Tag: mental health

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Thoughts That Kill

People don’t actually kill themselves. Nor do they kill other people. Thoughts kill people.

Now that I’ve got your attention, let me explain.

For many people, there is no separation between their thoughts and themselves. In fact, many people still believe the Rene Descartes quote “I think, therefore I am.” Just because something sounds good, doesn’t mean we should listen… (Descartes has a few other bad theories, such as “The Great Chain of Being.”)

We are not our thoughts. If we were our thoughts, we wouldn’t realize we were having them*. Many of our thoughts, mostly automatic, come from the ego (fear-based) mind. The ego mind was created in infancy and further developed in childhood, born out misattuned love: trauma, the times caregivers ignored our needs, abuse, and systems that measure success by achievement, etc. Because our caregivers couldn’t always protect us or be there to help us feel and soothe the emotions in our bodies, our minds kicked in. Our minds developed equations like: “If I do xyz, then dad will be proud of me.” If I never do that, then mom won’t yell at me.” “If things always go this way, nothing bad will ever happen.” “If I achieve this, then I’ll be enough.” These types of equations are bound to fail.

*Michael A. Singer writes in depth on this topic.

Yet without the separation between Self and thought, our ego-minds (and remember, the thoughts from our ego mind developed when we were kids) run the show, oftentimes getting stronger and stronger year after year. This is the same as saying that fear (of not being enough, being abandoned, or not feeling lovable) and negative thought cycles take the lead. With negative thoughts comes uncomfortable emotions, such as more fear, sadness, and anger. Again, because no one taught us how to feel our emotions, we suppress them…until we can’t anymore. Some people will internalize these emotions (at this point, we can really use the word “shame”), and some will externalize*. This is the difference between suicide and murder.

*Thank you to my Naropa professor Max Woodfin who first explained this occurrence to me, which allowed me to further extrapolate.

Let’s back up for a moment and take things back to childhood.

I know I gave a pretty brief explanation (but hopefully simple enough that its understandable) of how thoughts come into formation, yet I hope its obvious on why it should be of upmost importance that mindfulness and mental health is taught in schools. If we can teach kids that during hard times, when their thoughts start spiraling in negative circles and they’re beating themselves up about not being good enough, that they are not their thoughts, we could save hundreds of lives each year. All it takes is a few simple mental-emotional tools to let the thoughts and big emotions pass, especially because it is the urgency and intensity of negative thoughts and big emotions that lead to self-harm and suicide. Any type of delay that allows the energy to pass will help, be it a tool like meditation or a suicide prevention hotline. (Teenagers are especially susceptible because of brain development during this time period. Watch the teenage brain episode of the Netflix documentary: The Mind, Explained for more information.)

This is why willpower has nothing to do with suicide or addiction. When our minds are in control, we don’t realize that there is another option, another choice. Our internal vision is literally obscured by thoughts and the intensity of emotions they produce.

During one of my own anxious-depressive spirals, in the midst of all my chaotic thoughts, my training allowed for a new thought to come in,”My thoughts are going to kill me.” This awareness snapped me out of it. I realized then that this was how we lost Robin William, Anthony Bourdain, and a loved-by-all college professor at Naropa (my graduate school). Their minds took over, and the fight got too exhausting to continue. But its not a fight when we realize the voices in our minds are not us, just shadows that can be dissolved in the light of truth.

And here’s the tougher part for me to talk about (only because we’ve created so much division among ourselves on the topic)…

This is where I believe some type of middle ground can be found between the seemingly opposing parties on the gun control debate (although all everyone really wants is safety, especially for our kids). The truth is, people don’t kill people. And as much as the part of me that identifies as liberal doesn’t want to say this, guns don’t kill people either. Thoughts kill people. Or, more specifically, unconscious, fear (and shame) – based thoughts of the ego mind, which, for the added reminder, is working off a toddler’s “logical” intelligence.

The reason gun control laws should be in place that require the buyer/owner of a certain age and for there to be a time period between the buying and acquiring of the gun is because of the intensity and immediacy of suicidal and murderous thoughts. While of course there are exceptions to this (I highly dislike outlier debates), the time period between thought and action gives space for the energy to pass and new thoughts to form. Pause and intervention can save lives.
(Automatic/unconcious thoughts and automatic weapons are an obvious lethal combination that I won’t dive into full detail on here.)

The other piece I want to humanize is that those humans who own guns for safety purposes…which other humans who label* themselves as “liberal” also want to villainize… experience the pain of being human too. Many who also thought to use the weapon they own for their own demise. While maybe this accentuates the lethality of guns, I say this to actually highlight our shared connection. We are all human. And to be human is to experience suffering. The suffering only ends when we can transcend the differences that keep us separate (and birth fear/shame-based thoughts) and realize that we are all more alike than different.

To summarize: We are not are thoughts. We are all connected.

