Category: Connection

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Releasing our stories of too much, not enough, & shame

You cannot let go of anything if you cannot notice you are holding it.  ~Neale Donald Walsch

Letting go helps us live in a more peaceful state of mind and helps restore our balance. It allows others to be responsible for themselves and for us to take our hands off situations that do not belong to us. This frees us from unnecessary stress. ~Melody Beattie

We are all of us stars, and we deserve to twinkle. ~Marilyn Monroe

Last week I shared with you where these stories of being too much and not enough and the shame we carry originates.  Not a one of us were born with these stories, and yet they seep into our skin, bones, and sinew and impact the ways we are in the world and with ourselves.

Here’s a thing though: we don’t have to hold onto these narratives.  We don’t have to allow the shame to continue coursing through our being.  We can do the work of release, renewal, and reclamation – over time, with patience, practice, and self-compassion. It is work that is done in layers, over and over throughout our lifetimes.  It is work that is perhaps never actually done, and yet the more we are able to move through the process the more we are able to move ourselves from a space of living only to survive and into a place of living to thrive.

As I mentioned last week, naming the narratives is a vital first step in this work.  Until we name those stories that spin through our heads, and consider where they came from, we can never move into the work.  After we name the narratives and realize they are not our own but were given to us by our families and culture, we can move into the space of release.

Release does not happen over night.  It does not happen simply  because we think it or wish it.  It requires intention, ritual, practice.  It requires patience, self-compassion, and time. It requires a deep, visceral understanding that these stories are not yours to carry.

A truth is we can know, logically, in our minds that these stories are not ours; that they are not actually true; that they have little to actually do with us, individually and everything to do with us collectively.  However, knowing in our minds is not the same as deeply knowing in our bodies, in our core being.

To move from a mind knowing to a body knowing means… you guessed it… coming home into our bodies, finding where those stories live in our muscles and cells, and inviting them to leave, allowing for an openness to be where these stories once lived.

Coming into our bodies and releasing these stories that affect us in so many ways, is challenging work.  It is uncomfortable in the beginning.  And yet the shifts that come from this work can be amazing.

When we intentionally do the work of acknowledging those stories that do nothing more than cause us harm, we are able to begin to move into new ways of being with ourselves and others. This new way of being takes time to integrate into our bodies, minds, and spirit.  It requires space for shifting which means that we need to learn to tolerate that sense of openness, that may mistakenly feel like emptiness, so our new ways of being can take root and grow.  (More on this next week.  Stay tuned.)

I talk about these ideas in the 9-minute video below.

This essay is the second of a four part series I have written exploring our narratives of too much, not enough, the shame we carry and how we can release them and reclaim our own strength, power, and daring.  I hope you find it helpful and informative.

This essay series is also to introduce the themes we will be exploring in the fall online women’s circle Becoming Unleashed.  We begin October 1 and space is limited to six women.  You can learn more here.

Links to other essays in this series:

The Impacts of Inter-generational & Cultural Relational Traumas

Releasing our stories of too much, not enough, & shame (this essay)

The Goo: A time of Renewal, Restructuring, Re-evolving 

Reclaiming our power, strength, & daring

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Learning the difference between emotional and physical safeness

Unlike other forms of psychological disorders, the core issue in trauma is reality. ~Bessel A. van der Kolk, Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society

One of the things we’ve been talking about lately in a few of the groups I facilitate, is learning to differentiate between emotional safeness and physical safety.

In other words, the difference between the potential for our feelings to be hurt in some way and our bodies to be harmed, tortured or murdered.

Reading those words, I’m guessing some of you may be wondering why we would need to differentiate these things.  In so many ways we are all logically aware of the difference between these two very different types of situations. Most of us can look at different events in our own lives and be able to determine in which ones we were in actual physical danger and in which ones the risk was more about being told no, or being wrong, or not feeling heard or understood.

In our logic brain, we can completely understand the difference.

And.

