Tag Archives: mindfulness

Your original blessing lives in your body.

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Little girl sitting in the forest with sun shining on her

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

~Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

These famous words of Mary Oliver perfectly express my wish for this first step in remembering. We start with the body. Your body. Most of us, by the time we get to midlife, have lost touch with our embodiment.

Why is embodiment the first, most crucial remembering? Because your body does not lie. Your body is tuned to truth. Your body is your soul enfleshed. When you were born, your body was a pure, true expression of your wants, needs, and desires. Babies don’t tell falsehoods. Not at first. Over time we learn to hide our true selves as necessary to keep our caregivers attached and our little kid selves alive.

That’s why, of course, you lost touch with your body. It’s really hard to hold your body’s inner truth and the outer lies you learn to tell to survive. Especially when you’re a child.

Good news! Your original truth is still alive and well underneath all the faking you’ve had to do for decades. Your original blessing resides in your body.

Often when we start our work together, my clients tell me that they’re fluent in their body’s language. They do yoga. They meditate. They eat right and they exercise often. But as we dig deeper, they realize they really have no idea what their bodies are trying to tell them. What they’re actually fluent in is their thoughts about their bodies. Their ideas about their bodies. Their judgments about their bodies.

We’re often much more adept at mindfulness than bodyfulness.

So task one is to re-inhabit your body. Your beautiful, sweet, holy “God pod.” This marvelous “meat sack” that means you’re alive on Earth. Because this meat sack in which your mind has its being is the key to the garden of delights which is your life.

Remembering the beauty and original blessing of your body can take some time. And it will probably feel uncomfortable to return home to all the pain and memories you’ve stored in your flesh. Getting back in touch with your truth as communicated by your body will almost certainly create some havoc in your life as usual. Perhaps that’s why you’re here. Because maybe you know, deep down, that a little havoc is just what you need to reset your compass to your true north.

Here’s an Embodiment meditation you might like to try. (Click here for video version.)
Grounding Cord, adapted from Shakti Gawain:

Sit. Take three breaths. Imagine a long cord extending from the base of your spine down into the Earth. You could imagine this cord like the root of a tree. (If you prefer to stand, imagine the cord extending from the soles of your feet down into the Earth.)

Now, as you inhale, imagine Earth’s energy coming up through the cord into your body, up and up with every inbreath. The energy flows into your body as it rises, and continues out through the top of your head. Do this three times.

Now, as you exhale, imagine that the energy of the sun and stars and planets is coming down through the top of your head, down your spine, infusing your body as it flows down into the Earth. Do this three times.

Now, be with both energies. As you inhale, be with the energy coming up from the Earth. As you exhale, be with the energy coming down from the cosmos.

Keep inhaling and flowing Energy up, exhaling and flowing Energy down. Feel both energies intermingle and flow throughout your body.

We are Earthlings, made of stardust. We are Earthlings, made from dirt.

Take three breaths to finish.

Upcoming events:


A Summer Solstice Gathering:
Tuesday, June 21, 4 pm Pacific, Zoom. Free. Subscribe to email for the link.

Three workshops going deeply into the first three modules of my Self-Recovery Coaching Intensive: Embodiment, Awareness, and Ownership: July. Dates, times, and investment TBD. More info coming soon! Reply to this email and let me know if you’re maybe interested. (Today’s post is from the Embodiment chapter of my Coaching Intensive workbook-in-progress, delayed by Covid.)

Coaching Intensive Group starting in September: Ten weeks of step-by-step, carefully constructed classes covering the three phases of self-recovery: Remembering, Reclaiming, and Recommitting. Tentative investment: $1000. Details coming your way in August. 

Private Coaching: Contact me to schedule a no-cost, no-strings-attached Clarity Call.

For current writing and events, please subscribe to my weekly-ish newsletter here, and thank you! 

Photo Credit: Melissa Askew on Unsplash. 

Foundation #3: Ownership

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Sun shining through fingers

Foundation #3: Ownership. Your theology is the matrix in which healing happens. Examine your theology. Deconstruct and reconstruct as you choose.

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. ~Mary Oliver

(Three foundations – embodiment, awareness, and ownership – are fundamental. The four healing shifts – more soul, more acceptance, more intention, and more creation – are powerful. But making the shifts without the foundations is like building a house on the sand. I’m diving deeper into these seven facets of healing throughout November and December. You can subscribe here.)

