When you fight against reality

August 10, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Practice acceptance.

Most of us are used to—and mostly unaware of—creating unnecessary emotional pain when we “fight against reality.”

What does fighting against reality look like? We fight against reality by thinking thoughts like:

“It shouldn’t be this way.”

“This shouldn’t be happening.”

“I shouldn’t have to do this.”

“It” can be replaced with any of these: she, he, I, they, my weight, my life, etc.

“This” can stand in for whatever is happening that feels uncomfortable, undesirable, or unfair.

When we think these types of thoughts about something we have no control over or really can’t change, we’re resisting reality.

We’re spending emotional energy on it and wishing it were different. But if it’s something we can’t change, it’s not only pointless, but painful. And it doesn’t do anything to change what happened.

The opposite of resistance is acceptance. On the way from resistance to acceptance, there is non-resistance. And beyond acceptance, there is “loving what is.” That’s the big one.

When we start to practice non-resistance, when we start to acknowledge that we may be fighting against something that we can’t change and just let it be what it is, there can be peace and ease.

How do we know it was supposed to happen? Because it did.

That might be hard to swallow, but then there’s nothing to fight against. Then everything is going the way it’s supposed to go.

I know this is a big leap for many people. Many people feel resistant to even thinking of this as a possibility for themselves. To let go of how things “should” be or “should” have happened, and let things just be as they are.

Maybe it’s not exactly “loving what is” yet, but what about some acceptance, or even some non-resistance? Instead of all the resistance, along with the emotional pain it brings.

This is not to say that we don’t change what is possible to change, or that we don’t move towards the change we want to see in our lives, or that we condone injustices.

But again, when we think injustices “shouldn’t” happen when they do in fact happen unfortunately all too often, we’re fighting against reality, resisting how things actually are in the world.

And that only creates emotional pain and suffering for ourselves. When we’re in pain, we usually aren’t taking the actions that create change.

Of course, we need to process the emotions we feel when something happens that we didn’t want to happen. The emotions of disappointment, frustration, sadness, anger, hurt, loss, or grief. And let it take as long as it takes to process them.

But how long do we want to keep wishing it didn’t happen and add suffering on top of all those emotions?

When we can create more space for how things are, we surrender a little, we release some tension, we find some freedom. And that’s when we’ll get clear about what we really want and move towards creating the changes we want to see.

Your turn: What have you been resisting recently? What would happen if you allowed it to be what it is, without needing it to be different? How can the question, “How is this happening FOR me?” create some space in your experience?

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What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

When things don’t work out

August 3, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Don’t give up.

When we’re focused on moving towards our goals, we can feel deeply disappointed when something doesn’t turn out the way we thought it would or wanted it to.

We feel disappointed when we don’t get the job we really want.

We feel disappointed when we don’t see the weight on the scale go down fast enough.

We feel disappointed when the offer we put on the house we wanted gets outbid.

We feel disappointed when a relationship we’re feeling good about doesn’t move forward.

It’s easy to want to give up and think we’ll never have what we want when outcomes don’t happen the way we want and we feel disappointed.

But we don’t feel disappointed because of the outcome. We feel disappointed because of what we’re thinking about the outcome and what we make it mean about ourselves or about our lives.

Usually the thoughts have something to do with us not being good enough or that we’re doing something wrong or that we’ll never get it right.

But what if there’s nothing wrong with us or our lives? What if what we need is a nudge in a direction that we haven’t yet considered? What if the outcome we received means that there is something even better and more aligned with us waiting out there?

What if the outcome we get helps us see more clearly something we need to learn or do differently for ourselves? What if it’s a way for us to give ourselves more grace, compassion, and to become even more of who we’re meant to be?

If the Universe (or God or whatever Higher Power you believe in) has our back no matter what, then this outcome is happening FOR us.

It can be challenging to see that in the moments of deep disappointment, but once we’re able to be with, acknowledge, and process the disappointment (sometimes along with grief, loss, hurt, etc.) and have it move through and out of us, we can have more clarity in thinking about the outcome we received. What are we learning from this experience?