If there is ever a part of you that wants to die, please realize that it is just a part (refer to Internal Family Systems). Its a part formed by the ego-mind and created a false identity of you. What is most likely happening is that part is no longer serving you, and your Higher Self might be want to come back to the forefront. In short, what is happening is called a request for an “ego death”…it can be uncomfortable or outright painful. I highly, highly recommend working with some type of therapist at this point, and there are many books and podcasts that cover this topic as well. Remember that you are always, always loved.

My book: Light & Dark: Reflections on the Human Experience

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Split

*I wrote a similar blog post several months ago, but the story came to me again with new words and in a slightly evolved way as I have continued on my journey.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) states, in my own words, that our psyche splits in order to deal with the traumas of life. While I am knowledgeable on IFS, I haven’t done the specific training from the IFS Institute, so I’ll simply refer to this as parts work. With that, another way to explain this theory is that our ego (human self) and spirit self separate from each other. In trauma, this false belief of separation can become so severe that we forget our that our spirit, or higher self, even exists. Furthermore, our ego is no longer just the realization that we are human, but becomes our voice of fear, which further splits into different parts (Chronic Worrier, Inner Critic, Judgey McJuderson, etc.) to help protect our now fragile sense of self.

Breathe. Read that over a few times if you need to. It may take a few reads for the words to become understandable.

Here’s a personal example.

When I was young, maybe 7 or 8, my parents decided to get a divorce. Really, nothing wrong with that (well, maybe accept that we were Catholic). They got married in their 20s and were two very different people. The problem was how it was handled, especially for a sensitive, empathic child.

First, while we were all still living under the same roof, my parents got into a huge argument. For me any my sisters, this was scary, and we all huddled together on our oldest sister’s bed. Then, with one of my parents clearly needing to leave the house, we were told to choose who we wanted to go with. I’m pretty sure I wanted to die in that moment. I think part of me did. I, already scared, could feel both my parents pain. I wanted to please both, make them both happy, and here I was, being forced to leave one of them in more pain. I heard my dad’s pleas that we could go watch Space Jam. I had always been a daddy’s girl. Yet my sisters were both going with my mom. I wanted to be with them.

I can almost still see, or rather feel, the agony painted across my dad’s face as we left the house.

However, experiences are individual. I have also heard a similar told by a man on a podcast I was listening to. For him, this forced choice was empowering. I would say more as to why but I can’t remember his words and don’t want to create false meaning. I just simply know that for me, this unwinnable choice was literaly unbearable. My psyche split, attempting to protect me from pain-or really, the pain I felt in causing others pain (which is something a child believes she can actually do because the developing brain is self-centric), and tried to overcome that by never making the wrong decision again.

Hence, OCD.

(While OCD is most often recognized in people with compulsions, or repetitive acts, the defining point is really the obsessive thoughts. For people who go on to develop compulsions, its simply to soothe the stream of worried thoughts.)

Or rather, anorexia (w/ excessive exercise), which was a coping mechanism for OCD, anxiety, and depression, which were coping mechanisms for the pain and fear within my little body. Or rather, the felt separation from Love.

Furthermore, and I won’t dive into this too deep, but the legal process for divorce and child custody in the 90s (and I believe still does) sucked. I knew exactly what was going on as I sat in the family therapist’s office with my sisters, first with one parent, then the other. I could feel it going better with my mom. I desperately tried to save things during my dad’s turn, trying to illuminate the room with my energy. But it failed. I had failed. I didn’t see my dad cry after my mom was granted majority custody, but I could feel his heart break once again (it’s no wonder why he had a heart attack and triple bypass surgery at 40). The pain was too much for the both of us to carry.

My psyche split into what we call “protector parts”, yet are often cruel and controlling: “Don’t fail.” “Do better.” “Don’t fuck up again Ray.” “Why can’t you be good enough?” Then, when I inevitably failed, either because I was doing something I didn’t actually want to or because some part of me froze in fear (my shooting wrist would actually freeze playing basketball), my only option was to shut down in what we like to call depression.

*While I’ve listed memories that stand out for me, its often much small, sometimes forgotten instances that cause splitting, such as the time a parent forgot to pick us up from practice, or a teacher ignored our wildly raised hand when we desperately wanted tho share. Or, for others who grew up in a religious background, you may have been taught that God, the Divine, was outside of yourself AND should be feared. How’s that for controlling? (My intention here is not to put down any religion.)

*******

Let’s look at this now from a mental health* lens.

While it is now considered normal (thanks to Richard Schwartz and his work around Internal Family Systems) to admit that we all have different parts of ourselves that take on various voices in on our head, we still diagnose the extreme version of this. The extreme version, brought on by severe childhood abuse, is diagnosed as “Dissociative Identity Disorder” (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder). I would caution that diagnosis here may stereotype a person with DID, further separating them from a connection with their community and their higher selves. (Diagnosis is not inherently bad and may point in a direction of how to treat, but often is used as a label that forgets both humanness and causation.). What is crazy** is when we label others as “different” or “ill” because they suffered from extreme abuse, especially when I consider that my own parts have often made me cry. Really, we’ve all just coped with the fears of life as best as we could, and their psyches needed to do even extra work. The only thing that ever heals (not fix…I’m not trying to get rid of any parts, just make them feel safe) is curiosity and compassion. 

