounded (by those who gave us life, no less!) is so deeply invalidating, we come out on the other end with a wall-to-wall feeling of not being real. To them, our feelings and inner truth are getting in the way of the real us—the one they want, can do what they want with, and get what they want from without boundaries, protest, or consequence.
As a coach I see this all the time. Incredible humans with big hearts and a commitment to courageously heal that simultaneously use spirituality and self-help as a means to deny their lived experience. This allows them to avoid rocking the boat, setting boundaries, or making a real stand for their needs and truth.
“Taking the high road” seems to mean enduring breaches and abuse without hurting, feeling sated in withholding relationships, placing everybody’s needs ahead of their own, or even better, not having needs (let alone desires) at all.
I believe this is a manifestation of the same wounds of invalidation they incurred in childhood (now operating from within on the DL), combined with the unconscious belief there is no version of life that’s not subject to the rules and dynamics of their families.
Whenever I see someone bust through this myth, my heart leaps with joy because I know that’s when they’re cooking with gas.
In my personal journey, another huge turning point was when I threw in the towel of self-denial and began to notice that my NO was telling me something, and that it was up to me to listen. I could turn that NO into a YES by standing firmly in it so my life force could move toward what’s true for me.
I can guarantee that’s how it works.
How do you move into an authentic YES if someone’s trying to shove a spoonful of poison in your mouth? By saying no, trusting that no, and moving away from it.
Each and every one of us is alive and feeling regardless of the agendas and expectations of others. Your NO is not a problem; it’s a pointer to the real-deal solution for you.
Regardless of how unreal core wounding makes us feel, our reality is overruling and speaking volumes at every moment. Listening to and aligning with that is a non-negotiable step in restoring ourselves to wholeness.
MYTH 7: You’re forever bound to the role you played in your family drama.
We’re closing with a bang here, so listen up.
The coping mechanisms we employed to survive childhood often end up becoming who we believe we are.
If we had to be boundary-less, “or else…,” needless, “or else…,” believe we were nothing, “or else…,” this is how we learn to operate and how we try to survive and get our needs met in adulthood.
When we take a real stand for our healing and begin to assert and protect our safety, the parts of our persona that came about as coping mechanisms begin to unravel.
Each and every inch of safety and inhabiting of personal truth we take back systematically renders these parts obsolete and allows the full essence of our being to emerge, in self-responsible ways.
This means the limitations these parts imposed on us—compromising our ability to love, create, work, relate, speak up, rest, earn, enjoy, connect the way we’ve longed for, in alignment with love and truth—little by little begin to fall away, and life opens up in ways we hardly thought possible.
Listen, there’s always a reason why people are abusive or hurtful, and it’s usually trauma of their own. But while that’s a valid reason and a tragic one, it’s not an excuse or a free pass to rob anyone of their will, peace, truth, and the life they were born to live. Family is not an exception to this rule.
But here is a rule I’ve created for myself that I’m learning to live by: To love, set boundaries, treat others, accept treatment, and express my needs the same way in all close relationships, be they family or not. If a behavior or dynamic needs the shield of this or any other institution to be okay, it’s not okay.
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How a Barbell Helped Me Confront the Harsh Voice Inside my Head
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” ~Elbert Hubbard
I’m breathing fast; my heart rate is off the scale. I close my eyes and try to fill my lungs with air. My pulse starts slowing down.
Still forty seconds of rest left, my timekeeper shows. A single drop of sweat is running down my back, tickling me. I open my eyes again and drink a sip of lukewarm water, then I get ready for the next series.
Six down, four to go. This is a good day, I think while watching the seconds pass.
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They called me gifted when I was a kid, but it often felt more like a curse because I never believed a single good word people said about me. It was imposter syndrome at its finest, because it was rooted in me since childhood.
I didn’t just get good grades in primary school; I got straight A’s. I remember my English teacher telling my mom that I was the daughter everyone dreamed to have. Mom shrugged it off and answered that that was not the case.