The Universe gives us what we need to grow and evolve—which is not always what we think we want. And, my friends, this is a good thing. Are you open to seeing it that way?

Your turn: Are you open to allowing yourself to feel and process disappointment when an outcome doesn’t turn out the way you wanted? If you can dive deeper, what else are you making the outcome mean? When you’ve processed the emotions, remember to ask, “How is this happening FOR me?” And are you willing to keep going until you have what you want?

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Overeating, overdrinking, over-anything?

July 27, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Stop buffering.

This week we’re talking about buffering. What is buffering?

We buffer to avoid feeling emotional pain or uncomfortable emotions.

When we buffer, we use external things to change how we feel internally. This means engaging in an action to put a buffer between us and a feeling we don’t want to feel.

The action could be something like overeating, overdrinking, overspending, over-Instagraming, over-Netflixing, overworking, over-cleaning, or over-exercising. It could be anything, if we’re using that thing/action to prevent ourselves from feeling an emotion.

These things become false pleasures that have a net-negative outcome: When we overeat, we gain weight. When we overdrink, we end up with hangovers and half of the next day is ruined. When we overspend, we go into debt or don’t meet our savings goals.

If buffering is what we do to avoid pain/discomfort, it makes sense that when we stop buffering, we’ll feel pain/discomfort. But most of us don’t understand this, which makes it almost impossible to stop buffering.

We have to be willing to feel uncomfortable in order to move past our buffers.

An analogy for this is like stepping into a house and turning on the lights and the house is a mess. The obvious and easiest answer is to turn the lights back off (to buffer) so the mess will “go away.” But the mess doesn’t go away–you just can’t see it now because the lights are off.

It’s similar with emotions. Avoiding an emotion doesn’t make the emotion go away—it just helps us not to see or feel it. We pretend it isn’t there, but it is there, and it’s there for a reason.

When we stop buffering, we’ll likely experience temporary pain. And the pain isn’t caused by the lack of buffering. What we need to do is stop buffering ourselves long enough to find the cause of the pain.

When we give up our buffers, we’ll still get upset, but we’ll deal with it differently. We won’t head for the ice cream, which will just make us feel sick or regretful. We’ll deal with it by becoming aware and examining why we’re upset. Soon, we won’t even want ice cream or chips because the (false) pleasure we get from food—or whatever buffering actions we’re doing—actually diminishes, and the pleasure we get from taking care of ourselves and fueling ourselves increases.

Instead of using external things to change how we feel, we can use our minds to change how we feel. Or we can even choose to feel and process the emotion in the moment.

Your turn: What feelings have you been avoiding? What are the false pleasures you’ve been engaging in? In what way would your life be better if you didn’t have these false pleasures? Are you ready to stop buffering and willing to feel some discomfort instead, to move towards real well-being?

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Doing all the things?

July 20, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Care for yourself instead.

Do we have space in our lives for self-care? Some of us may think that we don’t because there are “so many” other things that we “need to” do. Why are we doing so many of these other things and not caring for ourselves?

In the past I used to think I needed to DO all the things in order to prove my worth, because I used to think I wasn’t “good enough.” I wasn’t even conscious of this as a choice I was making-–I just thought it was how I was supposed to be living my life.

I’d do things from a sense of internal pressure—take classes to learn a certain skill, exercise only for weight loss, do activities where I could “meet new people,” be on nonprofit Boards for a sense of prestige, volunteer my time in other ways. I ended up DOING so much in order to feel like I was “good enough” that I ended up exhausting myself and feeling stressed out and overwhelmed. With no time to really care for myself in intentional ways.

Only looking back, and through the self-awareness work I’ve done through therapy and coaching, I see that I was “doing” in order to prove myself as worthy and valuable. Because I thought I wasn’t good enough, I thought I could DO things to feel good enough.

Now I know that worthiness comes from within, that I can choose to have the belief “I am already 100% worthy. I don’t need to DO anything to prove that.” And that belief is available to ALL of us. We get to choose to believe it (or not).

So if we decide that we don’t have to DO things to prove ourselves, what might we let go of doing? How might letting go of some of those things create more space in our lives to prioritize and care for ourselves intentionally instead?

