self-reflection

Healing from Childhood Wounds: A Journey of Self-Discovery

/ Sheri / Leave a comment

It’s human nature to avoid pain. Yet distraction only takes us so far — especially when it comes to emotional pain. At after half a century of life on this beautiful Earth, I am starting to embrace Rumi’s timeless quote on a much deeper level:

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” Rumi

In my 20’s, I didn’t want to look at the wounds. Half the time I didn’t know they were there because I was so busy. 

Distraction is a powerful tool to keep pain at bay.

But the wounds remained, festering within my psyche as I continued to look outward for purpose, validation, and worth.

Looking back, I see that my youth was spent in a quasi-cocoon state: inside I was a gooey mess but outside it looked like nothing special was going on. I worked, I dated, I married.

The gooey mess within would get triggered by something someone would say or do. But instead of addressing the source of the pain, instead of going within to look at that dark goo, I got busier.

Life continued and with it, psychological blisters that hurt a little more each time. I looked for love in all the wrong places. I was a widow at 25, engaged at 27, married again at 28, pregnant at 29.

Go. Go. As fast as you can. You can’t catch me. — The internal battle between the cocoon of armor I’d held onto with dear might and the brimming-to-come-out wounds within.

The fifties have been a time of addressing the wounds, allowing the cocoon to fall away and finally allow the light to enter.

This second act of life offers an opportunity for radical acceptance of others and ourselves. It’s a chance to pull up a chair and put a compassionate stethoscope to the fractures in your heart.

The Russian Doll of Aging

I used to ( and still do) love those stacking Russian dolls. Every time you think you’ve freed the last Russian doll, you discover there’s another and yet another still.

That’s what aging feels like: the allowing of ourselves to — with compassion — explore the layers of our life story. 

It’s not until we are willing to explore the landscape of our heart and mind that we can begin to heal. We need to become like emotional excavators if we want to unearth the effects of those early seeds planted.

The Five Childhood Wounds

A popular psychological concept is that there are five potential core psychological wounds from our childhood. Many times, we are unaware of the wounds and walk around this life feeling triggered without knowing its origin.

Our thoughts, behaviors, and relationships in adulthood are often deeply influenced by our wound in childhood.

It is when we don’t address those core wounds that they have a greater chance of manifesting in our adult relationships.

Here are the five core inner child wounds:

🤕 Abandonment

🤕 Rejection

🤕 Shame

🤕 Betrayal

🤕 Injustice

Each fear arrives with certain behaviors. For example, if you were sent to your room without dinner for a bad grade, a seed of rejection may have been planted.

Fear: being rejected for who you are

Behavior: people-pleasing or perfectionism

The power to heal from our wounds begins by recognizing where and how the wound began.

And that healing continues when we carve out a safe space for ourselves to alter the narrative and know that we are not our wounds. 

I often think of that Frosted Shredded Wheat commercial in the 1980’s. 

We can tune into the gooey cocoon of our psyche at any time. It may hurt to listen, but that shell we carry is falling apart anyway. And when we allow to see our wounds with compassion, we are creating a sacred space for our wings to unfurl.

You were meant to soar. You were meant to transform your wounds into something beautiful. 🦋

Healing Mastery XI Code

Confronting Inner Wounds: Steps to Emotional Freedom

/ Sheri / Leave a comment

He was poking me. Not physically. Emotionally. His words landing like shards of glass in my throat and chest.

The pain was unbearable. It was a suffocating thing. All consuming and deep.

So, I did what typically happens when we are in this level of suffering: I lashed out with biting words of sarcasm. I knew my words were wrong and irrational, but rationality takes a back seat when pain is in the driver’s seat.

And then came the tears. My tears. Deep, guttural tears that had nothing to do with his poking words and everything to do with the unaddressed wounds within me.

The pain in my heart lasted long after he hung up on me. It ached between my bones and clung to the pores of my skin, stinging my eyes with unshed tears.

There is no greater pain than living with unaddressed wounds. 

Emotional pain holds on greater than a rabid Rottweiler biting down on a pant leg. It’s unwavering, unrelenting and feels like your soul is coming apart.

Break Out to Break Through

The pain I felt was so intense that I knew there was only one thing left to do: explore it.

“When you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out, because that’s what’s inside. When you are squeezed, what comes out is what is inside.”-Wayne Dyer

I looked at the wound within me. And there I found a history of wounds. I unravelled each wound until a pattern began to form. 