Our primal brain, or reptilian brain as some call it, doesn’t know the difference.

So, when our frontal lobe (where logic and empathy live) isn’t able to communicate with our limbic brain and brain stem, our systems see any type of “threat” as life threatening.  When we are in a trauma state, when we are in that elevated state where we are almost always in fight, flight, or freeze, our logic brain can’t communicate with our primal brain, because our logic brain has pretty much gone “off line” so our primal brain can try to keep us alive.

Because that is the role of our primal brain: to literally keep us alive.  To make sure we physically survive a situation.

Our primal brain isn’t actually concerned with our “feelings” such as shame, emotional hurt, embarrassment, etc.  It only cares that our hearts keep beating, our lungs keep working, and we are physically functioning enough to potentially procreate (regardless of whether we are within the years that procreation is actually possible.)

When the trauma that lives within us has not been processed, our nervous systems stay in a state of hyper alert.  This shows up in various ways, most commonly as anxiety, and can show up as irritability, moodiness, being “overly” emotional, etc.  When our sympathetic nervous system is in a heightened and activated state, when it doesn’t have the opportunity to calm down and allow our parasympathetic system to come online, and a traumatic event occurs, it affects our systems exponentially.

When we consider that we have not only the trauma of our own lived experience within us, but also that of our ancestors and we are constantly being re-traumatized to varying degrees by our culture, it is no wonder that our systems are on over-drive.

When our systems are in this constant state of over-load, we begin to be unable to differentiate between an actual physical threat and a perceived emotional threat.

This is why we get nervous speaking up to that racist uncle or aunt at the holiday dinner table.  It is why we don’t speak up. It is why we don’t share our intimate details or inner most thoughts with those who can hold them.

It’s why we isolate.

Perceiving emotional risk – from speaking up at the holiday table, to sharing our deepest self with a lover and all things in-between –  as life threatening is what perpetuates our isolation.

Our nervous systems and fight/flight/freeze responses are so over stimulated and over activated that any situation that is remotely uncomfortable emotionally, yet completely physically safe, is perceived as a threat to our lives.

To say this is problematic is an understatement.

This is why it is so important for the first step of processing our trauma to be integrating tools, techniques, and practices to soothe and calm our nervous systems (i.e. self regulate) and bring our “baseline” back down to a non-activated state.

It is why I share nervous system soothing (self-regulation) exercises on social media and in my weekly newsletter.  Because truly, this is where we need to start.

We literally are incapable of doing any deeper trauma work until we are able to soothe our sympathetic nervous system. Without that first step we only re-traumatize ourselves and keep ourselves on a very painful and frustrating treadmill.

The good news is, there are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of ways to begin the work of calming our systems.  When we look at our Self from a holistic lens, we can then find the different combination of ways that work for us.  For many people taking supplements, vitamins and or herbs, is incredibly helpful.  For others, pharmaceuticals are necessary.  For all of us having a somatic approach of some kind, anything from a somatic trauma therapy like my TIE™ approach to massage, acupuncture or chiropractic work, is incredibly beneficial.

In the end, it doesn’t matter which approaches you use, it only matters that they work for you, are nourishing, and allow for the space in time for you continue on to the deeper work of processing the trauma that lives within you.

I don’t believe in a “one size fits all” approach to trauma processing and healing.  We are each unique, and therefore the ways our systems respond to different exercises, practices, approaches, and modalities is unique to each of us.

And.

I also believe that the very first step we all need to take is in calming our elevated and activated systems into a more stable and steady state.  So we can then dive into the deeper work.  So we can truly connect with our body and the present moment.  So we can internally and systemically understand the difference between an actual physical threat and a perceived emotional one.

I believe this work is not only part of the ways we find healing for our individual selves, but is also part of the way we find healing, growth, and change in the greater collective and in our society.