First, a caveat:
I write these newsletters as the “me” who knows these things I write. I am still also the “me” who forgets them. I am still also the “me” who commits to this open-ended soul pilgrimage, gets scared, and returns to the safety of culture’s prescribed path. I commit to my journey, lose my way, and then find my way back to commitment, over and over and over. This seems to be how it works for most of us. Deep change takes time, usually. Time, and continuous recommitment.   

An audacious statement:
Theology should not hurt. Theological beliefs that cause pain aren’t true. It’s that simple. If a belief or a system of beliefs hurts, let it go and choose holier, healthier, more whole beliefs instead.

You get to do this.
You are a theologian. We are all theologians, whether we want to be or not. Many of us are passive theologians—taking what we’ve been told as the gospel truth, whether these beliefs about God*, creation, and our place in the cosmos cause harm or not.

When you’re more bodyful and mindful, you become aware of what hurts. You become aware of forces and ideas you may have endured for decades, believing you had no choice. After all, you’ve been taught, implicitly or explicitly, that theology is done by other people—more qualified, authoritative, male people.

Dr. Diana Butler Bass (author of Freeing Jesus, most recently) describes a moment in graduate school when another student referred to a woman author as a “theologian.” Diana’s male professor corrected them: “Women don’t write theology. Women write memoir.” (Or self-help.)

You get to choose your beliefs. If the theology implanted in your brain before you had the capacity to think about it critically works for you, rock on! If not, it’s your calling and your responsibility to create new theological pathways for yourself, and possibly for others.

These beliefs might be hurting you:

  • God* is male, therefore maleness is superior. Maleness is superior, therefore God* is male.
  • Bodies are bad, especially female bodies.
  • Earth and earthly things are profane.
  • My sexuality is dangerous, must be controlled, and is to be expressed only in the context of heterosexual marriage, if then.
  • One marriage only.
  • Religion is about following rules, being good, and getting to heaven.
  • Sin is breaking rules.
  • Jesus died for my sins.

Some alternatives to try on:

  • God* is love. God* is in everything and every thing is in God*.
  • All bodies are holy.
  • Earth, the body of God*, is sacred. There is no such thing as “profane.”
  • Sexuality is a gift to be cherished, explored, and shared if I wish.
  • People change. People grow. Sometimes that change and growth requires leaving a marriage.
  • Religion (the Latin root means to reconnect, retie, realign) is how I outwardly express my inward beliefs. Religion is how I tie myself to the holy.
  • Sin is refusing to heal and be whole. 
  • Jesus’ radical beliefs about human belovedness and the loving heart of God* led him to the cross. His fidelity to his beliefs and his willingness to die for them are what saves.

Some ways to begin:
1. Awareness = bodyfulness + mindfulness. Pay attention to how different thoughts feel in your body. Say a thought out loud or to yourself. What do you notice? What’s going on with your breathing? Your heart rate? Your muscles, especially in your upper body? Your abdomen? Truth feels like freedom. For most of us, freedom feels expansive, light, open, and warm.

2. Remember your experiences of holiness, if you have them.
Ask yourself questions, and listen for your answers.

  • Do I really believe in God*? (Maybe you don’t.)
  • If yes, why?
  • Have I ever experienced the Sacred/More/Holy/Love/God*? (Maybe you haven’t.)
  • If yes, how? Where? When?  

Attend to what you know is true. Truth feels good in your body. Perhaps unsettling, but good. False thoughts and beliefs do not feel good in your body.

3. You could play with this sentence: “If God* is …, then I am …, and my soul is ….” Using my Camino deep womb-like heart experience, I might say “If God is a deep womb-like heart connecting everything, then I am a child of God, and my soul is an umbilical cord.” Here are more examples.

This above all: Trust your knowing. Trust your experience. Your knowing is more valid than beliefs formulated by others, passed along as truth. Stop trying to make yourself believe things you know not to be true. Stop pushing those uncomfortable thoughts of disbelief aside. Believe yourself. Be truthful with yourself. Know what you know, at least internally. Claim your integrity.

If all you know to be true is the sweetness of an apple, or the feel of water on your feet, or the sound of birdsong? That’s okay. That’s real. That’s authentic. Trust yourself. Believe yourself.

