Tag: mental health

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The Path to Softening

person walking near wheat field

 “We become a bundle of tense muscles defending our existence” Chogyam Trungpa

 I would describe myself during most of my early life as a glutton for punishment. If there was a hard way, I would find it. It became something of a badge of honor, my ability to face adversity square in the face and push on. I remember in my early 30’s, I decided I would run my first marathon. Now, there was nothing intrinsically wrong with my desire to take on this challenge and stretch beyond were my current abilities, but because it was so deeply ingrained in me to soldier on, I was unable to accurately listen to the messages my body was sending me. The grueling training regimen I kept myself on meant my body was chronically in a great deal of pain.

To cope, or more accurately, to ignore, I began taking regularly high doses of anti-inflammatory medications so I could continue running. Eventually, the abuse of my body led to horrible stomach pain and bloody diarrhea. Even these symptoms didn’t register as something I should pay attention to. I never even thought to ask myself if it was too much pain. I never considered slowing down or stopping to help my body feel better and allow some comfort. Deny, ignore, and just soldier on. In retrospect, instead of finishing the marathon with a new sense of purpose and pride, I look back on that time in my life with incredible sadness. The vestiges of childhood trauma left me with an acutely high tolerance to pain and harshness. This was the world in which I resided and the life I knew best.

It wasn’t long after the marathon I began to see a massage therapist. I think my heart was in the right place. I began to feel the seeds of longing to feel better and not wanting to live my life in so much pain. On my first visit to see her, true to form, I told her that I would respond best to really deep tissue massage and I wanted her to go in hard and dig deep into the muscle. This fit with my motto, no pain, no gain. I don’t think I could see a path where I could open myself up to anything that felt good without first having to pass through the gates of suffering.

I remember this moment vividly. You know the feeling when someone is about ready to say something, however unwittingly, that will unravel and upend your entire world. She looked at me and with such kindness said that if she goes in too harshly and works too deeply into the muscle, my whole body will begin to tense and tighten up in an effort to protect itself from the onslaught, but if she gently begins to work the fascia around the muscles, going slowly and easily, then the muscles will  organically begin to unravel and soften and offer me some relief.

I can tell you that much of my adulthood since has been learning to cultivate this idea in all areas of my life. There is now an invitation to soften when things feel painful or uncomfortable. What I had learned in childhood, and what felt like the harshest path, always involved so much resistance. It felt like pushing a boulder uphill or swimming against the current. But there is a great spiritual truth, one found in 12 step meetings and bumper stickers which goes something like…  Pain is necessary, but Suffering is optional.

What I have learned along the way on this journey is that my old ways of seeking the most painful and desolate path was that it led to everything tightening more. I spent so much time protecting against the pain that there was not room for any opening up to what felt sweet and full of goodness. We cannot simultaneously both tighten to protect and open up to receive. But if we can begin to soften just a bit, if we can find the path of gently working the fascia around the muscle, life often gives way to some sort of sweetness, even in the most painful of circumstances.

When we meet the edges around what feels difficult with gentleness and kindness, when we bring to our places of pain and discomfort our loving attention instead of marching out the troops in an all-out assault, then we learn that the hard way is not always the better way. Instead, we learn that even if we find ourselves in places that feel hard, there is always a way to allow gentleness to touch upon our harsh edges. We learn flow and not force. This is the path to softening.

I would describe myself during most of my early life as a glutton for punishment. If there was a hard way, I would find it. It became something of a badge of honor, my ability to face adversity square in the face and push on. I remember in my early 30’s, I decided I would run my first marathon. Now, there was nothing intrinsically wrong with my desire to take on this challenge and stretch beyond were my current abilities, but because it was so deeply ingrained in me to soldier on, I was unable to accurately listen to the messages my body was sending me. The grueling training regimen I kept myself on meant my body was chronically in a great deal of pain.

