Feel is a Four Letter Word (When You're Insecure)

Insecure parents tend to get overwhelmed or irritated by feelings. They ignore them, shame them or misread them. How often have we all seen a parent tell their child, Stop crying. Nothing‘s wrong. You’re just being (a baby, cranky, difficult, etc.). This leaves kids feeling alone, overwhelmed, misunderstood, angry, and unable to tolerate distress. As you can imagine, as teens or adults, they often turn to food, drugs or distracting/numbing activities to avoid feelings. There may be one permissible emotion like anger or joy, but that feeling becomes over-used.

When clients come to therapy, one of the first things we do is name feelings. You seem worried, lonely, hurt, scared, etc. For insecure people, having feelings named accurately and kindly is a revelation. It feels like they are being seen and understood, maybe for the first time. The experience is deeply relieving, soothing, sustaining. It's a drink of water when you didn't realize you were dehydrated.

By seeing how the therapist responds, clients also learn the skill of recognizing and responding to their own feelings compassionately. This is what happens naturally in securely attached families. We insecures have to learn to fill this gap.
Secure parents notice facial expressions and body language, accurately naming feelings. You usually can't see your own face, but you can feel the muscles of your face as they move into a smile, a grimace, or a frown. You can feel your brow rise in surprise. You can feel your mouth tremble in fear or sadness.
You can also feel emotions in your body. The cliches we use to describe feelings can be a useful guide.

• When you're angry, you might notice your head or ears get hot. You might feel pressure like blowing your top. You might feel heat or energy in your arms or chest. This is adrenaline, a gift of your fight-or-flight response, gearing you up for battle.
• Shame, embarrassment and humiliation might leave you feeling like you want to shrink, to go full turtle and pull into your shell, to be swallowed up by the earth.
• Fear might leave you "yellow bellied," with a sick feeling in your gut. Or the hairs on you neck might stand up. Fear's cousin, anxiety, might make you edgy or fidgety, itching to run.
• Sadness may leave you choked up with tears that get stuck in your throat - especially if you've learned not to let them show. Sadness's bigger sister, depression might flatten you with the "why bother" blahs.

If you are on the reparenting road, seeking greater security from yourself, then your mission is to gentle yourself toward compassion, curiosity and acceptance. Naming your feelings without judgment conveys understanding and compassion. As you gain comfort with feelings, sitting with them in a friendly way feels soothing, safe and relieving (which you may notice in a deep breath or sigh).

Recognizing your feelings and accepting them with curiosity and self-compassion will also, in time, show you that you can tolerate and soothe your distress or disappointment. Taking the time to ease yourself through the distress will allow you to make better decisions about the messages your feelings are sending.

• When something doesn't feel right for you, you might set a different boundary.
• You might ask for more of what you want or need.

Allowing yourself to hear the messages your feelings are sending ultimately empowers you to take better care of yourself.

The Life Sucking Tragedy of Too Much Access

Something miraculous happened while I was on vacation. After several days of using phone GPS to get around in our rental car, streaming music, and uploading photos to our social media accounts, we got a text from our carrier saying we were nearly out of data. Did we want to buy more? Text Yes or No.



As if we shared a brain, we both knew the answer would be No. And for the rest of the trip, we chilled the f@ck out. We stopped going everywhere and doing all the things. We went to the beach and swam. We took long walks at dusk. We ate leisurely meals. We read books. It was like vacation used to be - relaxing.


For about a year now, I've been having conversations with clients about how much we have to track now, from multiple different passwords to which texts and emails need a response, to the milestones and deadlines of work projects, to the likes and follows we give (or hope to receive) online, to managing our children's activities and assignments, to tending to our friends and romantic partners, to (especially if you are over, say, 45) tending our own bodies.

Are you exhausted reading that last paragraph? I just re-read it, and I am!

There is also another fear you may not be aware of. A great many of us have a fear of down time. Because if we really do unplug and breathe, we might feel. We might feel how exhausted and overwhelmed we are. We might feel that underlying discontent about something (or someone) that feels so scary to address.

All the busy-ness becomes a way we ignore or tune out from our emotional world - and the needs that our emotions are designed to signal. By tuning out, we may be abandoning ourselves emotionally. We may be unconsciously re-creating the emotional abandonment or neglect we felt as kids. Ouch.

