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healthy mind

Why You Don’t Need To Forgive Just Yet

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There are some things I’m not ready to forgive. And because of that, I’ve found myself guilty of a lot of things:

  • Of being dismissive and cavalier.
  • Of not wanting to be nice.
  • Of feeling pressured to hug people I don’t want to hug, and being angry about it.
  • Of not wanting to get over it just yet – of wanting to feel and process the anger I never let myself acknowledge.
  • Of rehashing hurt from many years ago because at the time, I never saw it for what it was. I thought what went on was OK.
  • Of not noticing that someone’s concern was toxicity in a fancy dress.
  • Of letting someone use my pain as a way to fuel their hate, and not letting myself feel the anger associated with that betrayal until now.

But my biggest issue in all of this is in identifying and acknowledging the truth of how I feel and learning to live with it and by it, under the watchful eye of a wounded society.

Trying to live in this realm that allows me to feel, even though it would be more convenient and “appropriate” if I just hugged someone I don’t want to hug, is tricky territory. And here’s what I’ve learned in meandering it:

We don’t have to let it go just yet. In fact, it’s not up to us. Our hearts choose when it’s time to forgive.

As long as we are aware of the anger and resentment, let ourselves feel it, and acknowledge that it comes from a pain that needs to be felt, we’re going to be ok. One day the anger will dissipate, and we’ll be able to move on without the weight on our hearts.

Again, it’s not up to us. All we can do is continue to allow ourselves to feel how we feel.

And when we do forgive, it doesn’t mean we’ll have to want to hug someone we don’t want to hug.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean welcoming someone who violated our health and heart with open arms back into our lives. No enabling required.

It means one day being able to think of them without clamping your heart shut. And until your body, mind and soul are ready to do that, let yourself be pissed off.

Give yourself the freedom to feel what you feel. Give yourself permission to not be ready to forgive.

Rewrite Your Story

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You can edit your story.

Perhaps you’ll choose to rework it and tell it a different way.

Perhaps instead of concluding that you are a terrible person and unworthy of love because of the mistakes you made, you’ll try on the idea that you made them because you were so full of hurt it spewed out like a geyser, blasting everyone and everything in its path. And it altered your ability to see clearly.

Perhaps you’ll acknowledge the little kid inside who is still reeling over the love they never received in the ways they individually and innately required it, and ask yourself if you’d bully 5-year-old you the way you bully yourself today.

Perhaps you’ll warm to the fact that you are human, and therefore incapable of perfection. Perhaps you’ll realize the power in admitting to a mistake, and notice how much happier you are when you stop putting so much work into persuading yourself and others that you didn’t do anything wrong.

Perhaps you’ll realize you don’t need to be the expert on everything all the time, and that it’s OK to not comment on small-scale ignorance, instead choosing an internal state of chill.

Perhaps you’ll make some space in your heart for forgiveness, because they truly, madly, deeply, know not what they do. And sometimes, neither do you.

In realizing that, maybe you’ll release the need to bully yourself every time you aren’t impeccable with your word, your thoughts, and actions.

Because that stuff is so damn exhausting.

Perhaps you’ll acknowledge the spectrum of perspectives that houses good and bad. Perhaps you’ll start to see the goodness living within your perceived deficiencies, and begin to value yourself more, instead of spending so much time berating yourself over your societally deemed “negative” qualities.

Maybe you’ll see the beauty in the OCD;

The braveness in the overly emotional;

The benevolence in the overactive brain.

Perhaps you’ll see that just because someone doesn’t acknowledge your worth doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Upon realizing that, maybe you’ll give yourself the gift of swiftly exiting exchanges with people who don’t appreciate your efforts, or what you bring to the table.

Perhaps you’ll come to realize that you have the right to question the experts and the elders, as they too are human and capable of making mistakes. Even if they are too all-up-in-their-own-heads to acknowledge that fact.

And perhaps you’ll accept that you don’t have to be ashamed or embarrassed if you don’t agree with someone’s view about what they see as being the “right” course of action. Even if that view is coming out of the mouth of an MD, a specialist, a registered massage therapist, a naturopath or a yoga teacher.

Perhaps you’ll find the courage to accommodate your comfort. Even if it encompasses not going with the crowd.

Perhaps you’ll realize that the only one who can answer the question, “What is right for me?” is you.

The story you tell yourself about who you were yesterday and who you are today can and will evolve. And for that to happen you’ll contradict yourself.

Contradiction is part of this life thing we are all doing. It entails seeing things differently from day-to-day, week to week, even morning to afternoon. It’s about evolving and growing and learning and healing, and figuring out what feels like the right thing to do for you.

It’s not hypocritical. It’s not sinful. It’s not outrageous. It’s not shameful.

