"But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ." – The Little Prince
Power is not found in proving your strength. It is not in believing you’re enough. It’s in knowing that you are Love.
***
In the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to learn so much about myself, thanks to following my triggers, and the people who triggered them.
I remembered why I’m afraid to speak up.
I’m a woman. I was taught I’m not supposed to. I’m supposed to play it small, to be humble, to be meek. My place isn’t at the top.
No one spoke up for me.
I reflected on all my past relationships. Some were, blatantly, pretty bad (although never physically abusive). Although one of the bad ones was with a covert narcissist. (I’ve written about that before). Really, it was all so hidden to me, because I couldn’t see my own wounds. Yet finally I realized no one really supported me in my power. Whether it was politics, spirituality, or animal rights, I’d get shut down. There wasn’t a place for my beliefs. My unique view of the world wasn’t accepted, even though I would always at least consider theirs. So I wouldn’t exactly give in, I’d just shut up.
Of course there is strength in reserving your energy for yourself. My belief is, protect your energy about all else. Don’t just give it away to critical people or negative thoughts. But there’s a difference between protecting your energy and dimming your light.
My light, your light, my Love, was meant to shine.
If you feel like your own low beam, ask yourself the question, “Where did I learn to dim my light?” Heal that inner child wound. Be the one speaking up for him/her/them. Then go forth and shine, just as you were designed to do, because you are made of light.
Do you feel like you DO feel your emotions, but they just keep coming and nothing ever gets better?
The key is to BrEathe (be) WITH your emotions, not AS your emotions.
Your own (deep) breath can be what soothes you, like an adult soothing a child (because to the brain, that’s really what is happening). You’re both feeling the emotion AND regulating your nervous system, telling your body that you are safe, and you are safe to feel.
Second, you do have to work with the story. For round one, just pause the story and feel the emotion. After, seek holes in your story. Was that really all your fault? Did that person really cut YOU off on purpose? And even if it is true, is it worth your energy? Is the belief helpful to you? (There of course might be deeper memories to work with and heal here.). What do you actually want to believe? What narrative best supports you?
With all of that, your big emotions still won’t just all go away in round one or two. You’ve probably been repressing emotions for 10, 20, 30, 40+ years. Healing takes some time, but it is just around the corner. Breathe.
In my work as a psychotherapist, I have the pleasure of working with and learning from many artists. One of my clients recently showed me one of his wood carvings, and I was truly, truly amazed. I asked him how he did it. He said he really couldn’t explain how it felt (another energy seemed to take over), but he knew that anytime he had a pre-planned idea in mind of what he thought it should be, it never turned out as good.
I thought, “Wow. What a great metaphor for therapy.” The truth is, most of us are buried beneath stories of who we should be. Therapy is the work of chipping away at those stories, setting free the most authentic version of ourselves.
We are all, individually, masterpieces. Togher, we are part of an even grand tapestry, so big and amazing we can’t even comprehend while in physical form. Much of the tapestry is still covered in shadows. But if you are willing to uncover your own masterpiece within, you invite others to take the covers off their own. When you live your own authentic truth, you naturally set others free as well.
While prescription medication can and sometimes should play a role in managing and recovering from mental health challenges such as depression and anxiety, it’s important to remember that for most people, medication should only be used as a temporary tool in conjunction with therapy and other natural remedies that have been proven equally, if not more effective. With that being said, if you are currently taking medication to help support you with mental challenges, there should be no shame or guilt! Take medication from an empowered stance, knowing you are doing the best you can to support yourself through your healing journey.
Here are other researched and proven techniques to support your mental health:
Nature– Spending time in nature can relieve stress, boost your mood, and help shift your perspective. Nature therapy, or “ecotherapy”, is already a common practice in countries like Japan, where doctors may actually prescribe shinrin-yoku (forest bathing) to patients!
Exercise– Benefits of exercises include: Enhanced mood, reduction of stress and anxiety, improved cognitive function, better sleep,increased energy, and improved self-esteem (just to name a few).