*The term “mental health” lacks much of what I do as a therapist. Is psycho-emotional-somatic-spiritual too long to say?

*** This is where I think the use of the word crazy is totallyappropriate.

********

Returning to Self

I’m not going to dive too deeply into this part at the moment, as this is still very much part of my current journey. What I will say is that it has taken me years of therapy, reading, grad school, and being dedicated to my own inner work that’s allowed me even get here… here, to the part where I can even recognize that my soul, or higher self, is always there quietly and patiently waiting for me to recognize myself. It’s taken years of unwiring, becoming aware of and letting go of old identities that were never really me, and detaching from fictional narratives. Still, my ego is fighting like hell to stay in control, but my spirit if fighting like heaven for me to return to myself. To stand in the power of my own beauty and joy. My own Wholeness and Oneness with all that is.

And so, the journey continues…

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“Life is Too Short To Be Anything But Happy”

The death of a loved on has the power to shift our perspectives on life.

To realize what truly matters.
To realize what is actually worth stressing about…
little to nothing.

Getting a flat tire. Waiting in a long line at the grocery store. Needing to go to the bank.

I’m sure for some, this could further add to the overwhelm, but for me in August of 2020 my only thought was “My sister is dying, and you’re going to worry about that?”

If challenged, I would have been tempted to play the dead sister card throughout that fall.
Most people would have understood.

(Side note: From my understanding, people used to wear black in the year after a loved one’s death not simply to mourn, but so that others could recognize them in their sorrow and offer love and support. It was a way for love to be let in in the face of loss. Beautiful, right? Why do we try to hide our pain now?)

Why do we continue to stress about things that don’t really matter?

As my older sister would say to me and her friends in her final years “Life is too short to be anything but happy.”

Some of us want to brush that quote off as cliche, too simple, too aspirational.

As a mental health therapist, I don’t strive to be happy 100% of the time, but I do strive to live a happy life. My compass is always pointed towards joy in the face of hard choices and difficult decisions.

That relationship. That job. If I’m not happy or passionate about it at least 75% of the time, I’m out. I don’t have the time for that.

This means living by my values, dreaming big, going on adventures, and not giving energy to the negative voices- mine or others- who question my choices.

It is in choosing my own path that I honor my sister and her reminder “Life is too short to be anything but happy.”

…and sometimes, I just have to create the way for others by being the example.

Picture 1: Me and Pacer on top of San Luis Peak during our Colorado Trail thru-hike.

Picture 2: A plaque from my older sister.

Picture 3: Easter 2018 featuring my older sister, me, and our cousin.

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The Law of Opposites

The Law of Opposites

The law of opposites states that to know one thing, we must first know its opposite.

Night/Day
Suffering/Joy
Confusion/Clarity
Hate/Love
Fear/Trust
Dark/Light

The old debate among the spiritual community revolved around the question: “Is the opposite of love fear or hate?

When examined closer, we realize there is no need for debate.

We only hate what we fear, and we only fear what we don’t understand.

The reverse is also true.

When we shine a light on what we don’t understand, we begin to know its truth, and we can only love what is true. 

We find that to know the darkness is to know the light.

**************

I can still remember the first time I heard the song “Accidentally in Love” by Counting Crows.

I can almost picture myself walking out of the movie theater after seeing Shrek with my dad and sister, when Parmatown Mall was still actually a mall and had a movie theater. 

But the stronger memory is of the felt-sense I had of the closing song, how the high vibration of Accidentally in Love still reverberated throughout my body. The first Shrek was released in 2001, which marks the “post period” for me. Post death of my uncle (the firecracker of the family), post parents divorce, post Dad’s nearly fatal heart attack. Every once in a while, I still had the wild feeling of love, of zest for life still in me, when my mom let me wander through the trail-less woods alone or after seeing a movie in the theater, but for the most part, this light had disappeared. So when I heard Accidentally in Love for the first time, it was more of a longing that I felt within me. 

Would I ever get that feeling back?

When I decided to take a deep dive into my healing journey a few months ago, I didn’t really understand what needed healing. I didn’t know something was missing. I didn’t know how deep I would have to go into the dark. I just knew I didn’t feel how I wanted to feel, and so it really was my emotions that pointed the way. 

As it turned out, it all came back to returning myself, to the joy within me. To get truly excited about the little things, to the excitement of just being alive. Allowing my imagination to once again run wild. Getting back to art and creating, just for the sake of playing.

So when Pacer and I found ourselves at Great Sand Dunes National park, paws and shoes in the sand, without thinking about it, I just followed my urge to run. Then, on the drive back, I just started to sing to the songs on the radio, without hesitation in my untrained voice. 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was me returning to my light. It really all happened accidentally. Falling back in love with myself and life.

