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What if the ego voice is really a reaction to trauma? And that's why it's not very effective to solve deep patterns at the level of ego maintenance. Because simply interacting with ego brings you to its level which is not a place of love and healing. It's only when we take a step back (or deeper) outside of our thinking minds that we access a more powerful potential for change, where the roots can get dug up and new seeds can get planted.
In a similar vein, trying to change your life by changing your thoughts is a very inefficient way to improve your life at deep foundational levels. (The exception being for those working at a fine-tuning level, or who are adept at using thoughts as a gateway to examine deeper beliefs and core wounds. But most of us are not there yet.) For those of us with early developmental core wounding running a lot of the show, working at the level of thought is like trying to stop a car rolling down a hill when it’s already two thirds of the way down. By the time an experience gets to the conscious thought level, there’s already so much momentum in the form of emotions and body/subconscious memories, that just telling yourself something is OK is not going to be convincing to a body that is in fight or flight mode. I believe this is why somatic healing, which focuses on mindfulness of the body is so effective. It teaches you to become aware at an earlier stage of the process, at the physical level where it picks up more subtle signals before they become conscious as thoughts, before the momentum gets going. Another way of looking at it, without having to make a distinction between mind and body (it’s hard to say where one ends and the other begins), is just that resolving patterns is about becoming more aware and mindful of little details going on inside you, about slowing everything down, about catching that rolling car sooner. And focusing on the body is a technique to help you do that.
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I recently concluded that there’s no such thing as someone who takes or receives more than they give, or gives more than they take. Perhaps, in an individual relationship at particular a moment in time, it may be lopsided, but I am certain the net in our life is balanced. Which means the goal is not to become a more generous person, but to expand the capacity for both giving and receiving. The more we expand our capacity to receive, the more we are able to give. The more we grow our capacity to give, the more we are able to receive. Deeper inhale, deeper exhale.  When I really think about it, it’s hard to see where receiving ends and giving begins. How often do we feel filled up when we are able to give someone what they need? How beautiful is it that in the process of giving, we receive? And when we are the recipient of someone else’s gift, and we can really receive it and express our gratitude, we give back to them an assurance that what they gave us mattered. In fully receiving, we give. This makes me wonder, when we label a person as an over-giver or overly selfish, are we really just noticing a constriction in their overall giving and receiving cycle? When someone appears selfish, they are probably having trouble with both giving, i.e. feeling they have something of value to share, and receiving, i.e. feeling worthy. I know it may seem some people are taking so much and not giving back. But I would argue they haven’t truly been able to receive what others have given them, at least not on the emotional level where it counts. (This begs the question, like the tree falling with no one around, if a person can’t receive what someone offers, does the giving even occur?) Similarly, when one identifies with over-giving to the point of depletion or resentment, maybe it's more about giving too much to people who are unable to receive. Perhaps the off-balance feeling isn't always (or only) because the person can't give back, but rather because he or she can't receive and therefore can’t complete the cycle by providing the giver the fulfillment that comes from knowing their contribution made a difference. Healthy giving feels like a receiving because of the sense of joy and purpose we get when we see someone truly benefiting from what we have to offer. Which leads me back to my initial instinct that not only are we always in balance with giving and receiving in our life overall, but in each of our relationships, if we look deeply into the exchanges at an emotional level. Of course I cannot prove this "Theory of Balance in Giving and Receiving." There’s no objective way to add up a person’s giving and receiving in each interaction over their lifetime. But I offer this as something to consider when weighing the dynamics of our relationships, and our perception of the balance of give and take in each. It's hard to know where receiving ends and giving begins. Because healthy giving feels like a receiving, and healthy receiving is a gift to the giver. Now you might be thinking, "that's all fine and dandy, Amanda. Maybe you even have a point. But even if this is true, the question remains then: how does one increase one’s capacity to both give and receive?" It definitely feels correlated with one’s nervous system capacity and felt experience around the safety of holding energy. Outside of miracles, it’s perhaps impossible to receive or give more than one feels worthy of. Self worth is tied to our deeply held, often unconscious, beliefs inside about who we are and how much we are allowed to enjoy and have in life, usually wired in at a very young age. So how do we access those deeply held beliefs and reprogram them? The only thing I've ever had faith in being able to do this is meditation. What else could possibly get deep enough into our psyche to