The wounds were from a lifetime of false narratives, all of them being told by unhealthy, narcissistic, insecure men.

The pain I felt was a lifetime of me contorting myself to fit their narrative. 

We each have the power to transform our pain to empowerment.

The man goading me was just another manifestation of that false narrative. He was able to “get a rise out of me” because of the unaddressed wounds that I’d bandaged up, with psychological pus oozing out of them. 

A peace arrived within me when I addressed the root of the wound:

I was a victim of abuse. I am not the abuse. The power is always within me. I can choose to love and be love, regardless of what others do.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t experience moments of sadness or grief, pain or disappointment. It means that I allow those emotions to rise and fall within me, no different than waves in an ocean.

“Don’t think you’d be free if you just didn’t have these kinds of feelings. It’s not true. If you can be free even though you’re having these kinds of feelings, then you’re really free — because there will always be something.”-Michael Singer

When I allow the pain, it passes through and doesn’t stick around to form a new wound.

Emotional pain arises because of the unaddressed wounds we carry. It’s ripping off the figurative Band-aid that allows us to heal. It’s allowing ourselves to feel the pain and breathe through it that brings us true peace.

The need to poke another emotionally is sourced from an unaddressed wound. Those who manipulate, lie, and deflect responsibility are walking around this planet with significant unaddressed wounds.

True peace arrives when we realize we can only be responsible for our own inner healing. 

I cannot get sick enough to make that man healthy. You cannot get poor enough to make someone else feel wealthy.

Freedom means allowing another to choose their own path, however destructive that may be. 

A peaceful life begins when we embrace the four C’s: I will not control, change, cause, or contribute. 

But we can choose to be light and love to others. We do this when we prioritize our own healing.

XI Code to Peak Performance

Embracing Change: Transforming Toxic Relationships

/ Sheri / Leave a comment
Knowing the keys to the kingdom are a “level up” sign. (Image created using AI on CANVA)

I recently returned from visiting with a close family member who suffers from frequent physical ailments. The pains themselves alter throughout her body but one constant remains: the shroud of negativity she carries. 

For years, we shared a co-dependent dance. She would complain, and I would morph myself to please her. It was a manifested tango of low self-esteem, each of us playing our roles beautifully: her the perpetual victim and me, the quasi-therapist who could “save” her.

It took many rounds in this particular Earth School classroom to understand I was a participant in the toxic tango.

But on this visit, I watched without reacting. I listened to her cries that she didn’t want to live anymore, her verbal attacks on everything from the weather to drivers on the road. I allowed myself to feel all the emotions that arrive when dwelling with someone who is negativity personified and manipulates to get what they want. 

My body reacted to what I observed with an upset stomach. Our vagus nerve — the longest cranial nerve — runs from our brain to our large intestine. This nerve literally means “wandering” in Latin and plays an important role in involuntary sensory and motor functions — including our digestion. I couldn’t “stomach” the negativity of this loved one.

And yet, I was able to observe it all:

🧘‍♂️ the negativity

🧘‍♂️the upset stomach

I chose to take deep breaths and go for long walks when possible. I chose to find the humor. I chose to look at this spirit having a physical experience. And here’s what I saw:

A woman who is in pain with her knee because she literally can’t move forward in life. She is too steeped in the illusion of darkness to find the light that is her and always there. I saw the child inside the woman, no different than a toddler trying to sneak in an extra cookie, playing a game to get love. I watched her manipulate behavior and words to garner attention.

I realized that I can choose to love her without the need for her to change.🤯

I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change

Part of the reason there is often great family tension during the holidays is the old, familiar patterns that resurface. Unaddressed — sometimes unknown — triggers surface across dinner tables.

That which hurts is the wound that is unhealed. Leveling up is about growing aware of our wounds, understanding its origins, and choosing to love anyway.

“When you can find joy in the midst of the scariest times, you know you’ve leveled up.” Brenda Grate

Loving this person who identified with a false sense of self, I leveled up. Loving myself and finding joy in the midst of her pain, I leveled up. Loving her essence, the little girl with unaddressed wounds, I leveled up.

We think of leveling up in terms of gaming or a career move. It’s a term we associate with improving or growing. This world is a matrix, a classroom for our souls to experience life as a human.

Each time we choose to see light in the midst of darkness, we are leveling up.

