emotional wellness

Imagine 100 people in a line up in front of you, each one geared up and ready to tell you you’re irrational.

Why? Because the idea of being called irrational is adrenaline pumping. As in, you default to hyper defense, adrenal draining mode when it comes up. Which means it’s in your best interest to take a look at it.

Thoughts come up, like: If I accept their label of irrational, that means there is something wrong with me. And there can’t be something wrong with me. My mantra is: It’s Not OK for people to think I’m not ok; It’s Not OK for people to think I’m not ok. Must not happen. Cannot happen.

Gentle pause for peace inducing thought: Their label of irrational isn’t the true definition of irrational. It’s the label they give to anyone who doesn’t go along with what they want.

If you choose that as truth, then you have some options:

Speak – “Your label of irrational isn’t the true definition of irrational. It’s the label you give anyone who doesn’t do things the way you believe they should be done. Ie, in a way that suits your agenda.” (NOTE: This is gaslighting, a term for anyone who manipulates a person into questioning their own sanity using psychological means. Scary stuff. Prevalent. Look out for it. Here’s a book that will help you identify it.)

Don’t Speak, But Remember – I will never see this person again. This is not worth my time. I need to protect my wellbeing, by not giving so much of myself to something that doesn’t require it.

And then comes peace through self-assertion:

I know what the irrational label means. A rejection of boundaries. A fear of boundaries. A fear of me and my right to protect myself. 

In order to accept me as rational, the labeler would need to accept their entire way of living as irrational. This terrifies them, so they label me as irrational, instead. However, this does not mean I am irrational.

We can accept that someone might label us irrational, but that doesn’t mean that’s what We Are.

Thoughts to ponder, to help you experience more peace in your life. And also, there’s this: Clarity comes when we dare to look at what upsets us instead of running from it.

xo

It’s Friday and it’s been one hell of a week. Maybe you feel the same?

Personal issues that have my heart feeling like a yo-yo? Check. Mercury retrograde getting me feeling a certain shade of yikes? Check. Sleep issues? Check.

I can’t help but feel like things are falling apart.

What do we do when things feel like they’re falling apart? I know what I used to do: Make a home in my pain. I felt the return of that act this morning. I was drafting a response to the awful response from the other party in a lawsuit I’m in the midst of when I felt a familiar sort of uncomfortable radiating from my stomach.

It felt constricting, and immediately took away my desire to eat or drink, and yet, I kinda liked it.

It made me feel shaky and sick like I wanted to throw up, yet still, I kinda liked it.

It was volatile, and wavered with intensity depending on the tone of the words I either typed or erased in the document I felt consumed with populating.

To be blunt, it felt fucking terrible, yet still, I kinda liked it.

So I asked myself the obvious: “Why do you like this? Why are you continuing to do this, even though it is causing you to suffer? What is happening here?”

I didn’t wait for an answer or try to diagnose it. I just stopped typing and the feeling went away. And when the idea came up that I should continue to type, the feeling returned.

“Not like this,” I said to myself, though the words didn’t seem to come from me.

I realized then that I was so very, very tired of trying so hard at things that caused me so much emotional turmoil. I was tired of digging my own emotional grave, and I wanted to continue my commitment to doing things differently.

Different to me means not causing myself harm; it means being unwaveringly kind to myself, no matter how other people might treat me. Choosing to take this path dictates that whatever brings me the opposite of that pit of dread responding to an essay of lies and personal attacks initiated is where I need to go.

So I erased the parts of the letter that were harsh, and replaced them with words that were lighter and more loving. And yes – I sent love to the person who tried to minimize me with misogyny.

This is a moment if there ever was a moment; This is profound; This Oprah “aha” worthy.

I am very, very proud of who I am and the strength I have uncovered through my research and my commitment to doing things differently. Every step I’ve taken has allowed me to witness my pain, instead of allowing pain to run my show.

I make the choices now – Not pain, and not other people who are in pain, either.

I am so very grateful for my capacity to forgive, even in the face of unwavering efforts to minimize me. And yes, this week has had some challenges – the last two weeks, really – but it’s all worth it because of this moment, and my capacity to sift the good from the unsavory.

That said, I truly care about all of you. I don’t need to know you personally to wish you well and remind you with my whole heart how important it is that no matter what you do this weekend, you be loving to yourself.

In the face of confusion or feeling like things are falling apart, self-kindness is the answer.

❤️

A

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I’ve had two health care professionals tell me I should read The Four Agreements over the past few years. Must have been something about what I shared with them that had them thinking the book would help me.

