My work with Anna and James was not just to mediate their current and ongoing struggle, but to create relational harmony between them, to help them be together in a way that was indeed harmonious. So then, what is harmony in a relationship? We usually use the word to describe a relationship in which the people seem happy, and the interactions are easy and relatively conflict-free. We consider two people in harmony when they fit together like concordant notes in a pleasing musical chord. And yes, all this is true; such relationships are harmonious. But, there is one element of relational harmony, which may be the most important and defining one, that we deeply misunderstand and that causes much of our unhappiness in relationships.

Because we think of harmony as an agreement between two people, we spend our energy trying to agree on some version of what’s true. We fight until we determine a shared reality. Undoubtedly, agreeing with another person’s version of the truth, their ideas, values, and belief systems, certainly makes things easier in a relationship.  But in fact, deep and lasting emotional, mental, and spiritual harmony requires something other than just agreeing on a shared experience.

Harmony in a relationship means understanding; we don’t need to agree to be in harmony, but we do need to be willing to understand another person’s experience and actually hear their truth.

From the time we’re born, we’re conditioned to believe that our thoughts, opinions, and beliefs define us, that they are who we are. At the same time, we believe that our thoughts are true, but not just true, fundamentally true as in, the Truth. If someone disagrees with us or experiences something differently, it can feel like our identity or very existence is being threatened. How can we exist harmoniously with this other person if they disagree with us, and don’t see it the way we do? This implies that they disagree with who we are, which means there can be no harmony between us, and maybe more importantly, within ourselves.  We must get this other person to agree with us and our experience; we must win the battle of whose version of reality is true so that we can feel better and find harmony again, at least temporarily.

Returning to our couple, Anna and James were in a state of disharmony when they first came to see me, not because they disagreed on the role that money should play in their relationship, but rather because they were unwilling to listen to or even try to understand each other’s experience around money. They were locked in a brutal fight to determine whose version of reality was right, whose experience was going to be allowed to exists as valid and real. And, they were in my office for me to serve as the umpire in their battle, and award one of them with the badge of truth.  As in, you win… this is what money should mean!  This couple needed not to agree on who was right, since they both were right, and both of their experiences mattered, but rather to learn how to hear each other and understand each other’s truth—to coexist in disagreement and simultaneously, in harmony.

Harmony in a relationship, whether romantic, platonic, professional, familial, or any other kind, stems from our willingness to understand another person’s truth, without judging them or defending ourselves, to let their truth be true for them, and therefore, true. Harmony is born from our desire to genuinely know what another person’s reality looks and feels like, through their eyes and heart—not ours. To understand their truth beyond what we think of it.

Harmony blooms when we have the courage to stop hearing another person’s experience solely through the lens of what it means to and about us. Like grace, it appears when we listen to know another human being—not as they exist in relation to us, but as they are.

At the most profound level, harmony in a relationship does not mean that we agree with each other on the contents of life, on what should or shouldn’t be, what happened or didn’t happen.  In other words, what’s true. However, it does mean that we share an intention to understand and know each other, in agreement, disagreement, and everything in between.

In service to our desire for harmony, we can start by learning to ask harmonious questions: What is this like for you? How do you experience this? What does this mean for you? And not just to ask the questions, but to set your self and your opinions aside long enough to really listen to and hear the answers. And…to let them be.

The post Harmony in Relationship Does Not Require Agreement appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Her boyfriend had remembered a small detail about her, something she had mentioned in the first week of their relationship. Unprompted, he had looked through the lens of Pam’s experience, which he had remembered after just one casual telling. She had shared her experience with him, and he had carried it with him.

It’s a story that presents in all sorts of shapes and colors, but holds at the center the same theme. It’s a story, ultimately, about listening. Again and again, clients tell me about a parent who was unable to remember the details of their life. Whether it was not remembering the names of their friends, if they preferred their sandwich bread toasted or plain, or who their most hated teacher of the moment was, the experience was the same… loneliness frustration, and suffering.

