10 Life Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

a man in a yellow suit and gas mask sitting in a yoga pose.

The Crisis We Didn’t Want But Might Have Needed: 10 Life Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

For weeks now, I’ve repeatedly come to my computer with the intention of writing something about the current state of affairs in the world. More times than I can count, I’ve tried to grab hold of the thoughts swirling through my mind, hoping to spin them into something that makes sense. But every time I’ve ventured to try, I’ve walked away defeated. Clarity and creativity have been evasive, and I’ve found myself devoid of the verve and inspiration that typically find me once I sit down to write. In this way, and countless others, I’ve felt like a different version of the person I was before this whole thing started. It’s been one in a seemingly endless series of adaptations I’ve been forced to make—and I’d be lying if I said I’ve been gracious through the process.

Through my work as a therapist, I’m privileged to be reminded that I’m not alone in my struggle. The people I talk to every day share their own variations on the theme. They tell me about their frustration, their confusion, their fear, their grief. They lament the things they’ve had to let go of; they wrestle with the things they can’t understand. They search for ways to accept what’s happening and adjust accordingly.

It’s this ongoing process, of adjusting and accepting, that we’re all being challenged to endure. And none of us can deny the toll it’s taking. How do we respond to a world that’s changed more swiftly and dramatically than we ever could have anticipated? How do we find our footing on this foreign terrain we’re traversing? How do we make sense of the confusing and contradictory messages about what’s happening and what we should do about it? And how do we cope with what it’s all making us feel?

To confront these questions, and the many others we’re asking ourselves, can be overwhelming. None of us signed up for the disruption of life as we knew it. And none of us can soothe ourselves with any certainties about what lies ahead. In this way, what we’re going through collectively is an existential crisis that, for many of us, is unprecedented. Sure, we’ve all gone through personal struggles and faced hardships of various magnitudes. But none of us have lived through something with such a profound global impact. The idea that every human being on the planet is in some way, large or small, being affected by what’s happening right now is staggering. It’s enough to evoke a deep sense of dread. But at the same time, the universality of this crisis offers a rich opportunity to reflect on some inescapable truths of our existence. If we can manage to stay curious and open, we might find that this breakdown of what we knew can break us open to make room for valuable new understandings.

When I reflect on everything that’s happened and everything it’s revealed, I’m reminded of these unavoidable truths about our existence:

  1. We aren’t as in control as we want to believe we are
  2. We’re far more interconnected than we tend to realize
  3. We don’t need nearly as many material things as we’ve been conditioned to believe we do
  4. We all live in subjective realities, and truth is truly relative
  5. We’ve been terribly messy and irresponsible guests in the home our Earth has provided for us
  6. We tend not to appreciate what we’ve got until it’s gone
  7. We’re all together and all alone, all at the very same time
  8. We must adapt if we want to overcome
  9. We have little without our health (and mental health is as vital as physical health)
  10. We all, at some point or another, will die

Perhaps the most painful part of this experience is that it’s forced us to confront realities we so commonly aim to avoid. But if we can find the courage to see what’s left when comfort and certainty are stripped away, some profound understandings are likely to emerge—understandings that can infuse our lives with new meaning, bring us closer to our humanity, and help us stay grounded in the essential truths of this human experience. There’s no doubt this is testing us . . . but what is it teaching us?

Do We Have to Take the New Year So Seriously?

a person standing in front of a firework display.

Since I was young, I’ve had a strained relationship with the New Year holiday. I can distinctly
remember feeling overwhelmed at 12 years old as I watched my family members count down
the seconds until midnight. What, I wondered, will be different once the clock strikes 12? What
will be different once this celebration ends? What unexpected things will be waiting for us in
the new year? I’d watch the adults in my life resolve to eat better, work better, be better, live
better—and I’d find myself feeling weighed down by the idea that one day I’d have to start
every new year setting the same kinds of expectations for myself.

I still feel the way I did at 12 years old. The start of a new year generates a mixed bag of
emotions that takes me weeks to sort through. When the clock strikes midnight and the
fireworks start shooting into the sky, a jolt of anxious energy rocks my system. Another year.
Another set of pressures. Another burden of expectations.

It’s a cynical perspective, I know. But it’s one I can’t shake, no matter how hard I try. And maybe
it’s not such a bad thing to be cynical about a holiday that marks nothing more and nothing less
than the turning of one day into another—an occasion that we live through (if we’re fortunate,
of course) thousands upon thousands of times without any sort of pomp or circumstance. Is it
so wrong to think that maybe we don’t need to place such extraordinary and disproportionate
emphasis on the dawning of a new day?

To be sure, there’s something beautiful about celebrating the start of a new year. There’s
something psychologically and emotionally refreshing about believing we can turn the page and
start anew. It’s highly encouraging to believe we can begin again, drawing on a blank canvas
that holds endless promise and potential. But why, I wonder, can’t we feel this way about every
new day? Why do we need a designated holiday to remind us of our capacity to commit to
ourselves, start fresh, and build on a new foundation?