By surrendering to my darkness, I was reunited with my light.

This feeling of joy, of course, isn’t constant. For like every other human on planet earth, I suffer from the collective amnesia. I still miss the man I fell in love with over two years ago, but simply because I miss his beautiful soul, not because I miss my own (insert Beautiful Soul by Jesse McCartney here). Sometimes I still wake up with a sense of unease, and not giving into doubt is still a daily practice. Yet I return to the knowing that I will always be okay. I look up and see the love around me, my sister and brother-in-partnership who let me join them on full moon skis, my dog, my Sunshine, who will follow me wherever I go, my dad in his willingness to fly across country, eat “weird” vegan food , and tells me and my sister that we are his “happy thoughts”, my mom who will text me jokes on a “FriYay!”, my sibling by magic (I’m a Gryffindor, they’re a Hufflepuff) in Denver…

…”You are immensely loved” the psychic told me. For the first time, I believed this. I felt it for myself. The more I come back to this feeling, the more I remember, and the easier it is to return to a state of joy. Of gratitude. Of love. Of light. 

Pic 1: Me and Pacer (Sunshine) at Great Sand Dunes National Park
Pic 2: It really is the little things…completing this puzzle with my family came with so much joy.

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Fighting for Light: Realizing I Am What is Worth Fighting For

Not even 10 minutes into my Reiki session, I burst out crying “but why does it always have to be so hard?”

What I really meant was “why does it always have to hurt so much?” I felt like I had been cycling through periods of intense pain over the past several years. Even in just the last 7 months, I had been closely attentive to my body, battling to stay in it though I badly wanted to dissociate, and letting all my emotions arise as they came up. Yet it felt like it was never ending. And I was exhausted. While I never wanted to end my life, I had been ambivalent about living it. The voice inside of me that said “I don’t really want to be here anymore” was no longer unconscious. I heard it. Yet I quickly dismissed it with thoughts of Pacer, living in the mountains of Colorado, and having a loving family.

So, when at the end of the session my Reiki teacher told me the clear message that he had gotten for me was “Fight for Yourself”, I was confused. What did that even mean? I don’t even like using the word “fight”, anyway.

At my next session, two weeks later, even as he explained it again, I still didn’t understand. I would stand up for myself, I thought. I’ve fought against societal norms and resisted living a traditional lifestyle (not that there is anything wrong with that), and I had begun to actively speak my emotional and intuitive truth on social media. Somewhat frustrated, I said “I still don’t get it.” My Reiki teacher gently reminded me that I would, but that my focus should lean towards finding joy and not needing to having the answer. I left feeling somewhat better, less but still frustrated.

It was another week later, when I was listening to someone else tell their own story via a podcast, that I understood. It was that voice in me, that small, unhealed part of me, that didn’t want to live. That was my darkness. Could I fight for my light?

This may be confusing to some. For anyone who has followed me for some time, you’ll know I often talk about the magic and joy of life. And I 100% feel that that magic and joy. But I also can feel the contrast just as intensely (also finally understanding when Abraham/Esther Hicks talks about contrast).

Until that moment, I didn’t understand what a strong hold that part of me, even if small, had on my soul. How, sometimes unconsciously, it could stop me in my tracks. It could make me small and prevent my light from being fully expressed. Actually, I often hid between the shadows of my hermit archetype and introvert labels.

Yet, even as I understood that this was actually the part of me that needed the most healing, that I actually needed to fight to keep my light both going and growing, I didn’t know how. I still associated with this darker part of me. “How do I just make it go away?”, I wondered. I knew, deep down, I wanted to live and to live fully, but I wanted more peace and clarity inside of me too. Less pain, more joy. So then the question turned to, could I believe that was even possible?

It took me awhile to understand this part of me and how it showed up. In the morning, this was the taint I felt in my soul. In the previous years, it showed up as a heaviness in my heart and a shortness of breath that I described as “existential angst.” As I continued to heal and released some of the heart pain that wasn’t mine, it simply felt as if someone had taken a dropper, filled it with a dose of pain, and let it drip into my essence. Like a cloud inside my light, keeping it from shining at full capacity, from waking up in the morning excited about my day, even when I living a life I thoroughly felt grateful for.

Tracing this feeling back, I remembered the panic attacks I had in high school. Waking up early to run but not really wanting to face another day. The times I never felt good enough, the fear I held in my body at every basketball game, every social event. Luckily, I had a few good friends who never left my side and let me be me, but I still kept my pain away from them, and from my parents and my twin sister. We just weren’t a family who talked about these things. The one time, my twin sister, brave enough to say anything about her own pain, I clearly remember my stepdad saying “What do you have to be depressed about?”
(I have so much compassion for my stepdad now and can see how he still holds on to and buries his own emotions.) And so, my pain became my secret.

