Not happy all the time?

November 9, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

You’re not supposed to be.

I want to offer that life and our human experience is 50/50 – 50% “good/positive” and 50% “bad/negative.”

I think we’ve been taught incorrectly that our lives should be good most, if not all, of the time. So when something happens that’s in the “bad” 50%, we think something has gone terribly wrong. But if that 50% is supposed to be there, has anything really gone wrong?

If we felt happy all the time, we would have to feel happy even through things like the death of a loved one, an accident, an illness, a relationship betrayal. And all of these things are part of the human experience – things we basically sign up for when we’re born. So, unfortunately, we won’t be able to avoid them or the emotions that come along with them.

Our emotions are an indicator of what’s going on for us. To be authentic, to have a true relationship with our life, means also to be willing to experience negative emotion 50% of the time. If we’re willing to do that without trying to escape it, we’ll remove all the buffers in our life, and at the same time, we’ll remove all the negative consequences that come with them.

What are buffers? When we buffer, we use something to distract ourselves from feeling an uncomfortable emotion. A buffer could be over-eating, over-working, over-drinking, over-Instagraming, over-Netflixing, over-spending, over-cleaning. We do these actions instead of allowing and processing an uncomfortable emotion like boredom, loneliness, shame, fear, or jealousy.

What are buffers? When we buffer, we use something to distract ourselves from feeling an uncomfortable emotion. A buffer could be over-eating, over-working, over-drinking, over-Instagraming, over-Netflixing, over-spending, over-cleaning. We do these actions to create false pleasure instead of allowing and processing an uncomfortable emotion like boredom, loneliness, shame, fear, or jealousy.

We engage in false pleasure to “force” ourselves into the “positive” 50%. Then we think we’re OK and we avoid doing the harder things (like processing our feelings), and instead, we gain weight, we get hangovers, we go into debt or don’t meet our savings goals, we waste time consuming other people’s content when we could be creating our own, or doing something to take care of ourselves, like going for a walk, run, doing yoga, meditating, or cooking a healthy meal.

When we allow ourselves to feel the discomfort of the other 50%, we will decrease our buffers and the negative consequences they produce. In fact, when we allow ourselves to really feel and be with our emotions, we get to know ourselves in a much deeper way.

What happens when we get to know ourselves in a much deeper way? We start finding the causes of our unhappiness, and then we can start to change them, if we want to.

This is sustainable, unlike engaging in the false pleasures we’ve been using to buffer and dealing with the consequences that come along with them.

For example, when we limit our drinking, we don’t experience hangovers and we get to feel good in our body. When we watch our eating, we get the pleasure of not worrying about our weight. These results are real, ongoing pleasures.

Your turn: How would you think about your life differently if you accepted that life is 50/50? What if nothing has gone wrong when you’re in the other 50% that’s not “good”? What would you be more willing to do for yourself if you embraced the 50/50 of life?

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help you create the results you want in your life? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

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.

Ruminate much?

September 21, 2023September 21, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

It’s a thought error.

I learned the term “thought error” from my teacher at The Life Coach School. Thought errors are also known as cognitive distortions, which are automatic, often unrealistic ways of thinking that can rapidly affect our mood and create or keep us stuck in cycles of anxiety, sadness, or other difficult emotions. Thought errors and cognitive distortions include all-or-nothing thinking, catastrophizing, jumping to conclusions, and personalizing, among others.

A thought loop is when we keep repeating the thought error over and over again. It’s also known as ruminating (which is related to a cow chewing its cud, chewing on something over and over again). And we know our thoughts create our feelings, so whatever thought is looping, the feeling will likely persist and get stronger as well.

Usually it’s the feeling of fear—or some form of it (worry, anxiety)— that drives us to loop our thoughts. And it makes sense because our brains have evolved to keep us alive and safe, so it’s usually looking for threats in the world. Most of the time, the threats are created in our minds.

I was very familiar with thought errors and thought loops. I ruminated and made up stories about facts. It’s easy to make up stories about facts:

We’re used to telling ourselves stories about facts. We make facts mean something about us, usually that we’re not good enough or we’ll never have what we want.