Stop cutting off parts of yourself to fit into others’ theological boxes.

This work is too important to delegate. Be your own theologian. Take ownership of your fundamental beliefs.

*** ”God” is a commonly-used name for unknowable, unnamable, animating energy. How does “God” feel to you? If that name feels good, use it if you want to. If not, trust your knowing and use another name, or no name at all.  

 PS. Happy Thanksgiving to my readers in the United States. I’m thankful for each of you. Here are a couple of resources if, in addition to giving thanks, you want to think critically about this day.

To know more about, and perhaps acknowledge, Indigenous people who occupied your home before you, check out this resource. Bend, Oregon, is located in the homelands of the Tenino and Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, comprised of Wasco, Warm Springs, and Paiute people. Members of these Tribes, and others, live here still. 

And here’s a video by Robin Wall Kimmerer about “The Honorable Harvest,” which describes an ethical relationship with plants upon whom we depend. 

Photo credit: Daoudi Aissa on Unsplash

Foundation #2: Awareness

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Foundation #2: Awareness. Bodyfulness + mindfulness = awareness. Awareness is attention. Attend to your life. Tend your soul.
 

Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows. ~Henry David Thoreau

(Three foundations – embodiment, awareness, and ownership – are fundamental. The four healing shifts – more soul, more acceptance, more intention, and more creation – are powerful. But the shifts without the foundations are like building a house on the sand. I’m diving deeper into these seven facets of healing throughout November and December. You can subscribe here if this was forwarded to you.)

Separating bodyfulness* from mindfulness is helpful, but it’s not truly accurate. We’re intertwined, of course – combined bodies and minds. It’s helpful to separate them, though, when we’re learning to notice our patterns and processes, and to tend ourselves.

Your body, your Earthling body, is your ground of being. We’re feeling creatures who think, says Dr. Jill Taylor Bolte in her new book, Whole Brain Living. Our minds work better when they’re in service to our bodies.  

Now that you’re feeling your body a little more, let’s invite your powerful mind to the dance.

A Silly Story
Years ago, when I was a newby middle school English teacher, I was assigned to coach the school’s Brain Bowl team. I knew absolutely nothing about coaching Brain Bowl. Luckily for me, the Brain Bowl season didn’t start until March, so I could put off dealing with it for months while I learned to teach English. But I could feel my body tense every time my brain remembered Brain Bowl.

I began to picture Brain Bowl as a rattlesnake sleeping under my bed. You really don’t want rattlesnakes under your bed, right? If you’re not going to move out, you simply have to deal with them. Finally I did, by taking the obvious step of asking for help from the relieved senior teacher who’d shunted his unwanted duty onto me. The rattlesnakes under the bed began to slither on out.

That image has endured. I can still feel the frisson of fear running through my body when I imagine rattlesnakes sleeping under my bed. It’s my body’s way of telling me that something important I’d rather not think about needs my attention, and it’s time to deal with it.

Bodyfulness brings my attention to what needs healing. My mind works to understand and heal the sources of suffering.

Trauma
 “The body keeps the score,” says trauma expert Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk. When you bring your attention to your body, when you choose to be mindful of your body, uncomfortable feelings will almost certainly arise. Our bodies are repositories of trauma. Humans sequester scary stuff in our bodies until we can deal with it, so you probably have unprocessed fear stored in your body. As you bring mindful, compassionate attention to your body, these emotions and stuck places will show up.

The good news is that bit by bit you can surface and resolve the trauma. First things first: If what shows up is overwhelming, back off for now and find a trauma-informed therapist to walk beside you. If stored trauma is making itself felt, it’s wanting to be healed. You can do this, and it’s easier and safer with company.  


Adventures in Physical Therapy
 As most of you know, I had surgery on my right hand a couple of months ago. I was sitting doing my seemingly interminable physical therapy Saturday morning while my husband read aloud Richard Rohr’s weekly email. In this email, Fr. Richard references Buddhist psychologist Tara Brach’s “applied meditation” RAIN, about which I have written before. R stands for “recognize,” A for “allow,” I for “investigate,” and N for “nurture.” It’s a powerful practice, and I’ve used it often.