In a way, I’m grateful that my parents were never particularly impressed by my performances. Otherwise, they would have probably pushed me until I broke down, or inflated my ego and made matters worse. Instead, they were just perplexed by a kid that seemed to effortlessly excel.
And that was what confused me. Even at seven years old, it was clear to me that I did not need to put in so much effort to reach those accomplishments.
I was critical toward my own schoolwork. Sometimes, I could spot imperfections in the assignments I turned in, but the teachers would either not notice or give me the highest possible grade all the same, because the work was already off the scale with respect to the rest of the class. I started to feel like a fraud, and any time I tried to point out that I wasn’t that good, my words were mistaken for modesty, or even worse, humble brag.
In a sense, I was right: the game was rigged. I knew nothing about the subtleties of the school grading system. To me, an A was not a judgement of the work I had done compared to my classmates, or to the average level of someone my age.
To me, an A just meant perfect, and I knew that wasn’t me. That made me grow wary of the compliments and trophies. I felt like they were not demanding enough of me.
On the other hand, an ever-growing fear was starting to quench my thirst for knowledge. When your entire personality is based on a vague ability to give the correct answer to random questions, you start to dread the day you’ll be asked a question you don’t know the answer to.
But see, this is a lose-lose situation. Because every time I managed to stand out without putting in much effort, I just thought the assignment was too simple to deserve such praise. And every time it wasn’t, and I really needed to do my best and then some, I started to think that I couldn’t be as gifted as they said, because otherwise that would not have been so hard.
I know that my words sound pretentious to most. I can only imagine how hideous I sound to all the people who spent their afternoons studying as kids, and their families who had to pay for tutoring and extra help, only for their kids to barely reach a passing grade. The achievements I’m dismissing are the ones they so intensely yearned for.
My classmates never believed me when I told them that I admired them as much as they admired me. That they were better than me in so many things. And they really were.
To complete the painful stereotype of the teacher’s pet, I was a shy, goofy, chubby kid. I had few friends and even fewer hobbies. While I was home reading, expanding my vocabulary, and translating foreign song lyrics to kill the time and to appease my curiosity, they played football, took part in summer camps, and went out for dinner and on holidays with their families.
Later on, they learned to drive a car and french kiss, while I felt even clumsier and avoided parties. But no one put grades on those life skills, so they kept being envious of me for the only thing I was good at.
Then came the university, and the only thing I was good at got hard. Turns out you’re not that gifted after all, the voice in my head gloated. See, we were right to doubt it from the start.
I managed to get my physics degree, but it cost me every single ounce of the scarce supply of self-confidence I’d put together during all those years. So, there I was, feeling even worse: studying was all I was able to do, and yet I had struggled with calculus. Definitely not the daughter anyone would want, Mrs. English teacher.
That was the idea I had of myself when I first stepped foot in my boyfriend’s home gym at twenty-eight. An imposter, with the constant fear of getting busted. A perfectionist, with no confidence in her body and mind.
I’d never lifted a single weight before in my life, and I would never even have considered trying, if it weren’t for that boy who seemed so determined to believe in me. We’d been together for a couple months. I didn’t want him to give up his daily workouts, but I also wanted to spend every waking minute with him, so the best arrangement was for me to find something to do in that scary place.
Flash-forward to a few months later, and weightlifting had already become my drug of election. I had unsuccessfully tried meditation before, and this was the closest thing I could find. The repetitions, the short recovery intervals between sets, the regularity and simple logic of it all were like fresh water for my brain, abused by years of harsh thoughts and self-doubt that had left their mark like a burning scar.
There’s no thinking when you’re under the barbell: you need to focus on the movements, the range, the technique, and the strain. To be able to assess the right amount of discomfort, the effort that leads to growth and not to damage. You need to be in the present moment completely.
Leg day was a whole different story. While all the other training sessions seemed to be just fine, this one I could not handle.