The trouble with hyping the start of a new year comes when we forget that every new day
offers the same promise and holds the same potential. It comes when we lose sight of the fact
that we always have a choice to stay the same or start something new. It comes when we
attach ourselves to expectations that eventually overwhelm or disappoint us.

I have yet to find my way out of the struggle this holiday introduces for me every year. But I’m
okay with that. Because it’s led me to find freedom in recognizing that the choice about how to
regard the new year belongs entirely to me. I can celebrate the occasion or sleep through it. I
can resolve to do things differently or do things just the same. I can see the new year as a
special opportunity or recognize the specialness in all new beginnings. And maybe that
freedom—the freedom to choose our own perspective and choose our own way—is the
greatest offering the holiday gives us.

My wish for this new year and decade is that we all find our own unique ways to make the most
of the freedom, joy, and promise available to us—now, and in each new day.

Are You Coping or Copping Out?

therapy

“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.”

These words, commonly attributed to the late American actress, Katharine Hepburn, are a bit of a downer. But they’re also unquestionably, inevitably true. As beautiful as it may be, life really is hard. And in the absence of a clear instruction manual, it can sometimes feel like we’re stumbling more than striving as we make our way through it. Each one of us, without exception, is bound to encounter hardship at some point in life. But we don’t all experience our adversities in the same way. While some of us are crippled by our struggles, others approach them as catalysts for growth.

Undoubtedly, life’s difficulties come in various magnitudes and degrees of devastation. But those that don’t kill us must somehow be dealt with, one way or another. Between the time we’re born and the time we die, there’s a space of time in which we encounter, interpret, and respond to what we experience. Most people, at least the ones I talk to, hope to not only survive life, but to thrive within the time they’re given. And though a fortunate few people are able to thrive without effort, the rest of us have to work toward that ambition.

When it comes right down to it, the difference between fully thriving and merely surviving is how we deal with our circumstances. What do we do in the face of the tough stuff? Do we cope, or do we cop out? Now, before you accuse me of being insensitive to the plight of the disadvantaged or those heavily burdened by matter of genetics, upbringing, or circumstance, let me clarify a couple of things. When I refer to coping, I’m talking about what happens when we acknowledge our difficulties and take responsibility for responding to them in order to mitigate the struggle and alleviate our distress. When I say copping out, I’m referring to what happens when we avoid or deny our struggles, bypass the feelings they bring up, and attempt to evade our responsibility for dealing with them. No matter how difficult our lives might be, all of us have the choice to either cope or cop out. And, in reality, it’s one of the only options any of us really have. So, how can you tell which one you’re doing?

If you’re coping . . .

  • You acknowledge and accept that life isn’t all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows.
  • You recognize what you’re feeling and do what you can to work through it.
  • You own that while much of life is out of your control, how you respond to it isn’t.
  • You take responsibility for facing what’s in front of you, and you find a way to deal with it.
  • You ask for support when you need it.
  • You take care of yourself when life’s got you down.
  • You find ways to create a sense of meaning out of the difficulties you encounter.
  • You use your struggles as a source of strength.

If you’re copping out . . .

  • You avoid or downplay your difficulties.
  • You routinely blame circumstances or other people for how you feel.
  • You react impulsively to challenges and don’t reflect on those reactions afterward.
  • You bypass or suppress painful emotions when they come up.
  • You deny or resist support when you need it.
  • You try to push through, push stuff down, and pretend like everything’s fine when it isn’t.
  • You tell yourself that your struggles aren’t important and your emotions don’t matter.
  • You feel like a victim of life, with no options other than to endure it.

Whichever category you think you fall into, know that there’s no value judgment attached to it. You’re not a superior person if you cope, nor a bad one if you tend to cop out. Instead of judging or comparing yourself according to how you deal with life’s difficulties, consider reflecting on how you’d prefer to do it. If you want to become the kind of person who copes and creates meaning when the going gets tough, make that a daily intentional practice. Look for inspiration in the stories of people who overcame tremendous adversity and found a way to flourish. Viktor Frankl, one of those people whose story of resilience is an example for us all, offered a profound reminder for any of us who want to do more coping than copping out:

“Everything can be taken from a (wo)man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Is Self-Hypnosis a Super-Power?

get started therapy

When most of us think of hypnosis, our minds tend to conjure particular scenes: a timepiece swinging from side to side; someone quacking like a duck for an audience’s amusement; a hypnotist creepily half-whispering some version of, “You’re getting sleeepyyy.” These classic images of hypnosis embedded in our collective consciousness give the practice a really bad rap. But the truth is, hypnosis—or hypnotherapy, as it’s referred to when practiced in clinical settings—has a number of practical benefits to offer. Research supports the use of hypnosis for everything from smoking cessation to weight loss. It’s been shown to yield powerful results for people dealing with panic attacks, sleep disturbances, chronic pain, low self-esteem, and much more. In short, the real practice of hypnosis is nothing like the dramatized versions we’ve been shown on television and stage shows. It’s a true healing practice, and the reason it works so well is far less spooky than you might imagine. 