rearrange or uproot deeply held beliefs? But it was quite abstract to imagine, and up until a few months ago, I wasn't able to have a consistent deep meditation practice because I (my nervous system) couldn't manage the feelings that would come up when I did. It wasn't until I started working with a trained trauma and somatic healer that I was able to start accessing parts of me that I saw others, with more stable nervous systems, able to access through meditation (or a balanced nervous system they developed in early childhood). The thing about somatic healing, is that it focuses on presence and awareness of the here and now in your own body, much like meditation, but in the presence of someone who can hold the space and emotions that come up in the process. I am still learning about the actual biochemistry of it all, but there's something that happens when we get out of our thinking minds (which are really just recycling old stories and beliefs most of the time), and into a state of non-judgmental presence towards our selves in the present, that allows our nervous system to relax and learn a new state of being, a state of being closer to who we were before the traumas of life hit us and caused us to contract or feel unworthy.  I am happy to report that after two years of somatic therapy, I am finally able to do deep breathing and meditation each morning without losing my balance or falling apart, and I'm so grateful for this. Share with me your experience with meditation and nervous system regulation in the comments below. I tend to circle back to the same four or five themes in my writing, but I can muse about most anything at least once. So if you have any topics you'd like me to write about, let me know in the comments. I can't guarantee to have definitive answers, but I can guarantee a thoughtful musing It seems to me, that in order to experience that wonderful feeling of gratitude we are told is the pinnacle of a successful life, we actually need to be in a receiving state. Which means when we have difficulty feeling grateful in a situation we need not judge ourselves as "bad" or "wrong", (which further pushes us away from good feeling) and instead see it as a signal that we are closed off to receiving in some way. This perspective helps to eliminate the shame that can compound on top of whatever painful feelings we are already experiencing. It guides us to be curious about what ways we are needing nurturing and healing. Instead of trying to brute force ourselves to gratitude journal when we aren't feeling it, we can bring more attention to what we are feeling and see if we can move through it. Of course, reminding ourselves to count our blessings and find silvers linings in times of stress can still be helpful. It's just there are times when focusing on gratitude can make things feel worse, not better. In fact, sometimes defaulting to gratitude journalling can be a form of spiritual bypassing, when what's needed is to go deeper into the pain first, before we can open up to the good feelings.  I wrote the affirmation in this drawing partly in response to the trend in the wellness community of touting gratitude as the key to creating a life you love. So much so that there's more shame now around not feeling gratitude (and shame is a show stopper when it comes to learning.) Not to mention the spiritual bypassing that gets activated when one tries to force oneself to feel grateful when maybe the next step is to get sad, and go inward to heal.
As always, this relates to that point I come back to time and again: for those of us in the metaphysics and philosophy space, we need to keep in mind that we are just guessing about what causes what. Yes, we all notice that people who feel happier or experience great abundance tend to feel gratitude more often. But immediately concluding that it's the gratitude causing the happiness/abundance is a bit premature. Why couldn't it be the happiness causing the gratitude? Or, more likely, something else entirely causing both? We have to be aware of what they call in statistics the "correlation vs. causation" concept, which says that just because two things are correlated doesn't mean that one is causing the other. A third thing could be causing both. So, just for fun, I wanted to look at gratitude, not as something to pressure ourselves to feel in order to have a good life. But as an indicator of whether we are in a receiving state. If we can't access the feeling, maybe there is something else we need to do before we can get into that state of receptivity and gratitude. P.S. Receiving takes practice, and requires us, not to shrink ourselves, but to expand our feelings of self worth and what is possible for us in life. Often this involves learning to move through uncomfortable feelings and becoming more present to our needs on a moment to moment basis. And this may require the assistance of a trained somatic healer. But don't discount simple solutions, such as calling a loved one, doing art, or going for a run or a walk in nature. A few years ago, something I read led me to understand the ego as a reaction, as the voice that emerges when one feels disconnected and unloved; which then led me to the conclusion that the antidote to its constant ramblings in our heads is love, not fighting with it or trying to silence it. I summarized it in the words below.  