Your turn: What if you stopped doing all the things to prove your worthiness and value and started spending time checking-in with yourself? What’s good about you? (Think about who you ARE, not what you DO, to answer that question.) How can you enjoy being with yourself even more? How can you enjoy being YOU even more so that you feel deserving of the care you’d like to give yourself?

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Stop hiding

July 13, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Show yourself.

In the past, I wanted to portray myself in a way where others would think I had it all together and knew what I was doing. That I had everything I wanted. That I was “fine” and living a “fine” life the way I wanted to.

But I was hiding. I wasn’t allowing myself to be open and vulnerable. To be real and tell the truth. Why?

Patriarchal concepts, especially within my private equity job at the time, played into my perception of myself. I used to armor myself, metaphorically, to put forward a competent, self-sufficient, capable version of myself who wasn’t emotional or sensitive. Who was there and could do the job no matter what, pick up the pieces for others–even at the expense of myself sometimes.

I didn’t give myself space to be authentic, partly because I didn’t know what that even meant for me. Who was I? What did I want? What brought me joy? I didn’t know the answers to those questions internally–I based what I wanted on external, societal, patriarchal values of what I “should” want or have for myself as a “successful” person.

I didn’t allow myself to be known because there were parts of myself that seemed unacceptable to me, because I thought they were weak. And I didn’t want other people to know about those weak parts.

It wasn’t until I started therapy after going through emergency open-heart surgery that I had a chance to look more closely at how I was living my life, by questioning beliefs I held that weren’t actually serving me, to redefine what success looked like and meant for me, to understand why I had armored and hid myself.

Through therapy, coaching, and deep self-care practices, I learned how to accept more parts of me, to start telling myself the truth about what I needed and wanted, about who I am. I learned how I can share myself with others in a more authentic way, to hold space for myself and for them to show up in real ways, not in people-pleasing ways.

I continue on this journey and I get to learn even more about myself and others along the way. I’m passionate about sharing how self-care can shift us to a place of self-acceptance and eventually to self-love.

Your turn: What parts of yourself have you been hiding and why? How would your life be different if you learned to accept those parts of yourself? How might practicing powerful self-care help you show up differently in the world, for yourself and for others?

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Making positive, aligned changes

July 6, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Let it be hard.

When we want to make positive changes in our lives, it’s usually because we know we can be living in a more aligned way. Aligned to what?

Aligned to the version of ourselves we are becoming. Aligned to who we want to be. Aligned to the best version of ourselves. And it takes time, trial and error, and energy to know the direction we want to move towards.

When we make decisions to change, we recognize that our lives might feel out of alignment with who we know we can be. That doesn’t mean who we are right now is “wrong” or “bad” or “not good enough”–it just means we know we can grow even more than where we are right now.

I want to offer that this is part of showing care and love for ourselves, by wanting a healthier body, better relationships, finding our purpose, a job that will challenge us, being more present in our lives, making more income.

So we decide to make the changes we think will move us towards those goals.

We might feel motivated and inspired at first, when our thoughts about what we’re doing make it easy to start out. Thoughts like, “I can do this. This is easy. This feels good. I’m doing something to support myself.”

But then it starts getting hard. Most of the time, people don’t stick to what they say they want because it starts to get hard.

When it starts to get hard, we feel uncomfortable. Our brains want to go back to what was easy, comfortable, and familiar.

Even if that ease, comfort, and familiarity wasn’t in our best interests and is why we made the decision to create changes in our life in the first place.

When it gets hard, we may think:

“I don’t feel like it today.”

“I can keep scrolling for another 20 minutes.” (which turns into 60 minutes!)

“I miss him so much, I’ll just text him to see how he’s doing.”

These urges come up because we want to go back to what is easy, comfortable, and familiar. If we keep answering these urges by returning to what’s easy, comfortable, and familiar, we won’t get to the place where we pass through the “hard” part.

Instead, we can allow the urges–and any other feelings that come up–to be there without resisting or reacting to them. We can process them through instead.

So let it be hard. And keep doing it anyway.