Hypnosis, in essence, is all about connection. It’s a way of crossing over boundaries that tend to separate us from ourselves, others, and the world in general. When these boundaries are dissolved through hypnosis, the wisdom of the body and the unconscious mind can be recruited to generate powerful changes. Often, our attempts to create change at the conscious level only wind up getting us more stuck. For example, people with insomnia who try hard to fall asleep will usually discover that those well-intentioned, perfectly reasonable efforts only keep them more awake. But the truth is, the body and unconscious mind know precisely how to drift into deep sleep; and if the conscious mind gets out of the way, they’ll do it with ease. So that’s where hypnosis comes in—and, more specifically, where self-hypnosis comes in. 

Self-hypnosis is a practice we can all adopt to help us get more relaxed, sleep better, manage pain more effectively, and cope with mental and emotional challenges that arise throughout the day. The practice, which shares some things in common with meditation, can give us access to our own healing super-powers. By learning how to dissolve boundaries and create connections, we can access the extraordinary wisdom of our unconscious minds and bodies. 

The practice of self-hypnosis allows us to enter a flow state, in which changes can happen effortlessly and spontaneously. It helps us come back to the balanced state that is our true nature. Hypnosis isn’t some form of sorcery, as those classic images would have us believe, but it does help us tap into the magic that we carry around inside of us—the magic that helps us heal ourselves. 

Anyone can learn to hypnotize themselves; all it takes is a few simple tools and a little practice. If you’re intrigued, or think you could benefit from what self-hypnosis has to offer, join me at Innergy Meditation on Friday, January 18th from 7:30p.m. – 9:30p.m., and learn how you can Unleash Your Inner Healer Through Self-Hypnosis. I hope to see you there!

Mindfully Transitioning to 2019

not alone

In our culture, the end of the year is a time for slowing down, celebrating, spending time with loved ones, looking back on the previous 12 months, and building anticipation for what’s to come. This time of transition from one year to the next can offer us a peaceful and contemplative space from which to reflect, integrate, dream, and create. But as it goes with everything, we’ve got to be intentional and focus our attention if we want to harness and maximize this special year-end energy. Here are a few simple ways to ride the wave of mindfulness from this year into the next: 

  • Stay Consistent With Your Routines. The holidays bring a welcome disruption to the normal routine. For many of us, this time of year means time off from work, celebrations with loved ones, and indulgences of the food and beverage variety. And though it feels good to deviate from the norm, it also tends to make mindfulness a bit more difficult. If you find yourself ending the year feeling foggy and groggy, it’s a good sign that some daily routines and rituals are in order. Whether you hit the gym, meditate, take a walk outside, pray, write in your journal, or perform some other meaningful ritual, maintaining a sense of consistency in your end-of-year days will set you up to make the transition into next year much more consciously and smoothly.
  • Carve Out Some You Time. If your social calendar tends to be a bit fuller than usual around this time of year, it’s a good idea to create time for connecting with yourself. Having the energy of so many people around can be dizzying, making it hard to focus or find your center. It isn’t uncommon for people to make the new-year transition from a place of pure exhaustion; the demands of the holidays and the many social obligations that tend to crop up around this time can be truly overwhelming! But with some awareness and effort, it’s possible to strike a helpful balance and maximize your enjoyment as well as your emotional and energetic wellbeing. Make sure to make time for being alone, silent and still. Even a few mindful minutes can go a long way in helping you center yourself and prepare to consciously transition into a new year of possibilities. 
  • Make Peace With What’s Passed.To bring more mindfulness into this time of transition, thoughtfully consider the previous 12 months and reflect on what you’ve learned and what you’d like to bring with you into the new year. Spend some time considering what you experienced in 2018, highlighting those experiences that brought about new awarenesses and understandings. Contemplate the relationships that began, as well as those that ended. Recall your successes and your failures, your joys and your sorrows. Find a way to honor the year and make peace with it. You can do this by writing in your journal, sharing with a friend, going through a visualization exercise, or coming up with a ritual that’s all your own. Whatever way you choose to make peace with the year that’s passed, be sure to stay present to the intention to release the energy of the past year and create space for everything that will manifest in the year to come.
  • Focus on the Being (—Not Just the Doing). Whether you get pumped up about setting new year’s resolutions or shudder at the thought of it, it’s nice to mindfully generate a sense of purpose and intention at the start of a new year, so you can fulfill those resolutions you set or simply enjoy the ride. To shape the year ahead with mindfulness, focus your attention on how you’d like to be, as well as on what you plan to do. In other words, reflect on the energy you’d like to bring into the year, and think about the inner experiences you’d like to cultivate. You might, for example, set the intention to be wholehearted in your endeavors, present in your day-to-day activities, trusting in your intimate relationships, and kind to yourself. You might commit to experiencing more joy, more peace, or more openness. By focusing on how you want to be and what you want to experience, you’ll be flowing into the new year with a sense of purpose that isn’t dependent on external circumstances and doesn’t require you to sustain your January 1st motivation all year long. You’ll be rooted in clear intention and connected to a sense of what you want to create within you—and from this place, there’s nothing you can’t do!