If you are on the road to practicing Healthy Secure Adulting, it may be time for your inner parent to some set limits. Because this can be scary and painful, you might not want to dive into the deep end. I don't recommend two weeks of silent meditation as a first step. But maybe you can designate an hour or even 30 minutes one day a week to unplug and listen inward.

It may help to remind yourself that you don't have to do anything but listen. You don't have to fix anything. Your main mission, at least for now, is to keep yourself company while you feel how you feel. Nice company. Kind, friendly, compassionate company. Your inner critic is not needed for this task.

Notice how it feels to offer yourself company without any other agenda. If sadness, fear, pain or anger come up, practice breathing into them. Imagine putting an arm around yourself. See how it feels to just validate the feeling - "Given my history/circumstances, it makes so much sense I feel this way."

When you get in touch with your feelings, a soreness may linger for hours or days after. See if you can just let it happen. When you notice it, be that kind, supportive company for a moment or two. In this way, you may build tolerance for your own emotions and ease yourself out of the feeling-phobia endemic in our culture.

Gradually, over time, you may listen and just be with your feelings more often. As you do this, the abandonment/neglect end. Eventually, you may want to address the messages your feelings are sending - in gentle and kind ways.

It may just be that in limiting the access you have to tech (and the access tech gives the world to your time), you discover more opportunities to relax, to slow down, to enjoy the moment. That's good too. It's really good.

Need practical tools/ideas for reducing access?

• Filter all your email accounts through gmail to reduce spam.
• Take 10 minutes each week to unsubscribe from all the things.
• Set up an auto-responder on your email and an outgoing voicemail telling the world you are unplugged and will respond in X days. 
• Turn off your phone, all the way off!
• If anyone complains they can't reach you, practice saying, "I unplug from X day/time to X day/time every week. I will respond when I'm back online." People will adapt.
• Designate certain days or hours "screen free."
• Spend time outside if the weather permits and look at the world instead of a screen.
• Lay down with your eyes closed for ten minutes or more and just let your mind wander. If you wander into work thoughts, planning, or fixing, gently nudge yourself into something else. You might take the time to feel your feelings. Or you might fantasize about the perfect vacation, or meal, or who you would want to visit if you had a time machine.

We are not built to be "on" all the time. Down time is essential to restore our energy and creativity. Out of doing lots of nothing come some of the best ideas. Trust that doing less will create more richness in your relationship with yourself. And as you become more available to your own feelings and needs, your inner children will come to trust you (and like you) more and more.

Deep Gratitude

Part of self care is discovering what makes us feel good. Providing what feels good is a key factor in building trust and security from within. Knowing you care about yourself and are looking out for your own happiness builds that trust.

In the convergence of science and spirituality, we are learning that certain practices like gratitude foster good feelings (and increased happy neurotransmitters like serotonin). But here's the thing. I get a bit irritated by positive thinking and affirmations. And a daily gratitude list can feel like one more chore.

But I absolutely love unplanned, unforced moments of deep gratitude - like when you realize you have stumbled into paradise after hiking a bit too long for your knees. Even more, I love deep gratitude for the seemingly mundane. Today's breakfast, for example...

Barley flakes (less gooey than oats), cooked with fresh blackberries from our local farm and mango. Mango. In California. In June. Vanilla. Himalayan pink salt. Palm sugar.

Given the state of the world, it's easy to focus on what's wrong. But I look at my breakfast, the stunning violet streaks of berry juice contrasted with the orange-yellow of mango, the Italian pan with its mottled, BPA free, long lasting nonstick surface -

- and I feel like I am looking at love.

I think about the care, kindness and attention that went into my breakfast from strangers, many who died hundreds of years ago. The slow, steady steps that led to the technologies of flight, refrigeration, agriculture. The scientists and designers who kept working and tweaking to make a lightweight pan for my arthritic elbows that will not give me cancer. I think about the people in India who planted, tended and harvested this mango. I think about the people who hand pollinate vanilla plants. I think about the people who collect the salt crystals. I think about the ancestors who learned, step by step, generation by generation, to make all of this possible.

For me, the miracle is the tenacity, the perseverance, and most of all, the love and care, that make humans all over the world work on creating safety, pleasure, comfort, easy, and joy on behalf of other humans they will never meet.