“No romance, amount of money, credential, or achievement can give you the sense of certainty your own joy can provide. When you practice having fun along the way, the Universe supports you.”-Gabrielle Bernstein

The keys to the joy we seek is inside of each of us. We can’t make someone else happy by making ourselves miserable. When we can find inner peace and joy from within, we are free from emotional vampires. And we can also choose to love those Downer Debbies.

Even letting the Universe know that you are willing to see a negative person or situation in a new way and surrendering this desire to the Universe is a leveling up step.

Heaven or hell is a state of mind. It is not dependent on people or places, financial or health circumstances.

Find your Heaven on Earth now by being the change you want to see in others.

XI Peak Meditation

Unspoken Menopause: A Look Behind-the-Scenes

/ Sheri / Leave a comment
Menopause is much more than the cessation of a woman’s period. (Image created using CANVA)

One of my student’s recently got her mouth pierced. She’s thirty-five, so it goes without saying that she looks beautiful — with or without the shiny loop piercing her lip.

“Do you like it?”

I tell her the truth: I like it for her. At over half a century on planet Earth, the last thing I need is another hole to maintain.🤨

But at thirty-five, she isn’t thinking about potential infections or the additional care needed to keep the new piercing clean. She is that five letter word of yesterday: YOUNG.

She laughs at my response and adds with the casual lack-of-perspective youth carries: 

“Oh, I get it. I’m only going to wear this for another five years. When I’m forty, I will be too old to get away with something like this.”

Math has never been my strong suit, but in five years she will still be miles younger than me. And I’m happy for the ample chronological chapters before her, but the zinger from her words still stings: “too old” at forty😣.

The Unspoken Menopause

Scientifically, biologically:

“Menopause is a point in time when a person has gone 12 consecutive months without a menstrual period. Menopause is a natural part of aging and marks the end of your reproductive years.”-Cleveland Clinic

But menopause is so much more than the cessation of a menstrual cycle. Yes, it’s the end of a woman’s reproductive years, but this is no small thing. And there are physical and emotional changes that occur as a result of these clinically-sterile sounding biological facts.

Menopause can be a celebration of freedom (white sheets ahead!) and empowerment when a woman gets through the often rollercoaster experience of perimenopause.

But menopause also requires us mourning who we once were and will no longer be.

Mourning in menopause, we can realize that we:

😔no longer have a glass of water without our bellies waxing five months pregnant.

😔 notice the scale start to go up faster than we like

😔 see a dark mustache forming ever more frequently (who has time for an extra piercing now?)

😔 finally understand the menopausal phenomenon of needing to watch everything from your A1C to your readers’ prescription

So, what do we want?🤨

“We want what men want. Everybody wants to look younger. And gravity is making that impossible.”-Cathy Ladman

We want what women have always wanted: humor, love, and to feel good.

Humor is menopause’s best magic pill. Through the aperture of humor, I can laugh at my student’s comment from the generous perspective time has granted me. At 35, 40 sounded “old” to me too. 

In the middle, with the figurative sands of time in the hourglass between birth and death, we can choose to both mourn what has passed and embrace what we have.

The crazy thing is, I appreciate more now that Time’s hourglass has dispensed plenty of sand in the past.

I appreciate my chiropractor keeping my back in alignment and the sound of birds that greet me each morning. 

Menopause is Mother Nature’s reminder that this ride called life will end at some point. So, we need to take care of and love the “equipment” we have while we have it (even if said equipment is a little worn out and in need of a low-carb diet and tweezers for stubborn chin hairs😉).

Mourn+Find Humor+Appreciate+Embrace=Enjoy the Ride

(Rinse and Repeat)

And just like the sign that reads on the ceiling of my gyno’s office:

“This too shall pass.”

The Profits and Ethics of Ghostwriting

/ Sheri / Leave a comment

Ghostwriting can be quite profitable. Yes, it often requires a great deal of research and time, but if you enjoy writing, this can be both a rewarding and lucrative endeavor.

A man recently asked me to ghostwrite his life story. It would require both the aforementioned generous doses of research and time. He offered me a generous amount to write it as well. And his life story sounded like the stuff of a Lifetime TV drama. The juicy fodder was there.

And yet, I turned his offer down.

The reason? 

A big part of his life story involved his passion for hunting.

“It’s about winning.” His eyes gleamed. “It is pure sport.”

He made it clear that hunting had everything to do with his love of guns and taking the life of another animal. 

To write someone’s memoir is to spend hours with someone, to study countless photographs and letters, documents and newspaper clippings, until you can hold the essence of a person in the space between your mind and heart.