As he was reading about RAIN and I was doing my PT, I recognized that I’ve been treating my hand, which is still quite stiff and swollen, as an enemy. I recognized that I’d been feeling ashamed of my hand’s wounded state. I detested the scars, stiffness, and swelling. That’s a strong word, and it’s also accurate.

(Feeling ashamed of illness, brokenness, and helplessness goes back to my childhood, but it doesn’t matter where it comes from. It’s not necessary to understand the genesis of a thought that causes suffering to begin to unravel its hold.)

My poor hand, to be treated so meanly. I was going through the motions of caring for it – massage, exercise, desensitization – while inwardly resenting the hell out of it.

RAIN helped me see that pattern. That old, deep, fossilized pattern became visible because I recognized the feeling of loathing in my body. Now I can heal the pattern, one PT session at a time.

This week I’ve been practicing breathe prayers while I do my physical therapy. I’ve been breathing in healing and breathing out stiffness. I’ve been breathing in healing and breathing out swelling. I’ve been doing my exercises to the beat of my heart. I’ve been loving on my hand and treating it with compassion. This feels better. 


Pain, and Joy
So far I’ve been talking about the hard stuff that awareness helps us surface and deal with. But consciously practicing bodyfulness and mindfulness leads us not only to our pain, but also to our joy. The sources of our joy will likely be just as irrational as the sources of our pain, when we pay attention to our body’s joy. A warm shower. A walk in the woods. Playing around with words or paint. Purple twinkle lights around the bathroom mirror. Puppy videos on YouTube. Whatever.


A simple practice
Stop what you’re doing. Do a quick body scan from feet to head. What do you notice What sensations do you notice in your body? What emotions do you feel? Are you aware of any thoughts? Take a moment to note what you sensations, emotions, and thoughts on paper or in a notes app. Do this several times each day. Set an alarm on your phone if that would help.

Listen to what your body is telling you, then bring mindfulness to those messages. That’s all awareness is. Start small. Just notice. That’s all. You don’t need to be fancy and formal. Just keep track, somehow, of what you notice. Are there consistent body sensations? Consistent thoughts? Consistent patterns? Just notice.

Bring compassionate awareness to your daily embodied life. Little by little.

If you’d like to talk about any of this, simply “reply” to this email. I’d love to know what you think. 

*I owe the wonderful word “bodyfulness” to Christine Valters Paintner, the abbess of Abbey of the Arts, a virtual contemplative and creative community. See especially The Wisdom of the Body.

Resources
Dr. Tara Brach on Fear and Trauma
Dr. Tara Brach and RAIN
Whole Brain Living, by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor
The Body Keeps the Score, by Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk
The Wisdom of the Body, by Dr. Christine Valters Paintner

Photo credit: Lina Trochez on Unsplash

Four healing shifts and a simple awareness practice.

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Sun shining through fingers

I’m convinced that healing happens as we make four simple shifts. These shifts aren’t rules. They’re more like touchstones. Truths. Signposts along the way of integrity. They’re not linear, but rather a spiral unfurling. They’re my attempt to “systematize Mystery.” 

  1. More soul, less façade. To orient ourselves more and more to the truths of our hearts and souls, and less to others’ expectations. 
  2. More acceptance, less resistance. To accept and celebrate the ever-changing nature of being embodied on this earth more and more often, and resist life’s inevitable changes less often.
  3. More intention, less reaction. To choose our thoughts with intention more often, and become caught in our emotions less often. 
  4. More creation, less victimhood. To actively create our lives more often, and less often behave as passive victims of other people, circumstances, or “fate.” 

Supporting my clients as they make these four shifts is the core of my coaching. These shifts are simple, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy. And we have to know where we’re starting from to get where we want to go.

Moving the dial on these shifts requires awareness of what’s happening in our bodies and our brains.

Powerful, lasting change begins with clearly seeing, acknowledging, and being with our current reality, and loving ourselves no matter what we find when we tune into ourselves.

My clients and I begin every session with a few minutes of tuning in. We stop, we feel our bodies, we breathe. This tuning in is non-negotiable. 

Here’s a simple two-minute awareness practice. You can do it anywhere, and you won’t need any special equipment. Don’t complicate it, or try to excel. Just do it.

1. Stop what you’re doing. Take three breaths, Feel your feet.
2. Scan your body for sensations.
3. Whatever you feel, simply allow it. Let the sensations be what they are.
4. Sit with yourself for two minutes. 