Here’s to a peaceful close to 2018 and a beautiful start to 2019. May your transition be made mindfully, and may the year ahead expand and evolve you in wonderful ways. 

8 Simple Hacks for Happiness

a woman jumping in the air on a bridge.

As a mental health professional, I’m often faced with questions about how to reduce suffering; how to manage tough transitions; and, perhaps most often, how to experience real happiness. As it turns out, it’s this third question that people tend to struggle with the most. For so many of us, happiness is an ideal we’ve been sold on that’s so transient and elusive as to make us wonder whether it exists at all. We all want it, but most of us have no idea where to find it.

When we’re young, happiness is much easier to access, so much more lasting an experience. But as time goes on and our responsibilities and obligations increase, happiness tends to register far less frequently on our emotional radar. Why is this, and what can we do about it?

What I’ve learned in my years of practicing therapy and studying the science of happiness and wellbeing is that happiness is—as the worn-out cliché suggests—about the journey, not the destination. It’s an experience that we cultivate in the day-to-day encounters of our lives—one that we’re capable of creating at will and get to experience more vividly the more we conjure it. There are many ways to harness happiness and hack your brain to experience it more often; here are eight.

1. Smile for “no reason.” It might sound silly, but this one really works wonders. Research shows that when your body works the muscles that form a smile, a signal gets sent to your brain, letting it know that you’re happy. But don’t’ rely on the research; try this out for yourself. Chances are, the more you smile, the better you’ll feel—and, of course, the better you feel, the more you’ll smile. Before you know it, you’ll have generated a fun feedback loop that sparks happiness for you and everyone you meet. We’re hardwired to respond to nonverbal forms of communication, and smiles are the universal language for connection, joy, and positive vibes. As you practice smiling for no reason at all, you’ll see more smiling faces around you. And if those faces continue to move through the world transmitting that positive energy, you’ll have created a ripple effect of happiness; not only will you be happier, but the world will be that much happier, too. Put this little trick in practice, and you’ll be off to a fabulous start.

2. Practice kindness. Let’s be real; it feels really good to have others be kind to us. And, the research is clear, it feels just as good to be kind to others. When we go through the world guarded, jaded, and walled off to other people, we isolate ourselves from a source of happiness and wellbeing that we’d otherwise get to access. It might take a little practice, especially if you’ve been hurt by other people and feel the need to protect yourself, but making kindness a deliberate practice promises to yield great rewards in terms of happiness and general positivity. Being kind to others promotes good feelings in them, of course, but it also delivers us a powerful happiness boost. Beyond that, it has the potential to enrich and strengthen our relationships with others, allowing us to feel connected and supported—both of which are vital contributors to happiness.

3. Be in awe. This is one of my favorites. Recent research has shown that a regular experience of being in awe is associated with decreased rates of depression and anxiety. When we do, read about, witness, or otherwise experience things that make us feel a true sense of how awesome life can be, we make a significant contribution to our overall wellbeing. And this is something we can deliberately practice in an effort to generate those good vibrations. Go for a walk in nature; marvel at the intricacies of artwork or the architecture in your neighborhood; read about new scientific discoveries or human achievements; watch a newborn baby discover the world. As much and as often as you can, put yourself in a position to be in awe, and watch how much more easily happiness comes to you.

4. Affirm your worthiness. With so many messages telling us who we should be—the ones coming from the media, communicated silently by the people around us, or echoing in our own minds—we sometimes need to strive to remember that we are enough. Doing this for ourselves, intentionally and regularly, can boost our sense of self-confidence and increase our sense of contentment. To fold this into your happiness practice, regularly check in with how you’re thinking and feeling throughout the day. Whenever you find yourself caught in the web of comparing, criticizing, or cutting yourself down, repeat worthiness-boosting affirmations. You might say something like, “I am whole and complete, exactly as I am,” “I am worthy of love and connection,” “I am worthy of forgiveness, including my own,” or create your own affirmations that help you remember your worthiness. Watch your happiness meter rise.