At the time I felt excited about the insight and thought it a breakthrough of sorts. Yet years passed, and the voices in my head continued to plague me the same, despite a new awareness of the cause being a deficit of love. And that's because the insight gave me no information on HOW to "fill myself up with love" (whatever that even means). Over time, I've come to find that developing a capacity for self-love is not what I thought it would be. Love, not the romantic or familial kind, but the embodiment of a presence that stills the mind, calms the heart, and allows one to be as one is, is simply about awareness and attention. Nonjudgmental attention IS the love. Hearing the need or intense emotion with curiosity instead of shame IS the love. Nonjudgmental attention IS the love. Hearing and responding to a need IS the love But how do you DO that? How do you get present non-judgmentally? And, by the way, isn't that just what Buddhism calls mindfulness, and isn't that incredibly hard and only possible for people who devote themselves to meditation for decades? I am coming to believe that in many ways what Buddhists call mindfulness and The Beatles called love are the same thing; and that's why I'll never forget a fortune cookie I opened in Manhattan in the 90s: "The greatest gift one can give another human being is rapt attention to their existence." And, yes, it is hard to expand your capacity for nonjudgmental awareness - of your own needs and others - because your baseline ability was wired in you so deeply at such a young age. And no, it's not just for the lucky ones raised with a perfect combination of developmental ingredients, or the mystics who meditate in the mountains; and it doesn't have to take decades, but it could be months or years of work. "One of the greatest gifts one can give another human being is nonjudgmental attention to their existence." OK, OK. But HOW do you DO that? For the love of God! How do you get present non-judgmentally? Well, because our capacity for this is viscerally wired into us in infancy or even in the womb, I believe that, at least for people like me, it's not something that can be done on one's own through sheer acts of will or even meditation. Think about the futileness of trying to fire up processes in the brain, psyche, spiritual body that literally have never been activated properly. In essence, it's like trying to use a non-working instrument to try to start up another non-working instrument, which can become a sort of Catch-22 loop. (There are of course those instances of revelation we hear and read about, but personally I don't have time to wait around for a one in a billion one like Eckhart Tolle had.) So, what has finally allowed me to start becoming more present to myself on a moment by moment basis, is working with someone who can mirror it for me by, for example, witnessing me in my darkest hours without judgment, and then teaching me or modeling for me how to interrupt the pattern in real time through awareness of physical sensations, not thoughts. And slowly but surely, over the past year, I have started to become more present to myself, to hear the quiet parts of myself needing the attention, and to then step up and meet those needs as they arise before they snowball. And THAT is what love is, to me. That is what simultaneously reflects and gives me my sense of worthiness, by giving myself the attention that someone worthwhile deserves. Becoming present and hearing the parts of one's self needing attention, and then stepping up to meet those needs IS THE LOVE, is what simultaneously reflects and creates a sense of self-worth. I strongly believe that the effectiveness of working with a trusted healer who can model and mirror unconditional love / nonjudgmental attention comes from the dynamic's ability to recreate the early dynamic between mother and child when the child's nervous system, and sense of self and worth, are calibrated with that of the mother's. For many of us, the wiring doesn't happen properly because you can't give what you don't have, to yourself or others. And so people can spend years or decades or generations spinning in circles trying to learn something that was not wired into them at the proper developmental time. And the pattern continues over and over again, child after child, until something disrupts and changes the cycle. Working directly with a compassionate healer can serve as the pattern interrupt, the catalyst that allows you to jump out of the Catch-22 loop of trying to fix a disconnected self with a disconnected self, and begin to rewire your nervous system in a way that allows you be aware of your self and needs in the moment, and experience the feelings of worthiness that result. The effectiveness of working with a trusted healer comes from the dynamic's ability to strategically mimic the mirroring and modeling that happens in the early development of a child's nervous system. And what else is more important in this world than love - than connecting with one's self and others, and allowing the self and others to feel seen and heard exactly as they are? If love is the answer, then the true secret of life is not about the energetics of thought like has been popularized by some mainstream self help authors. Rather, the secret is in learning how to be so present to the needs of the moment that the ego voices (wounded parts) quiet down, we feel seen and heard, and wire in that deep sense of self-worth we have been longing for for decades, and from which the most sublime and joyous aspects of life unfold. Perhaps LOVE, as nonjudgmental attention,
is the secret of life. Today is the day a change comes your way