When someone tells me I should read a self-help book, it kinda makes me want to tell them to fuck off, depending on the day. No one likes a stranger coming to an assumption about what their issues are. In my humble opinion, I prefer my unsolicited advice from people I know and trust, if at all.

But I ended up reading it because one of the suggesters lent me a copy. hah!

I didn’t love it enough to buy it, at least not yet. I did, however, find the principles to be solid, and now that I think about it, I would consider throwing it in the basket next time I’m at a bookstore (I haven’t ordered from Amazon since I found out the dude that owns it was a Trump supporter. Plus I would way rather touch a book before I buy it. That’s right: I wanna get touchy-feely with a hardcopy more often ‘cuz it feels good.)

So I read part of the book, and this line stuck in my head because it irked me:

“Taking things personally is the maximum expression of selfishness. It makes the assumption everything is about me.

I get that we cause ourselves pain when we take things personally but I also know the value of the feelings associated with taking things personally. 

They act as a catalyst to investigating why we feel upset. And we need to understand why we feel how we feel.

We enter tricky and potentially damaging territory when we shame ourselves for feeling upset about how someone treated us. Especially if we’ve spent our entire lives believing that how we feel isn’t OK.

Self-help books are great. I am a full-time seeker of wellness, which means I’ve always got a new one on the go.

But these kinds of books can get dangerous, particularly if they motivate us to jump ship on feeling our feelings.

We need to make sure that anytime we attempt to better ourselves, whether it be through a book or a course, we don’t abandon our right and need to feel how we feel.

There’s a lot buried within our feelings. For example, maybe you take things personally because you’ve spent your whole life feeling like who you are, as is, is never enough. If that’s the case, validating your feelings is not a luxury, it’s a necessity if you’re to establish the self-love you weren’t taught to feel for yourself as a kid.

And Self-Love is the basis for all healing and emotional evolvement.

Getting defensive is just you trying to protect yourself. The fact that you want to protect yourself is a good thing. We don’t want to bury or dismiss it because a popular book suggested it’s an undesirable way to feel.

We want to unwrap it and give it some light and air, so it can be acknowledged and processed.

It’s one thing to admire a piece of writing or a popular wellness concept. It’s an entirely different thing to throw self-compassion out the window by denying how you feel.

Your feelings tell a story. They give voice to trauma, both known and unknown, that you experienced throughout your life.

Your feelings are born of your life’s experiences, which started at birth, and, some would argue, from the day of conception (Check out the documentary In Utero. It’s rad.)

Is it selfish to take things personally? Maybe. But the hurt still exists and needs to be investigated.

Think of getting upset by other people’s action or choices as a chance to get better: “I need to figure out why this is hurting me so much.”

And work on accepting the truth that feeling angry, sad, betrayed, annoyed, disrespected, or devalued by the way someone treated you doesn’t mean you are a sub-par human being.

It means you’ve got some hurt you need to process, just like everyone else.

These worksheets on my resource page are a great way to start figuring out how to process that hurt.

♥

A

What does emotional freedom look like to you?

For me, it’s the dream of feeling oh-well-ish about how other people choose to act. It’s, “Hey dude, It’s your choice to show your pain, in the way you feel you need to show it.”

It’s walking away when it feels like too much, without any weight on my heart. 

The place I’m trying to get to in my heart is where I can full-time accept that we are all at different points in our emotional evolution. I want to stop defaulting to expectations and instead focus on how I can ride the wave of perceived rejection and still put my heart out there and help people.

I want to say a lot by not saying anything. I want a pause to take the place of an excessively rehearsed conversation with someone I have a really hard time being emotionally generous with.

I want to set the tone, not match it.

I want high frequency, not emotional regression.

But if things don’t go well I also want the freedom to feel, in the safety of my own space and time. I want to cry and not feel bad about feeling bad. I don’t want to wear big girl panties, I wanna wear whatever the fuck I want to wear while I cry and release the grossly false assumption that to not have it all together at all times is to be a deeply flawed, irrational human being.

I want to stop stifling myself.

I want to feel, even when I don’t want to feel.

I want to be free.

Lucky = Working with Intention and Gratitude.

Too Sensitive = An innate Gift.

At Least = Denial of Your Truth.

Should Have = Lesson for next time.

Summary: the next time you start ripping the seams on all that you aren’t, remember that perspective is everything.

You are enough, as is. And if someone in your life, including you, thinks you aren’t, step back.

Pause. Reflect. Revisit your truth.

We don’t all have to be on the same page. And you don’t need everyone to want you to win, in order to win.

Also, winning sometimes looks like failing. So give your truth some time to rise to the surface.

It is in the prolonged moments of discomfort and vulnerability that we connect with a depth of ourselves we wouldn’t otherwise experience.