Plus, even before high school, my pain was evident just by looking at my appearance. Anytime you see someone who is skin and bones, or becomes large enough that you can no longer decipher their true form, you’re looking at someone who’s “I don’t know if I want to be here part” has taken over. It may be unconscious, especially for a 13 year old girl, but it’s evident. And then, I was basically put on medication (that I would spit out), sent to various doctors, and a mental health therapist. All this told me, or rather confirmed, was that something was wrong with me. This was the belief I was already working off of and trying to cover up with perfectionist tendencies. (Obviously, I’m all for therapists now, but even if kind, the majority of therapists in the early 2000s were still working off of the disease model of mental illness.)

The origins of the pain were still somewhere underneath that. Contrived somewhere earlier on in childhood when I was punished or unseen, especially the part of me that has always been a sensitive, empathic soul. A gift my parents just couldn’t know was actually to be cherished, for their own world had been made up of harsh realities. They were simply trying to protect me from the pain. So my sensitivity became my kryptonite, a superpower better to be hidden.

The pain started to leak out in my late 20s, first releasing some of the pain I took on from the world. I’d see a video or get a piece of mail about the inhumane treatment of animals, and I’d soon be crying on my bathroom floor. I think it was easier for me to make visible the pain I saw around me than the pain within me. It seemed more acceptable, more honorable. And to be honest, my soul was truly confused and hurt by the created darkness of the world.

So, the battle in my 30s became the battle within.

My years learning to be a therapist, speaking to my own therapists, processing with my graduate school cohort, using my skills to guide others on their journeys… this all was a practice for my internal fight. Still, I hesitate the to use the word fight. With no offense to our military, I can only see the external wars in our world as nonsensical. How truly ridiculous that we kill each other over power, fear, and inflated egos? Yet defending beautiful, innocent people is another matter, and here I lean on the example set by Nelson Mandela and other great peace leaders. (This is too big a topic to dive into in this blog.)

The first part of my own battle was surrendering to my own pain. It felt insurmountable at times, as it had been built up for nearly 3 decades. Still, I continued to be a witness to my own suffering and eventually the edges wore off and I gained more compassion for myself. Yet even as the heaviness dropped away, the part of me that felt ambivalent about life still persisted. I didn’t know how to release that darkness, although meditations focusing on “breathing out clouds and breathing in sunshine” provided some relief.

Then, I had yet another opportunity to practice.

In many cases when I have a decision to make, I’ll stay stuck in a type of anxious freeze mode, and I have a debate in my head about my choices, over and over and over again, not making the final decision until I absolutely have to. Then, every once in awhile, I’ll rush into a decision… particularly around tattoos. It’s not that I didn’t want this last tattoo, I just agreed to a drawing that wasn’t exactly what I wanted before having it sketched into my skin. Actually, to make it worse, I only “semi” rushed…I actually had 2 hrs between seeing the image and agreeing to it, with a full opportunity to wait another week since the tattoo artist was heading out for vacation. For me, this was a perfect recipe of wanting to blame myself. While I’ve mostly trained myself out of negative self talk like “you’re stupid”, “I can’t believe you did that”, “why aren’t you better?”, etc., the internal feelings of shame that look like a panic attack on the outside were still very much prevalent. Could I choose to be kind to myself?

Could I choose to forgive myself for acting too quickly? (No wonder why the majority of time I can’t make a decision, if my other practice is beating myself up whenever I make the “wrong” decision.)

Could I choose, instead, to see the lesson?

This practice, too, was a fight. I wanted to go into self-blame. Being perfect and making the so called “right” decisions was what I knew how to do, how I had learned to protect myself from the fear of not feeling good enough. The hope, from my ego’s perspective, from this protection mechanism was so I didn’t make the mistake again, so I wouldn’t be the mistake.

Stepping away from the shame for a moment, I gave myself the opportunity to realize this was a lesson I had to learn. Humans, yes, are fallible. But is a person, a child, ever a mistake themself? Hell no. We simply become better versions of ourselves when taking the time to learn and gain meaning from our mistakes. The more simply stated, common phrase: sometimes we have to learn what we don’t want to know what we do want.

This tiny step turned out to be a big insight. It opened the door for me to forgive myself for a myriad of other poor (so I had deemed) decisions as well as times I had stepped away from opportunities and my own light for fear of being unworthy.

From this perspective, I could see my adult self giving a hug to the little me wearing a sunflower outfit (hat included) for her elementary school picture, who felt confused by the actions of adults in her life (as well a Catholic school that gave her the message that she was less than for being female). Then, to the high school me, who had learned to push so many people away because she thought her pain made her an outcast. I accepted these younger parts of me, showed them love, and brought them back home in my body.

In other words, I fought for them, and I fought for me. I fought for the part of myself that knew life was magical, a gift to be lived and expressed through my being. While pain, yes, may be a part of living, it doesn’t have to be carried with me on my journey. I was not my pain. I was meant to overcome my pain. To shine my light through it and to realize that my light was the only truth.