When I think of miracles in this way, just noticing how wonderful people can be (even though all those same people through the centuries have probably said something terrible about their spouses' foot odor from time to time), something happens in my heart. I soften. I breathe more deeply. For a moment, I fall in love with humanity, with all of its flaws and grumpiness. Today, hundreds of people, over generations, conspired to give me the ingredients and tools I needed to make a gorgeous, delicious breakfast. Thanks everyone!

And I take a moment to notice, to give myself that feeling of being cared for, loved - by others, but also by the parent within me, who wants nothing more than to treasure me. And I feel that love, for which, I am deeply grateful.

Please DON'T Suck it Up, Buttercup

April 5, 2019...

We live in a kind of a crazy (and crazy-making) culture - one that encourages us to be productive all the time, at any cost. Tired? Drink coffee or Red Bull, take a shower, hit the gym. Don’t rest! For god's sake, don’t nap!

Hitting a wall with work? Take a course on motivation. Meet with a coach. Push through. Suck it up, buttercup.

Procrastination is a sign of weakness. Lazy is a four letter word.

We are so indoctrinated into this way of thinking, we may not stop to question the truth of these notions - or their effectiveness - or their sustainability.

I used to be an over-doer. Fueled by fears I was barely aware of, I worked all the time. I didn’t realize I was working myself into exhaustion or repetitive stress injuries until my body finally screamed (in pain), STOP!

I was so lucky to be working with my beloved therapist and mentor, Robyn, who had walked a similar path herself. She helped me understand that it doesn’t have to be this way (quote on going slowly).

Over time, I have learned to trust my body’s rhythms. If work isn’t coming easily, it usually means I need to rest - even if I’ve been resting! I might just need more.

I’ve learned that procrastination is about getting ready, something good is percolating, and I can trust that it will emerge at the right time.

Lazy doesn’t exist. It’s a negative label we give to fatigue, lack of interest, or the need to take a break and just play or putter.

Over the last few months, I haven’t felt engaged with the work of writing my course on Healthy Secure Adulting. I had one deadline to meet, and I made it. But it wasn’t fun. I am taking classes to learn how to create engaging, effective online training. But it’s been feeling like a slog to get through the work. I began to worry that I’ve forgotten how to teach - something I have loved and done well for nearly 17 years!

So I have given myself permission to put it all down for a while. I’ve been walking in nature, enjoying the wildflower show courtesy of a rainy spring. I’ve been writing poems with my friend, Wendy, in what is now an annual tradition for us - national poetry writing month, in which we each write a poem a day for thirty days. I’ve been napping and watching my favorite old TV shows.

And this morning, all the tiredness and too-busyness and brain fog I’d been having completely lifted. I wrote the first four sections of my course on boundaries in less than an hour. It came easily. I was able to integrate the information I’ve learned about online course development. And it was fun.

All this to say, if you’re tired, rest. If you’re bored, do something that feeds you. If you’re feeling unproductive, stop trying to push through. Play. Read a book. Watch TV. Do nothing. Fully give yourself over to letting go. Trust that as your body and psyche receive the care they need, they will revive. And you will return to anything you feel a true desire to create or accomplish from a place of excitement and energy - instead of stress or obligation.

Holidays are not happy for everyone. Most people over 30 have some level of loss that we feel more acutely at this time of year. It can be the loss of a person or pet, the loss of a dream or a job, the loss of functioning as our bodies age.

We often admonish ourselves to cheer up, put on a happy face, or practice gratitude instead of leaning into the grief. I think this is a betrayal of our hurting selves. We don’t need platitudes or denial when we feel sad. We need arms around us.

We need our own compassion and permission to feel the sadness until it passes. If we ignore it or worse, shame ourselves for feeling bad, the pain will just last longer. It’s having our own comfort and empathy that allow the feelings to move through us and resolve.

So, instead of discounting or dismissing your feelings, try validating them instead. There really is a good reason you feel this way. And you’re allowed to feel it until it passes.

Quotes on Self Acceptance

Quotes on healing, slowness, allowing emotion, 

and having your own permission to just be you

May today there be peace within. May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith in yourself and others. May you use the gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content with yourself just the way you are. Let this knowledge settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us.