To cope, or more accurately, to ignore, I began taking regularly high doses of anti-inflammatory medications so I could continue running. Eventually, the abuse of my body led to horrible stomach pain and bloody diarrhea. Even these symptoms didn’t register as something I should pay attention to. I never even thought to ask myself if it was too much pain. I never considered slowing down or stopping to help my body feel better and allow some comfort. Deny, ignore, and just soldier on. In retrospect, instead of finishing the marathon with a new sense of purpose and pride, I look back on that time in my life with incredible sadness. The vestiges of childhood trauma left me with an acutely high tolerance to pain and harshness. This was the world in which I resided and the life I knew best.

It wasn’t long after the marathon I began to see a massage therapist. I think my heart was in the right place. I began to feel the seeds of longing to feel better and not wanting to live my life in so much pain. On my first visit to see her, true to form, I told her that I would respond best to really deep tissue massage and I wanted her to go in hard and dig deep into the muscle. This fit with my motto, no pain, no gain. I don’t think I could see a path where I could open myself up to anything that felt good without first having to pass through the gates of suffering.

I remember this moment vividly. You know the feeling when someone is about ready to say something, however unwittingly, that will unravel and upend your entire world. She looked at me and with such kindness said that if she goes in too harshly and works too deeply into the muscle, my whole body will begin to tense and tighten up in an effort to protect itself from the onslaught, but if she gently begins to work the fascia around the muscles, going slowly and easily, then the muscles will  organically begin to unravel and soften and offer me some relief.

I can tell you that much of my adulthood since has been learning to cultivate this idea in all areas of my life. There is now an invitation to soften when things feel painful or uncomfortable. What I had learned in childhood, and what felt like the harshest path, always involved so much resistance. It felt like pushing a boulder uphill or swimming against the current. But there is a great spiritual truth, one found in 12 step meetings and bumper stickers which goes something like…  Pain is necessary, but Suffering is optional.

What I have learned along the way on this journey is that my old ways of seeking the most painful and desolate path was that it led to everything tightening more. I spent so much time protecting against the pain that there was not room for any opening up to what felt sweet and full of goodness. We cannot simultaneously both tighten to protect and open up to receive. But if we can begin to soften just a bit, if we can find the path of gently working the fascia around the muscle, life often gives way to some sort of sweetness, even in the most painful of circumstances.

When we meet the edges around what feels difficult with gentleness and kindness, when we bring to our places of pain and discomfort our loving attention instead of marching out the troops in an all-out assault, then we learn that the hard way is not always the better way. Instead, we learn that even if we find ourselves in places that feel hard, there is always a way to allow gentleness to touch upon our harsh edges. We learn flow and not force. This is the path to softening.

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The Art of the Pause…

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Viktor Frankl

Much of my own personal work over the years as well as the work I do as a therapist has been helping to cultivate the art of the pause. What does that even mean to pause? I found it helpful to look at some common definitions of the word pause which included:

– A temporary stop in action or speech

– Interrupt action or speech briefly

The phrase “To give someone pause” is defined as causing someone to think carefully or hesitate before doing something.

So, why craft the ability to pause? Why is this such a valuable life skill? Perhaps first we should explore some of the reasons we may find it difficult to implement the pause in our daily lives to begin with. Do you find yourself feeling frequently overwhelmed and/or enraged when stuck in traffic, or being cut off? Maybe you find yourself easily irritated and frustrated with your kids or being reactive with your significant other. Or, perhaps, you are becoming aware of how quickly you rush through your days without ever taking a moment for yourself to breathe or relax even just a little.

Speeding through life and frequent reactive, impulsive knee-jerk reactions are often the norm for those of us who grew up with early trauma and adversity. This can occur because of adaptive changes the brain makes in response to the chronic stress in the environment. Chronic or toxic stress happens when a child experiences frequent and/or prolonged adversity- such as physical or emotional abuse, neglect, caregiver mental illness or substance abuse, exposure to violence and/or the accumulated burdens of family economic hardship- without adequate adult support.