Do this practice as often as you remember. Set a reminder on your phone, if you want to. Journal just a few words about what you find, if you want to. Pay attention to any patterns you see, if you want to.

That’s it. That’s all. This simple awareness practice, just coming home to your body for a couple of minutes, is such a powerful place to start making important shifts. Your body is your life. Your body is a gift. Your body tells you what’s true and real and alive. 

Your body is your connection to your soul. Your soul is your connection to meaning, purpose, and deep joy. Everything starts with your body.

You might find as you do this practice regularly that you become aware of emotions and thoughts. If you do, you can jot them down if you want to.

All change, for conscious humans, begins with awareness.

I go a little deeper into one of the four shifts mentioned above in each newsletter, and suggest a practice, exercise, or journal prompt to explore it further. I value your feedback. 

I’m collecting everything I’ve written about these four touchstones into a short e-book. Your responses and questions will help me make that book clearer and more useful. Contact me here or leave a comment with your thoughts. Thank you! 

PS. I’m transitioning from a blog subscription to a newsletter, in order to serve my readers better. Please visit my website and subscribe to my newsletter to continue to receive posts. Thank you!

Photo credit: Daoudi Aissa on Unsplash

It’s Not Your Fault.

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It’s not your fault.

Repeat after me: “It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault.”

The behaviors you carry into your adult life are not your fault. They are simply how you learned to cope with the stresses and strains of being a child in your family and in your culture.

They are not your fault.

They are, however, your responsibility. Once you are aware that your automatic behaviors in stressful situations aren’t serving you, it’s your responsibility to learn new ones.

Here’s what happened. You came into this world with an incredibly malleable, adaptive brain. Events happened in your family that began to shape your brain even before you were born. Every event in your childhood was an opportunity for neurons to connect. Every repetition of an event and your response to that event strengthened that neural connection. Over time, these connections learned to function like superhighways in your brain. Stimulus leads to response without your conscious awareness, producing the same result.

It’s neurobiology, and it’s not your fault.

For example, let’s say one of the adults in your life got mad often, and you frequently got hurt when they got mad. You probably learned that angry adults are scary and your job was to either hide or placate. That was an adaptive, rational response when you were seven. If you’re still responding to angry adults by hiding or placating when you’re 57, that’s a problem. You’re not a child anymore, and you have power now.

Building new habits to replace the old habits that no longer serve us – that’s what coaching is.

We start by learning the cycle: an event produces thoughts, thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to actions, and actions produce results. You can interrupt that cycle in only two places. You can change your thoughts, and you can change your actions. Feelings are a result of your thoughts, and the only way to shift them is to shift your thinking.

To heal and to make different choices, you must cultivate awareness of exactly how this cycle is operating in your life. One powerful tool for developing awareness of the cycle is the Awareness Wheel. Grab one here, and read these two previous posts for more information.

Sometimes just shining a light on what’s going on with us will ease our suffering. To really heal ourselves, though, we need to heal our brains. One powerful way to heal our brains is through an inquiry method, such as Byron Katie’s model which she calls “The Work.” (There are other forms of Inquiry. I’ve included links to two of them at the end.)

After you’ve identified a thought that’s not serving you, The Work asks four questions:

  1. Is it true? Yes or no.
  2. Can you absolutely know it’s true? Yes or no.
  3. What happens when you believe this thought?
  4. Who would you be without this thought?

The deeper you go into Questions 3 and 4, the more healing occurs. Take your time here. Katie’s website is full of resources, and I’m always happy to talk you through this process.

The final step is to turn the original thought around, and to find evidence for why it might be as true or truer than the original thought.

The purpose of this process is to find the truth. Inquiry is not about denial. It’s about truth. The truth will set you free.

Here’s how The Work could look for a child growing up with a violent parent. One painful thought learned in this situation might be, “It’s my job to keep people happy.”

  1. Is it true? It sure feels true, so YES.
  2. Can I absolutely know it’s true? Not really, so NO.
  3. What happens when I believe the thought “It’s my job to keep people happy”?

I’m always being nice and going out of my way to accommodate others. I don’t say what I think and I never disagree with anyone. I’m always paying attention to how others feel to the point that I don’t know how I feel anymore. I feel tense in my stomach and my breathing is shallow. My shoulders are a little hunched and my arms are tight.