As I close, I can’t say the fight is over, the battle is just easier. The darkness is less powerful. I can see it for the fear that it is. I have more say in what I choose to believe and what I give my energy to. I can realize that my light, that I, Ray A. Nypaver, am worth fighting for.

May you always realize that your light, that You, are worthing fighting for.

*******


“I’ve come to believe that there exists in the universe something I call “The Physics of The Quest” — a force of nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity or momentum. And the rule of Quest Physics maybe goes like this: “If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments) and set out on a truth-seeking journey (either externally or internally), and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared – most of all – to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself… then truth will not be withheld from you.” Or so I’ve come to believe.”― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

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Death by Switchbacks

In the midwest, we like to name the “fun” sections of our routes, like “The Stairway to Heaven” or “The Piano Keys”. If you’re not familiar with Cuyahoga Valley National Park, then you probably at least heard of the infamous “Heartbreak Hill” on the Boston Marathon course.

I like to call this section of the Colorado Trail/Collegiate West/Continental Divide Trail “Death by Switchbacks.”  Now truly, this section of the trail is nothing short of majestic, but in these few specific miles, you drop down from alpine via what feels like 100 switchbacks, cross a short marshy section (pictured here- it looks much different in the summer!), only to return to alpine via another 100 switchbacks.  If you’re already feeling tired, it’s nothing short of a struggle.  The good news, however, is that once you make the death march (hike, run, or cycle) up, you meet heaven.  (If headed southwest, towards the Alpine Tunnel and Cottonwood Pass to the northeast.)

The ego (how we feel about ourselves, our self-esteem) death uses a similar model as this section of the trail, although I’m going to offer a reframe that it is not necessarily about a part of us that needs to die, but actually about the part of us that doesn’t want to truly live, or “be here”, as I’ve written in previous post.  It’s that part of us that says life is too hard, too painful.  It’s the part of ourselves we try to numb and call it depression.  The ego death is actually about bringing that part into Light and reigniting your own inner fire.  It’s accepting that there is pain in the world but realizing it is not our own.  It’s acknowledging that there is suffering, but it is not our truth.  It’s reclaiming our authentic expression of self and believing in our divine right to live freely, peacefully, and joyously.  This is “fighting for the Light”.


Again, the question is, will you choose yourself (Love) over fear?

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Ghost of Christmas Past: A Meditation Practice to End Unwanted Patterns

Yes, I do realize it is February, almost March, and most people are way over Christmas. But I, the 7 year old in a 34 year old body, believes the spirit of Christmas lives on (after all, according to pagan belief, winter solstice is about the coming of the light). Plus, as I was doing this meditation for myself, which originally just started with a question, the name “Ghosts of Christmas Past Meditation” just popped in, so I think my higher self wants me to go with this name too. 

First, a little more background.

Early one wintery and windy February morning, three questions popped into my head: 1) What am I resisting/not clearly seeing? 2)What lesson do I need to learn? 3) Where is my intuition wanting to lead me?

These 3 questions came to me after an already long journey of moving through pain and deep inner work. By then, I knew myself well enough that something was stuck and needed to move. The first question led me to both realizing I was carrying something (energetically) that was not mine and releasing a block, while the third question pointed an arrow to the direction my life was moving. The second question, however, was the key to unlocking an old pattern that was keeping me stuck, that I couldn’t fully recognize while being in the tiny perspective of my human self.

The funny thing is that I’m really good at doing this for my clients. One of my roles as a therapist is connecting the dots for a client, and then reflecting them back for a client so they can see it too. In my mind, I literally imagine a connect the dots coloring page, and we see the full picture coming together. 

Yet when I started meditating later that evening on the question and wanting to see my past patterns, I quickly got stuck in my analytical mind. I wanted to go straight to my “trigger-> reaction ->past experience-> core wound” map, which is a handy journaling tool. Yet for me it was still too sticky for this moment, especially because I couldn’t see how several, quite different relationships all connected. I realized I needed to step out of myself. I needed to connect with my higher self, or what Lee Harris (and the Z’s) call the “Eye of Awareness” or what others call the inner observer or inner therapist. 

In choosing to access my higher self, I shifted my energy (this can be just using your imagination) to just above my head. Some people call this the 8th chakra, but again, just do what works for you. Then, I imagined myself in a few scenes of the relationships I wanted to examine, but this time I pictured it as if I was looking at the memory as an outsider. Or rather, it was like I myself was the ghost of (Christmas) past and watching myself and the other person in the scene. (In EMDR, for particularly traumatic memories, we/trauma therapists will often ask the client to picture the memory as if it were on a TV screen, perhaps even making it a black and white movie.) From this perspective, I could see it. The people were all different, some with very good intentions and some with negative vibes, but I could see how I abandoned myself, playing out the negative belief of not being enough, with each person. Perhaps it was not speaking up for myself for fear of ruining a date with someone I really liked, or just accepting things as “not that bad“. 