In the form of a scream or a soft spoken "hey." A flash on your phone, a knock on the door. Keep your mind open to receive what's in store. Oh, if only you knew, my fine feathered friend how long we've been waiting for the old story to end. So hold your thoughts still like you're holding your breath and don't worry if it feels a little like death. For today is the day a breakthrough is made when all the old patterns are peacefully laid to rest in the fields where things go to die, you laugh and you cry as you wave them goodbye and all of those things that once felt intense no longer seem big, or even make sense. What used to seem daunting's a fun little quest. Words that once stung are now taken in jest. The release of your tears burst open the doors as a river that flows to wondrous new shores and the momentum is held in the form of a wave that not even the stubbornest of thoughts can evade. As you reach the end of this strange breakthrough day it's the start of a life that's true to you in every way. ~ May 6, 2015 Those who know me well, know that when I come across a book or article I find really inspirational, I want to share it with all my favorite people. That can be a good thing. Taken to an extreme, you can even make a career of it - just look at Oprah. Other times though, due to things outside my control - like the timing and mind state of the person I'm sharing with - it's not always what the moment calls for. And over time I've started being more mindful of when, how and with whom I share things. I ask myself, "Is this really something that is going to help someone else? Or is it just an inside joke that resonates with me?" Well, today I'm feeling really pulled to share something. It's an excerpt from an Elephant Journal article, "Finding Power in Powerlessness," written by my friend, Mia Hetenyi, who I met back in 2012. Over the past few months her posts have been coming up in my feed as she began writing prolifically on topics I have been pondering and writing a lot about myself. This recent one really hit home and hope it resonate with you too. People on social media preach all the time about not being afraid, not being a victim, not giving in to fear-based thinking, that no one is ever truly helpless. [Fear is] pitched as a false narrative or negative belief. I've been finding it reassuring that Mia's essays often call out the rampant spiritual and emotional bypassing in our society, which unfortunately made its way insidiously into the self-help movement under the guise of “being high vibe.” It is one of the themes I have been wrestling with a lot these days myself. It feel feels like I've come full circle to that time in 2012, around the time I first met her, when I simultaneously got more focused on my healing journey, while also moving further away from myself by denying the darkness and trying so much to "be in the light". It's as if my desire for light led me further and further into the darkness.  So in the vein of the title of my friend's article, maybe this is the year we can find light in the darkness. And I don't mean finding some silver lining or "being positive" in the midst of chaos to try to make a bad thing feel better. I mean finding the light that never dies, that goes beyond words, that perhaps can only be found by delving deep into the unknown, into utter darkness, and facing the underbelly of the human experience head on, but this time making it through to the other side with a much greater strength and understanding. Victor Frankl, in his famous book, "Man's Search for Meaning," expresses a profound perspective on this, a realization he had while being marched to a concentration camp in World War II. “For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.” Hoping this has brought some sort of clarity or comfort in these dark times.
Amanda Ianthe | Drawn to Life A few years ago, I had a terrible omen-like vision of bitterness in the distance running towards me at a breakneck speed. It was the first time in my life that I can remember worrying about becoming bitter and was sparked by an experience fostering a dog of all the things. I had the sense that if I didn't realize my dreams soon, it was going to be too late and I would become one of those bitter, cynical people who had given up on life. I felt that if something didn't change soon, bitterness was going to seep into my bones and become a part of my physiology and that simply willing myself to "mind over matter" things was no longer enough - things were falling apart faster than they were coming together, and nothing I was doing was working anymore. It was one of the worst feelings I had ever experienced and the start of new level of depression, despair and hopelessness that lasted the next three years. Now, up until that point, each year that had passed since my dark high school years I had actually felt like I was getting younger - more hopeful, more innocent, more connected to myself and my dreams. Inspired by my eastern philosophy (mostly buddhism) upbringing, at the age of 17, I realized that the negativity I had somehow become proud of in myself was really just an ego identity I'd copied from my mom - that I was just a shell of a person, and that there was another way to see the world - things didn't have to be so grim. It was a genuinely empowering realization, and so off I went to college determined to become a well adjusted positive person and eventually attain some form of spiritual mastery. And it seemed that year after year I was moving forward, becoming more well adjusted, having more positive experiences with people that counteracted my early experiences of low self worth. But, for reasons I still don't fully understand, it wasn't really the progress I had thought, and the skills I acquired over the two decades following high school were no match for the realities of life, let a lone for a creative entrepreneurship journey. Little did I know that how I felt in high school was perhaps not the best baselines to compare my progress in life. The despair, bitterness, negativity and anger I felt and acted out in high school was quite intense. So in a way, each year I felt myself feeling more confident was really just me digging myself out of massive disregulation and into a semi-functioning emotionally regulated "adult" state. It was not me healing some great wounds or "catching" up to people who had been born with stable regulated systems, as I delusionally