As children, when those who are supposed to love us are unable to hold the details of our life, the small pieces that put together the puzzle that is us, the result is profoundly impactful and long-lasting.

Pam sobbed when her boyfriend remembered that small detail, in part, because she had grown up with a father who didn’t remember the small things about her life. And while she knew in her head that her dad loved her, when she needed to remind him, over and over, about the name of her best friend or favorite flavor of ice cream, she didn’t actually feel loved.

Clients have described the experience in different ways; for one woman, it was the feeling of starting from scratch in each interaction with her parent, choosing details to share, building a new story about herself as if with a stranger. Another woman talked of introducing herself over and over again, reminding her parent who she was and what her life was about. And yet another told me of getting off the camp bus after a summer away and being surprised that her father actually knew which child was his daughter. To be known is to be known, in all its details.

I write this blog today as a cautionary tale for parents, and also, I hope, an encouraging tale. As inconsequential as they may seem, the details of a child’s life are vitally important; it’s difficult to feel truly known if the details of one’s life are not remembered or retained. And, most importantly, we can’t feel loved if we don’t feel known.

It’s common for children to take the blame for a parent who doesn’t listen. The child assumes he isn’t interesting or important enough, doesn’t matter enough to be remembered. The child concludes that he is the one who is broken and lacking. He takes responsibility for the parent’s inattention, in part, because a child’s primary need is to maintain the bond with the parent no matter what, in order to belong and hence survive. Secondly, a child blames himself, because he needs to hold the parent in his mind as something good and trustworthy, to see his parent as reliable, even if to do so causes the child harm. The idea that a parent might be untrustworthy, flawed, or even unkind is too discordant with what the child needs for his own equanimity. For little Jonny, it’s less problematic (paradoxically) if he is responsible for his dad’s inattention, as opposed to his dad himself choosing not to pay attention to him.

So often I meet clients who were not adequately listened to early in life, and the chronic suffering that accompanies such an absence is profound. As adults, such folks frequently continue struggling to be known, seeing every interaction through the lens of being adequately listened to or not, and never really achieving the feeling of being entirely known.

All that said, I offer parents the following advice: Listen to the details of your children’s lives, and don’t just listen, remember them… whether you’re interested or not. Furthermore, ask about those details, show them you know them. Parenting is a boots-on-the-ground endeavor. It’s not that hard to do really, and yet it’s one of the most powerful and generous things we can do for our children.

As a parent, I know how overwhelming it is these days to raise kids. Just the number of tasks we have to perform for our kids is staggering, without the rest of the caretaking. I also know that our children’s friends’ names change weekly, as do all the details. I also know what it’s like to work a full day and come home in the evening, cook dinner, and try to pay attention to the stories that kids tell.

As parents, our goal is not perfection; we’re works-in-progress, never completed. We’re going to mess up, confuse last week’s frenemy with today’s BFF. The point is that we try hard to show up, be present, listen well, and remember what we hear. So much of parenting is challenging and sometimes even impossible, but the act of listening and retaining the details, while it may take some effort, is not that hard. And particularly not when you know that the small details are portals to something infinitely larger.

If a child feels we’re present and experiences us as interested in and paying attention to their life, then even when we make mistakes, miss and forget things, it’s more likely the child will feel known and grow up to be an adult who feels sufficiently seen and heard, and thus not have to keep searching for it for a lifetime. It’s likely that child will also know that they’re important—they matter. There’s a saying: “God is in the details.” I believe love is in the details, and maybe it’s the same thing. Paying attention is love. Remembering that our child likes the crusts off the bread is a small way of saying I love you, I see you, I know you.

The post Parenting 101: Love Is In the Details appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Her husband didn’t miss a beat and accused her of being too sensitive, twisting his words to mean something they didn’t.  Mary, becoming even more furious, shouted that it wasn’t about him and him and more him, but rather about the fact that his words had hurt her. And it went on… her husband, deaf to her pain, accused her of judging him, to which she again responded that this was not about him, not about who was right or wrong, but rather about his being able to simply hear the fact that she was hurt.