Glutes and quads are big muscles, and they need a heavier weight to be properly stimulated. The whole body has to engage in the movement, and when you reach the bottom of your squat, just for a moment, you feel you’re not sure you’ll be able to get up again. You have to gather all your strength and focus on your breathing in order to bring that weight back up.
You have to trust your body to do it, and trust your spotter or rack to support you if you can’t. You have to come to terms with the feeling of your legs burning and your heart racing, and remind yourself that the air is there, that you’re not going to asphyxiate. At least, that’s what I felt.
I protested every time my boyfriend added another plate on my barbell.
“It’s too heavy. I won’t be able to lift it up.”
“You will. I’m here to help you.”
“What if I can’t lift it up?”
“Then don’t. Just let it fall to the ground.”
“But what’s the point in trying if I already know I can’t do that?”
“Don’t you get it? You’re supposed to fail. That’s how your body learns. That’s how you’ll be able to do one more rep next time.”
I had been terrified of failing all my life. But now, someone was telling me that he would love me all the same if I let go. That it was okay to let go.
Even if it was only a stupid iron bar on my shoulders, it felt like all the weight I’d always carried with me. The weight of perfection, of praises I never thought I deserved, of achievements I’d never been proud of. I could just let it fall to the ground.
I cried. A lot. I cried during sets; I cried in between sets.
I cried because I was afraid to fall and be crushed under the weight of the barbell—although my boyfriend was there to help me all the time, and the weighted barbell was not even heavy enough to harm me. I cried because I felt there was no air to breathe—although he had taught me to move slowly, to pause every time I needed to. I cried because I felt weak and miserable, and at some point, I cried just because I felt like crying.
He was worried about me.
“If it makes you feel so bad, you can just give it up.”
No way.
I had never been one to push through hardships, because to me it was all about being good straight away or not good enough, but this was something I didn’t want to lose. I liked how I felt after completing the workout. I liked how I felt when the weight I had not been able to lift two weeks before suddenly became lighter, and I could add another small plate.
It wasn’t even about losing weight or being toned or impressing my boyfriend—it was about that feeling I had been chasing all my life: the feeling of not making it. It was the thing I had always feared the most, and now I could look it straight in the eyes, and finally find out that nothing happens if you fail.
Just like a kid learning to walk, I needed to let the barbell fall again and again and again and see that the world wouldn’t stop spinning on its axis if I failed. That I had permission to try again next time, and improve. Most of all, I needed to see that he would still want to love me, even when I was messy and tearful, even when I was weak.
“Have you seen it? I made it!”
“Why are you so surprised? Didn’t you expect to grow stronger?”
No, I didn’t. I wasn’t familiar with progress and improvement, just with failure and shame, as opposed to instant success I never truly enjoyed.
And slowly, slowly, the voice in my head started to sound different. A feeble light began to filter through the cracks, among all the petty and cruel things I whispered to myself. A light that sounded just like him, that rooted for me instead of working against me.
For the first time in my life, I was actually proud of me—and it had nothing to do with how much I could lift, or how much weight I’d lost, or how much better I looked. It had never had nothing to do with results and praises and accomplishments, after all. It had to do with patience and perseverance, with the confidence to suck it up and show up, even though it scared me, every single week.
And to know when not to show up and give my body the rest it needed, without feeling like a loser. To learn that I could skip a workout if I was ill, or tired, or too busy, and the barbell would still be there for me the following week. To learn to cheer myself up, instead of bringing myself down.
To do it, even though I was not strong enough, until I finally was.
Three years later, I married that boy—and the topper on our wedding cake had the shape of two little guys under a barbell.
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The Friend I Couldn’t Fix: A Story of Love, Loss and Letting Go
TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of domestic violence and may be triggering to some.
“You can’t heal the people you love. You can’t make choices for them. You can’t rescue them.” ~Unknown
Every story starts at the beginning. But how far back should I go? Birth?