The individual is part of the collective and the collective is part of the individual.  We need each other for greater internal and external change to happen.  And our ability to connect and be in right and meaningful relationship is dependent on bringing our nervous systems down from an elevated and threatened state and being more in our frontal lobes so we can respond to situations mindfully and intentionally instead of reacting to them from a state of fear, anxiety, and stress overwhelm.

…

Originally published on January 28, 2018 as a weekly newsletter and revised for publication here.  Did you enjoy reading this?  If so, I invite you to sign up to receive my weekly love letters right here.

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Blessing for the Unleashing Ourselves Circle & for all of us

On the eve of each of my circles and online programs I offer a blessing to the participants and to all of us.  This is the blessing for the Unleashing Ourselves: Processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny circle, and truly, for each and every one of us.

May we…

Release the narratives of who, how, and what we should be

Heal the generations of wounding that has been passed down through the millenia

Process the inter-generational trauma that impacts our daily lives

Bring our unconscious motivations into our consciousness

Embrace our female lineage

Unearth the power, strength and daring of the women who came before and live within

Acknowledge our own innate, embodied wisdom

Connect to our true, authentic, whole Self: body, mind, spirit, and soul

Live mindfully and consciously into our interconnected futures

Amen.

******************************************************

If you’d like to learn more about the upcoming spring circle,  Unleashing Ourselves: Processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny that begins to gather April 1, you can click here. There are still a few spaces left and we’d be thrilled to have you join us.  xoox

If you missed the educational essay and video series I wrote introducing the ideas and concepts we’ll be exploring and examining in the spring circle, you can find them at the links below:

Defining Ancestral, Inter-generational, & Cultural Relational Traumas and Internalized Misogyny

Connecting the Dots

Connecting Individual & Collective Traumas

Ending Cycles: Processing the Past & Changing the Future

I also wrote these essay to give more detail about the circle and our work together:

The importance of processing ancestral trauma & dislodging internalized misogyny

More About Unleashing Ourselves: Processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny

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Unleashing Our Self :: Disconnection, Shame, and thinking it is us

My own relationship with my Self has been a rocky one most of my life.  From a very young age I received and internalized the messages of how my body was not mine, how I was to be seen and not heard, how I took up too much space, how I was too smart, how I wasn’t good enough at this or that or anything.  I had feelings of shame for even existing as far back as I can remember.  These messages came from many places, family of course, but as I grew older and started reading teen magazines and Cosmopolitan, watching movies, really listening to music, the message became very clear that my sole purpose on this earth was to look pretty and to get a boy or man and that in order to do that I had to look and be a certain way.

And of course I didn’t measure up to the standard idea of beauty – my thighs were too big, my hair too mousy; I was too short; I wore glasses.  My clothes were hand-me-downs or homemade and never in style.  I would never fit that Ideal and so I would likely never catch a boy or man.  In addition, I was smart, and, well, we all know that smart girls can never ever be pretty.

Since my worth, according to media, according to popular (i.e. patriarchal) culture, was measured by whether I could get a boy/man, I was clearly worthless.

This didn’t get much better as I grew older.  In college I spent the first three years or so proving how very stupid (and therefore how very pretty) I was. There were periods of self harm that included drugs and drinking and hitting myself, usually my legs, so hard that I would bruise.

All of this I hid from others for the most part.  All of this I had to hide because it was only more proof of how flawed I was because I couldn’t “handle” life and very clearly didn’t have my shit together.

Eventually I did meet my now husband and our love story is one for another day.  But my not measuring up didn’t stop with falling in love with, and more importantly being loved by, this man.  I had my career, then an electrical engineer, where I was constantly pushing myself beyond my limits by working 50, 60, and even 70 hour weeks to prove I was as good as The Boys and trying to find the balance of my femininity and my power.  And then when I had my first child things became even worse.

Now I had to juggle career and motherhood and I could not fail at either. And failure, by the way, basically looked a lot like being human.  I kept up a persona and mask that everything was Fine when the truth was I was suicidal and on the brink of a complete mental collapse.  I hated myself, and blamed myself as obviously lacking, because I couldn’t do it all and my career, marriage and motherhood were all flailing.