Later that day, Mary called to tell me that her husband had approached her about an hour after the session and acknowledged that maybe his words could have come off as a bit insensitive.  While she was still brimming with anger and hurt, Mary had offered a simple thank you for your apology.  It was the first time he had owned any of his own behavior in twenty years of marriage.  And so, while his “apology” felt light on empathy, she made the choice to acknowledge his attempt at kindness and leave it at that, and not risk doing or saying anything that could discourage him from this new, positive behavior.

But the following week, Mary reported that her husband had become withdrawn, sullen and unfriendly.  He was playing the part of the one hurt and angry, while she had stepped into the role of the one trying to win back his affection and regain a sense of peace in the couple.

This was the standard trajectory of their disagreements.  Mary would be hurt by something her husband said or did; she would then bring it to his attention. Upon hearing what he perceived (only) as criticism, he would immediately attack her emotionally (which I had witnessed), and then withdraw into his role as the victim in the relationship. As a victim, he would become silent, non-responsive, and backhandedly unkind towards her over the next several days.  He would, in essence, fall into full-blown episodes of passive aggression.

Mary and I had both felt hopeful the previous week when her husband was able to take a baby step forward in acknowledging his own behavior and considering how it might have affected her.  And yet, it seemed that his old pattern of reverting to passive aggression after hearing he had done something she didn’t like, was still firmly intact.

Mary confessed that she was completely lost as to how to deal with her husband’s behavior.  She still wanted to stay in the marriage (and still loved her husband) but his passive aggression, which appeared each time she shared that he had upset her, felt unbearable and maddening.  She was utterly unable to find her ground or feel at ease when he was in this mode.  She couldn’t get okay until the couple was again okay.

Mary felt that she had always been stuck in the same place with regard to her husband’s passive aggression.  Unable to speak her truth, she felt that her only recourse was to wait for him to get over it after which time she could get back to her own center.  But of course, when he did get over it, she then was left to deal with her own anger and hurt.  Regardless, her well-being was dependent on his behavior, which she hated.

But while she felt stuck, I reminded Mary that something profound had in fact transformed within her.  When we first started working together, Mary would actually feel guilty when her husband punished her in this way.  She would identify with his projections of blame and try to make up for the hurt she imagined she had caused him.  She would play the perpetrator (having told him he hurt her after all) to his imagined victim; she stepped into his projections and took on the role of the bad one. I was happy to remind Mary that she no longer felt guilty in any way despite his playing the part of the one abused.  This was an enormous change in her and a huge relief.

While Mary could acknowledge that she was no longer suffering from this most insidious consequence of passive aggression (imagining oneself as deserving of the punishment), she was however still frustrated that she felt so anxious and de-stabilized, that she couldn’t get comfortable inside herself when her husband was acting out in this way.  No matter what she did for herself, how much mediation and awareness she practiced, or how she tried to separate herself from it, she still felt afraid and off-kilter living with his punishing behavior.  She was angry and disappointed with herself that she couldn’t get a grip on her experience.  She couldn’t will herself into well-being, but she strongly believed that she should be able to control her inner-experience regardless of what was going on in her environment.

Simultaneously, Mary was bottling a lot of rages about the fact that she couldn’t speak her truth to her husband.  In the past, when she had tried to call him out on his behavior, he had attacked her more directly and denied all responsibility and intention for his behavior.  Her trying to talk about it had always made things worse and so she felt resigned to acting as if nothing was happening.  Pretending he wasn’t affecting her was the way she had learned to protect herself.  The truth was, he was getting to her; she felt manipulated, controlled, and humiliated by his behavior. Enraged in fact.