5. Tune out. We already know that we live in a digital era, in which technology pervades every aspect of our lives. But as many advantages as this provides us, there are also some pretty considerable drawbacks to consider. The research is clear that if we aren’t mindful about how we engage online, we risk doing harm to our happiness. The more mindlessly we engage online, the less connected we feel to our actual lives. And this is worth adjusting, because as it turns out, mindfulness—the practice of deliberately connecting to our actual experience in the moment—is known to increase happiness. To harness happiness by tuning out, practice limiting your online engagement. Take social media fasts; dedicate time to going offline; cultivate your real-life relationships; limit your TV time, and try a new activity instead.

6. Drop in. Our waking hours are spent swimming through a stream of distractions that vie determinedly for our attention. From the moment we wake up until the moment we go to sleep, many of us are either busy doing something or thinking about the next thing we’ll do. But when we fill our days with work and obligations, constantly thinking about what’s next, we get tired. And often when we’re tired, we numb ourselves out in an effort to rest and disconnect. There’s nothing wrong with this, except that it often doesn’t work very well. Instead of feeling refreshed, we can feel even less energized. Worse, we can find ourselves lethargic, bored, or apathetic. Developing practices that connect us inward can help us increase our happiness as we learn to nurture and give to ourselves. Meditation is a remarkably effective tool for helping us turn inward and generate positive feelings. Exercise is another great way for us to practice connecting with ourselves and attuning to our mind and body. Journaling, another useful tool for hacking happiness, helps us to learn from the wisdom of our own free-flowing thoughts and let go of things in our minds that weigh us down and contribute negatively to our lives. Try incorporating one or all of these into your daily life, and enjoy the uptick in happiness that comes with it.

7. Get your hands dirty. One of the best ways to experience more happiness is to get in touch with our abundance, and helping others is a marvelous way to do this. Volunteering has been shown to boost our sense of contentment, gratitude, and overall wellbeing. But we don’t need to be Rockefellers to make this happen. When we contribute to others, in ways both large and small, we also contribute to our own happiness. Take some time to seek ways that you can get involved in your world and your life, and enjoy the bonus prize of a sizable boost in happiness.

8. Get your feet dirty, too. This final happiness hack is my personal favorite. I don’t know about you, but I have fond recollections of how fun and freeing it felt to be a child. Back when my responsibilities were few and my options felt limitless, happiness always seemed to be right at my fingertips. If you can relate to this, then you’ll be glad to know that engaging in play activities is one of the best ways to experience more happiness. Let loose, access your imagination, and be creative. And if you want to up-level your efforts to get happier through play, take the fun outdoors! Being in nature is an unparalleled mood-booster. Kick of your shoes, ground yourself in the earth, and soak up all the good vibes it has to share with you.

I hope these 8 simple hacks set you on the path toward inviting more happiness into your life. Got some happiness hacking tips of your own? Share them with me in the comments section below!

What a Trip!

a wooden table topped with lots of plates and bowls.

I haven’t written in a while, but I’ve certainly had some things in mind to share; and I’m grateful to have that opportunity now. As some of you know, I spent a couple of weeks away this month on a visit to Morocco and Spain. It was my first time in Morocco, and though it was a wedding in Marrakech that brought me there, I got a chance to experience a few other parts of the country and enjoy some of the many riches it has to offer. I had few expectations going into the trip; and I’m glad for that, because nothing could have prepared me for the journey it turned out to be. While I was there, and since coming home, I’ve done a lot of reflecting on what I experienced and what all of it had to teach me.

From the moment my flight touched down in Marrakech, I was overcome by the energy of this new place. My senses were overloaded, and it took effort to stay centered. There was so much to take in, so many things around me demanding my attention, something unexpected at every turn. I felt completely scattered, yet totally present. Time flew by while somehow seeming to drag on forever. It was a dizzying experience that, oddly enough, led me to feel more grounded than ever.

Getting immersed in a new place requires a certain degree of surrender, a releasing of patterned ways of thinking and being. But the truth is, we don’t need to stamp our passports to get this experience. We always have this choice—to let go of what isn’t serving us and live into new possibilities; to shed old skin and grow into something new. For me, this trip was a humbling reminder of how much there is in this world, this Life, to be discovered. When we allow ourselves to move outside our context, our culture, our comfort zones, our customary ways of being in the world, we get rewarded and expanded. We move a little closer to the essence of Life, catching a glimpse of its vastness through the small pieces of it we get to savor. It’s a choice we get to make every day—stay small, or expand; close ourselves off, or open ourselves up with curiosity. Remembering that we have this choice isn’t always easy, and sometimes we have to shake things up to realize it again. But when we do, we get to grow.