I had no desire to hold a hunter’s essence in my mind and heart.

Oh, I tried. For the generous amount of money he offered, I tried. But my gut kept got tighter the more he spoke about his love of guns and killing defenseless animals in the wild.

He will no doubt find the right writer for his memoir. It will be a tale of conquest and winning at all costs. 

The heart of a writer bleeds onto the page. It can be tasted between the words. I couldn’t create a likable protagonist for this life story without my heart feeling torn and without a certain element of passive-aggressive sarcasm oozing between its pages.

Someone else might feel differently. And that’s okay. We each have to do what speaks to our inner compass. 

Years ago, I would have pushed down the discomfort that arrives when you feel something you don’t like. I would have resided in the Land of Denial.

Age (and a steady meditation practice) has taught me to heed that — even subtle — tug of discomfort. Much better to address it early on, then spend years addressing an ever-growing issue with psychological Band-aids.

To the Loved One You Can’t Reach

/ Sheri / 2 Comments

When the Shit Hits the Fan (Literally)

This past week, the shit (literally) hit the fan. 

You know those moments when you are holding life together by a flimsy strand? You think: “This is tough, but I got this.”💪

The self-pep talk renders you akin to a duck on the water. Sure, you look smooth on the surface, but you are paddling furiously just below the shallow current.🦆

Still, if you could hold it together for a tad longer, you think you can make it through the day/week/month without imploding.🤯

And then, the shit hits the fan…

While the aphorism is apropos of anything negative happening on a grand scale (where no amount of duck paddling will work) in my case, 💩 floated through the first floor of my home, a river of it swimming through like a feces canal.🤢

The short version of this smelly (true) story: a broken sewer line pipe caused the issue, and it’s going to cost a year of college tuition to repair (Let’s not even speak about insurance…).

What’s In YOUR Plumbing?🤔

Remember that duck analogy? Yeah, my waddle was already quacking upstream when the R.O.P. (River of Stool) hit. 

A home’s pipes are like the arteries in a body: everything’s connected.

I thought about this idea of connection a lot. Each of us is connected to each other in this world, on a micro and macro level. And those arteries, while not always physical, either close or open and sometimes need to be replaced altogether.

It was when the R.O.P. hit that I started to become aware of the R.O.P in a close relationship. My heart would always ache when I spoke to this person. Invisible cracks would start to form. I’d Band-aid the pain up with rationalization and distraction.

I was regularly this person’s quasi-therapist — a sounding board for her to throw her deluge of negativity my way. I’d sop up her violin music with emotional pompoms that I’d shake until she felt better.

But there’s a price paid for being someone’s emotional tsunami and it’s much higher than any insurance deductible.

It took my literal (sewer) pipes breaking to realize the shitstorm I was accepting in my personal relationship.

Waddling upstream, I could remain in the comfort zone of rationalization for this person’s toxic behavior.

But when I was at ground zero, emotionally, physically, financially and could no longer waddle upstream, I needed a lifeline. I was drowning.

And what did she do? She continued to do what she always does: she took out her violins and made the moment all about herself. She pulled out the “one up” card: “You think you have it bad. Let me tell you what I’m going through.”🙈

I wasn’t looking for anything more than a lifeline. A simple handful of words like “I’m so sorry.” or “That must be tough.”

Nope. Instead, she regaled me with violin music about how tough she had it today, yesterday, and always. It was all about her. I couldn’t reach her over her whiny notes. I realized then that the crap in my home was nothing compared to the emotional crap she’d been dishing me for years.

I’m in pain — much more about this relationship than my home. A pipe can be replaced. A house can be rebuilt. Money can be replenished. 

But our personal relationships…those are spiritual fingerprints. They touch our soul.

The emotional pipes cannot always be replaced. But they can be examined and if needed, reshaped and recycled so that the heart doesn’t continue to get broken. We can shift our perspective, through the aperture of compassion — for ourselves and those we love — recognizing that some emotional pipes cannot provide the oxygen our heart needs to thrive.

The Illusion of Love

/ Sheri / Leave a comment

And why we fall for it

I discovered boys at a young age. A generous portion of my teen years were spent choosing a different “crush” in each class — an unusually fun form of academic entertainment.

Each boy had a story: the tough guy who was misunderstood, the quiet one who spent his afternoons sketching seagulls at the beach, the funny boy who used humor to deflect pain that I daydreamed about healing.