I was born at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden, New Jersey, in May of 1972…just after three in the morning.
No, wait. That’s not morning. It’s still dark outside.
Forgive me. That’s an inside joke.
You see, just a few years ago a friend of thirty years came to live with me. A down-on-his-luck, unemployed alcoholic that recently battled Stage four cirrhosis, we agreed he could stay with me, rent-free, for six to eight weeks as he sorted himself out.
Just typing that sentence makes me cringe. How did I ever think he’d sort himself out?
I believed that with enough love and support people could overcome their troubles. However, it never occurred to me that they had to WANT to overcome their troubles.
Within a few days of moving into my apartment, he blew the job opportunity that he (and I) counted on by insulting his future boss. Six to eight weeks evolved into eleven and a half months. Sorting himself out morphed into sleeping all day, drinking all night and abusing me in the time in between.
Which brings me back to the inside joke.
Don’t Engage
I woke one day before dawn. “Good morning,” I yawned as I flipped the coffee on.
Fortified behind a barricade of empties, he launched his daily verbal assault. “Are you really that stupid? It’s not morning; it’s still dark. F*cking moron.”
“Don’t engage,” I said to myself. Not engaging pissed him off because he wanted to fight, but engaging was so much worse.
Engaging led to things being slammed. Thrown. Shattered. Time spent searching for every shard of glass and worrying about the eight tiny paws that scampered around my apartment. I didn’t have it in me to see any more of my belongings broken. Any more of my spirit broken.
His attacks began months prior and consisted of only words at first—a slew of insults he hurled at me as though playing a game of merciless Mad Libs. I was stupid, a moron, a fat blob, ugly, pathetic.
Then began the screaming, throwing, slamming, backing me into corners, pushing me into walls, grabbing my throat, and finally punching me in the face.
It’s Not That Simple
Prior to living with him, I never thought too much about domestic violence. I’d never witnessed it, and to be honest, it never occurred to me that domestic violence could exist in this type of relationship. You see, he wasn’t my father, my husband, or my boyfriend. He was a friend.
Moreover, and I’m ashamed to admit it, I unfairly thought people in abusive relationships were weak. And I am not weak. I’m strong and independent. I realize now abuse is not that simple.
It began so slowly I didn’t see it for what it was, nor did I want to. I wanted to see the best in him. Only with the gift of hindsight do I clearly see the picture three decades of brushstrokes formed. For thirty years I loved his potential, not who he really was. Looking back, I see that he had been narcissistic, manipulative, and emotionally abusive since day one.
The Perfect Storm
When he first came to live with me, I was his “angel” and could do no wrong. I won’t lie to you—being an “angel” felt wonderful.
You see, as far back as I can remember I have felt useless and unworthy—the ugliest girl in the room that no one wanted. It’s a paralyzing state of mind that led me to a place of constant giving at my own expense. Of people-pleasing. Doing anything and everything to make those around me happy so they wouldn’t abandon me. So they’d need me. So they’d love me.
And here was my friend who needed help as desperately as I desired to offer it. My friend whose spiral of mental illness and alcoholism was as destructive as my non-existent boundaries and acute need for acknowledgement. We were a perfect storm.
The Last Day
The last morning we ever spoke, he was in the midst of what I can only describe as a reality break. He spewed such nonsense that I secretly recorded his rage on my smartphone in case I needed proof of what was happening. He verbally berated me and threw a heavy pair of headphones across the room, missing my head by inches. The straw finally broke the proverbial camel’s back.
I kicked him out of my home…out of my life. This man who for so long I loved and admired. This man who in reality lived his life like a forty-six-year-old toddler. Choosing to kick him out was more difficult than living with him. I loved him. But I chose me.
I had to choose me.
The Path to Recovery
Not long after kicking him out, I found myself standing in front of a wall full of light bulbs in Home Depot—with no idea how I got there. I was sinking fast.