The shores of pain, anguish and frustration over not being able to fix how we feel on command are places our soul wants and needs us to visit.

Still, settling into the discomfort remains an extremely daunting task. Why would we want to stay there for any amount of time when it feels so terrible, and we have so many options to escape it?

The desire to escape is engrained in us. Wars, both internal and external, from the here and now and long since passed – teach us to run in order to survive.

But unless we sit in the aftermath of these storms and witness them, we cannot rebuild our foundation.

We have to witness how trauma has changed us, without judging it’s right to exist, in order to be set free from it.

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It’s Saturday morning and I want to get shit done.

Most weeks I’m in hyper-productive mode. And the weekends are wonderful when they show their faces, but I need constant reminding to dial it back when they do.

Otherwise, I end up overdoing it and am all out of sorts for the beginning of the week.

I’m highly aware of how productive being unproductive can be. Weekends are an exceptionally good time to hone in on activities – both physical and mental ones – that are rooted in self-compassion in the form of self-care.

That way, when Monday rolls around we can get back to getting shit done.

Am I saying you need to get a sitter and a fork over huge dollar bills for a 6 hour spa day? No. But wouldn’t that be fucking fantastic?

Rather, a really simple, no fee activity that supports your wellness requirements is writing a list of guidelines that remind you to keep your health and wellness needs at the forefront.

Even in the face of childcare or fur-child duty, house cleaning, or spouse wrangling (just keeping it real ladies and gents!) there are ways to make sure you take care of you.

So in order to inspire you to do that, here’s my Weekend Wellness List:

• Before tea, celery water – you know it makes your stomach feel better. So just do it, sister.
• If you’re feeling anxious, herbal chai coconut milk latte it up in lieu of caffeine.
• Remember to eat. When you postpone eating you suffer, as do other people. Take the time to make yourself a meal. You matter enough to do that. 
• When you want to reach for your phone, read something instead. Put a sticky note on your phone to remind you. Inspire yourself, don’t wire yourself.
• Where are your healing affirmations? Go find them, and read them.
• You have a husband whose fingers aren’t broken. Ask him to help you with that to-do list. Steer clear of focusing on the fact that he didn’t volunteer his time.
• Walk outside. Stretch. Meditate.
• If you feel anxiety coming on, remember to pause.

That’s it, that’s all: my weekend wellness list.

Write one. Print it out. Reference often.

xo

A

We must always move forward.

Even though I know this, I revisit the past a lot. Driven by the desire to connect, I warp into the person I used to be.

She feels like a better fit for certain conversations and vibes. Half the time I don’t even realize I’m being her until I’m in the moment, being her. But I get a regret hangover in my heart whenever it happens because it feels like a betrayal.

In the moment it’s about survival. I’m so uncomfortable and wonder, “How can I feel connected to this person?”

I’m 15 again. I’m people pleasing. I’m suffocating my growth. I’m sacrificing my well-being by putting on airs for the sake of fitting in.

I’m stifling myself for the sake of nostalgia.

There is a common theme at the core of many of the relationships I’ve had in my life. It is born of emotional abandonment and I am drawn to it like a shark to blood. It’s equal parts comforting and disturbing, wrapped in trendy decorative paper. And it goes like this:

Because of the choices I’ve made in my life, I’m not willing to show you compassion.

I used to get really angry when I witnessed this belief in action. And I used to get it twisted into a narcissistic self-defeating response: “I guess in order to be loved by this person, I can’t not be OK.”

Big. Huge. Sigh.

Right now I don’t feel angry or sad about it. In fact, today it influences me to acknowledge that it’s time to step out of the past and into the future.

2018 has thus far been the most rewarding and volatile time of my life.

I knew it was coming – I was ready to take everything to the next level.

I’ve been taking bold steps, resulting in far more ups than downs, while the downs have proven to be intense, yet extremely productive. Revelation after revelation has made emotional growth the steady byproduct of all this newness I’m stepping into.

But there is still fear which tells me to not move forward – to stay the same.

Fear tells me to stay in the past just a little bit, so I don’t get hurt. Even though doing so siphons from all the progress, it’s the only familiar thing I’ve got going on right now.

“There will be nothing you can’t predict if you stay with the same faces and places,” fear says. 

We are not saints. We need connection with people who are willing to support us in being human. We need relationships with people who don’t reject us when we feel the need to say, “What I just went through felt really awful and I’m really upset by it.”

We need all-in, I-see-you-rough-edges-and-all-yet-still-accept-you, connection.

We need full throttle acceptance. Not just on our good days, but every day.

And if we aren’t getting it, we need to move forward.