And yet…

The narratives of each boy were more fictional than a Harry Potter series. 

They were surface tales that made me feel good to weave in my imagination.

Illusory Dating

But then, dating started. 

“He likes you.”

The three coveted words my riddled-with-hormones brain wanted to hear. It didn’t matter who the he was. What mattered: someone liked me.

My teens and 20’s were greatly spent looking externally for a sense of self worth.

The primary focus: what did they think of me?

It was secondary to consider how I felt about them. My value was tied to their perception of me.

When we look for merit or worth in another’s eyes, we give away our power.

When we hand over the invisible yardstick of worth to another, we lose ourselves.

There is often an illusion to dating — particularly in our youth: we believe the person we are attracted to is the cutest, sweetest, funniest or any other “est” qualities we find ourselves thinking. But who “they” are is just an illusion of what we want them to be.

One of the many boys I had a crush on was Zack — a sarcastic know-it-all, a “bad boy” with whom I shared an AP History class. Almost every day, Zack would come up to me, give me a playful smile that reached his blue eyes and say, “Can I have a quarter?”

Sometimes, I’d give him one; sometimes, I didn’t. The quarter was irrelevant in my 15-year-old-hormone-rattled brain. 

What mattered: Zach’s attention toward me — including those playful blue eyes. 

My focus was so consumed on his attention towards me — like a beggar starving for crumbs — that my heart began thumping like mad in my chest every time I saw his long legs make their approach to my desk.

And if he winked at me? Utter elation.

As a grown woman now, hindsight renders me shaking my head, a humorously sad smile on my lips.

Zack was a goofy kid with a lot of chutzpah. Maybe he thought I was cute; maybe he just needed money. He smelled like he hadn’t gotten the memo on deodorant — all sweaty and stinky from a mix of hormones and PE. He had as much experience at flirting as a fish living out of water. 

Dating in youth (crushes included) often includes two potential illusions:

  1. Creating a story of who someone else is.

and

2. Creating a story of who we are (in an attempt to please the other)

It’s no wonder so many of us in our early dalliances found heartache: we were dating an illusion, experiencing relationships based on false or incomplete narratives.

Illusory Love

Real love — that intangible experience humans crave and is written about in everything from songs to scripts, arrives like a crockpot meal: in time.

Intimacy requires trust — something acquired over time. But this is not just intimacy with another; at some point, love means intimacy with ourselves.

Illusory love is the couple that rationalizes they are “good” when the frowns in their faces speak a different story. It is the white picket fence of relationships that looks great on the outside, but you can’t help but notice the paint chipping when you step closer.

When we eclipse who we are to please another, it doesn’t matter how many years we’ve shared with a partner. Resentment and disappointment fill the cracks of the unstable foundation. 

An illusory love is the emotional equivalent of building a house on quicksand — it won’t last.

There’s a powerful quote from author Alice Hoffman that illuminates the why behind our seemingly irrational behavior to chose or remain in an unhealthy romantic relationship:

“Is it the man you want, or the feeling inside you when someone cares?”

When we remember the why behind our behaviors — particularly with love — we can better discern if we are with someone out of love or its illusion.

The late Maya Angelou once said:

“When a child walks in the room…do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.”

We are children in grown up bodies, hungry to matter, starving for connection. 

But the greatest connection, the most important relationship will ever have is the one with ourselves.

When we nourish ourselves, when we remember that our self worth is sourced from within, we are less likely to fall prey to an illusory love.

 The grounded feeling of knowing you matter prevents starvation and taking emotional crumbs from someone who is not in your best interest.

Calling Writers and Teachers

/ Sheri / Leave a comment

An insightful (and fun:-) writing prompt

Calling all ELA teachers, parents, poets, and writers! Do you want to:

  • explore the inner terrain of you
  • connect with your students/child/children
  • inspire self-exploration and self-awareness

If the answer is a resounding YES to any or all of the above, you’ll want to keep reading:-)

For the Educator

Whether you are an ESL secondary teacher or Language Arts teacher to 1st graders, the activity I’m shortly going to suggest will boost:

  • insight
  • emotional intelligence
  • creativity
  • language development
  • self-esteem

So, what’s the activity? Hold onto your academic seats…

I Am From

Students of all ages love a creative activity that offers a rare combination of form and freedom. Enter the I Am Fromwriting prompt.

Just having a sentence stem soothes yet challenges the novice to the experienced writer.