Keep sticking to the plan. Keep remembering why this is important. It was a decision to want more for ourselves because we care about ourselves. To align with who we want to be and are becoming.

When we can let it be hard, we will pass through to the other side of it. Then it will just become a regular part of what we do in our lives, a part of who we are.

Your turn: Are you ready to stop quitting on yourself? Are you willing to let it be hard? What would happen if you let it be hard and got to the place where it’s just part of what you do and who you are? How would your life be better or different then?

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Guilt-free rest and leisure?

June 29, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Take your time.

I recently decided that I would take one day off a month to have ZERO plans for the day. No obligations or tasks on a to-do list and no one to see. Well, there is ONE plan and that plan is to commit to rest and leisure without guilt.

If the plan is to rest and have leisure time, then by following the plan, guilt has no need to be in the picture.

If guilt does come around, we might be starting to think thoughts like, “I shouldn’t be doing this” or “I could be doing more productive things” or “People will think I’m indulgent.”

If caring for ourselves is a value we have, why do we feel guilty for honoring and expressing one of our values? If we value integrity, we usually don’t feel guilty honoring and expressing our integrity. We can treat rest and leisure time as values that we want to honor and express, without guilt.

For my plan of one day a month, within that free time, I could do WHATEVER I want. I could stay in bed until 10am, just dozing and resting. I could read for an hour after lunch. I could go for a walk to the ocean. I could walk to the park and sit in the sun for the afternoon. Things that I don’t usually have the leisure time to do.

And if a whole day for rest and leisure seems unrealistic, commit to small chunks of planned rest and leisure throughout the month. Maybe one weekend morning is for sleeping in. Maybe one Tuesday evening is for reading on the couch with hot tea for 45 minutes. One Friday night for a quiet night in instead of going out.

Rest and leisure are ways of taking care of ourselves. Commit to rest and leisure without guilt.

Your turn: Does committing to rest and leisure seem unrealistic to you? Why? What options might you not be giving yourself to take a well-deserved break? What reasons are you telling yourself that you don’t deserve rest and leisure in your day, week, or month? How might you request support for creating the space to have some rest and leisure for yourself?

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More self-confidence?

June 22, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Your thoughts about you.

How many of us want to have more self-confidence? There’s a difference between confidence and self-confidence.

Confidence comes from experience. If we’ve done something well before, when we do that thing again, we’ll likely have confidence that we can do it. The thought might be, “I’ve done this before and I can do it this time.”

Self-confidence comes from within. Even if we haven’t done something before, our thoughts about ourselves and our abilities can create self-confidence that we can figure something out. Or if we can’t figure it out, we’ll see it as a learning process, and we won’t beat ourselves up for that.

Self-confidence comes from having our own back and what we’ll tell ourselves when something doesn’t go the way we thought it would. The thought might be, “I tried my best, I learned what didn’t work, and I’ll try it again to see what might work differently. I know I can figure it out.”

Confidence and self-confidence are feelings. Our thoughts create our feelings. So if we want to feel confident and self-confident, we’ll need to think thoughts that create those feelings.

Many of us struggle with self-confidence because we’re used to telling ourselves mean and critical things when we think we’ve “messed up” somehow. Thoughts like:

“I’m just not good enough for this.”
“There must be something wrong with me.”
“Nothing ever goes the way I want it to, so why keep trying?”
“This is too hard for me.”
“They think I’m incapable.”

Those thoughts will create a feeling of disappointment, self-doubt, discouragement, or defeat. Are those feelings close to the confidence or self-confidence we want to feel? No. So let’s try different thoughts. Thoughts like:

“I’m figuring this out and I can keep trying.”
“I’m learning what works and what doesn’t.”
“It didn’t go the way I wanted it to this time, but let’s see if this other way works . . .”
“This is hard and I can do hard things.”
“I’m as capable as I need to be.”
“I’m deciding to believe in myself no matter what.”

When we become aware of the thoughts we think about ourselves, we can choose them on purpose. We can choose thoughts that serve us, that are kinder to ourselves than the ones we might be used to thinking.