One of the biggest treasures of this experience was the sense of connection I felt with the people I met in Morocco. Through the brief but significant encounters I had with them, I got reminded of how transcendent human connection can be. We have the ability to communicate with people in powerful ways that go far beyond the words we speak. This awareness came most penetratingly to me through an encounter with a practical stranger that I doubt I’ll ever forget. We didn’t share a language—save for a few words of Arabic and English that both of us could understand—but, in our brief exchange, I experienced trust, understanding, acceptance, forgiveness, and love. We connected and communicated in a way that transcended language, culture, or any other seeming differences between us. It served as a reminder and affirmation that true connection isn’t about the surface stuff. It’s about presence, awareness, attunement, patience, and a mutual willingness to understand. To really connect, we’ve got to slow down and pay attention. We’ve got to hold ourselves in the space to give and receive. Our connections with each other open us up to new worlds; they reveal new insights and understandings; they help us resolve our differences and discover our sameness; they affirm that we’re all having this curious and wondrous human experience together.

For me, this trip was a teacher. It humbled me, expanded me, and got me present to some things I believe wholeheartedly—that new experience is a transformative tool, and human connections are powerful medicine. After two weeks of traveling, I was eager to return home; but I promised myself that I’d hold on to all the lessons I learned while I was away. And now I get to share them with you. Thank you for being the space to receive them. I hope they resonate with a part of you and, in some way, contribute to your own beautiful journey.

Meditation for Trauma Healing

a woman sitting on a dock in front of a body of water.

Sometimes, when people ask me what I do for a living and I’m in the right kind of mood, I tell them I’m a tour guide through the realm of emotional pain. This is a sassy and, perhaps, slightly macabre way of describing myself and my work, but it’s an honest one. As a mindfulness-based psychotherapist and self-aware wounded healer, I know that keeping people company while they make contact with their own wounds is the most significant part of what I do. And it’s something I do with great reverence for the people who choose me to take the journey with them.

These people, my beloved clients, often seek me out in the midst of great suffering. Many of them have gone through dramatic and traumatic life experiences that interrupt their lives and negatively impact their functioning. When they arrive to their first session, many of them fight to hold back tears; they make visible efforts to hold themselves together, showing just how much life energy they’ve been expending to avoid falling apart. Once they know it’s safe to surrender, they allow themselves to reveal the pain they’ve been holding—and it’s heavy. In this beautiful clearing, they allow me to join with them and begin the healing process.

Often, clients come to see me because they know I incorporate mindfulness and meditation in the therapeutic process. Some of them have heard about meditation or been encouraged to try it, and they arrive eager to access anything that will give them some relief. Naturally, they assume that meditation will help them clear their minds and get free from the internal chaos that’s causing them so much anguish. This heartens me, as I know the abundant healing potential meditation holds. But in almost every case, I bookmark that chapter of our work together until a later time. Here’s why.

Meditation can be a remarkably effective tool that aids in the healing process. A regular practice has been found to calm the sympathetic nervous system, thus reducing the fight-or-flight response associated with trauma and post-traumatic stress. It’s also been shown to produce structural and functional brain changes that support healing. But it isn’t always advisable for survivors of trauma to hop onto the cushion right away. In fact, practicing without attending to other things first can actually interfere with and complicate the healing process.

If you practice meditation, you know that the notion of the mind getting quiet is a complete fallacy. Our brains simply aren’t wired to go silent whenever we want them to—if they could, traumas could be resolved pretty rapidly, and a whole lot of human suffering would be eliminated. Instead, what tends to happen when we enter the practice is that we become even more aware of what’s swirling around inside us. For people who’ve experienced traumas, this can be terrifying. Thoughts, emotions, and memories that are already troubling under normal circumstances can become overwhelming in the silent space that meditation opens.

The experience of trauma is characterized by intense fear that comes from a real or perceived direct threat to our survival. This kicks our nervous system into high gear and has a lasting psychological and emotional impact. After the initial event, trauma survivors often experience severe anxiety, intrusive thoughts, unpleasant physiological symptoms, emotional detachment, and unwanted flashbacks of the initial event. Without a proper foundation in place, meditation can amplify these experiences instead of alleviating them.

Here’s where that thing I said earlier about being a tour guide comes into play. It isn’t always safe to turn inward unaccompanied until we’ve done some work on being able to settle into ourselves. Research supports that meditation can be an integral part of the trauma healing process when accompanied or preceded by talk therapy or other forms of intentional interpersonal support. By consciously addressing the trauma, survivors learn how to revisit the traumatic event without become re-traumatized by it. They learn a variety of tools that help them cope with daily life and reestablish a sense of safety and security. While therapy isn’t a panacea for trauma, it provides a solid foundation that can be built upon and bolstered by practices like meditation.

Having had more than one traumatic experience in my own life, I can say that meditation is something I was able to adopt and embrace only after I did some conscious sorting out of my internal material. Through therapy and other more deliberate and directive healing modalities, I prepared myself to sit in silence, be present to my experience, and make direct contact with my thoughts and emotions. This is the space I aim to co-create and hold for my clients. Once they’ve walked through the pain and gotten familiar with the landscape, they can access the power and potential of meditation, cultivating serenity and taking their healing to new depths.