BREATHE– Diaphragmatic, or deep belly breathing (my favorite), box breathing (4 second inhale, 4 second hold,4 exhale, 4 hold), and other box breathing practices help reset your nervous system, switching you from fight or flight (sympathetic) to rest and digest (parasympathetic). Practicing a few minutes of deep breathing or BrEathing with your emotions everyday can be a GAME CHANGER.
Journaling– Free writing, or journaling, is all the rage right now, and for a good reason. Writing from our emotions can help us release suppressed emotions and unlock any subconscious beliefs and blocks that have kept us feeling stuck. (Bonus: After your emotion-based freewriting practice, take another few minutes to write from your Higher Self.)
Play & Creativity: Play and creative activity not only help us express emotions but can take us beyond the rational and logical (and also ruminative) part of our mind and into the part of our mind that allow us to access greater perspectives, new ideas, and access our wholeness. (Bonus: Activities like pickle ball and knitting include “bi-lateral stimulation” of the brain, a technique used in EMDR therapy.)
Sleep: Simply stated, your brain just can’t function properly without enough sleep.
Daily Gratitude Practice: A daily gratitude practice trains your mind (YES, YOU CAN TRAIN YOUR MIND!) to look for the good in life and cultivate emotions of appreciation, love, and abundance…and a release of all those feel good hormones. As you write or think of your list, make sure you pause and tap into the feeling-state.
Whole Foods: Whole, plant-based foods are anti-inflammatory, which is a good thing for both your body and your mind (which of course, are intimately connected). Dark leafy greens, nuts, berries, whole grains, and avocados are especially great. Oh, and we’ll include dark chocolate (72% or more) too!
Connection (time with family, friends, and animals): Connections offer us a sense of belonging, purpose, and support. When we feel supported, we feel safe, and we can relax. Animals count too! We know dog studies have shown a reduction of cortisol and a release of oxytocin.
Meditation: Meditation helps us to detach from our thoughts, helping us realize that our thoughts are just…thoughts. We don’t have to believe them. We can just witness them. (Reminder: There’s no being “good” or “bad” at meditation! It’s a practice. If you notice yourself thinking 10x in 1 minute, the key is you noticed, and that is awesome!)
Spirituality: Having a spiritual practice, which might simply mean believing in something bigger than yourself, has now been shown to be a buffer against depression and foster feelings of connection and purpose. Spirituality can play an important function in how we make meaning out of challenging situations and support us in times of grief. If you’re interested in learning more, I highly suggest reading The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life by Dr. Lisa Miller.
Service: Similar to much of the above, service can decrease feelings of depression and anxiety while increasing feelings of gratitude and a sense of purpose. But the summary is, service gets you out of your head and “little self” and into your heart-based, expansive self. Volunteering is absolutely wonderful, but even something simple, like taking a minute to chat with someone at work who you noticed looks a little down today. You can always choose to BE A LIGHT.
When you’re “in it”, I recommend latching on to a few key phrases that can hold you steady until the waves pass through. A few I find helpful are: “This too shall pass”, “I’m stuck in a thought cycle”, “I’m okay, I’m safe”, and “I am loved”. No panic attack or dark night of the ego lasts forever, I promise. Things can and will get better.
(There’s always support available. Colorado mental health support line: 988.)
Dosage: Most changes are successful when they are built by small increments. In general, I don’t suggest attempting to make huge lifestyle changes in a week (New Year’s resolutions often fail for a reason). What I suggest instead is making small, daily changes that you can add or incorporate into your normal life. For example, you may simply add a banana to your breakfast or a few blueberries as a side to your lunch. If you don’t exercise at all, a 20 minute (or even a 5 minute) walk outside/in nature is a great addition. Take some deep, conscious breaths during your shower or take two minutes before turning your car radio on after work to simply check in with yourself and breathe.
Healing isn’t found in the past, but in unraveling from it.
Some people give therapists bad raps for “just talking to people about their problems”. And I’m like “whoa, that’s not my job description.” But honestly… it is part of it, for a very good reason: Some people have never had a safe place to talk and experience their emotions, so just letting them talk and feel lets them know they’re okay, they’re safe, and just that can be healing.