thought was going on. Little did I know, all the work I had done so far was built on the faulty premise that there was something wrong with me, that it was my fault I couldn't be mindful and in the moment. Little did I know that I had embarked on a healing processes without proper guidance and support, and what was really going on those two decades after high school was me swinging to another extreme - desperately willing myself to see the positive in everything, while rejecting the parts of myself that had been negative and cynical (sometimes for good reason!). I had concluded that those parts of me were all faulty and been mistaken perceptions of the world and that I could simply decide one day to see things positively and be done with it. But I now know that true healing can't happen in an atmosphere of rejection. You don't grow up to be a suicidal 15 year old simply because you were "just being negative", or even due to some chemical imbalance in the brain. The level of emotional instability I demonstrated back then (and even onward through my 20s, though then in the context of at least trying to change) doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens from repeated experiences of being unable to get needs met over and over and over again. Subscribing to lofty ideals of Buddhism, the prominent religious philosophy in my life growing up, without proper guidance and context, wound up taking the form of spiritual bypassing. I admit, believing I could simply will myself to be more mindful and think good thoughts, allowed me to have hope and gave me the ability to function in a world that actually is full of great tragedy. But it only got me so far and kept me removed from reality and therefore really living. Now that I am waking up, I'm seeing veils being lifted in ways I didn't expect. The 9 things1. Everything happens for a reason. We can make one up retrospectively, but there’s no way to know if there’s any kind of grand design and in fact you could argue there's more proof to the contrary. 2. Everything will work out or be Ok. There’s no way to guarantee that. And what are we defining “ok” as? Not dead? Sure, everything is always OK if you want to think of it that way. Life is life. When we die we go back to oneness. I guess that’s ok too. What doesn’t kill you, doesn’t kill you, and if it does, you’re dead and at least not in pain anymore. 3. Life only gives us what we are ready for. Bullshit! One definition of trauma, (physical, mental or emotional) is “too much too soon”. Conversely, sometimes you can handle more but, for a number reasons, do not. I never had to face the loss of a super close loved one until this year. And at first I thought life graciously waited until I could handle it. Then I realized, no, in the face of losing a loved one imminently, I rose to the occasion - because there really wasn’t an alternative, and became one who could handle it. I grew so much because of it. I feel now that I could have taken on so much more earlier and to do so would have allowed me to grow a lot more. Instead I hid away from much of life's normal challenges, further stunting an already stunted emotional system. 4. Things will work out, you’ll find someone, you’ll find peace. Actually, my family heritage shows that is not the case, and it takes immense concentration and work to steer one's self towards a course where life is going to feel safe, kind and rewarding, both intimately with friends and experientially with money to the extent where one gains true freedom, autonomy and is allowed to live with dignity with access to healthcare, healthy foods, and the therapy needed to overcome cPTSD and early childhood traumas. Any slip in focus on this path to healing can set you back decades, if not generations. There is absolutely no guarantee you will meet someone and have a good life. 5. Time heals all wounds. Time and facing the pain in the right way with the right help can heal wounds and yes, the sting of certain disappointments surely can fade over time; but with respect to deep impacts, time by itself often just serves as a boiler room for unmet needs and traumas to grow. 6. There is something that I’m meant to do and I’ll figure it out. Millions of people die every day on their way to figuring out their purpose, many with unlived dreams that die inside them. There’s no guarantee of figuring it out or living it. Unless you were raised in a loving environment with basic human emotional survival skills, it will take every last bit of focus, energy and concentration to turn your ship in the right direction and then live long enough to see some of your dreams actually come true. 7. Slow and steady wins the race. This is another old adage that is true in certain contexts but is by no means universal and can definitely be misunderstood. The wisdom in this is basically not to erratically rush things because you can wind up making costly mistakes that set you back as a result. But if you want to get anywhere, steady, yes, is important (though there's no rule that says major spurts of creativity can't also be helpful), AND in many contexts the pace needs to be at least a brisk walk. Because it IS possible to go so slow that you will not reap the benefits of your actions in this life time. Furthermore, there are things that require momentum to accomplish, especially big changes. A great nature analogy for this is leaping over, say a wide river or crevice. If it's a great enough distance, walking up to it and then jumping may never allow you to get over it, no matter how many times you repeat it - you may actually need a running start. This adage brings up another big theme for me, namely that many truth do have great wisdom, but are meant for certain contexts, not to be used as a blanked truth for every situation. For someone like me, with a