Chronic or toxic stress in early childhood mobilizes the “fight, flight” hormonal system. When this happens too frequently or for too long it changes the architecture of the brain. Cortisol levels remain elevated which can affect several neural systems, impair our immune response and set us up for long-term deleterious effects on our physical and emotional health.

Toxic stress early on can result in a lifetime of struggle and difficulty controlling our stress response system and it can become overly reactive and/or slow to shut down when faced with challenges and threats. We become adults who have difficulty making accurate assessments and often feel threatened and respond impulsively to situations where this is no real threat and remain activated well after the threat has passed.

So, you can see, for many of us, we have experienced those brain adaptations that make pausing more difficult, especially when faced with challenging circumstances. One of the ways I have found incredibly helpful on my journey to slow down and create more spaciousness has been to develop more mindfulness in my life. Mindfulness is simply bringing our complete attention to our present moment awareness (thoughts, feelings, bodily awareness) without judgment and with gentleness and compassion. Another interesting definition for mindfulness is the self-regulation of attention with an attitude of curiosity, openness and acceptance.

So, what does mindfulness have to do with the brain changes that can happen with early adversity and our ability to cultivate the art of the pause in our everyday life? Well, here is where it gets interesting. Research has shown that mindfulness improves emotional regulation, not by eliminating or reducing emotional experience, but instead, it is the present-moment awareness and acceptance of emotional experience that develops are capacity to soothe a dysregulated nervous system. 

The research supports the idea that this kind of attentive and open stance toward our own emotions and thoughts allow us to notice these emotions earlier on and take necessary steps to help them from spiraling out of control.

I was first introduced to mindfulness in my twenties when I completed extensive training in a therapeutic modality called Hakomi, which is a mindfulness, somatic and experiential based approach to change based on the tenets of curiosity, gentleness and non-violence. I went into my career as a therapist and this training as someone who had struggled personally with the changes that result from trauma and I often felt like I was on fire inside. 

My response to most things that had any overlap with my early childhood trauma or were personally triggering to me were at once highly reactive and lightning quick. It felt to me like there was no space at all between the trigger and my reaction- I often felt like an open wound living in the world.

As I began to slowly change my language around my emotional experience to one that was less shaming and more nurturing and compassionate, I realized I had this new ability to witness myself from a more neutral framework. Where I was once had to utilize my limited resources to defend against the onslaught of the trauma laden narratives that had been passed down to me, I found an emergent witness within myself, compassionate, patient, and capable of infinite kindness. It was from this that I found the courage to slow down and become curious about my own process, the trauma I carried in my body and the ways I engaged with the world around me.

The art of the pause happens when we learn to embrace, comfort and soothe the internal fires. Just as an ideal mother might do with her hurting child, we offer to ourselves a safe place, kind words, and a sweetness we may have lived a lifetime without to the places we hold that suffer. 

The pause will always have difficulty co-existing in an internal environment of judgment, shame and harshness. It is just too difficult to do the kind of self-reflection required for growth and change under those circumstances. The art of the pause is cultivated in gentleness and kindness, in love and 

encouragement. The art of the pause is the natural by-product of our fierce commitment to bring our attention to our present moment experience with openness, curiosity and acceptance. It is in cultivating the art of the pause where change is possible and hope lives.

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How to be ok when your not ok

We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with messages about what it means to live the American dream and achieve the perfect life. Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat have given us the unique ability to filter out the less glamorous aspects of our lives and offer to the world some watered down, inauthentic version that fits with that idealized image. I have thought a lot about the costs and where have we have paid the price for these advances in technology. I have wondered if the rise of the internet and social media have played a part in the frightening rise of mental health issues, especially among our youth and young adults.