And then the unraveling begins.
I‘ll just say a bit on this for now: You’re not who you think you are. (Take that Descartes). You’re identity (unless you’ve already unraveled) is a configuration of all your thoughts and beliefs and emotions experienced (or suppressed) from throughout your life time, but mainly, BEFORE THE AGE OF 8. Which means most of it’s subconscious (just below the surface of your awareness), especially as much of what you learned came from what you saw, what you felt, and the stories you created from it. And unless you were held and loved the majority of time you experienced big emotions, those stories probably aren’t good.
That sounds like a lot, I know. Breathe. (No seriously, breathe. Full belly breaths. It’s one of the best things you can do to heal your nervous system, which is probably out of whack from all those fear/not enough stories you’ve been telling yourself.)
The good news is, you can unravel. You can be free!
And your triggers (whatever sets off a big emotional response, or even depression can be a start) can get you there.
Here’s my basic process:
-Identify the trigger.
-Name the emotion (if possible) and BrEathe with it. This creates some safety.
-See if any past memory “floats” up. (To use EMDR phrasing)
– What was the story little you came up with to make sense of what was happening? (ie. Dad is never home and doesn’t want to spend time with me. I must be unlovable.)
-Drop the story, and once again just BrEathe with the emotion. What does little you need?
-What’s a new story, one that you’d prefer to believe? (This is where you get to create!)
Last, remember the healing path is non-linear- it’s The Wanderlust Path- and it’s OKAY that it doesn’t come all at once. You’ll probably have to do this many times. But that’s okay, because you’re worth it.
The path to healing, growth, and evolution isn’t linear. It’s not something to get frustrated about (but do honor your emotions). These obstacles and road bumps (different from roadblocks and closed doors) are actually signs YOU ARE ON THE RIGHT PATH!
In fact, we know that obstacles and challenges are not only what make us stronger, but bring us closer to our true, most awesome (and authentic), selves.
Accepting this truth, that challenges are signs we’re on the right path, can keep us from getting stuck. It’s when we judge ourselves, “Why am I here again? I thought I healed this!” that we’re resisting the lesson and blocks us from 1) the opportunity to apply what we learned the last time and 2) prevents us from being curious*, “Hmm, why is this happening again?” “Why is this repeating?” “What do I have to learn here?” “How can I love myself more?”
* Curiosity is different from “trying to figure everything out”, which has more of a fear energy. Oh, self-judgement will never get you to healing, either!
This idea, that the path to healing and growth often happens in loops and includes challenges, can be applied to athletes too.
When I work with athletes who get injured, they usually end up working with a PT, commit to correcting poor form, or to consistently performing exercises that target underused muscles. When that athlete comes back, they’re not only physically stronger, but more mentally resilient for having gone through the challenge. There’s a new belief, a new resilience in them that says, “I can move through challenges and not only be okay, but be closer to that highest version of myself.”
A slight reframe: The path to healing and self-evolution is really the journey of transformation. Usually, we metaphorically think of this as the process of being a caterpillar to becoming a butterfly*: First, we are a caterpillar. Then, we wrap ourselves inside a cocoon. Third, we become MUSH, obsolete. From the mush, we transform into butterflies. But in order to REALLy be a butterfly, we have to fight our way out of the cocoon.
*The caterpillar and butterfly share the same DNA, but the genes are expressed differently. That, in itself, is metaphorical. Article Link
But what I really see for most people is little transformations inside a BIG transformation. Maybe we go through a small transformation in a few months or 1 year period, but then in 7* years, BOOM! We’re this new, amazing being flying high and living our best lives. (In other words, don’t give up. You’re right where you’re meant to be.)
*On AVERAGE, our body’s cells renew every 7 to 10 years. However, some cells are replaced every few days, and others take 70 years. Article Link
…And then there’s probably another evolution, but this time it’s easier because we’ve done it before and this higher version of ourselves knows that THIS IS A SIGN WE’RE ON THE RIGHT PATH.