I reached out to my primary care physician, as I realized I was in a situation I was ill equipped to handle. I was diagnosed with compounded trauma, placed on medication for depression, and instructed to seek talk therapy.
Talk therapy enabled me to unpack the root of the issue of why I’d “allowed” this situation to carry on as long as I did.
I peeled back the layers of an onion that revealed that I had such a deep-seated fear of abandonment and self-loathing that I was willing to sacrifice myself for breadcrumbs of love, affection, and validation. Only by identifying and facing my core wound head on was I able to make significant progress.
Additionally, I explored eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, which lifted a weight off of me I wasn’t aware I carried. Reprocessing distressing memories using this technique fundamentally changed my relationship with my trauma.
I devoured books, podcasts, and internet tutorials on emotional abuse, CPTSD, attachment styles, and so much more. I began eating cleaner, exercising consistently, and prioritizing sleep.
He tore me to my foundation, but as the architect of my future self, I undertook the painstaking process of building myself into who I chose to be. I chose warrior. Well, that’s who I am on my good days. I also have days when I’m a little scared mouse, and that’s okay too.
Lessons Learned
It’s been three years since that final day in my apartment. In that time, I’ve accepted there is a difference between showing someone grace and sacrificing oneself for someone who cares only for themselves.
I’ve made peace with the realization that I can’t heal or change anyone—that they need to do that work on their own.
Can I provide love? Yes. Will I hold space? Absolutely. Am I capable of fixing anyone? No. Will I forfeit my sanity and safety? Never again.
My love could not help my friend. I could not fix him. At the end of the day, only he had the ability to fix his problems, and he was either unwilling or incapable of doing the work.
The Actual Last Day
I kept tabs on him in the weeks following him leaving my place. He bounced from friend to friend, to various seedy motels and finally to emergency rooms for psych evaluations and vomiting copious amounts of blood.
And then the inevitable.
Every story also has an end.
My friend of thirty years died at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden, New Jersey, in September of 2020 at 7:13 a.m.
A time I think even he would consider morning.
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How to Move Through Your Fear by Retraining Your Brain
When you’re in fight-or-flight mode, everything you do or don’t do teaches the brain something about the perceived threat. When you avoid or flee the situation, your brain experiences a wave of relief. The amygdala learns that avoiding that situation is how you stay safe from that threat.
This is exactly how you want the brain to respond if the threat is a grizzly bear. But what if the perceived threat is something less biologically adaptive, like a worry about being judged or teased?
Let’s say you’re invited to a party full of new people, and you have thoughts of looking dumb, making a mistake, or being judged. The fear response is triggered, and you decide not to go to the party. Whew…relief! You don’t have to be judged!
However, you’ve now taught the brain that parties are dangerous (even the ones without tequila), and avoiding them is how you stay safe. The next time you have to attend a party or event, the anxiety response is even stronger—the brain desperately tries to get you to flee, because that’s how you’ve stayed safe in the past.
Anxiety gets worse and worse as you avoid it and can even start to generalize. A fear of parties can spread to all social events and then to brief interactions with baristas at the coffee shop. It can become debilitating, preventing you from doing things you really want to do.
That’s what happens when you train your brain to sound the alarm when there’s no real danger—but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Retrain Your Brain
Let’s say you choose to behave differently when you’re anxious but not in real danger. You recognize your fear, accept it, and go to the party anyway. In fact, you go to a lot of parties, even though your fight-or-flight response kicks in.
The brain is collecting data about what happens and soon realizes, Wait a minute, nothing bad is happening! Maybe this isn’t actually dangerous! Over time, you retrain your amygdala about what is safe, and the fear response becomes less intense or disappears.
If you sit around waiting to feel comfortable, you’ll be waiting forever. Your brain won’t magically retrain itself. You have to act before it feels comfortable, before you feel ready.
You can choose to do things that scare you—to feel the fear and act anyway. Avoiding your fears makes your world smaller; facing them expands it.