However, this pretending to not notice, to save face if you will, was breaking down as a defense strategy; it felt impossible to maintain this level of falseness, and also, more and more like an abandonment of herself.  It was making her angrier and more anxious to know that he was (as she experienced it) cornering her into being inauthentic.  Mary felt stuck in this either-or scenario.  Either she confronted someone angry, reactive and not self-aware and faced the consequences of that scary choice, which also included acknowledging that he was hurting her (and therefore winning in her mind), or, she pretended nothing was happening, pretended to be Teflon to his aggression, and in the meanwhile, went on living in an anxious, disconnected and angry state of being.  Neither felt doable for much longer.

When I asked Mary what she wanted to scream from the rooftops, she said this (without hesitation): I did nothing f***ing wrong.  I’m the one who was hurt!  And now, I’m the one being punished.  What the f*ck!  But instead, she went on smiling, asking if he wanted milk with his coffee, and being the person she wished he could be with her.

The first thing I wanted Mary to know was that there was nothing wrong with feeling anxious and angry.  Living with someone acting out in this way is bloody awful.  Her expectation that she should be able to feel well in an environment that was so un-well was absurd.  She was not made of Teflon and as humans, we are relational and porous beings; we are affected and impacted by our environment.  So right out of the gate, I insisted Mary stop blaming herself for feeling anxious and off-center.  If she didn’t I’d think something was wrong!

With regard to her desire to stop pretending she wasn’t being affected, I asked her a simple question: What was it was like to be with her husband when he was treating her this way?  She erupted with tears upon hearing the question.  After some time, she was able to share that it felt painful, unfair, unkind, hurtful and just terrible in every way.  I asked her if she could stay with these feelings and maybe see if there was also any sense of I don’t want to be treated this way, or maybe just I don’t want this.  I asked her if she could step outside the whole narrative and history attached this situation and just feel the direct, bodily-felt experience of I don’t want to be treated this way.  And indeed, Mary could feel this, without any help from her mind.  It was right there in her heart and gut.  It was true now.

I then asked her if she could remember this I don’t want this, I don’t want to be treated like this feeling in the moments when she felt herself putting on the Teflon suit.  This refuge of self and self-compassion could then be home for Mary, a destination she could go instead of having to step outside herself and into the pretender.  Her self-caring truth was safe ground for her in the present moment, when the unkindness was happening, and this is what she had been missing.

What we need in these situations, when we’re really struggling, is self-compassion.  We don’t need more judgment or more strategies for figuring out the situation.  Yes, we need to address the other person and their behavior, and yes, we need to decide if and how we can live with this situation if it’s not going to change.  But in the moments of triage, when we’re really suffering, what we need most is our own loving kindness.  In offering Mary permission to let herself have the experience she was having and also, pointing her towards her own self-loving experience of I don’t want this, Mary was able to return home to herself and to her ground.  While the situation on the outside might have been the same, her inner world had profoundly transformed.  She had somewhere to go inside herself now, a refuge in which she could live in the truth in the midst of whatever was happening in her outer environment.

Furthermore, I knew that Mary’s body-knowing of I don’t want to be treated this way would prove to be a far more powerful guide and motivator than anything our minds could come up with.  I trust and know (from experience) that when we let things be as they are, feel what we’re actually feeling, without judgment, and simultaneously, allow ourselves to feel the heart’s authentic I don’t want this, the process itself reveals our next right step; we are led to know what we need to know.  How and why this happens remains for me the great mystery and magic that is this thing we call truth.

4 Tips for Dealing with Passive Aggression

1. Don’t fall into guilt.  The passive aggressive character will play the part of the victim.  Be mindful not to step into the role of the perpetrator, the bad one.  Remind yourself, you are not that.

2. Give yourself permission to have the experience you’re having, to be affected by their behavior.  When we’re around aggression (regardless of whether it’s direct or buried), we feel it.  Don’t judge yourself for having a response; it comes with being human!

3.  Tap into self-compassion.  Feel your heart’s genuine I don’t want to be treated this way.  Drop into this feeling on your own and when their behavior is unkind.  It’s your refuge; let it guide you in how to respond.