When we’ve done the work of acknowledging and addressing our traumas, meditation and mindfulness can help us get back into our bodies. These practices can serve as a profound form of empowerment, revealing to us the capacity we have for healing ourselves and learning to thrive again. They invite us to begin shining light over the parts of ourselves that were cast into darkness; they allow us to reclaim those parts and become whole again.

Serving as a means of retraining our brains and deepening our connection to ourselves, meditation offers significant benefits for anyone who’s experienced trauma. It helps us safely self-monitor, notice our thoughts, soothe ourselves, anchor our attention, breathe into discomfort, confidently encounter strong emotions, and securely inhabit our bodies and minds. Through a combination of therapy and meditation, I’ve seen countless clients move from victimhood to empowerment. I’ve seen chronic drug users who’d do anything to numb the pain release their attachments to substances and learn to comfortably live in their own skin. I’ve seen suffering transformed through the power of the practice, wielded by individuals who know they’re ready to turn the gaze inward.

Meditation holds the promise of opening our hearts and transmuting our pain into loving awareness and a deepened sense of compassion for ourselves and others. Through the practice, we learn to make space for the traumatic events we’ve endured and integrate them into our story. We learn to accommodate every aspect of that story. Because the truth is, our lives are richly complex experiences; they contain darkness as well as light, sorrow as well as joy. And when we learn to accept this fundamental truth, that life is everything, we can release our attachments and access our freedom.

It’s a Long and Winding Road

a train track with trees in the background.

I had a startling encounter with myself recently that came at an unexpected time, with unanticipated intensity. During a heated argument with someone I love, I found myself in dark yet familiar territory: The Shadow Land, as I’ve come to call it. This is a place I’ve known all my life—one that I decided years ago to travel far, far away from but that somehow has a way of calling me back from time to time. In the midst of this particularly painful exchange, I found myself there again and felt all those old emotions that I swore to myself (much more than once) I’d never feel again. I was out of my depth; I felt out of control. As the awful words tumbled out of my mouth and the dark emotions surged through me, I disconnected from the purest parts of myself and went completely into shadow mode. I didn’t like who I was being or where I was going in that moment, but I was compelled to keep spiraling deeper into it. What a painful experience. What an awful, well-worn path to tread. It’s tough to admit this—especially given the pressure placed on people in my position to act as if we’ve got it all together all the time— but if owning up to it makes any sort of contribution to anyone else’s process, it’s well worth it.

As someone doing the kind of work I do, I have the benefit of getting an insider’s view of the painful insecurities and disowned shadowy bits that plague most people. If we’re willing to look closely, all of us can find parts of ourselves we’re unwilling to own; parts of our stories we’re unwilling to forgive; parts of our lives we’re unwilling to accept. Some of us are at war with ourselves, unable to live comfortably in our own skin. Others—perhaps those who have ventured into the territory of healing and made the brave and radical decision to shine love and acceptance where there has been darkness—know the pain and disappointment of realizing that the work isn’t done. This was my experience as I found myself losing touch with my light. This is the experience of owning the unfortunate yet inevitable truth—that self-acceptance and self-love are a lifelong project.

We’re living in interesting times, where self-improvement is in style, and everywhere we look, someone’s offering a quick and easy solution to peace everlasting. But let’s be honest: human nature is more complex than we’ll ever understand, and the road to total self-acceptance is a long and winding one. Books, seminars, coaching, and therapy can give us direction and equip us with the tools we need to find our way; but Life, as always, remains in charge, finding myriad ways to put us in touch with the unacknowledged, unforgiven, disowned parts of ourselves. The dark matter, as it turns out, runs deep—and so does the work of shining our light there.

After spending some time battling my demons and forgetting everything I’ve ever known—or taught—about self-acceptance and self-love, I found my breath and allowed myself to re-align. I called upon my courage and committed to doing some exploring of everything that was unearthed when this person so close to me triggered something I had no idea was lurking beneath the surface. But first, I did some serious ugly crying, jotted some notes in my journal, gave myself a big hug, and got back to the business of living. Because this is what we self-helpers tend to gloss over: sometimes, we can’t just Namaste the pain away and bathe ourselves in blissful self-love. Sometimes, pulling ourselves together and wearily declaring a truce is all we can manage. The process, as I said, is a deep one, and the journey toward boundless self-love might be never-ending. So sometimes, the best we can do is stay with the process and sit with the pain of what hasn’t yet healed, trusting that shining the light of our awareness into the darkness is its own powerful form of progress.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that if only we read enough, meditate enough, go to enough yoga classes, or repeat enough mantras, we’ll be healed forever. I mean, how appealing is it to believe that we can free ourselves, once and for all, from the shackles of insecurity, self-doubt, and self-loathing? But the truth is, when we buy into the notion that the self-love project is one we can conquer swiftly and completely, we only add to our own suffering. Maybe instead, we can let ourselves settle into the lifelong journey and appreciate the process of learning as we go. Maybe we can brace ourselves for those dark nights of the soul, trusting that they’ll usually wind up being the greatest contributions to our growth.