Maybe you can’t relate to the party anxiety scenario, but I bet there is at least one area in your life where you are afraid to fail. It could be your work, your finances, your relationships, your body, your reputation, your legacy…there are many possibilities. We all have something we’re afraid to ruin, and that fear holds us back from taking that very thing to the next level.
With the right training, though, your brain can unlearn its fear of virtually anything, even things you would think are unquestionable…like lions.
Facing the Lions
My best friend Joe and I were in Kenya visiting the Maasai community. It was the perfect chance to fulfill our dream of going on a safari, so one morning, we woke up before sunrise to hit the plains. It was a rugged outfit, riding around the Serengeti in doorless Land Cruisers trying to get close to elephants and big cats.
And we did—a little too close, actually.
It had been pouring rain through the night, and the ground had turned into a few feet of mud. We were attempting to get our tires unstuck when our guide said in a hushed but urgent tone, “DON’T. MOVE. BE. QUIET.”
On the right side of the car, a giant lioness with the drooling jaw of a cold-blooded killer was walking directly toward me. There was nothing between us but three feet of air—not even a car door. In this much scarier version of The Lion King, Nala crouched, we locked eyes, and I felt her slink past my legs just as we were able to peel out from the mud.
My life flashed before me as I pissed my pants and imagined my obituary reading, “In death, Bridget became what she loved most in life: a delicious meal.” Hakuna matata.
Seek to Understand
We thought the mega cat’s demon stare was the true embodiment of fear, but we hadn’t quite seen it all yet. Later that afternoon, we were inching through the tall grass, looking for signs of life, when we saw a figure coming toward us in the distance. It didn’t look like an animal, but there were no roads or villages in that direction for miles and miles.
Twenty minutes later, a Maasai woman appeared, her traditional bright red and blue patterned Shuka standing out starkly against the endless brownish-green grass. We were stunned. It was 100 degrees with no water in sight, and we were in a vast, open valley.
We expected to see giant cats in this area at any moment, and she was just waltzing through? And what was she carrying on her back? Wait… was that a baby?
She walked up to us, and we chatted. I told her about our close encounter with the lion and said incredulously, “Aren’t you scared of the lions while you’re walking all by yourself?”
She laughed at me and said, “No. I am only afraid of the hippos.”
The Maasai know from experience that lions are lazy and unlikely to attack humans unless they feel threatened (they certainly could have fooled me). On the other hand, hippos (yes, the giant water pigs) are highly aggressive and kill more people each year than lions, elephants, leopards, buffalo, and rhinos combined. Hungry, hungry hippos indeed.
So there you go—even the things that seem genuinely worth fearing might not be what they seem. More often than not, the more you understand something, the less scary it becomes. Of course, most of us aren’t going to encounter lions in the wild (or hippos, for that matter), but this holds true for everything you might fear, including other people.
Don’t Fear the Other
“Cow blood. Cow meat. And cow milk.”
That’s what a Maasai warrior told me when I asked what they liked to eat. “Wait… that’s it?!” I exclaimed. “Yes—it’s very good, very simple,” he said with a laugh.
As I admired his muscles glistening in the sun, I took a sip (not bad!) and briefly contemplated switching my diet before remembering the extremely low chances of the granola health stores back home in LA selling bulk cow blood.
On the surface, the Maasai people could hardly be more different from me. Our attire, what we eat, our daily activities, our language, our surroundings, our communities—we seem to have nothing in common. But the more time I spent with them, the more I realized how untrue this was.
This warrior welcomed us into his village with genuine hospitality. We found common ground in music, my first love and a huge part of their culture. They taught us their traditional songs and dances and told us that contemporary Tanzanian and Kenyan hip-hop artists often incorporated Maasai rhythms into their songs.