Bonus points — while your students are waxing creative, two big things are developing:

  • a positive association with writing
  • a connection between teacher and student

When a student is given the verbal water wings of a sentence stem, they can “swim” with an idea.

Sentence stems promote students’ confidence and provide a focused theme for them to explore.

For the Lover of Words

The I Am From is no ordinary I Am prompt. Oh dear lover of words, just look at the beckoning use of the preposition “from” teasing us to respond.

The I Am From writing prompt is an invitation to explore our soul’s journey.

This is your chance to weave those unspoken thoughts into a tapestry of verbal color as intricate and mesmerizing as wonderful you.

I’ll be running a writing camp for the next couple of weeks. Their ages range from 5–14. So, I’ve created an I Am Frompoem as a model for them.

Poetry is to writing what a trailer is to a movie.

Poetry gets to the heart of a matter, literally pulling on the gamut of emotional strings just long enough to let us know there’s more lying many leagues below the sea of our psyche.

Poetry is the sampler; prose is the buffet.

My Poetry Sampler

I am from
metal swings,
plastic-covered couches,
and station
wagons

I am from
dogs barking
at mailmen,
8 millimeter films,
and fireflies
on summer nights

I am from 
45 records,
playing hopscotch,
and Mr. Softy’s 
ice cream truck

I am from 
building forts
cartwheels,
and the end 
of the Vietnam War

Whether you are a teacher or lover of words (or both:-), I hope you find the I Am From prompt inspiring.

Abundant Living

Soothing News for Worriers

/ Sheri / 2 Comments

It’s a sunny day as I write, the sky a seamless swath of pale blue. The warmth of the sun’s rays kiss the floorboards and my feet.

Man, it feels good.

But only yesterday, rain pummeled down from a sky reminiscent of horror flicks. Driving through the puddled streets was an exercise in caution.

And yet, both today and yesterday, I have the power to choose my reaction to the weather.

Sounds easy enough; but what happens when the changed environment isn’t as benign as the weather?

What happens when a life change involves something someone said or did?

The Sky Isn’t Mad at You

We all know that a blue or cloudy sky isn’t about us. Mother Nature will continue to do her thing. Whether it’s a stunning 75 degrees or a chilly 45, we know the weather isn’t personal.

And yet, we tend to personalize our emotions and take them as static.

Unhappiness manifests when we take a negative emotion and either deny its existence or take it personally.

Life happens through us; we don’t own the experience. We are no less ephemeral than Nature itself. In her groundbreaking book, Just a Thought, Dr. Amy Johnson shares the subtle yet profound cognitive error plaguing most of us:

“Ever since you’ve been old enough to think about yourself and your thinking. Ever since you’ve been old enough to cling to and personalize your moving, changing experience, it’s looked as if what you experience is you. It’s looked like your psychological experience means something stable about who-you-are at your essence….It is not, and it does not.”

Our emotions feel personal. But they aren’t. As the Taoist philosopher, Wei Wu Wei said:

“Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and everything you do, is for yourself — and there isn’t one.”

What Brains Do

Our brains are wired to protect us. They are constantly chattering to us, offering us zillions of ways to look out for our safety. Our cerebrums are hardwired for our survival. So it’s no wonder that our brains:

  • compare
  • judge
  • predict
  • create narratives
  • solve
  • dramatize
  • find patterns

But here’s the great news:

We have the power to choose awareness at any moment. We can choose to acknowledge our miraculous brains without heeding its every suggestion (or what it often feels like, command).

Embracing Discomfort

When we feel anxious or depressed, our brains kick into overdrive, offering anything and everything to keep us “safe”.

For example, let’s say you are anxious about an important test coming up. Your mind might chatter on in the following manner:

“If you don’t study more, you will FAIL! You remember, you failed that test in 7th grade because you didn’t study enough. You aren’t as smart as other people, so you need to work twice as hard. What is wrong with you, thinking you can relax now when the test is tomorrow?! You should be ashamed of yourself. If you fail this test, you will be such a disappointment to your parents and friends. Is that what you want??”

Notice the word “should” and the brain’s razor-sharp ability to compare a past failure to the present situation — even labeling the failed test as a failure in itself instead of reframing it as a learning experience. Notice the brain’s derogatory language, questioning the person’s ability to make sound decisions, serving up potential embarrassment and shame on a guilty platter.

The brain’s chatter feels so personal. It can feel downright painful.