Your turn: Are you aware of the thoughts you think about yourself? What thoughts about yourself serve you? Which ones don’t? What are some slightly kinder thoughts you could choose instead? What are some much kinder–and still believable thoughts–you can choose instead?

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Are you 100% worthy?

June 15, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Believe it.

I used to run around trying to do all these things in order to prove that I was worthy. I used to overwork myself at my job. I used to volunteer on weeknights and on the weekends. I used to say “yes” to everyone and everything.

I thought I had to do all these things in order to show that I had value.

Now, I still do a lot of things, but it’s no longer coming from a place of “I need to prove myself and my worthiness.” Now what I do comes from a place of wanting to contribute because I know I have value to add.

Through my coaching school, The Life Coach School, I learned to believe that I am already 100% worthy. I always have been. I just didn’t know that this was something I could believe about myself.

Most of us aren’t taught to believe that we’re already worthy. What we are taught is to believe that we have to perform, achieve, and accomplish in order to feel worthy and valuable. That we have to please everyone and get everyone to like us to feel worthy and valuable.

We were not taught that our own self-approval, self-acceptance, and our thoughts about ourselves are more important than what other people think about us or even what we think other people think about us.

Much of the time, we do things because of what we think other people will think about us. We’ve been conditioned to do this. But we can’t control what other people think. Not if we do “good” things or if we do “bad” things. They will think whatever they want about us and that’s based on them and not us.

We build our self-worth through our thoughts about ourselves. Not through what we do for our work or job, what we do or don’t do for others, or what we do well or don’t do well.

We build our self-esteem through our relationship with ourselves. Our relationship with ourselves is built on what we think about ourselves. What kind of thoughts do we have about ourselves? What do we think when we look in the mirror? What do we think when we make a mistake? What do we think when something goes the way we wanted it to go? These are all thoughts we have about ourselves.

Once we become aware of our current thoughts about ourselves, we can see whether they’re in alignment with how we want to feel about ourselves. If we wouldn’t let others talk to us in a certain way, why do we let ourselves do that?

Your turn: “I’m already 100% worthy.” Do you believe that? What about, “It’s possible that I’m already 100% worthy,” or “It’s possible that I can learn to believe that I’m already 100% worthy.” What would happen if you practiced one of these thoughts every day? What kind of thoughts do you think about yourself? Is there anything you’d like to change about that? If so, what?

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What does worrying do?

June 8, 2023June 8, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

It’s exhausting.

For most of us, worrying seems necessary. But what is it that we’re doing when we worry?

When we’re worrying, we’re making up a story about what could happen–usually the worst-case scenario–and then thinking as if it’s already happened.

What do we create for ourselves when we do that? We use a lot of mental and psychic energy focusing our minds on something that might happen and that will unlikely happen. And it’s exhausting.

When we think we’re protecting ourselves from a possible outcome that hasn’t happened yet, we’re hurting ourselves ahead of time. We’re already feeling all the emotions and thinking all the thoughts we might feel if this outcome happened. So we’re going through it as if it’s already happened, when it hasn’t yet or maybe never will.

Worrying is just a bunch of thoughts that we’re thinking. And likely the same thoughts repeating over and over again.

So what are the facts? A fact may be that an event is coming up on June 14th where you’re speaking in front of people. A fact may be that your son is going to a party with his friends this weekend. A fact may be that you’re traveling to Florida on June 25th. A fact may be that someone you care about hasn’t called you back for two days. A fact may be that you just got a mammogram done today and you’re waiting for results.

Everything else in your mind is just thoughts that you’re thinking about the facts.

We may think that worrying about something may “prepare” us for what could happen. But what if the worst-case scenario does happen? Will worrying about it make it any less devastating in the moment when it happens? No. Likely we will feel all the painful feelings that come up.

Worrying about it in advance only drains your energy ahead of time and doesn’t necessarily “prepare” or “protect” you from worst-case scenarios.

Your turn: What’s the upside of worrying? Instead of worrying, is it possible to keep your thoughts focused on the facts? What could happen instead if you keep your thoughts neutral or focused on the best possible outcome instead of the worst case?

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