The women of the tribe showed us how they make the gorgeous jewelry they sell to tourists. We made a fire together, had a jumping contest (I lost miserably), and listened to exciting tales of life in the bush. Yes, we are different on the surface, but when it comes to values, we share more than I ever expected.
We love music, our community, and the outdoors. And a juicy steak, of course.
Get Closer
As human beings, it’s simply in our nature to draw a line between “us” and “them”—our people and other people. “Other” people are the ones we don’t understand or relate to, and we’re much more likely to perceive them as scary or threatening, whether they really are or not.
We see this repeated endlessly throughout history, all over the world, and it continues today. The solution to this fear is simple: get closer. The better you know people, the harder it is to demonize them.
Talk to enough people, and you’ll begin to see that everyone has their reasons for thinking and living the way they do. Most people aren’t crazy or evil—they’ve just arrived at a particular set of conclusions based on the experiences they’ve had and the information they’ve been given. When you recognize that most strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet, you can do away with the labels and fear and just listen to each other with empathy and open minds (hey, a girl can dream!).
Everything You Want is On the Other Side of Fear
To help you start to dissolve your own fears (whatever they may be), try the following exercise. First, think of one specific thing that fear is holding you back from going after. For example, here are some common ones:
- Traveling to a new country
- Taking a new job or trying a new career
- Moving to a new city
- Learning or using a new skill
- Committing to a romantic relationship
- Making new friends/socializing
Now, focus on that one fear and answer the following questions:
- If you did what you’re afraid to do, what negative things might happen?
- What would be so bad about that? What would it mean about you if your fear came true?
- What does this tell you about what you believe about your safety, worth, competence, or lovability?
- Where did you learn to believe this about yourself?
- How does this belief keep you from pursuing your dreams?
- What would you do if you believed something different about yourself?
Ultimately, when you master your own ego and stop worrying about the judgment of others and potential negative outcomes, fear can evaporate, and you’ll be surprised by how fast the voice of dissuasion disappears.
Feeling the Fear… And Doing It Anyway
Let me share an example of what I mean. Some time ago, I had the opportunity to speak alongside Sir Richard Branson. He was my idol; years prior, I had even listed getting beers with him as an experience I really wanted to have.
This was my chance—but there was a problem. A huge one. I was petrified of public speaking.
As I focused on that fear, though, I started to realize that what I was actually afraid of was something far deeper. Every time I thought about speaking in public, I was terrified I would be exposed as a fraud. I didn’t have an unshakeable belief in my own competence, and that had stopped me from pursuing my dreams of speaking on stages for my whole life.But what if, I asked myself, I let myself believe in my own innate worth? What if I pushed back against the fear that I would be exposed as a fraud? I knew that doing so would expand my world and give me the chance to meet my hero—so that’s what I decided to do.
It wasn’t easy, but it was worth it, because after the talk, I got a chance to live my dream: Sir Richard and I shared a few beers. As we were talking, I mentioned how scared I had been to get up on stage, and then he said something that changed my life forever. He was terrified of public speaking, too.
To hear that someone insanely accomplished felt that way gave me hope for myself. It wasn’t just beginners like me. I knew I could remember that the next time I felt nervous on stage—that we’re all human. And it would be okay.With that newfound revelation, I started working to overcome my lifelong phobia, and as I did, each step I took gave me the confidence to push past my fear. Now, just a few years later, speaking is my passion and livelihood. The cave I feared to enter held the treasure I was seeking.
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Why I Didn’t Love Myself (and All the Suggestions That Didn’t Help)
“Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving yourself and see what happens.” ~Louise Hay
There is a lot of hype around self-love these days. The media and marketing world often bombard us with messages insinuating that the key to self-love lies in consumerism. For a long time, I bought into this idea.
I would see an advertisement urging me to treat myself to a high-end face cream for a dose of self-care. Or a promotional email landing in my inbox might suggest that a calming lavender bubble bath was just what I needed to boost my self-love. Or I would receive a text notifying me of the latest designer bag on sale—isn’t self-love about indulging in what you fancy?