  1. Who would I be without the thought “It’s my job to keep people happy”?

I’d say what I think. I’d let their anger be their problem. I’d pay attention to what I’m feeling and give myself love. I’d feel so much more free.

Two possible turnarounds:

  1. It’s not my job to keep people happy.

Of course this is true, because I’m not actually in charge of other people’s feelings.

  1. It’s my job to keep me happy.

Who else’s job could it be?

Repeating this process over and over builds new neural pathways. This is how you heal your brain.

Resources:

The Work

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Unf*ck Your Brain (This podcast and blog is the work of Kara Loewentheil, a Harvard-trained lawyer turned life coach. I think it’s f*cking brilliant, if you don’t mind swearing. Kara’s method is more streamlined than The Work.)

As always, I offer a free consultation. Please email me or use the contact form to set up a convenient time.

photo credit: Daoudi Aissi on unsplash

Your feelings are not your problem. Your feelings are your solution.

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My mom was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of uterine cancer when she was 62. By the time it was found, the cancer had metastasized to her lungs, although we didn’t know that right away. The lung cancer would kill her a year later. My mom had been very healthy her whole life. Her plan to live to be 100 was one I heard often as a child. Her cancer was completely unexpected, which was why it was found too late to save her life. I was devastated. Everyone who knew her was devastated.

And she didn’t want to talk about dying.

We were living in Illinois, so I took both my kids, six and ten at the time, to Arizona with me for the summer. In June, the kids and I took a road trip with her to visit her favorite aunt in New Mexico. She went swimming with her grandkids. She took walks with her dog and her husband. She still didn’t want to talk about dying.

In July, my mom was slowing down. By August, I was doing all the cooking and cleaning for her and my stepfather. She had to sleep sitting up because she couldn’t breathe lying down. And she still didn’t want to talk about dying.

We went home to Illinois at the end of August. My mom’s last words to me were her promise that she’d call me when it was time for me to return and say good-bye.

She died September 1st, alone in her bed, never having asked me to come back.

I was heartbroken. I didn’t know I could hurt like that. I was also deeply angry. I was angry that she’d never let me tell her how much I loved her, and that she didn’t let any of us say goodbye. This was no accidental death, like my dad’s. My mom had plenty of advance warning. Hers could have been a much better death. It didn’t have to hurt so much. She could have died surrounded by people who loved her. She was a nurse. She knew how to do this right.

Grieving her death while I was so angry was harder and took a lot longer than it would have if she’d done it better.

I held onto this anger for years. I tried to let it go, but it stuck around. It persisted, despite therapy and many attempts to forgive.

I didn’t know at the time that I was carrying a lot of what the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy model calls “dirty pain.” Mixed in with the clean pain of my heart-rending grief was a ton of unnecessary suffering. (The Buddha and many healers since have put it this way: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” In other words, pain comes and goes, as a result of injury or loss. Suffering hangs around, tied like a yoke to the thoughts we’re having about our pain.)

And then one day, almost twenty years after her death, I did something that helped my anger loosen its grasp. I filled out an Awareness Wheel about how much I still missed my mom, as a teaching example for a small group I was facilitating. (Download one here. The rest of this will make much more sense. And here’s a previous post about the Awareness Wheel.) I was encouraging this group of wise women to go deep in their choice of issue to work with. They encouraged me to be brave, too. What follows is verbatim from my Awareness Wheel that day.

 

In the middle, in the Issue circle, I wrote “I miss my mom.”

I Notice/Observed: “Tears, heaviness in chest, avoidance of talking about her, distracting myself, tightness in arms/neck/shoulders.”

I Think: “She shouldn’t have died so young. I wonder how she is. I hope she’s happy. I wish she’d had a better death. I wish I’d been able to say goodbye. She was selfish in her dying. I wish she was still alive. People should have talked about the family history of cancer.”

I Feel: “Sad, furious, love.”

I Want (for myself): “To feel at peace. To have you back. I Want (for you): That you’re happy. I Want (for us): That you know I love and forgive you.”

I Do (Past): “Stuff feelings. Be mad. Grieve.” I Do (Present): “Feel my grief. Acknowledge loss and your impact on my life.”