I was never ever enough on the one hand and I was way too much on the other and no matter what I did or how hard I tried, I could never “win”.  I could not feel, now matter how much I did, that I deserved any of the success that came my way. If someone tried to compliment me on some thing or another I would come back with a list of all the things that were wrong or imperfect or all the ways I fucked this or that thing up.

And boundaries… what were those?  I wouldn’t dare set a boundary for fear of being considered rude or a bitch or selfish or not committed to my work.

And at my core, I didn’t like myself.  In fact, I really hated myself.  I truly did not believe I was worthy of being loved.  I did not believe that I was lovable.  I didn’t respect myself.  I was ashamed of who I was, how I looked, and almost everything I did.

There are many things that contributed to the shifting of my relationship with myself.  There was therapy, and then my pregnancy with my daughter and then her birth and life.  There was leaving engineering and going to graduate school to study psychology.  There was mindfulness and yoga and writing the words breathe or love or gentle on my arm.  There were a million books.  There were friendships that saved me.  There was my husband.  And there was more than all of this.

One of the things that finally helped make it click for me though, was the realization that it – all that self hatred and loathing, all those feelings of not measuring up or taking up too much space or needing to prove I deserved to even exist – wasn’t my fault.

None of it was my fault.

It was the realization that our culture purposefully trains and conditions us to think we are undeserving and unworthy of love as we are and so we must keep striving and proving and fixing ourselves.  That if we have boundaries we are cold and uncaring and will alone.  That we must bend and mold ourselves ways of being to always please others and make sure they are comfortable.

When I started to dig into the ways the system was truly and actually stacked against me – against all women, and definitely some more than others – light bulbs started to go off in my head.

Our culture doesn’t want us to have healthy or loving or connected relationships with other women – because when we do come together and rise up the status quo is going to be destroyed.

And more than that, our culture doesn’t want us to have any type of healthy relationship with our Self – with our body, our mind, our spirit or our soul.

It wants us living outside our body while also being focused on changing it, on starving it, on torturing it, on hating it.

It wants us disconnected from our mind and so keeps us distracted with all the menial ways we “fail” and don’t measure up, be it the clothes we wear, the home we live in, the way our children act.  It wants us constantly striving and striving and striving, never being satisfied with anything we have, because if we feel satisfied with ourselves, with our life, we might actually take the time to stop, and breathe, and look around and see how fucked the entire system actually is – and then, and then, we might actually also have the time and energy to do something about it.

It wants us believing in a spirituality that doesn’t feed us, that oppresses us, that doesn’t allow space for women.

It wants us cut off from our soul, from our core, from our very being.

By keeping us disconnected, disembodied, and cut off from our Self, our culture, and those in power in our culture, is able to keep us distracted, compliant and complicit. By keeping us severed from our Self, it is able to continue oppressing us and in turn have us passing this oppression down through the generations.

To all of this I say:

No More.

Not on my watch.

You are my sister, my comrade, not my competition.

And

I am connected to my Self.

I have compassion for my Self.

I honor and love and cherish my Self.

I invite you to join me in the resistance to our culture.  To the gas lighting. To the shaming. To the stories and lies of how we aren’t enough and are too much and aren’t lovable and need to be “fixed.”

I invite you to sing and shout and whisper and scream and roar with me:

No More.

Not on my watch.

You are my sister, my comrade, not my competition.

And to

Connect with your Whole Self – body, mind, spirit and soul.

To have compassion for your Self, your stumbles along the way.

To honor and love and cherish your Self, as the beautifully profound and amazing being you are.

I invite you to join me in this rebellion of connection, of wholeness, of love and in so doing burning down a culture that dare to hold us down.

I talk even more about how our culture encourages us to disconnect from our Self in this 20-minute video below.  I hope you enjoy it.