Despite buying all the things, incorporating self-care routines, and generally doing all the things these mediums recommended for self-love, I still felt unfulfilled.
I questioned why, despite following all the guidelines, something still felt amiss. I felt that emptiness creeping in, even when I had checked all the boxes these commercial messages prescribed.
Through navigating this journey, I’ve come to recognize an overlooked issue that often lurks in the shadows of the pursuit of self-love: low self-worth. The belief that I am not worthy of love, exactly as I am.
For most of my life, I found my self-worth through doing instead of being because this is what I learned from my church and home life. Serve, give, think of others. And I always got affirmation from my parents when I did something that was helpful to them. I don’t recall ever being asked what I wanted to do, and I really had no idea what I needed.
I thought that in order to be worthy of my own approval and love, I had to first receive it from others. I thought that by being the helper, the healer, the giver, I would gain the love of others and then be lovable.
I now realize that developing and believing in my own self-worth and loving myself is an inside job. All the healing, giving, and helping should have started with myself. You know, fill your own cup.
What I learned does not work is seeking something outside of me for approval and validation. You see, we cannot control how others perceive us, or whether they understand us. We cannot control if someone likes the way we look, the art we create, or the words we say. Nor should we allow their opinions to dictate who we are, what actions we take, what we say, or how we feel about ourselves or our lives.
For me, low self-worth showed up in very subtle ways that I am only now starting to see and understand because I now have an awareness of it.
For me, low self-worth showed up as me giving my body to men before I was ready, or not saying anything when they took my body without permission, instead acting as if everything was fine.
It manifested in me working at a job that had unrealistic expectations of me, that did not provide an environment to learn, grow and flourish—constantly giving my all and feeling it was never enough.
Low self-worth meant marrying someone because they loved me, not because I loved them.
It meant silencing my truth, my opinion, my feelings for the sake of not wanting to feel uncomfortable or make anyone else feel uncomfortable.
It meant giving more than I had to give expecting others would do the same.
I now know that my worthiness does not lie in what brand I am wearing, how big my house is, or how much money is in my bank account. And it’s not tied to how much I give or do for others, or whether someone likes me or not.
My worthiness lies in how I feel about myself. It starts with loving and approving of myself.
It was amazing to see the changes that occurred when I began to deem myself worthy for simply existing. Suddenly I found myself less interested in getting drunk to escape myself and the world, and less interested in pleasing people.
I began to ask myself why I was choosing to make a particular decision. Was it because I felt like I should, or was it because I genuinely wanted to? What I found was that many of my choices had a motive—to get approval from others.
As I navigate this space, I give myself permission to change my mind, to cancel plans, to do my best to lean into the discomfort of change.
I validate myself daily through mirror work, affirmations, and making choices that are beneficial for me.
I make an effort to speak kindly to myself and forgive myself for past mistakes, which in turn allows me to forgive others more easily, and to understand that we are all here doing the best we can do, with the awareness that we have.
If you are on this journey of self-love and find that you are not making the progress you would like, ask yourself the following questions:
- Where does my self-worth come from?
- Do I believe that I am worthy of love?
- If not, why? When did I form this belief, and how can I let it go?
- What actions can I start taking to show myself that I love and honor myself?
- What type of thoughts am I thinking about myself?
- What proof can I find that my negative thoughts are actually untrue?
On this journey of discovering my worth and loving myself I’ve had my fair share of tripping, face plants, and “oh NOO, not again” moments. There have been ups and downs, good days and bad days, periods of rapid progress followed by times of stagnation or regression.
This journey will be lifelong for me, but despite the obstacles, I have discovered a deeper sense of peace (at times) than I ever imagined possible, experienced more joy and laughter than I thought could exist, and found more moments filled with gratitude than ever before.
As I choose to uphold the idea of appreciating progress rather than pursuing perfection, I realize that it is all worthwhile.