mathematical/science brain looking for universal laws, it has taken awhile to grasp this. 8. The Law of Attraction (LOA) is a neutral universal force of natural (spiritual and physical) that we can easily work with at the level of thought to create the life we desire. LOA is a monstrous beast and is behind why abused children put themselves in abusive situations in their adult life that reinforce the self perception and internal map of the world and their worth in it (and/or become abusers themselves). LOA is the reason the rich get richer and the poor get poorer - it's reflected in the math behind interest rates and exponential functions. Additionally, evidence shows that trauma and childhood conditioning lives in our bodies more than our minds, that the mind often actually serves as a defense mechanism against feeling our bodies and the wisdom stored in them, and that our thoughts are the effects of dysregulated nervous system as much if not more than the cause of it. Thus, the focus on changing our lives with thoughts alone is like trying to make a marble sculpture with a toothpick. 9. That I am responsible for my actions. I know, I know. this one is loaded - but it actually brings this piece full circle from where I started about going from extremes. Ever since I realized in high school that I had a choice in how to look at life, I concluded that I had created all misery in my life thus far by having a negative attitude. Now, if we get down to the cellular law of attraction level, sure, I have attracted and created everything in my life - cause and effect. But that's not the whole picture, doesn't get to the what actually caused our cells and subconscious to wire and attract the way it does in the first place - do you blame a cheetah for being born a cheetah and being a carnivore? Is it going to think itself into being a zebra? I've been carrying this burden of everything being my fault my whole life - I felt responsible for my family disfunction even before my high school epiphany. All that high school realization about having a choice to think more positively about things did was add more weight to an already self blaming predisposition. *(OK, maybe it was an honest insight with some truth, but it just was so incomplete.) Past lives aside (which is a nice way to explain the injustices in this world but is NOT the way to heal personal trauma), it is NOT my fault that I was wired a certain way, that I was raised with neglect or trauma, that I developed such low self worth and then attracted low self worth situations that further perpetuated ancestral stories. It's not my fault that trying to get out of the cycle often just kept perpetuating the cycle. It's not even my fault that I had a predisposition for seeking help or educating myself - that was wired in too. I'm starting to believe that where I am in my life could have been largely predicted within some margin of error, based on the upbringing and genes and environment I was born into. (Read The Body Keeps the Score if you don't believe me). Is everything predetermined? I can't say for sure of course, and in many ways it really doesn't matter because we are still going to try our damnedest to heal. The point is, the act of "taking responsibility for all one's actions" is so much more nuanced than I took it to mean and can in fact be toxic for those who already blame themselves for everything. Is there a point here?Perhaps a couple of concrete takeaways from all this are:
 So much to say about this. So many different ways to say it. So many different experiences of leaping. The one that comes to mind a lot is one that until recently haunted me. A few years ago I took an awkward leap of faith and did not land on the other side, or wherever people wind up when they tell the happy ending stories about taking that leap of faith and the net appearing. The idea behind that saying is relatively down to earth. When we take (measured) risks, we often find that things work out much better than we feared - people/opportunities come into our lives at the right time creating a smoother landing than we expected or even hoped for. I know that has happened to me, but usually with things that didn't feel like a big leap (i.e. by the time I made the "big" change, it was really just the next natural step.) And I believe that big leaps that end beautifully must happen to others - but we usually only hear about it from the people that make it because they lived to tell the tale and their success brought them into the spotlight where they could share it, where we would wind up hearing about it. But what about the others who didn’t survive, or who are still falling? It doesn’t always have a neat little ending - people can die in pursuit of their dreams (well, we all will die eventually on the way somewhere). Or things can get worse before they get better, which is what happened to me when I left my day job and created my first children’s book only to spend all my money producing it and winding up virtually homeless and reliving childhood nightmares for several years after. My initial understanding of the experience was two fold. One, that I took the leap a bit prematurely, not well calculated and with a lot of anxiety. It was more than the healthy excited anxiety when one stretches outside ones comfort zone; and more like the panic and stress from being way too far out without the proper resources and support in place. And two, that net didn’t appear because I didn’t have enough faith. While I whole heartedly believed that with faith it would appear, there was a part of me that didn’t believe it would appear for me, and/or that I didn’t deserve it - possibly in part due to the lack of preparation and strategy. (The strategy and planning piece ties into the faith piece so much that it's hard to untie them in way to