But when we remember that it’s not personal, that mental gymnastics is just what brains do, we can take a deep breath and observe.

We can lean into the discomfort we experience and know that, just like the clouds that cover the sun, the sensations of dread and angst WILL pass.

Fear only festers when we deny its existence.

When we acknowledge, with self-compassion, as the objective observer that we are experiencing negative emotions, they can more easily pass through us.

We experience emotions; we aren’t the emotions.

Soothing Our Brains

My son called me the other day from college, very stressed. I shared a 10-minute Calm meditation with him via text. Ten minutes. He called me the next day to say it “really helped.”

Meditation allows us the space to observe rather than react.

Meditation is an act of self-compassion. It is an unspoken invitation to the Universe and our soul to connect.

Often, our brains’ (initial) response to meditation is protest. The monkey mind tends to throw in all kinds of machinations. I liken the mind to an overtired toddler, fighting her afternoon nap:

“This is stupid! You have so much to do and all you’re doing is focusing on your breathing — what the hell point is that? Did you turn the oven off? You never returned that important phone call. You are so irresponsible. Do you even know what you are going to wear to that party tomorrow??”

And on and on it will go…and just like the overtired toddler, if you observe long enough, the chattering, overly vocal brain will eventually quiet and realize the Silent Observer (YOU) are in charge.

Meditation reminds us that whatever we are feeling or experiencing is temporary.

Meditation strengthens our spiritual muscle to better handle life’s ever-changing journey.

May the following meditation bring you peace and comfort:

The Daily Calm 10 Minute Meditation

The Snapshots We Carry

/ Sheri / Leave a comment

There’s a photo of me in 5th grade sporting braces and a perm reminiscent of a poodle fresh from a blow dry. It’s 1980-something, a time when bigger meant better and this included the Linda Richmond-esque bifocal glasses with gold-hued stickers of my initials in one of the lenses’ corners.

For decades, I hated that skinny girl at the start of puberty. The one who begged her mom for a training brawe both know wasn’t necessary.

Yet over time, I started to look back at that photo and saw a completely different image staring back at me.

Snapshots Can Change

Hindsight offers the ability to see through the past with a different lens.

Think of any experience in your life — good or bad or somewhere in between. 

How we remember an experience affects our perception.

For years, I looked at the photos of me in 5th grade and saw a mess of big hair, huge glasses, and boobs that made Houston look mountainous. 

Now, on the cusp of fifty, I am able to see the tween I was less myopically. I’m able to zoom the mental camera out see the terrain of that time and place:

There I am, holding a baby in my 11 year-old arms. How cool is that? The neighbor, a mom of a 5 year old little girl and now a mom again, is trusting me with her kids. I get to babysit both of them regularly after school, and I’m so good at taking care of them. 

I move closer to my 5th grade self and speak directly to her:

You’re not skinny — you are thin. And it’s the 80’s — of course your hair is big!

Be kinder to yourself; no one has this thing called Life figured out. Don’t be in such a rush to grow up and get those boobs. Everything has its season and there’ll be plenty of time for boobs. Just revel in the stories you make up with your neighbor’s daughter each day after school. Trust me, all of these creative games you are playing with her will be something you’ll miss in adulthood.

The Illusion of Snapshots

Author and therapist, Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone) writes about remains of our snapshots:

“People don’t always remember events or conversations clearly, but they do remember with great accuracy how an experience made them feel.”

We’ve all had that moment when we speak with someone from our past and they recall an event one way and we another. Since our perception dictates our reality, this makes sense — both people are correct.

We can look at the same snapshot — the same moment in time and see it differently because of the lens we respectively look through.

Perhaps the real illusion is believing there’s only one snapshot, one angle to view a memory.

Future Snapshots

We not only have the power to alter the filter of our past snapshots; we possess the ability to transform the mental photos on their way.

Instinctively, we do this with young children: seeing the wonder of who they will grow up to be while still wearing diapers.

One of the reasons parents possess so much power in those formative years is their ability — whether realized or not — to affect a child’s inner snapshots.

The great news: we can transform our inner snapshots at anytime to what we want to see.

I’m not talking denial or sweeping things under the figurative carpet. I’m referring to our ability to look at ourselves with compassion and unconditional love, embracing the fractured parts of ourselves to let in the light.

Imagine how the snapshots of your future will develop if looked at through the mental lens of self-compassion and willing vulnerability?

Talk about a Kodak moment!