A helpful way to remind us that we are thinking thoughts and that they are OPTIONAL is to add these phrases to our thoughts:

“I’m just thinking the thought _____.”

“I notice I keep thinking the thought _____.”

“I’m telling myself the story that _____.”

“Right now I’m thinking the thought ______, and that’s okay.”

Then we can find some space between our thoughts and what we think is fact. Sometimes this can create some peace or ease for us. We can discover that we are NOT our thoughts. We can start to become aware of our thoughts and then start CHOOSING THEM on purpose to serve us.

Your turn: The next time you find yourself ruminating or looping thoughts, remind yourself that you’re thinking thoughts and possibly making up stories about facts. What are the facts? What is the story you’re telling yourself about the facts? When you remind yourself of the story vs. the facts, how do you feel differently?

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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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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help create a more meaningful life in which you start committing to yourself and show up the way you want? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

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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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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What do you REALLY want?

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

Allow yourself to desire.

Sometimes we don’t allow ourselves to tell the truth about what we REALLY want.

We anticipate the feeling of disappointment ahead of time and think, “I’ll feel so disappointed if it doesn’t happen. I don’t want to feel disappointed, so I just won’t think about it.”

Is feeling disappointed a good reason to not allow ourselves to desire or want something? Disappointment is a vibration in our body that happens when we think something like, “It’s not happening,” or “This isn’t what I wanted,” or “It’s never going to work out.”

Yes, disappointment is an uncomfortable feeling. If we know how to process our feelings, we can let disappointment flow through us instead of getting stuck. We can realize that as “bad” as disappointment feels, it is still just a vibration in our body that can pass through us if we allow it to. When we resist the feeling of disappointment is when it can seem stronger and more persistent than it needs to be. And what if we are willing to feel disappointed? It can stop being something scary to avoid.

When we want something, not getting it or not having it happen is the worst case scenario. And for some reason, the worst case scenario is usually what we think about.

But what if we allowed ourselves to give the BEST case scenario equal air time in our thoughts? What’s the best case scenario of our desire? That we get what we want. That what we want happens.

What might it be like to allow ourselves to fully desire something? Without the “what if it doesn’t happen?” part? What would that feel like?

I want to offer that it can feel empowering and tingly and even FUN to allow ourselves to fully desire something. And who says the best case scenario won’t happen?

Your turn: What are you not allowing yourself to fully desire? Why? What might you create in your life if you allowed yourself to fully desire something? Are you open to playing with that idea?

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Give yourself permission

March 30, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

And get used to it.

In the past, I didn’t give myself permission to ask for help. I didn’t give myself permission to set boundaries. I didn’t give myself permission to feel my feelings. I didn’t give myself permission to consider what success really looked like and meant for me. I just accepted what other people and society told me success looked like and meant. I didn’t consider broader possibilities for myself.

I put myself in a box that I thought was a “good” box. I was doing the things I was “supposed to” do and was doing a great job with them.

Or so I thought.

I thought the armor that I put on each day was masking the insecurity and weaknesses I felt. Maybe to others, it looked like I had it all together. Maybe not. But while I thought the armor was protecting me, it was actually keeping me separated from what I really wanted and who I could become.

Because I didn’t even know who I wanted to become. By my own choice, through my own decisions, and by knowing myself.

And now I do know. More than I did before. And I will keep learning more.

Part of this process began when I started to give myself permission to take off the armor. To know that the armor wasn’t necessary for who I wanted to be. That armor was heavy and I didn’t even know it, until I didn’t have to put it on all the time.

I learned how to give myself permission for things that seem obvious now. To rest. To relax. To not feel guilty and obligated all the time. To let other people do some of the work. To ask for help. To say no. To say yes … to things like pleasure and joy and freedom. To believe new things.

Who do we think we need to ask permission from? Why? Who do we think we’ll get permission from, if not from ourselves?

Your turn: What are you not giving yourself permission to do, be, say, think, feel, believe, want, have? What would you really like to do, be, say, think, feel, believe, want, and have? Who do you need permission from? What might happen if you asked yourself permission? What might happen if you gave yourself permission?

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It’s not “over there”

February 16, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

It’s right here.