really know what is causing what). The frustrating part of it, was that when I wandered back to the 9-5 job world with my tail between my legs, I still felt like I was falling. Sure, I evaded homelessness and brought myself back up to being able to support myself, but still worse off in many ways than I was before I took the leap. Meanwhile, day by day, my dream of having a successful career in children’s media continued to grow and evolve while every step I took was too slow and ineffective to make a dent or get a foothold anywhere, so the gap between where I was and my dreams just kept growing. It was a literal nightmare. And up until a few months ago, I was still falling. A spiritual retreat to Peru in 2019 to treat trauma didn't stop the fall - it may have changed the course of my fall, but I still can't tell if it was for the better yet - as I was also re-traumatized and had things come up without the proper support to heal it. A spiritual entrepreneurship program in 2020 was the first thing that started to slow the decent with some basic online business skills and exposure to a group of wonderful supportive women. At the end of the program I finally got it. I finally received the unequivocal message that I needed not just to get trauma therapy, but from the RIGHT people. When I started to get the trauma therapy I needed, I started to learn how to fly, in bits and pieces: how to navigate stress and the unknown without crumbling and falling, and how to show up outside my comfort zone consistently in baby steps. While I still feel like I'm falling, I'm starting to wonder whether we every really find solid ground. I'm starting to realize that wha ti need to do is learn an entirely different skill set - how to hold myself above the abyss of helplessness without a corporate job, and to learn how to fly in the creative entrepreneurship world. Let's see! This quote really resonates: “The bad news is, we are falling through the air without a parachute. The good news is, there is no ground." ~Chogyam Trungpa  I am in the process of both literally and figuratively drawing myself back to life, as I emerge from a nine year depression and begin healing life-long untreated traumas and early conditioning. In addition to being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) in my twenties I operate on the outskirts of the autism spectrum and suffer from untreated cPTSD and major depressive disorder that got worse as I got older and resulted in me becoming totally isolated and cut off from human contact. It is my deep belief that most mental illness is a result of early childhood developmental trauma, which I define as anything that distorts a child's perception of itself as anything but basically good and lovable. For me, mental illnesses are really just names for a set of symptoms that arise as a result of various disrupted developmental processes and untreated trauma. A child can be traumatized even while being raised by well-meaning parents, because it has such a simplistic way of interpreting information. Typically, healthy parents will help guide the child in processing and working through them and regulating their nervous system so they don't carry around the activated trauma state into adulthood. The outlook, however, is more grim for those who are raised by addicts and people with untreated mental illnesses and traumas themselves, where trauma after trauma gets piled on without anyone helping to process it. Almost everyone is bound to experience something scary by the time they are 8 years old. But what makes something emerge as a mental illness later or dysfunctional behavior later resides in how it was dealt with immediately afterward, as much as the baseline nervous system stability at the time of the event. I spent the greater part of two decades trying to address my issues by taking responsibility for everything that was going on in my life and understanding how reality was impacted by my perception. And at 35, I thought I had a grip on things. I thought I had finally figured out how not to go off the handle in work environments, how not to have nervous breakdowns in public and wind up in hospitals after a break-up, how to basically seem "normal." But it was all surface level. Sure, I created some new beliefs and ideals that helped me maintain stability. I grew some resilience through sheer acts of will that helped develop confidence and social skills. I even became an expert at finding the silver lining in every situation. But it was all mental, and overall the deepest wounds of the heart hadn't healed and I still found myself in ridiculously abusive situations (when "I should know better!"), bordering on poverty (when "I have a Harvard degree!"), and eventually, as of a couple years ago, just fading away into the oblivion of an unlived life, completely isolated and out of sync with the things I really loved. My belief is that it was all due to a low level of self-worth I carried around in me, deep in my cells, despite intellectually knowing better, despite reading so many self-help books, despite subscribing to all these lofty ideals of "anything is possible" and "we are all worthy of our dreams." It is only this past year that I have actually started to do the work of real healing - which no one really tells you how to do. They just tell you to love yourself more. But how do you even do that? They tell you to meditate, but what if meditation uncovers such painful traumas that it sends you into a psychosis? No one tells you about that. No on tells you that your problem isn't your mind, but in your body's ability to regulate stress. It IS possible to change - but it must be with the right team of healers who actually know about healing trauma (and at the same time humble enough to know they don't know everything) - to really uncover the