- Source unknown

  

Far too frequently we see ourselves as doers. This means that in order to feel worthy… we feel we must endlessly work and achieve. We have not always learned just to be receptive, to be [present] – quiet, available... 

- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

  

Listen in deep silence. Be very still and open your mind.... Sink deep into the peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and sights and sounds of this insane world.

- A Course in Miracles

Ultimately, healing is a coming to terms with things as they are, rather than struggling to force them to be as they once were, or as we would like them to be to feel secure.

- Jon Kabat-Zinn

Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass...it's about learning how to dance in the rain. 

- Source unknown

Life is so short - We must move more slowly

Thich Naht Hanh

There is no point driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad.  You might as well give in and save your sanity for later.

- Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The deep attending to hard knots of holding is a powerfully compassionate act, a turning toward rejected parts of our being. As this newly compassionate observing occurs, the object of observation, the body/self is transformed and we move from denial to acceptance, from rejection to inclusion. This is the beginning of...loving kindness for the self. 

- Katherine Thanas (in Being Bodies)

  

All of our emotions are our babies.  Treat them tenderly, care for them.  Be with them. Understanding and compassion will ultimately transform them.

- Thich Naht Hanh 

Growth and forward motion continue whether we are vigilant or not. Pushing ourselves often slows the process: it stirs resistance in the healthy parts of us that are protecting the natural flow from being overthrown or interfered with. When things feel really hard, slowing way down allows the internal, organic balancing process to work its magic. When you get scared that you'll never come out of this (or any other place in which you find yourself) remember that everything in us moves always toward growth and change–no matter how it looks to our outside eye. 

- Robyn Posin

  

Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What appears as bad manners, an ill temper or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.

- Miller Williams

Nothing that feels bad is ever the last step.

- Diana Fosha (on the power of positive emotion in therapy)

Your Inner Legal Advisor

We all have a voice within that edits what we say for our audience. I might swear like a sailor with my college friends but aim for more polite language when I’m with my friend, the minister. Choosing your words can be a wonderful social skill. Or it can be a straight jacket, especially if you judge yourself harshly.

Some people become painfully shy and awkward for fear of saying the wrong thing. Some preempt possible judgment from others by speaking in disclaimers. It’s like having an internal legal department whispering in your ear.

In these instances, you’re not choosing words to respect or connect with others. You’re trying to avoid being judged. In the process you end up creating distance with others instead of closeness, because they feel uncomfortable with your silence, with your self interrupting disclaimers, and a sense that you are looking at them suspiciously (you suspect they are judging you as harshly as you judge yourself).

The problem is that the judge isn’t out there. It’s within you. So the work to do is not to tightly manage your words or behavior with others. It’s to listen inward to the frightened parts of you who are likely lonely and want to connect.

Before those parts of you can feel truly safe being themselves with others, they have to feel safe with you. You might have to commit to stopping self criticism whenever you notice it. Then replacing that self criticism with empathy for the fear that sparks self-flagellation.

If you think about your history with people, your fear of judgement probably makes sense. Practice validating that fear while letting the critic know it’s no longer okay to bully yourself when you’re scared. You might say to your frightened self,

“Given what’s happened in the past, this fear of judgment is only natural. We can’t control whether others will judge. We can only find out if they are judgy. If they are, we can choose to spend less time with them or reveal less of ourselves to them.

What we can control (though it may take practice) is whether we judge ourselves. So whenever self judgement comes up, I’m going to try to remember to stop that old habit and instead ask, what feels scary? If we name the fear, we can look for ways to feel safer like going slower or practicing new boundaries. I can help you when you’re scared. But when you’re mean to me, I get stuck in shame paralysis.”

As you begin to feel less judgement from within, you might discover who really is judgmental among your friends and family and who is not. When you have your own safe, friendly, kind and respectful company, it’s much easier to spend less time with the judgy people in your life. And in turn, this frees up time to meet people who don’t judge you, but really enjoy you exactly as you are.

Your inner legal advisor has been trying to help you avoid pain, but like most attorneys, it does it’s job by frightening you. You can help this part retire from this role and become an ally who tells you when you feel anxious, worried, or when something just isn’t quite right. That will empower you to help yourself instead of shutting you down.