Yesterday, as I was doing my normal uphill laps at our local ski resort, a gentleman who I had met and talked to in December stopped me. He said, “I told myself if I saw you again, I would stop you and say thank you for being so kind to me the day we talked.” Even as I type this, I feel happy, meaningful tears well up in my eyes.
Even though I’m a therapist and a coach, I haven’t always felt like I’m living my purpose in this world, which is really just to be a light so I can mirror others’ own light back to them. I don’t always show up as the highest version of mySelf. And really, I know that’s because there’s so much darkness that still clouds my mind, which I know are just stories and old beliefs.
And maybe that’s the work I still haven’t done. To truly reframe those old beliefs, let go of the shame, and allow the true me to unravel. Maybe it’s been a subconscious form of self-sabotage, not really believing I could do it or that I was worth the effort of creating a new narrative.
Yet this man, giving me my gift right back, saw it. Saw the unwounded, unbound version of me. Without using words, he told me “You are your purpose.”
Because really, the more I’ve done my own inner work…the more I’ve BrEathed with my emotions, traced them back to core memories and witnessed the stories my mind created, the more I KNOW that we are all, inherently, enough. Anything else truly is just a story. We are all worthy of divine, unconditional love.
****
A few notes:
1). I usually ski on Tuesdays. It’s my favorite day to go because it’s the quietest. But after a client cancelled, I checked in with my intuition (something I’m very much just still practicing with) and I felt like Monday was the optimal choice.
2) That morning, I had done one of my favorite Gabrielle Bernstein exercises, “The Daily Design Method” (below) and I practiced feeling into my answers, envisioning how I wanted to feel in the things I knew I would be doing that day. This exercise, or any meditation focusing on feeling into your future or highest self, can be really powerful, and relates to what I mentioned about shedding the past and reframing old beliefs- or creating new ones altogether.
-How do I want to feel today?
-Who do I want to be today?
-What do I want to receive today?
-What do I want to give today?
3. I want to be clear on this- therapy often gets a bad wrap for just “talking about problems”. While that can certainly be a component (a lot of people do feel better by just sharing, and it creates a sense of emotional safety), that’s actually a very tiny part of therapy. What it does entail finding compassion for ourselves, often by visiting old memories, the beliefs we created from them, and understanding our development. By unravelling, our true selves can emerge. IFS empathizes Self being revealed, while EMDR focuses on a structured process of past, present, and future, with the last phase being the true integration of how we want to feel and what we want to believe. This can be done in other ways, of course, like using the exercise above and meditations. But if we don’t get through some of the old cobwebs, blocks, or victim mentality (feeling hopeless or unworthy), it’s really hard to convince someone they deserve to feel good, as I believe, was my case (which was super subconscious).
On cloudy days, we know the sun is always right behind the clouds. It hasn’t disappeared, we just can’t see it. The same thing goes for when our minds are clouded by negative thoughts. Our own inner light, as well as the light of Source, is always right there.
And so, our thoughts are like clouds. It is only the stories we tell ourselves, and allowing them to build up, that block us from seeing the sun. When we see a thought earlier on (you might catch the emotion first, then the thought), we can notice it without attaching too it, and allow it to pass, so the sun is still felt.
This, my love, takes practice. Sometimes, when you’re feeling cloudy, you might just simply have to remember you’re not thinking clearly, and take some deep breaths.
Your breath acts like the wind…breathe fully into the emotion (just the emotion, dropping the story), and let it begin to move with the exhale. Repeat.
If there’s no movement, the thought or belief might be stuck. That’s okay. Again, this takes practice. Wait until another time, when you’re feeling some light, to get curious about the belief and its orgin.
Remember, the sun is always shining.
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Attention is not Love, but attention IS an important way we show Love.
When parents take time every day to put down their phones, work, and even to-do list to offer their full presence to their child(ren), they’re sending the messages: You matter. I care about you. You’re safe with me. Similarly, in a relationship, when one partner send a text to the other such as “I’m thinking of you” even on a day their busy, or on other days responds back in an appropriate time frame (this is absolutely individual and can vary by daily circumstance, but let’s say 1-3 hours) and makes time for a date or at least a phone call, their saying, “This relationship matters to me.” “I care about you.” This builds safety, which again, may not be Love in and of itself, but it is closely intertwined.