Listen, I’ll be the first to tell you: personal development work is not for the faint of heart. It’s gruesome to face down the self-limiting beliefs and unresolved emotional drama living inside us. But despite what any late-night infomercial or well-funded Facebook ad might try to sell you on, it’s the only way transformation can happen. We’ve got to face it and feel it to heal it; and we’ve got to be ready for the lifelong project of self-growth, self-love, self-acceptance, and self-improvement. But though the journey is long and the work deep, I, for one, take great comfort in knowing that we’re in this together. All of us breathing and learning and healing and growing, side by side—all of us contributing to and gaining from one another’s beautiful journeys.

Superego, Take a Seat

The field of psychology has come quite a long way since the time of Sigmund Freud. And though a great deal has changed over time, some of his ideas about human psychology have proved timeless. Take, for example, his model of the human psyche, which consists of three components. First there’s the id, the most primal aspect of ourselves, which contains our most basic instincts. Then there’s the superego, which serves as a moral conscience and operates from a rigid set of constructs about how we should conduct ourselves. Finally, there’s the ego, the reality-based part of ourselves that mediates between the id and superego’s extremes.

While the id is all about fulfilling pleasures and satisfying impulses, the superego drives us toward becoming the most idealized version of ourselves. Our superego is like a strict and rigid parental figure living inside our consciousness; its job is to use morality, pressure, and guilt to get us as close to perfect as possible. And all the while, the ego toggles between the two, trying to create harmony and guide us through life.

I’ve always appreciated the framework Freud laid out; it gives us a way to understand the seemingly disparate parts of ourselves. I, for one, find it incredibly useful to remember that my occasional impulse to dive headfirst into a chocolate cake is not a reflection of who I am, but rather a function of the id that constitutes just one part of me. Similarly, I take great comfort in reminding myself that I don’t need to follow all the demands of my relentless superego. Just as it wouldn’t be socially acceptable (or even safe) to follow the id’s every whim, it also wouldn’t be prudent to put the superego squarely in charge.

See, the superego operates according to a strict set of rules and expectations—a binary set of rights and wrongs, if you will. It deals in extremes and sees things in black and white terms, as either completely good or completely bad. Some of its most commonly used words include should, shouldn’t, must, and can’t. It’s nearly impossible to please. And though it serves a worthy purpose—to maintain our moral nature and keep us working toward a perfected version of ourselves—it can keep us rigid, restricted, and mired in guilt if we aren’t careful.

If you’ve ever worked with me in therapy, you know I’m always on the lookout for the superego’s traps. I commonly catch my clients in superego-driven rigidity and invite them to be more reasonable with themselves. This is not only vital to the therapeutic process, creating valuable space for us to be more flexible and forgiving, it’s also essential to our general wellbeing. It’s unreasonable—and often downright harmful—for us to hold ourselves to an inflexible metric of right and wrong. For starters, there’s ultimately no such thing as right or wrong. Reality is a wholly subjective experience, and each of us defines it differently. We all judge reality, including the rightness and wrongness of things, according to our own personal standards. What for some is acceptable, others find reprehensible.

The superego’s idea that there’s a perfect way to do things is simply unrealistic. More than that, it’s damaging. It sets us up to judge ourselves according to impossible standards and always feel like we’re falling short.

We spend our lives letting our superegos tell us what we should and shouldn’t do; we constantly make ourselves (and others, no doubt) right or wrong about everything. This takes a heavy toll on us. It keeps us from having a clear sense of what we want, since it’s hard to hear the voice of our true selves over the din of the superego’s demands. It prevents us from recognizing how free we are. With the guidance of the thoughtful, integrating ego, we can determine new standards for our behavior. We can think openly and flexibly about how we want to show up in the world, and give ourselves permission to be imperfect.

You can create a lot of powerful change in your life by developing a new relationship with your superego. Whenever you notice it dictating what you should think, say, or do, pause and take a moment to consider other possibilities. For example, if you’re facing a choice between two things, don’t let your superego decide which is right and which is wrong. Instead, explore other standards, and ask yourself different questions. Will what you choose be helpful or unhelpful? Will it have you in or out of alignment with your highest self? Will it be productive or unproductive? Will it promote freedom or constraint for you and the people around you?  Instead of letting your superego dictate what you should or shouldn’t do, ask yourself other, more useful questions. How will doing it make you feel?  How will it affect the people around you? Will it move you closer or further away from the life you most desire?

The more mindful and intentional we are, the more harmony we can create among the various parts of ourselves. We can learn from our instincts and be informed by our internalized rules, without being enslaved by either. We can flow more easily through our lives, trusting ourselves to make decisions that move us toward our highest potential. And, in maintaining this sense of internal harmony and self-awareness, we can let ourselves live both responsibly and freely, with a clear mind and an open heart.