It just is.

You don’t have to be ashamed of your evolution.

We have to re-write our stories in order to heal. And to do that we have to convince ourselves that it’s safe to throw our hands in the air and surrender to our evolution.

Listening to the Right Voice

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There is a voice in my head that has consumed my life for over 20 years, and it tells me a lot of crappy stuff. Maybe you can relate. Here’s a quick summary of what it has to say:

  • Making mistakes is a character flaw.
  • You don’t make enough money, and the amount of money you make determines your worth.
  • Your brother doesn’t call you because he is embarrassed by you. That’s also the reason why none of his friends knew you existed.
  • You keep attracting bad employers because you yourself are bad.
  • You need to be stern and serious and rigid. It’s not OK to be happy all the time — Being overly happy is ridiculous.

So that’s the voice that bullies and reprimands me. But there is another voice — One that I’ve tapped into over the last few years — that has a much kinder take on who I am, and what I have to offer the world.

It’s not so much in my head but in my heart, and it’s got a lot of kind and comforting things to say, such as:

  • Human beings were made to make mistakes. And you are human. So your mistakes are inevitable and natural, and not a character flaw.
  • You have enough money to feed, clothe, house, and create a savings account for yourself. If you want to make more of it, work on releasing your fears surrounding it. (PS: I’m reading a great book about that right now)
  • Your brother doesn’t call you because he is busy. And the reason he doesn’t talk about you with his friends is that he is so focused on his life that he doesn’t feel the need to share details about his family.
  • You are not bad. You are learning to release the need to be surrounded by negativity and aggression. And you’re doing a really good job of it.
  • It is safe to be happy, even if you were raised to believe otherwise.

So depending on the day, there are some seriously conflicting beliefs rumbling through me, which lends itself to a bit of confusion. Although logic would dictate that the second voice offers the most constructive conclusions, I am excessively familiar with the negative one. I’ve gotten up close and personal with it for over 20 years, and have built a sort of toxic trust with it — I’ve taught myself to believe what it tells me.

Choosing to accept the second voice — the one telling me things I’ve never known to be true— has been a challenge. Some days I have faith in the foreign assertions and graciously accept them. While on others, I just don’t have it in me, so I default to what I know.

I see a lot of folks out there claiming it’s as simple as swapping out a negative for a positive. Heck, I’ve been one of those people at one point or another, because I wanted so much for it to be true. And don’t get me wrong, it’s a really good thing to get in the habit of doing, but science proves it’s not so simple.

These are subconscious beliefs, and those suckers aren’t so easy to change, particularly after years of programming. On top of that is the physiological stress response to the negative thoughts we have(1). This stress response triggers the amygdala, which over time becomes more reactive to apparent threats, like our negative thoughts. This results in anxiety, even when there is no perceived threat.

And then the hippocampus — which assists in developing conscious and clear memories of what actually happened — get’s worn the F out by the repetitive stress response. This makes it harder to create new, positive memories because we are overloaded with the bad ones. So pretty soon our brains get overwhelmed with all the stress-inducing thoughts, and we end up in a state of chronic fear and anxiety — with no clarity on how the heck it all came to be.

Then we bash ourselves for how we feel. And others minimize our struggle, with dangerous statements like, “Just think something different,” or “What do you have to be stressed about? My life is harder than yours.”

It can be wildly difficult to shake heavily engrained beliefs. We have to work hard at eliciting a relaxation response (more on that in the coming weeks), in order to keep the stress from consuming our bodies and minds and creating dis-ease. We essentially have to re-train our brains, a process that takes a lot of time and a strong commitment.

And we do have to swap out negatives for positives, but with the understanding that it’s not going to be a one-off act: they will keep coming back to haunt us. And there may still be times when we wonder what voice is right: when we follow the crappy thoughts down the rabbit hole and have to pull ourselves back out. But we have to commit to the process, even when it seems easier to just let ourselves fall backward into the abyss.

Because one voice accepts — the other rejects.

One creates peace, while the other creates discontent.

One voice is love, while the other is hate.

Life to me these days is about figuring out which voice to listen to, and cultivating kind messages instead of hateful ones — about myself and others. It’s about choosing to love myself, by choosing to reject the voice that hurts me.

It’s about chipping away at the beliefs that tell me I am less than, and replacing the chips with ones that tell me I am more than.

It’s swapping out a less than (< )with a greater than (>), and realizing that when you choose to believe positive thoughts about yourself, the equation balances out like never before.

What does the voice in your head tell you? Something crappy? If so, I urge you to look for other beliefs — ones that support you achieving a state of wellness, rather than a state of discontent. Start chipping away at the crappy thoughts. I’ll be doing it with you.

(1) Rankin, Lissa, M.D. The Fear Cure, ed (2015).

