What If You Started Owning Your Shit?

You know what's easy? Criticizing and blaming others for your problems. You know what's not? Looking objectively at your own role in your interactions with the world.

I should know. I'm relatively intelligent and perceptive - I'm not just saying that, my therapist thinks so too! (Ha!) I've always fancied myself as great at communication with others, but lately I'm realizing that I'm TERRIBLE at it. Okay, perhaps that's a little harsh, but I'm nowhere near where I thought I was. Turns out that simply throwing a lot of words at someone doesn't count as communicating... who knew? 

This, and other truths about the way in which I perceive myself in my relationships, are difficult for me to swallow. Sometimes my therapy sessions feel like a battle of reconciliation between my long-held idea of who I am in my relationships and the uncomfortably spot-on points that my therapist makes as a third-party observer. It literally feels like a war going on inside me as the way I've always perceived my interactions tries desperately to hold its ground against the new knowledge that I'm gaining every day.

I say all this because I don't want you to beat yourself up if you have never owned your shit, if you're just beginning to own your shit, or if you don't have the slightest idea how to begin owning your shit. IT's HARD! Like I said, I am smart, quick to learn, and consider myself relatively self-aware. I'm also very hard on myself. The biggest struggle of all is to accept how much I myself contribute to the dumpster fires in my personal life without totally hating myself in the process. 

That's the trick. Develop a strong sense of self-love and self-worth in order to confront your own issues and the active role you play in your life, or it might tear you up. Accepting responsibility for your decisions is important, but if you find yourself using it to further put yourself down, you're off the mark. Forgiving yourself for not knowing more in that moment is an essential part of your transition to a healthy awareness in the future. 

You can only do your best with what you know at the time. As you gain more knowledge and self-awareness, you'll do better, but it's a journey. We all make mistakes, we all fuck up, and we all wish we'd known more - but we can't change the past. Clinging to regret does you no good. 

Owning your shit comes with the prerequisite of learning how to be gentle with yourself as you grow, change and develop clearer awareness. Don't try to do it all at once. Work on your foundation in yourself so that you can stop blaming and criticizing others, realizing that it accomplishes nothing, and instead look first at where you can shift and change in a situation. You cannot control anyone but you. Instead of throwing your energy all over someone else, use it where it does the most good - right where it lives. 

I know it's a lot. It can be overwhelming. I get overwhelmed too. But we have to start somewhere, and any movement forward is preferable to staying stuck.

You got this. I've got your back. Sending you so much love. 

What If We Normalized Openly Feeling All Of Our Emotions?

What a concept, eh?

How lovely it would be if we felt comfortable sharing all of ourselves with the world. The good, the good, and the good - because I don't believe any of it is bad or ugly. 

There is often an overarching emphasis in our society on the idea of healing as sticking staunchly to positivity and avoiding any less ... attractive emotions. And I call bullshit. Emotions are there for a reason. No one floats through this world feeling nothing but happiness, joy and peace. Especially not in the process of healing. 

I don't believe that even the most enlightened among us never feel frustration, sadness, loneliness, or everything else on the gamut. The difference is in how they handle and process this discomfort. 

Healing isn't about pretending that nothing is wrong and forcing yourself into a positive mindset while shoving the truth of your process down and stifling it under a smile. Quite the opposite. Healing is about peering into the wounds and learning their true nature in order to find a way to mend them properly so that they leave as little scarring as possible. 

Invisible wounds are the same as those that physically show on the body. If you do not clean a cut, but instead cover it so that no one can see, what happens? It gets infected. It oozes. Eventually a small scratch becomes a life-threatening problem. 

And so it goes with emotional and mental wounds ... we suppress them out of denial, fear of judgment, lack of self-awareness ... there are endless reasons. The world does not treat mental health fairly, and so we deny our own mental health issues. They are in fact no different than physical issues, but because they are perceived as making us less than, we hide them out of shame. 

Unfortunately, this is unlikely to change unless we do something about it. Perhaps if we begin, one by one, refusing to hide our truths in the shadows, we can make a difference. So many societal issues would be lessened or even solved if everyone was simply freed to feel comfortable expressing true emotion in a healthy, constructive and accepted manner. Then we would not feel obligated or pressured to carry it all inside until it becomes such a heavy burden that we explode, collapse, or crumple inwards.

Let's begin today. It's okay not to feel okay. That's the damn truth. The sooner we find the freedom to release emotion, the sooner we can process it and let it go. That's what leads to the ability to deal with our problems constructively. 

Find the courage today to begin standing, little by little, in the truth of your own emotions. You got this. I got you.

Much love. 

What If You Let Yourself Feel Everything That You Are Afraid To Feel?

 You're probably thinking, I feel! I feel lots of things, all the time. 

Of course you do. We all do. I'm not suggesting that you're a sociopath. 

So let's go a little deeper. What if you let yourself feel everything that you are afraid to feel? 

The first step is identifying - even allowing yourself to identify - what those feelings actually are. You may be so terrified of them that this is the toughest part of the process. You may have stifled them for so long that you're entirely disconnected from yourself and have inner rediscovery work to do before you can even take this step. 

Once you've identified them, ask yourself: Why am I afraid to feel them? 

Don't gloss over it. Sit with it. Sit with yourself. When you feel uncomfortable, stay. Your answer is on the other side of moving through your discomfort. It might be just as frightening to let yourself admit why you are afraid as to actually feel.

If it helps, I'll tell you why I was so afraid to let myself feel my deep sadness, my fear of failure, my lack of self-worth, and my sense of hopelessness. I thought that if I truly released everything I'd kept locked so tightly inside for decades, it would kill me. 

What was actually killing me? Stifling my truth.

I won't lie to you - sometimes I still find fear in myself around my own emotions. Sometimes it feels like if I let the sadness start flowing, it'll never stop. But it releases, little by little, more each day.

Now, here's the catch. You may already think that you let yourself feel everything. You may have depression and sadness, you may lash out or cry or react in ways that seem very emotional. But anger is just a cover for pain, and when you cry, do you really let yourself CRY? Or do you stop yourself at some point to numb with a coping mechanism?

I'm asking because that's what I did without realizing it. I was uncomfortable letting myself go deep into the darkness of my shadow self, so when I decided I couldn't stand to feel bad anymore, I would turn on the TV, or drink wine until I could fall asleep, or eat junk that only made me feel worse about myself later. Because I was too afraid to stay with my pain until it fully passed through me, it stayed stuck inside my body, prolonging my agony even as I kept ignoring it. 

So I'm challenging you to challenge yourself. Identify the emotions you are afraid to let out. Ask yourself why you're afraid. Find a way to feel safe releasing your feelings - maybe you work with a therapist, or a breath work coach, or a friend or partner who is willing to hold space with you. Trust that you can feel without dying - that rising out of your numbness is the only way you can truly live. 

It's not easy. But you can do it. You want to heal, and you can. Acknowledging the truth of your own emotions is a crucial step in the journey.

It is safe to feel, and your feelings are completely valid, no matter what they are. I love you. You got this.