In doing this, in seeing things from a higher perspective, I gave myself the opportunity to stop myself from having to repeat the cycle and learn the same lesson again the hard way. Spiritually speaking, once we have actualized a lesson we came to earth to work through, we can move on and transform at a more enlightened level. From my core, I now know that I need to act on the inner knowledge (it was a lot of work just to start believing that deep truth!) that I am enough and speak my truth in relationships, even if I fear the outcome (whether it be a partner getting mad or a relationship, romantic or friend, ending.)

Okay, so here’s the short “how to”:

Ghost of Christmas Past Meditation (Aka Accessing your Higher Self to End Unwanted Patterns) 

  1. Find a time and space of at least 10 minutes where you will be uninterrupted. If it feels good, light a candle or put on some high vibrational music.
  2. In your journal, write down your question. It might be something like “What is the pattern I am not seeing?” “What lesson do I have to learn here?”
  3. Close your eyes and begin to focus inward. First, notice what sensations are in your body and if there are emotions that need to be released. You can do this by simply breathing into the spot where you are noticing the sensation. It’s totally normal if you need to cry for a bit.
  4. Call on your higher self for guidance. You may intentionally shift your attention and energy upward, above your head, anywhere from a few inches to a few feet. (Again, if you can’t feel it but simply use your imagination, that is 100% okay.)
  5. From this “distance”, lightly touch on and observe memories related to the pattern you want to see more clearly, end, and learn from. What are you noticing? If you catch yourself getting too analytical, just use this as a nudge to gently pull back and return to the higher perspective.
  6. Write down any insights. It might be helpful to read them again the next day.
  7. Offer gratitude to your higher self. 
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Releasing the Past

The past, it clings to us.

Like heat rising off the blacktop.

The past sticks to our bodies, 

a smoke we can’t shake off.

It cycles through our minds, 

obscuring our lens.

We see the word through our past. 

Traumas, beliefs, emotions. 

It live in our brains and our bodies,

hunched shoulders, locked jaws, tight hips.

We stretch.  We try not to think about it. We try to shake it off.

Yet it still clings, threatening our souls from ever being free.  

The pain is the way.  

The only way out is through.  

Stepping into the fog, the confusion, is entering the darkness of my mind. 

I scream in agony.  

I see the pain start to float past.

The groans and cries continue for a while longer.

Actually, what feels like an eternity,

but really, only a moment in time.  

My past is not yet behind me, 

though I feel it loosening its grip.

I breathe in.

A full, deep, belly breath.

I exhale.

Freer than I was before.

I nod to the past, no longer dragging its weight behind me,

but see beside me, like an old friend,

who’s history no longer matches the desires of my future.

But I thank that friend, all the same.

“Great suffering comes from great confusion.” -Robert McKee (on the Rich Roll podcast, episode 736).

So what happens when we let go of the confusion of our minds and let our hearts lead the way? …

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The Sacred Groan

I cannot live in this pain anymore.

Something must break. 

This must be why the earth splits.

Why it erupts.

Something within me must break too. 

For what I am holding onto will not allow me to live.  

The wounds of our past: slavery, separation, running from love.

Both Mother Earth and I know the depths of the darkness.

Wounds, resurfaced, by no other than a lover.  

No longer buried deep, but instead, threatening to consume the light within.

The love within.

What choice will I make?

I hear my body groan in agony.  

“Good”, instructs my Mother.

This is the release.

I can’t see the way, 

but with signs, she assures me that she does.

My only job is to lean back,

to trust my fall into the night sky,

to trust the stars will catch me.

There is no doubt some type of death will occur. 

In my sacred groan, I choose to release my pain.

I choose to let go.

My only chance to return to the Light.

Notes:

  1. If you are in pain right now, know that you are not alone. This is part of the human journey. To transcend our pain. Not to hold it in, but to release it. To let it go. Realize it is not a burden to carry but a path to transformation. This process of moving through pain often requires more movement of energy than journaling or meditating. I suggest first moving the body and inviting any noises…screams, groans, cries, etc to come to the surface to be released. Then you may find peace in stillness.
  2. I believe this is the difference between suicide and ego death, which is, I know, a big statement to make. But when we hold on to our pain, internalize it, keep it inside, it can absolutely kill our light, our soul. On the other hand, if we choose to step towards the pain and allow it to move, to be released, whether it be by groaning and physical release or talking to a therapist or friend, it is simply the ego that dies so the flame within can burn brighter.
  3. The opposite of the sacred groan is, yes, the sacred moan. I hesitate to write about the sacred moan, for lack of many people understanding. There needs to be some conceptualization of sacred sexuality, even if it is only resonating with the term. The sacred moan is the mirrored twin of the sacred groan. It is the orgasm between two divine energies merging together to create something so expansive that it cannot be held within. It too, must be released. Yes, it can happen during sex, but it can happen outside of physical intercourse too. For it is in the energy, the pleasure, the love, the intersect of two divine energies coming together to co-create something bigger, more expansive, that one could have ever done in singularity.
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The Day My Heart First Split

The day Dad shared the news, I believe, started off as an ordinary day. My sisters and I went to school, came home, maybe ate dinner. That evening, before the announcement, he first took me, Sandi, and Amanda to Brookpark Fun & Games, which maybe I thought was a little odd, being a school night and all. I won a small stuffed animal. I don’t remember what it was, or how I won it. I just remember I had it when he sat us all down on Grandma’s couch.