Before global connectivity and social media, what we learned about our world came largely from our flesh and blood relationships, our family and friends. We had the opportunity to learn through these deep and meaningful relationships, that life is often messy, imperfect and filled with the unexpected. This is the price of being human. Sure, many of us spent time, even before the rise of the internet, trying to hide the more uncomfortable aspects of our private lives. But here’s the thing, in real-life that’s a lot harder to do.

Our heartaches and struggles are unconsciously revealed through the subtle rounding of our shoulders when we walk, the unexpected catch in our voice, or the hint of sadness in our eyes. The countless ways the people around us really know who we are without our having to say it out loud. How often has a friend intuitively known when something was wrong, the truth revealed by our subtle cues long before we found the strength to share our story with others. We learn that it is okay to not be okay because we see the people around us, those we love, during the times in their life when they are decidedly not ok and watch them make it through to the other side intact.

On social media we often fail to see this kind of honesty. Whether it’s an Instagram influencer or a classmate from high school, we all feel the pressure to look perfect. And because we are privy to such a skewed personal narrative, we miss out on witnessing the beautiful sequence of events that transpire when we witness each other’s struggles. It is here we see how unbelievably awful life can be, how capable we are of persevering and overcoming, and just how much of our time can be spent feeling like we are living in chaos.
This kind of upheaval is a requirement for change and growth. Period. Chaos theory tells us that when you work to change a system, you push it out of its previously stable state. When that occurs, it then begins to oscillate between the old system and the new. The previous system must let go and fall apart for the new state to emerge. When we are in the middle of this it feels like nothing is ok or ever will be again.

“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is thing’s don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen; room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” - Pema Chodron

Our current obsession with the Marie Kondo brand- controlled, sanitized, and demanding it meet our insatiable need to be filled with joy is antithetical to personal and spiritual growth. Perhaps, we can’t get enough of it because it offers an illusion of safety or a measure of comfort in uncertain times, but it fails to prepare us adequately for the challenges we will face in life.
We spend our time and energy trying to manipulate and manage our circumstances instead of fostering our innate resilience and strengthening our ability to accept life as it is and not how we want it to be. We build valuable muscle memory each time we struggle and find ourselves on the other side, stronger for the experience. We learn to trust and have faith when we practice letting go in the moments when it feels impossible and everything in us screams for us to hold on tighter.

In some measure, the collateral damage from the digital age has been alienating us from the very thing that protects us in times of hardship and struggle. It is impossible to be connected to an image on a mobile phone and a status update cannot feed our soul’s need for belonging. That falls squarely in the province of the real world and in our real relationships. Those positive social interactions protect against stress and we are failing to access this brilliant evolutionary system when our attempts at bonding primarily occur via technology and social networking. At the end of the day, it is the bonds of love and connection that allow us to endure when things feel like they are falling apart.

So, how do we learn to feel okay not being okay? Cultivate relationships with people committed to living authentically and whole-heartedly. Find your family, those who know the intrinsic value of chaos and struggle on the road to reorganization and self-love. Connect, love deeply in the places that hurt. Reject the illusion of perfection everywhere you see it. Remind yourself to stop comparing your inside to everyone else’s outside.

 Be here now, invite the present moment into your life and make space for whatever may show up. Remember that the idea of beauty and perfection is only a construct, so give yourself permission to make your version big enough to include the parts of you that feel so exquisitely tender and vulnerable. Invite them to show up, then love them unconditionally and often. Learn to welcome not being okay because deep in your bones you know that it is here you will remember that you were ok all along.

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Embracing anxiety

Learning to live in the presence of anxiety is not easy. My first experience of debilitating anxiety started in my early twenties when I had my first panic attack. I was in school, away from home, in an entirely new environment when they struck from what seemed to be out of the blue. I could have up to 4 or 5 panic attacks a day. I remember distinctly not being sure if I would be able to get through the day let alone successfully through two more years of school. 