 

It’s useful simply to fill in a wheel when uncomfortable feelings arrive. It’s even more useful, after you do your wheel, to identify which thought is causing the most suffering. You do this by reading the thoughts you wrote and feeling how they feel in your body. Many of my thoughts were painful, but “She was selfish in her dying” felt like a knife to my gut.

I questioned that thought using Byron Katie’s method called The Work. (More on questioning our painful thoughts next time.) Simply put, through a series of questions, we get very clear on the results our thoughts are producing in our lives. Then, we turn the thought around and kindly investigate how the opposite might be true. This process wiggles the thought loose just a little and begins to grow new brain connections. Healing begins at the cellular level. We feel a little relief, at last.

When I gently investigated my thought “My mom was selfish in her dying,” I began to see how my mom had been generous in her dying. She let me take care of her. She spent time with her grandkids. She was trying to protect us.

When I let go of the thought that she’d been selfish, I can just love her and miss her. I can see that she was doing the best she could with an incredibly scary sad thing. I can see the ways I’d been selfish in her dying, by wanting her to do it my way.

This is how healing has happened, for me. I still miss my mom, of course, and letting go of my anger is ongoing. Now, though, my grief is mostly good, clean, healing grief. I can tell when it’s mixed up with dirty pain, because they feel different in my body.

Martha Beck has said, “If a thought causes suffering, it isn’t true.” That’s an audacious statement. It’s a core belief of my coaching work, because I’ve found it to be true.

When you pay attention to uncomfortable feelings using an Awareness Wheel, you find the thoughts causing suffering. When you question the thoughts that cause you to suffer, you begin to change your brain. When you begin to change your brain, you heal. And that’s how your feelings aren’t your problem, but your solution.

Interested in talking further about this? Contact me here to schedule a conversation. I’d love to explore with you!

Read This the Next Time You Feel Anxious. (Or any other painful feeling.)

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What do you do when an uncomfortable feeling rears its ugly head? You know the ones I mean: the biggies like anger, sadness, or fear, and also their annoying little cousins frustration, anxiety, and the blues.

There are only two things you must know about feelings to handle them more skillfully:

  1. Feelings are ephemeral. They come, they stay awhile, and then they go away, as long as we don’t make them too important.
  2. Feelings are the result of thinking.

You probably weren’t taught how to deal with your “bad” feelings, so you try to manage the feeling so it will just go away already. (“Oh, shit. I’m anxious. Again. How do I make it stop??”)

Do any of these coping strategies sound familiar?

You numb or distract yourself (usually with an addictive behavior).

You decide not to do the thing that’s causing the feeling.

You try to talk yourself out of the feeling.

(For me, this third strategy usually sounds like a bully in my head saying things like “Oh, grow up,” “It’s not such a big deal, silly,” “I’m such a loser,” or some other very unkind statement.)

You might use all of these strategies, because you’re an overachiever in this department.

This sucks, right? And it doesn’t change diddly-squat. You don’t feel better, and you don’t learn what the feeling has to teach you.

Let’s change that. Here’s a way to handle the inevitable unwelcome feelings that brings peace, growth, and greater resilience. Here’s a way to greet those feelings open-heartedly, treating them and ourselves with compassion.

Does that sound better?

The next time you have an uncomfortable feeling, do this:

  1. Stop and feel the feeling. Let it be what it is.
  2. Identify the situation about which the feeling is arising. Write it down.
  3. Notice the sensations in your body and your behaviors. Write them down.
  4. Listen in on what your mind is thinking. Write the thoughts down.
  5. THEN write down your feelings. There are probably more than you originally noticed.

You might recognize this process as an “Awareness Wheel.” Awareness Wheels are brilliant, because they help us see what’s going on below our conscious awareness. You can download one here.

Awareness in any form helps you see that your feelings are not your problem. Your feelings are your solution.

If you downloaded, you’ve noticed that the Awareness Wheel goes on to ask you what you want to happen, and concludes by asking about actions we’ve taken in the past and present or will take going forward.

This tool is powerful, for so many reasons.

Do this: download and print this blank wheel. When you have a feeling you don’t like, take a few minutes and fill out the wheel.

Next time I’ll share a couple of wheels from my own life, and tell you how you can begin to change your thoughts.

If you want to work through a wheel together, let’s schedule. I’d love to talk!

photo credit: Daoudi Aissi on unsplash