This essay and video are the third in my three-part series Unleashing Our Self as an introduction to the topics we’ll be unearthing, examining, dislodging and embracing in the six month circle Unleashing Our Mothers, Unleashing Our Selves.  We begin April  1.  If you are interested, you can learn more and request an application here. xoxo

You can find first essay & video in this series right over here and the second one right over here.

 

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Short Game and Long Game

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of having many conversations with several different wonderful women. We talked about everything from being therapists to the having the privilege to say we are going to burn it all down to intergenerational trauma to mean-girl alpha-ing behaviors in feminist spaces. These conversations have been fortifying and replenishing and nourishing and I have been deeply grateful for them.

All of these conversations, except one, were via this lovely box I am currently typing on (mostly through Skype, but some textual exchanges too). And while I thank the gods and goddesses above and below for this here modern technology and the ability to have these conversations and see the other person’s face, there is also nothing quite like being in the same room with someone and the intimacy and focus that comes with that.

The one conversation I had in person was with one of my bffs who happens to also be a professional photographer. And while and between taking new photos of me for my website, we caught up on All The Things, which seriously filled me up in all the Good Ways and I need to remember to make in-person time with my besties more of a priority.

Anyhow.

At one point in the shoot we put on the song 99 Red Balloons by Nena on repeat. I don’t know why this song is so… something… for me. It both gives me life and gives me angst and I had fun dancing furiously to it and flipping off and punching at the camera in the process.

I have loved this song since it was first released in 1984. Since I was in 7th grade. So you know, a lot of years.

The year I was in 7th grade was also the year the movie The Day After was released and aired on TV. My dad didn’t allow me to watch it, because he felt it was anti-communist propaganda and figured it would give me nightmares. He was probably right. (He also refused to let me see the movie Red Dawn in the theaters, even though it had all my crushes in it, for the same reason. Again, my father was probably right in this decision.)

My point maybe being that I grew up in a time when nuclear annihilation was a given. I pretty much assumed that I would not live to see my 18th birthday because there would be a full scale global nuclear war. In 9th grade, maybe because the middle school I attended was close to the air force base, we did air raid drills in the event of a nuclear attack.

I grew up assuming we, humans, were fucked.

Then in 1987 the Berlin wall fell. And eventually the Soviet Union also collapsed. And in all this the fear of a nuclear holocaust also disappeared. At least from my own psyche. Yes some of our world leaders seemed to be war mongers, but it also seemed even in their need to conquer they had a deep respect for that red button. (At least it’s always red in the movies, I have no idea if it’s really a red button or even an actual button at all). And so, while we as humans are flawed, I came to a place of assuming we would all survive and live into relatively old age (barring disease and car accidents and being murdered and the like).

Over the last month plus, every time I read a headline I am back to believing that we are so fucked.

And maybe that’s why I needed to talk with my bestie and dance furiously to this song while flipping off and punching at a camera.

But in this We Are So Fucked-ness, I also am getting to see such gorgeous humanity. While the current leaders of our country seem hell bent on killing us all, I am witnessing revolutionaries I never thought would be the ones to save us pop up. The park rangers, the scientists, the lawyers.

And the every day people like you and me.

I don’t have a moral or some neat little message to wrap all these words up with a bow.

Except maybe to remind us all that what we do matters. How we spend our time and energy matters. And while we have the short game right in front of us of disrupting and resisting the fuck out of the current regime, we also have the long game of building something new and different and tearing down the existing infrastructure that got us to this place today.

So let’s remember that. Let’s remember that there is a short game AND a long game. And people are needed in both arenas. And maybe you are able to play in both arenas right now and that is amazing and thank you so fucking much and maybe all you have time and energy for is the long game right now and that is also amazing and thank you so fucking much.

And please, can we also remember we are in this together? And we don’t need to destroy each other in order for a single one of us to rise? That too would be amazing and awesome.

xoox