When we set goals for ourselves, it’s easy to start thinking that when we finally achieve those goals, our lives will be better.

Our lives will be different, not necessarily better. We may not have some of the problems we had before achieving our goal. But then we may have new problems after achieving our goal.

Life will still be 50/50, positive/negative.

But it’s tempting to think that “there” is better than where we are right now. We might start thinking:

“Once I get that promotion, I’ll be satisfied.”

“When I find my perfect partner, I’ll feel worthy.”

“Once I’ve lost the extra weight, I’ll love myself more.”

“When I buy a house, I’ll feel complete.”

“Once we have kids, our marriage will be more fulfilling.”

We can get focused on the “there” and forget about being here in the present moment. And when we place a lot of weight on getting “there,” we may be disappointed once we are “there” and we still don’t feel satisfied, worthy, loving, or complete.

This is not to say that our goals aren’t important or that we shouldn’t have a vision of what we want for ourselves. But when we place so much responsibility on the future for the way we want to feel, we forget that we’re responsible for the way we’re feeling right now.

“Being aware of the present moment simply means you never believe the illusion that the future is going to be better than what is going on right now.” – Mateo Tabatabai, The Mind-Made Prison

We can feel satisfied, worthy, loving, and complete right now by what we’re thinking about our life circumstances and ourselves. Our thoughts generate our feelings. We can fuel ourselves with the feelings we want to feel, take aligned actions, and create the future we want from here.

Being “here” and creating our future from “here” is just as valuable and important as being “there” can be.

“Plan, dream, and organize all you want, just don’t start believing that what you have planned for the future is going to be any better than your current moment. You are going to be in the present moment your entire life. If you are focusing on how good the future is going to be, you are just running on the hamster wheel hoping to get somewhere. Life is right now in this glorious moment right in front of you. I believe that if you’re not allowing yourself to be happy right now, nothing external in the future is going to change that permanently.” – Mateo Tabatabai, The Mind-Made Prison

Your turn: What feelings do you think achieving your goals will generate for you? Do you believe you have the capacity to feel those feelings right now? What would happen if you didn’t need to wait for future circumstances to provide the feelings you want and that you can feel that way now? What would it look like for you to move towards your goals feeling now the way you think achieving those goals would feel?

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When others “make you” feel guilty

December 22, 2022December 22, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Choose.

For the next two Thursdays, I’ll be responding to questions related to self-care that people have asked. If you’d like to submit your own anonymous question, you can use this form (also can be found in the “What’s on your mind?” section below).

How do I take time for myself without a family member making me feel guilty when I do?

We know from the Model that our feelings are created by our thoughts, not the circumstances. When a family member says something to us, that goes in the Circumstance line. What we think about that creates our feeling. So if we’re feeling guilty, we’re thinking something that creates guilt for us.

We’re responsible for how we feel, because of what we’re thinking, even though we’ve been conditioned to think other people are responsible for how we feel. When someone says something to us or about us, there’s a space between what they say and how we feel. That space is where we think thoughts that interpret and create meaning about what we heard.

We can agree with what someone says about us, or we can disagree. We may be able to find the truth in what they say, or they can be wrong about us. For example, if someone says, “You’re selfish for taking time for yourself.” If we feel guilty, we might be thinking, “Yeah, it is selfish of me,” or “Yeah, I shouldn’t be taking time for myself when there’s so much to do.”

There are other options as well. “Maybe I am selfish, but it’s important for me to take this time for myself. I know I’m still a helpful person,” or “She’s wrong that I’m selfish. I’m doing this so I can refresh and be able to give more later,” or “I know I give enough to others. This is for me.” These thoughts will create a different feeling than guilt.

Find the thought(s) that might be creating guilt. Decide if you want to keep thinking those thoughts or if you want to choose new ones that create a different feeling.

How can I set boundaries and be confident / comfortable with my own needs with the possibility of upsetting others?

Is it possible that others may be upset when we set boundaries and take care of our own needs? Yes. If others aren’t used to us setting boundaries with them, they may feel upset when we do. We set boundaries to keep our relationships healthy. We set boundaries to take care of ourselves. We can stay connected with others while setting boundaries.