4.  Prayer.  Regardless of whether or not you have a higher power, ask the universe for help.  Silently or aloud, ask for guidance: You can say something like, I don’t know how to do this, show me how to be okay in this not okay, lead me to where I need to go.  No matter what you believe, the act of asking for help always helps.

(All names are changed and permission was granted for use of all material.)

The post How to Protect Yourself From Passive Aggression appeared first on Nancy Colier.

We often hear the idea that forgiveness is a gift, an act of kindness for ourselves, as the forgiver, that forgiveness is not for or even about the one we are forgiving.  It’s said that if forgiveness benefits the one we are forgiving, then that’s an added benefit, a gift, but not really the point. And yet, one of the obstacles we face in forgiving someone we perceive as having done us harm is not wishing them well, not seeing their benefitting from our forgiveness as a gift, and in fact, wanting them to suffer because of what they did.  The idea that the other person would somehow feel better as a result of our forgiveness is challenging and precisely what we want to prevent.  We imagine that not forgiving then is a form of punishment, a way of forcing the other to continue suffering, a way of being in control of a situation we didn’t feel we had control over.  At a primal level, we imagine that not forgiving is a way of taking care of our wound, proclaiming that our suffering exists, and still and forever matters.  Not forgiving, paradoxically, is a way of validating and honoring our own hurt.

So too, when the one we believe caused us harm is unwilling to take responsibility for their actions or insists that they did nothing wrong, we conclude that it’s even more necessary to withhold forgiveness.  Not forgiving then becomes a way of holding on to our rightness—remaining justified in our version of the truth, and the sense of having been treated unjustly.  Our non-forgiveness, as we imagine it, continues to prove the other wrong, which legitimizes our pain.  And indeed, it is the validity of our suffering which above all else we’re trying (often desperately) to confirm and have confirmed.

Furthermore, we think that forgiving the other somehow implies that we are now okay with what the other person did, and maybe even one step further—that what they did is okay on a grander scale. Our perception is that forgiveness announces that what happened is no longer relevant, significant, or alive.  It’s as if we’re allowing the past to be done, and thus to move out of mind and heart, which can feel intolerable.

Perhaps most troublesomely however, forgiveness, as we relate to it, is letting the other person “off the hook.”  We equate it with absolution—excusing the other from blame, guilt or responsibility for what they did.  We imagine it as symbolically setting them free from having to carry the burden of suffering that we believe they caused.

And so the question follows, What actually is forgiveness?  And its partner inquiry, What is forgiveness—not?

Forgiveness is Not Saying… 

-You were not hurt by what the other person did.

-Your pain is gone.

-You are back to being the person you were before it happened.

-Life can now pick up where you left off, you feel the way you did before, as if what happened never happened.

-You no longer believe the other person was responsible for causing harm.

-You excuse the other person’s behavior.

-You no longer view what happened as important.

-You share the blame for what happened.

-You can ever forget what happened.

___________________________________________________________________

The way we view forgiveness, in many ways, is flawed.  We say “forgive and forget,” but when we forgive we don’t forget.  Forgetting is by no means an inherent part of forgiving, nor should it be. So too, we refer to forgiveness as “burying the hatchet.” But when we bury the hatchet, the hatchet is still there, just under a bunch of dirt, or we could say, a bunch of denial.  Buried or not, we still need to find peace with what’s happened.  So too, we’re flippant about forgiveness, encouraging ourselves and others to “just let it go!”  But again, forgiveness is no small affair and we cannot rationalize, intellectualize, manipulate or bully ourselves into feeling it.

Forgiveness is different for every human being that lives it.  For some, it comes on suddenly, blessedly, without having to think about or try and create it.  For others, it’s a more deliberate process that requires effort and practice.  And for others, it’s a permanent destination and once discovered, never slips away.  But it can also be a feeling that comes and goes and ebbs and flows.  There’s no right way to find or live forgiveness; any path to and version of it will do.  And yet, despite the fact that there are infinite paths to and colors of forgiveness, certain key components exist in its sentiment, aspects of forgiveness that essential to its basic nature.