My days were spent trying to convince myself that I was not dying of some obscure disease and my evenings were not much better. I kept the lights and television on all night for comfort, watching Field of Dreams over and over in a desperate attempt to reassure myself. The familiarity of Kevin Costner’s voice helped me hold on, reassuring me that I was still alive and breathing despite my brain and body insisting otherwise. This lasted for a few months and when my panic attacks finally subsided, I was desperately glad they were no longer my constant companion.

My second round with panic disorder came around 10 years later. What I learned then was that although I had been living with chronically high anxiety most of my life, I had adapted to that level of stress and it often went unrecognized. But the panic attacks could not be ignored and leveled me in a way that demanded my full attention. It was typically a physical illness that precipitated my anxiety crossing over that threshold into the “I can’t live with this anymore” territory. As a child I had been hospitalized multiple times and the trauma from my early medical history played a pivotal role in the onset of my panic attacks.

This time was different though. They did not just simply disappear after only a few months and wishing them away could no longer be considered a particularly effective coping strategy. They were here to stay, at least for the time being, so I would have to find another way. My felt sense at the time was that I was continually fighting myself, feeling so much frustration alongside my fear, and my constant anger at the universe for the general unfairness of it all was exhausting. I knew it was time for a different approach.

I had recently completed a training in a therapy modality that utilized mindfulness and was fundamental in its principles. Mindfulness is the ability to pay attention and be aware in the present moment in a non-judgmental way. I began to imagine what it might look like if I could incorporate more mindfulness at the very time I was experiencing my anxiety. This required me to totally reconsider my approach, which had largely been one of avoidance. Now I was asking myself to face the monster head on. Could I really have a different relationship with the anxiety that plagued me?

Looking back, I think maybe the most difficult part was figuring out how to slow down and let go of my habitual pattern of running away from my heightened emotional states which were understandably frightening to me. I began to ask myself if there was something I could learn by befriending my anxiety. My first few attempts at this were not ideal. On one particularly challenging night I remember having to go into the bathroom, look at myself in the mirror and tell myself that I was going to be okay and that I would get up in the morning and things would feel different…that I would feel better. And when I woke in the morning they did.

So started my slow evolution to open the lines of communication with those places of intense fear and anxiety. The first step in cultivating mindfulness for me involved finding a steadfast commitment to compassion and kindness for myself. That meant addressing a lifelong pattern of self-judgment and shame. It was a lot of work. Those critical voices I had internalized were so much a part of my inner dialogue that it required a great deal of my conscious attention to notice when they would show up. They had somehow become the background noise in my life. When these voices would come, and they always did, I began to find a way to gently but firmly tell them it was Enough. We had lived with the harsh and unforgiving for far too long and it was my job to help forge a new path.

When anxiety and panic would return and wash over me yet again, there emerged a new voice to comfort those fears. I would imagine talking to myself in a way a loving parent would soothe a frightened child. My new religion became one of softness with a healthy dose of compassion and kindness. In a way, I suppose I was re-parenting myself. Instead of denying, avoiding or excising my fears I found a way instead to increase my capacity to hold close my most difficult places, singing them lullabies and whispering words of encouragement.

When I was finally able to redirect my efforts from trying to banish my anxiety and instead focus on creating more spaciousness within myself to hold what was so uncomfortable and frightening, well, everything changed. Not really the anxiety so much, that is still there at times. But what did change was the new sweetness that came from learning to lovingly hold my fears and my ability to offer unconditional support to the places that needed it most. I wasn’t alone anymore. I could trust the love would be there for me in my darkest hours and that made it softer and somehow more bearable.

 As a mother, I know this to be true with watching my own children. I couldn’t always fix the cuts and scrapes or the break-ups and losses, but the magic of holding them close and letting them know I was always there, assuring them everything was going to be okay transformed the sharp edges of their fears somehow. And so, I too, came to believe that the healing only came when I learned to embrace my anxiety and offer it the connection and support it too had been waiting for.