We can even let others know that we value our relationships with them and are setting boundaries in order to maintain our relationships. Some language can look like this:

“I really appreciate our friendship and I also respect my time. If you continue to be more than 15 minutes late for our lunch dates, I will need to leave after 15 minutes and we can reschedule.”
“I love you and I do not want to do that. How else can I support you?”
“I want to help you and I can’t do it this weekend. Is there some other time that can work for both of us?”
“I like spending time with you and would like you to call before coming over. If you continue to come over without calling, I will ask you to leave and come back when it works for both of us.”
“I like living with you, but I don’t appreciate it when you use my things without asking. Would you be open to asking me first before using my things? OR If you keep using my things without asking, I will put them in a locked area.”
“I like talking to you on the phone and hearing about what’s going on for you. Sometimes when you call, I’m only able to talk for 10 minutes. I’ll let you know right when you call how much time I have to talk. If you have more to say after 10 minutes, I will need to continue our conversation at a different time.”

These are just a few examples of what’s possible to say in different situations while staying connected to the person and showing we value them.

The important part of setting boundaries is following through with the consequence, which is what WE will do if a boundary has been crossed—the “…then I will ____” part of the sentence. We need to decide whether it’s something we can follow through with or not. If we don’t, it’s like making an idle threat to someone and it doesn’t help us reinforce the boundary that we set.

Many of these examples prevent resentment from building up for us—when we don’t set boundaries, it can be easy to let things go on, even if we don’t like it. When we don’t like it, the other person doesn’t know unless we communicate with them. They think everything is fine, but we start to feel resentment. When we start feeling resentment, we start thinking about our relationships differently, maybe with dread. This isn’t part of keeping our relationships healthy. Remember, boundaries are something we do to take care of ourselves and to keep our relationships healthy.

Check out this video I created for more about setting and maintaining healthy boundaries.

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Why are you doing that?

December 8, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Our feelings fuel us.

Everything we do in our life is because we want to feel a certain way. Everything we want in our life is because of a feeling—the feeling that we think we’ll have when we get it or the feeling we think we’ll avoid in not getting it. This is really good to know.

And if we know that our feelings are caused by our thoughts and that what we do in our life is in order to feel better, wouldn’t it be important to know what kind of thoughts we’re thinking?

Circumstances are the facts that happen in our lives and which we usually don’t have control over. How we think about those circumstances creates our feelings. It’s not the circumstances that create our feelings.

Our feelings are also important because they drive all of our actions. Feelings are the fuel for our actions. So when someone asks me, “Why am I not taking action?” It’s because of the way they feel. Or if they’re taking an action they don’t want to be taking, it’s because of the way they feel.

So our feelings are driving our actions. And then our actions are always going to create the results we get—sometimes they’re results we want, and sometimes they’re results we don’t want in our life.

Our actions create our results.

Our actions stem from our feelings. And our feelings come from our thoughts.

So if we want different results, ultimately, we need to think different thoughts.

Sometimes the reason why we don’t take a certain action is to avoid a feeling we think will happen after taking that action. This can look like declining a big opportunity because we’re feeling doubt and thinking something along the lines of, “I might fail and I don’t want to feel the dejection of failure.”

Other times, we feel a certain way and because we feel that way, we either take or don’t take action. This can look like feeling nervous because we’re thinking, “I don’t want to look stupid in front of everyone,” so we don’t offer our opinion in a meeting. Or we feel hurt because we’re thinking, “He should want to spend more time with me,” which causes us to disconnect from our partner, which is an action that doesn’t serve us or our relationships-–it’s actually the opposite of what we want here, which is connection.

When we have results in our lives that we don’t want, it’s good to be aware that it’s our actions that are creating them. And where do our actions come from? The way we’re feeling. And where does the way we’re feeling come from? The way we’re thinking about our circumstances.

To create different results, we need to think different thoughts.

Your turn: Are you open to bringing more awareness to what feelings are fueling your actions? What are the feelings that might be fueling your actions? What actions are you taking when you experience those feelings? And what results are your actions creating for you? Do you like the results you’re getting?

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