deep set beliefs embedded in our nervous system and underlying our experiences of life, and release them and replace them with the truth of being lovable - the truth that people with healthy self-esteem naturally embody - the truth that everyone deserves to feel. (And by the way the healing processes it doesn't have to be expensive like many in the self help world will lead you to believe). I started this process of uncovering and releasing deep stored beliefs in December of 2020, and started making real headway this summer around the time I started a 100 Epic Day challenge where I committed to creating and playing with art every day (with the intention of become a person that was healed). And for the first time in my life, I see progress - real progress - in getting outside the mental prison I've been in since as long as I can remember. Breaking free seems to have very little to do with any kind of mental process, or brute force behavioral changes, and everything to do with getting present enough to access the core wounding memories in the safety of loving professionals - professionals that don't tune out the second your 50 minute-hour is over, and really hold a space of love and compassion. So far drawing, rather than writing, is what helps the most in processing, because it gets me out of my head more.   If you are wondering “why am I not doing that thing I should/want to be doing”, it may not be laziness, lack of will power, or inertia, or stuckness, or even self sabotage. And at the very least, labeling it as such is not particularly constructive. (How useful a particular perspective is in motivating us to change depends greatly on context - what tools we currently have for navigating change, where we are on a particular transformation journey, the size and type of traumas we are dealing with, etc.).
What may be a more illuminating way to look at it is that you are not doing whatever that thing is because it does not fit in with your sense of self worth or identity. Like it literally cannot co-exist with your current sense of self. And yes, “just doing it” is a way to develop a new identity, but it’s effectiveness depends again on where you are in the process of change, your current toolbox, the intensity of the wound you are uncovering. So just willing yourself to do something doesn’t always have staying power. For several years I was resisting doing something I really wanted to do and surely would bring me joy and change my life for the bette. And it wasn’t even about doing something painful like running to get fit or something! I remember sitting down and literally feeling in pain as I was going to do something enjoyable! It was like oil and water. The north end of two magnets. Like two incompatible things coming together. I couldn’t make it happen, even if I did go for weeks or even month periods of “doing it” the doing it was so painful that it wasn't sustainable. The only I have explanation in retrospect, especially now that I am doing and enjoying that thing daily, is that I literally couldn’t do it because I didn’t feel worthy of the joy and life that it could bring. It’s as simple (and twisted) as that. But then the question is how do you build the new belief of being worthy or of holding the identity, say, of an artist or writer or dancer or athlete etc, something you know you are meant to be and will be sooo fulfilling! It doesn’t have to take a long time, but for me it took a somewhat intensive immersion among other likeminded people, ongoing accountability and connection, deep healing from specialists in trauma, self worth, & somatic experiencing, and of course baby action steps along the way. The biggest thing though I think is the trauma therapy. Trauma goes deep into the nonverbal physical, and colors every aspect of ones life. I’d say there’s the biggest bang for your buck, but even that may not always be what’s called for and can be iffy if you can’t find the right person, or if you aren’t surrounded by the right support system while going through the therapy. (I’ve tried DIY trauma books to somewhat disastrous results, e.g. nervous breakdowns at work). (One caveat is that the block doesn't always have to be about not having a certain level of self worth. It may be about a just having a hard time transitioning to a new identity, say from engineer to designer, writer to actor, etc. However, it's probably safe to assume that built into the identity change is the belief that this new identity is closer to your calling, to something you would love to do or simply something you want to try to bring you joy. And so if you are stuck too long in that transition, that is when I would bet that this is not just about adjusting to a new identity, this about feeling worthy of the joy involved in exploring a new thing that your gut knows will be fulfilling for you. All this is to inspire some more gentleness towards ourselves about maybe why we haven’t been doing that thing we know will bring joy and benefit us, or even resisting doing the work of trauma therapy itself. There is a reason why there is so much unhealed emotional pain in this world. Competent trauma healers aren’t lining our streets the way acupuncturist, chiropractors, massage therapists are (yet). And the right one may be hard to find. And on top of that, there is an elusive factor of timing that I’m truly unsure how much control we have over it (will leave the free will/destiny enigma for another day tho). Over time, I will building a list of quality resources so that people that read my blog and are interested will have some options to explore. Xoxoxo |
Author:Amanda I. Greene This is where I share thoughtful, and sometimes unpolished, musings in the form of philosophical explorations, inspirations, poems, and artwork.
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