"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.
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 lay in bed with a hand on my chest, feeling the almost rhythmic beat of my heart (I’ve had a slight, non-harmful arrhythmia, since my early 20s). I listen to the soft pounding coming from inside of me, a change from the normal external tuning.
I feel like my heart is trying to speak to me, but it’s coming through in morse code, or perhaps an ancient language that I once understood, but now has long forgotten.
“What are you trying to tell me?”, I ask and plead at the same time.
My heart just keeps beating. Perhaps a little quicker and louder now, in response to my desperation.
While my mind believes it always has all the answers, a suspicious part of it believes my heart holds a secret. I suspect that once the secret is revealed, it will put an end to all my mind’s suffering and finally quell its endless thirst to know everything. Or at least, this is a lie my mind tells itself, because it really just wants love and safety, but that sounds too vulnerable, too childlike to admit.
The paradox is that I know my heart does hold the key, but my demand that it speak in a language I can understand and fix everything I believe is wrong is exactly what closed the pathway between my mind and heart. I suppose we could also call it fear, which I can feel in the gentle constriction of my neck.
I breathe, realizing I’m in a state of anxiety again. It always sneaks up on me, without my knowing. It’s a learned response to not trust. Not trust in myself, in light, in Love. My anxiety never feels safe. But I’m learning that perhaps, fear is the lie.
I remind myself to relax. That all is well. I am safe in my bed and hear my dog’s sleepy breathing close to me.
I put down my pen and turn off my lamp. I know my heart will speak when it is ready, when I am quiet enough to hear it.
***
The next day as I’m driving, I hear my heart simply say, “I’m right here.”
The biggest block to healing is judging yourself for where you are now, who you are now vs. where you want to be and who you think you should be. This is always a form of, “I will love myself when…”. (“I’ll love myself when I deem myself as perfect and never make another mistake”, is really the subconscious story many of us tell ourselves. We know this because we say we have self-love, until we make a mistake and then immediately go into self-judgment and criticism.)
Of course, it’s okay to want more for yourself, to have more money, less panic attacks, feel more fulfilled, to have less problems. But the mental and emotional work is to see where we withhold love from ourselves from our current position, and allow love to enter from there. Or here, not when we get “there”.
From a spiritual perspective, to say we should be somewhere else is to deny the divine intelligence of the Universe. (Mother Earth would be just fine without humans interfering.). If you’re feeling stuck now, it’s because your soul wants you to remember how to love unconditionally and for you to know that you are always worthy of love.
This theme of acceptance (better understood as “self-acceptance” or “self-love”) vs change is perhaps the biggest paradox of therapy and healing. It’s also nearly impossible to think through (to the dismay of my “Figure It Out part”). I could only come to understand this paradox though patience as I witnessed my clients’ struggles and gently received this guidance on pup walks, realizing my own blocks to love. Hopefully this post has made a little more sense of this paradox for you.
Integration: Where do you resist your life right now? Are you injured? Do you not have the job you want or simply think you should be doing more? Are you not where you want to be financially? Are you still having mental health struggles?
Then answer some version of the question, “Why do I believe I don’t have more money?” “Why do I believe I still have anxiety?”
Is it because you don’t believe you are worthy? That you haven’t done enough? Do you believe that if you were better, or smarter, things would be better?
It is from that wounded place, that old belief, where you allow the love in.
And the moment you allow Love in, is the moment you realize it was always within.
When my older sister passed away, after the brief stage of the ego anger/fight for survival, innocence took over. She was not mad about her early parting, she accepted loved ones at her death bed, allowed us to hold her hand.
Being 36, the same age as when she passed, when she had less than two months to live… I wonder what I would do? Or perhaps, not do.
I have often been driven by ego wants and desires. Not that they are necessarily bad (although sometimes destructive). I have wanted to do things, see things, achieve things before I die. I gotten stuck on destinations and forgotten about the journey. And with that, I have experienced many nights breathing in the shallow breaths of yet another existential pain as time all too quickly passes and what once was has already changed. In those labored prayers, I have often overlooked the fact that my ego is simply fighting for its existence, or at least the existence of others in relation to me. I have changed. They have changed. Life has changed. Or worst, life has changed and people/animals have died and while I have stayed the same.
Yet if I knew, if I knew it was my time to die in a few weeks time, I hope I’d forget about all those wants and desires. Instead, I would hope to follow a similar path as my older sister, who seemed to remember what truly mattered. Maybe I’d go to the mountains a few times if I was able with those closest to me, during the times my ego gets scared, to tap into the peace and love that awaits me. But most likely, I’d spend my dwindling time with family and friends, allowing them to say their goodbyes and let love be shared. I’d want to return to innocence, my belief in true magic, joy, and an existence without fear. The purpose of my death being to light the way for others. To come back to the remembrance that when we die, only love is left behind, for that is all that is real, all that is eternal.
A Dog and Her Girl 