The post What is Forgiveness, Really? When “Letting it Go” and “Burying the Hatchet” Fail…What Works? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Two months ago, a dear friend, someone I consider family, asked to borrow money.  I’m working a lot these days (thankfully) and therefore could provide the help. My friend told me that she would pay me back by the end of February. Before writing her the check, I asked her three questions:

1. Could she, realistically, commit to refunding me by the end of February?

2. Could she repay it without my asking for it?

3. Would she inform me if she was not able to, again, without my having to ask?

Essentially, would she take ownership of the loan she was requesting? Her answers were yes, yes and yes.

Just to know, this is not the first time this friend has asked me for a loan. And, she has not, ever, paid me back when promised. But she does pay me back… eventually. And in case you’re wondering, yes, I do know the problem with doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  But here’s the thing, I didn’t expect a different result, and for many reasons not relevant to this post, I decided to lend her the money anyway.

On the last day of February, I awoke to radio silence: no text, email, phone call or other communication. My friend had not repaid the loan nor contacted me to let me know it wouldn’t happen.

In the past, when confronted with this same situation I would say nothing, at least not for several days, weeks or months. I would sit in resentment, anger, and make-believe okay-ness. Or, find some backhanded way to allude to the unpaid loan but without directly addressing it. Because of my intense fear of what I faced in expressing it—defensiveness, aggression, anger, and attack, a rage on why I was despicable and spiritually bankrupt for wanting and expecting to be re-payed, I would tuck away my truth, my experience of being unpaid, unappreciated, unacknowledged and uninformed. I would disappear, paradoxically, to save myself.

But on this recent occasion, I knew that no matter how frightening the situation, I was being presented with a great opportunity—to practice living from my truth and actually being on my own side. And indeed, I chose to take the opportunity the universe offered, or maybe more appropriately, the universe chose to take me, and lead me somewhere new. It was as if I were extending my hand into the handshake of forward-movement that grace provided.

On that very day, I asked my friend directly if she was going to pay me back and honor the promise she had made—to me.

As expected, she was not going to pay me back, not yet anyway. But the contents of this story are irrelevant. What matters is that I asked my friend for the loan back, on the day it was due. And, that at the moment when my friend would have ordinarily launched into her attack, I stayed still and faced her, eye to eye, to remind her of her promises, and ask her when exactly she would be able to take care of this loan I’d offered. I stood in my own shoes inside the actual moment.

I’m so grateful that my friend didn’t pay me back. It gave me the chance to change, the opportunity to speak up in the face of fear—to choose myself and the truth over the certain conflict it would create and even the possible loss of the relationship altogether. It gave me the chance to practice planting my feet in the truth and trusting that no matter how bumpy the ride, the solid ground of the truth is a place that I will be (and already am) okay.

I write a lot about playing on our own team, expressing and supporting the truth of our experience. In this particular relationship, I would have argued (until recently), that saying nothing and letting it go was taking my own side, because it resulted in keeping the relationship intact, which is what I really wanted and thought I needed.  But as time passed, I grew and my heart broke, for itself. It became clear that being on my side, in this way, also required abandoning myself, not speaking up for myself, and even joining my friend’s blaming of me.

Even though I knew, intellectually, that I had rights, nonetheless, after years of being blamed, something in my gut had lost its conviction that I had the right to ask for the money back because I didn’t need it financially. Or, that I had the right to be informed or upset that something I’d been promised was not going to happen.  Or, for that matter, the right to be able to trust my friend’s word. I was not on my own side in this relationship, not only because of my fear of the aggression that would come at me in response, but also because of my own handshake with blame, both hers and mine.