So let me say it again: Attention is not love, but it is an important way we show Love. Attention says “You matter.” Existentially, attention says, “You exist.” But, because we so often conflate attention for Love, we can mistake negative attention for Love. On one side: At least we are important enough to have someone mad at me, be treated poorly, even abused. On the other hand, even hate can feel like Love, when it’s really just the chemical effect of attention: They hate me, which means I’m important (perhaps not conflating both attention and power with Love).
On an internal framework, this is the basis behind parts work. When we give the shadowed parts (as an example, think of your emotions when you get triggered) of ourselves attention they often ease up. I usually tell my clients that our parts are like little kids inside of us, just asking to be noticed (and treated with curiosity and compassion), and usually they’ll settle.
Your attention is not power, but it is powerful. Use it with Love.
* I’ve heard other professionals say attention is a form of Love, and I don’t disagree. I think it’s more of a matter of the subtle difference in how we’re defining the word. If we want to play semantics, I might say that “presence” is a better equivalent to Love.
I’ve got at least 30+ years of them suppressed and repressed inside of me.
Not because of parents who didn’t care, just parents who weren’t there. Or maybe there, but didn’t know how to comfort an alien (re: very sensitive) child.
So now, it’s a fight. But I resist the urge to text an ex.
I simply breathe into the anxiety in my chest. “It’s just a feeling”, I tell myself.
Yet I can’t deny the glow of my phone and I give it one quick scroll.
Really, I’m hoping one of them, or anyone, messaged me first.
Really, I just want the attention.
I know it’s a drug, but my mind calls it love.
It’s a quick fix.
A yearning I’m trying to nix.
“They” say if I sit with this feeling, this anxiousness, this yearning- this fear- long enough, that eventually what I seek I shall find within me.
How much longer?
I am filled with faith and doubt. Hope laced with despair.
Self-love hasn’t been a thing since…
ever?
But I’ve been practicing. With a little parts work and some psycho ed, I’ve started to quiet the voices in my head.
I know “enoughness” is only a game the ego plays.
I understand the stages of development and early childhood programming, how unsupported emotions turn into stories that turn into nightmares. It’s all in the subconscious.
In theory, I understand it all.
But this yearning…
I continue to breathe. Being with myself, the good parent, the nurturing mom, as best I can. I allow my inner child to be as she needs. I don’t encourage her stories. I just offer her my presence instead.
And for tonight, that will have to be, enough.
I rest.
******
Most of us mistake attention for love, as attention to a child is being seen by a parent. And if a child is at least seen, they’re safe. Safe-ish. Which is why even negative attention is good, as it at least proves our existence. What most of us really wanted as a child is our parents or caregivers’ presence. Presence, in a way, is god-like. Presence, in pure form, is love. A child who cries and can turn to a parent in their vulnerable state and simply be held, regulated by the gentle rise and fall of their parent’s chest, feels safe, feels loved, and can process their emotion and move on without an emotion being trapped by a story the mind created to make sense of a situation. In psychotherapy, we usually call a child who received this regularly “securely attached.” The rest of us didn’t develop that way, not because we weren’t loved, but because our parents or caregivers were simply passing down what they learned, and most likely, were doing better than their parents did, or could do.
If you have this wound, there’s a good chance you continually find yourself in relationships with emotionally unavailable partners, or simply feel confused, hurt, and unseen when a relationship ends. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s an opportunity to go within and be your own healer. We, YOU, can heal all of this by “re-parenting” yourself with the unconditional love (some of your parts will refute this at first) you always deserved. One of the best steps I have found is simply to turn towards (as much as feels safe) an emotion as a witness (rather than attaching to it) and simply take deep breaths into the heart and belly. This isn’t a “one and done” thing. It’s a continual practice, allowing our inner child to trust us by repeatedly showing up for his/her/their needs and being the loving presence they have always deserved.
A Dog and Her Girl 