I think he was standing, we were sitting, Grandma in the other room. He and Mom, he said, were getting a divorce.

At first I didn’t understand it. I think I was only 6 or 7. My only timeline is that my uncle, Dad’s youngest brother, passed away from Leukemia the year before. My sister tells me this is the first time she remembered seeing him cry, the second being just a few years ago when Amanda passed. Soon after the news, Dad had a heart attack, age 40, cause: a broken heart. I remember helping him put on his socks as he recovered that winter. I faintly remember mine and Sandi’s (my twin) kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade teachers feeling bad for us.

As I was sitting on Grandma’s couch, I remember picturing me and my sisters floating away in boxes in the ocean. Separated. It sounds silly, but I was so little, still partially dependent on my parents for shaping my understanding and view of the world. I must have cried. I just don’t remember. I don’t remember what happened next, when we saw Mom at home.

I think this is the day I first learned how to dissociate. My body partially shutting down and my imagination floating somewhere else, to protect me from my emotions, the emotions that my little body couldn’t yet process on its own.

I needed to my parents. I needed them to comfort me. To tell me that they loved me and that everything would be okay.

But they were in their own pain. They had learned themselves as children to shut down their emotions from their parents. A survival technique most likely used for generations to get through the hardships of life. And so, I was left alone, inside my own inner world.

For much of my life, I tried to dismiss my parent’s divorce as having any affect on my. After all, I figured, lots of kids experience the divorce of their parents. Of course, some of the wounds started to creep up in relationships as I entered my late 20s. Then, I recently learned that divorce, especially when kids have no voice in the matter, affects the part of the brain that associated with self-worth. [To be more specific, the frontostratial pathway, which links the medial prefrontal cortex (self-knowledge) with the ventral striatum (motivation and reward). Thank you Dr. Bruce Perry for sharing this research in What Happened to You? and https://www.huffpost.com/entry/self-esteem-brain_n_5500501]. I don’t think I felt that the divorce was my fault, but I didn’t feel like I had control of anything happening and I certainly had no one to comfort me, save for my stuffed animals Big Abu and Little Abu.

My brain, at the time, must have associated this with not being enough. A belief that I’ve only semi-consciously carried with me for the last 25+ years.

As a kid, self-soothing came in the form of eating, until I heard the “chunky” comments, and then I numbed my way to anorexia. Then there were sports. Sports, of course, aren’t bad. Except exercises fed my anorexia. Basketball, thinness, and grades all become closely associated with my self-worth.

Eventually, I became ruled by the belief, the fear, that I wasn’t enough. My body was too anxious to play basketball well. My shooting wrist would lock up. I’d have panic attacks, simply playing against boyfriends. In running, I was determined to leave the pressure, the past, behind me. I just wanted to bask in the freeness of running outside.

But you can’t escape the shadows that you don’t know are there. (Aka, the unconscious.)

I loved running.

Yet I got caught in the traps of a culture that said “do more” over and over and over again.

My body had enough. The left hip developed a “hitch”. On flat ground, I felt like I couldn’t control the leg’s swing. I developed calf strains. Running, limping, fainting 100 miles through the first one. And finally, an Achilles tendon injury that stubbornly wouldn’t heal.

I was frustrated for so long. Now I am simply grateful. I believe my Achilles was telling me “I’m not going to let you run until both you unconscious on conscious believes that you are enough. You don’t always have to do things to feel that way. You don’t have to work so hard to be loved. Only then will you know what it’s like to run embodied with freedom and joy. “

Joy and freedom have always been what I’ve strived for. And I have felt that way in the mountains, yet never without that little voice in the back of my mind too, coaxing me like the serpent of Eden, “You a have enough time. Do that mountain too.”

Now, there are times that I do want to extend the day outside. It’s the pressure in my body that feels awful, unloving, persisting even after I call out my ego and choose to stop. The should haves on the drive home actually driving me further away from myself, the home inside my body.

Striving, I realize, is not the right word for what I want to obtain. For striving for love is not love. It’s actually a returning. A returning to my 6 year old self, reminding her that she is loved. That she has nothing to prove, no need to claim her worthiness. A returning to that core truth, so when the world around her spins in a way she can’t control, only that truth exists. That love, joy, and freedom are always present, if not outside then within. The heart that exist outside of protections, ego, and human form.

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