Taking the step that is joining our own side, finding the courage to face whatever comes when we speak our truth, is a profound shift in a human being.  It doesn’t happen in one fell swoop but rather in little moments and small challenges (that can feel gigantic). In order for this change to happen, we have to have had enough of the suffering that comes with not being on our own side, remaining silent, abandoning ourselves, or accepting blame for having a truth that another person doesn’t like. Our own heart has to break—for ourselves—for what we’ve actually been living, and believing. We have to stop self-blaming and forgive ourselves for needing what we need—for our truth. When this happens, it’s no longer possible to turn our back on ourselves, disappear, in order to keep the peace or status quo.

The moment comes when we say enough, not from our head, but from our deepest guts. We are done, not as an idea but as a profound knowledge.

This process can feel like an act of grace, like something far larger than just our personal self has intervened, offering us the strength and clarity to change how we’re living and who we are. At last, we find ourselves holding our own heart.

Furthermore, the courage to speak our truth involves a shift in allegiance or purpose. Our goal transforms from maintaining the situation/relationship—at all cost—to living from the truth—at all cost. But in order to find this courage, this reverence for and trust in the truth, we have to get okay with anyoutcome that might transpire, including the one we’ve most feared.  We must be willing to let it all burn up in the fire of the truth.

To do this, we have to release the belief that the only way to keep ourselves safe, keep our life proceeding as it needs to, is to control our experience and thereby create a certain outcome. It’s a process, really, of turning it over, truth’s will not my will, trusting (or at least being willing to try trusting) that the truth will take us where we need to go, even if it’s not where we think we should be going. At the deepest level, what I’m describing is an experience of awakening and surrender—knowing that we can’t keep abandoning ourselves in the service of taking care of ourselves.  And, that it’s safe to let go of the reins, that the truth will take care of us. And ultimately, that the truth is the only real safety we have.

The post When We Can No Longer Silence Our Truth appeared first on Nancy Colier.

For one thing, our self-care approach in this culture is made out of the wrong fabric, or if not the wrong fabric, one with the wrong texture.  We’re taught that self-care is an external process; it means getting a massage, making time to eat lunch sitting down, taking a walk, putting on our oxygen mask first.  All are valid self-caring actions which serve our wellbeing.  And yet, a far deeper and richer level of self-care exists, one which is not about externally doing for ourselves, but rather about being with ourselves, internally, in a particular kind of way…

Read more:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inviting-monkey-tea/201712/are-you-your-own-side

The post Are You On Your Own Side? How to Take Good Care of Yourself From the Inside Out appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Have you ever wondered why we’re so bad at self-care, why taking care of ourselves is so difficult for us human beings, and not simply inborn?  Every week, another book comes out on how to take better care of ourselves. So why are we not getting it?

For one thing, our self-care approach in this culture is made out of the wrong fabric, or if not the wrong fabric, one with the wrong texture.  We’re taught that self-care is an external process; it means getting a massage, making time to eat lunch sitting down, taking a walk, putting on our oxygen mask first.  All are valid self-caring actions which serve our wellbeing.  And yet, a far deeper and richer level of self-care exists, one which is not about externally doing for ourselves, but rather about being with ourselves, internally, in a particular kind of way.

The most effective self-care is not about what we do for ourselves but about how we are being with ourselves, the kind of company we keep inside, the flavor of the conversation we conduct with ourselves inside our own minds.  The self-care that profoundly changes our life for the better involves creating a relationship with ourselves that’s infused with kindness, support and curiosity. True self-care, as the word implies, is about genuinely caring about and for how we actually are.

This being variety of self-care, relating with ourselves in a friendly and supportive manner, is not only not encouraged in our culture, but often quite discouraged.  In fact, we are afraid of what would happen to us, who we would become, how we would be judged—if we were to value ourselves and suspend the judgment and impatience with which we relate to ourselves. So, what is it about developing a kind and compassionate relationship with ourselves that’s so threatening?

Am I Selfish?