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Why You Need To Keep Putting Yourself Out There, Spelling Mistakes and All

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Part of the reason why I’m happy today is that in spite of the fear of how I might be perceived or what may be said about me, I put myself out there.

Pressing post on my first article for my blog on Dec 31st, 2015 was the catalyst for drastic change in my life. It was also what propelled me towards this idea that I might be really awesome in my inherent state.

Me as is, was something to be celebrated, not frowned upon.

It also taught me that it was OK to be me on a global scale, on any scale for that matter, and that I had a talent, of which I didn’t have to feel bad about celebrating.

I could stop minimizing my worth.

In putting myself out there, I was able to get myself into a state of wellness.

But it was really hard to do in the beginning.The reason I was so scared was that I was so deeply concerned about what others might say or think of me – the underlying issue to that being that I craved perfection.

And without an editor, the perfect amount of sleep, a peer review and the clarity of a Buddhist monk, it wasn’t going to happen.

I mean heck, perfection just doesn’t exist. And it’s in correcting the errors that we find greatness.

I believe in the process of life. I trust it. So when I find an error days later and gasp in horror, I look at it as a chance to give myself a pep talk.

“Andrea – just because you made an error doesn’t mean you suck. It means you were in the zone and your eyes skimmed over it.”

You also never know where that edit and update may take you. After I update something I usually share it on social media again. And who knows who might come across that post? Maybe they will find some common ground in what I’ve written? Maybe it will help them face something they have been scared to admit to or talk about?

I believe we need to do our best, all the time. But sometimes my best isn’t the best of the best. For example, when I’ve had a rough sleep, but I wake up with this idea for an article and it just pours out of me like syrup.

The idea might be amazing, but the packaging might not be that great. That day, the article as a whole might not be my all-time best. But because I’m feeling it, and I follow the goosebumps, I post it.

I believe those pulls to do something are things we must listen to. So I do. And every-time I do I get better at being me.

Days later I often find an error or two. But you know what? That’s inevitable. It’s gonna happen. The eyes that are reading it two days later aren’t the eyes that skimmed it two days earlier at 6 am.

Plus, with clients, dishes, and laundry I don’t have time to take my posts through a rigid editing process. So I choose to post it and move past the fear of judgment or shame that sits on my shoulder telling me I should be scared to share my words with the world.

So to one and all: put yourself out there. Do your best. Just know that your best isn’t going to be Harper Collins editing team quality, at all times. And don’t hate on yourself when you inevitably realize that.

The world needs you to be you, so keep putting yourself out there.

xo

A

Anger and Following Your Calling

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Anger has played a big role in my life.

It’s been my side-kick; my go-to response when someone tries to tell me the way I’m feeling is wrong. Or that the way I inherently am isn’t OK.

There have been plenty of times when my behavior has been in need of correction. I know in the past my feelings and actions were irrational due to my heavy drinking.

But now I’m in this zone where I trust myself and like myself enough to know that my feelings serve a purpose: that they exist for a reason.

And I’m working on responding to outsider requests for alterations to those feelings with less aggression.

I default to anger when people try to coerce me into believing how I feel is not OK. Because to me that’s manipulation.

But then I take a moment to breathe and remember this:

People get very uncomfortable when we don’t think like them or want to follow their lead. They feel very unsettled when someone strums to a beat they don’t know how to play along to.

Not everyone reacts this way. A lot of light and laughter has been brought to this world by way of people being themselves, feelings and all.

Because when we are true to who we are, we radiate good vibes. And good vibes are powerful. 

We don’t have to please everyone and subdue ourselves to soothe the minds of those who don’t understand us.

What we have to do is hold strong to what we know to be true to us.

Because when we stifle ourselves so that someone else’s idea of normal can continue to exist, we affirm that being true to who we are is not OK.

Our number one job in life is to be who we are. When we do that, the people around us will pick up on our authenticity, and feel inclined to follow suit, creating big, life-altering change.

That’s how big our roles are in this life.  We are all integral and important and powerful, particularly in our authentic state.  

So let’s move forward as we are, releasing the need to be disgruntled. Let’s say mercy to the struggle to be right or wrong, and make room to become whatever it is we feel called to do.

Even if we don’t know the details of what that is yet. Because I sure don’t.

All I know is I feel something calling me. And it says, “Speak”

Those that want us to change want their idea of normal to continue to exist. And our existence threatens that.

I know that they are scared to love themselves enough to be honest. And I can have compassion for their plight, because that used to be me.

Some days it still is.

But when the mental tempests of anger subside, I am reminded of this beautifully freeing truth:

Be who you are. Always.

And that’s enough for me. Even if it’s not enough for others.

Enjoy your weekend friends.