While most of us would claim that we’re pretty good at caring for ourselves, when it comes to actually treating ourselves, internally, like someone we care about, now that feels selfish for sure. How selfish of me to spend time thinking about me, what I need or want, when so many people don’t have that luxury!  The fear of being judged (by oneself and others) as selfish is what keeps many people from treating themselves as they would a friend, or asking for kindness from others, even when they desperately need it. As one woman responded when I simply asked her how she was feeling that day, “It’s always about me me me!  Too many people have no one to ask them how they are!”

We’re afraid that if we care about ourselves, there won’t be any caring left for others, as if caring were a finite commodity. That is, if we take the time to pay attention to our own experience, we will become so self-involved that we will end up only interested in ourselves, so egotistical that we will stop wanting to ever be kind to anyone else.

In this belief system, our compassion for others is just a façade of sorts, something we do to seem like a good person.  We’re desperately afraid of who we would become, were we to relate to ourselves with friendliness, as if just a taste of our own sweetness would unleash the true narcissistic monster within.  The truth is that it is only when we feel well taken care of, when our feelings have been properly heard and cared for that we have adequate caring resources to offer others. When our well is full, we are our most self-less and can fully experience our goodness, our inherent desire to be of service.

The post Are You Friends With Yourself? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

And for some of us, all of the above is true; our holidays meet the expectations our culture sets for us.

But, I am struck by a very strange phenomenon. Every year, I witness firsthand the great chasm between the story we tell ourselves about the holiday season, the cultural mythology if you will, and the truth of the experience that so many people are having this time of year. The disparity between what we’re supposed to be living (and imagine everyone else is living) and what we’re actually living seems to grow wider with each generation of reindeers.

The truth is, many people do not have warm and loving families to go home to, relatives with whom they feel they genuinely belong. Many are not busy with exciting and interesting things to do throughout the season. And the fact that they aren’t having the holiday season they’re expected to have makes them feel even worse about themselves — less joyful and less happy.

There’s not just pressure to be having a great time and feeling loved at this time of year, but also to find (or even better, make) the perfect gift for everyone on our necessarily long list of friends and loved ones. We’re supposed to engineer presents that, while perhaps small in expense, are able to capture and celebrate the essence of each recipient. And finally, we’re supposed to enjoy the process of discovering that unique token to honor the profundity of our important relationships.

But once again, the reality of so many people’s experience, to which I am privy as a psychotherapist, simply doesn’t match these cultural expectations or the narrative we’ve constructed about this season. For so many, the feeling that we need to buy and create gifts for everyone in our life, all at once on an externally-determined date, is overwhelmingly stressful. And if we don’t want to give in the way we’re supposed to give, demonstrate our love and lovingness in the way we’re instructed to do so, we feel inadequate and ungrateful, ill-equipped to be a good person.

So, what is the best way through the season for those who have a holiday experience that differs from the one that our culture has scripted for us?

To begin with, we must throw out the “supposed-to-be” narrative that we’ve attached to this time of year and liberate ourselves from the cultural Kool-Aid in which we’ve been swimming. This narrative can then be replaced by a genuine curiosity for the truth: What is our actual experience of the holidays, not the experience we’re supposed to be having, but the one we are having? Secondly, we commit to being on our own side, to rejecting our inner bully, to stop blaming ourselves for our reality. Instead of blame, we offer ourselves compassion for where we are, and where we’ve gone off-script from the part we’re supposed to be playing in life.

In addition, when we get caught in imaginary stories about what life is supposed to look like, and in comparisons with the make-believe and real others who are having the holiday experience we’re not, we need to remind ourselves of what’s true. So many people are not living the holiday experience that our cultural mythology perpetuates, and many are afraid or ashamed to admit it. For most people, the holidays are a cocktail of emotions, some positive and some painful. It’s almost always both.

We need to stop believing the story of a sustained seasonal happiness, a wholeness and fulfillment that the holidays will offer, and realize that we’re not alone in our human experience. We need to stop telling ourselves that we’re a failure if we don’t meet the expectations that our consumption-oriented culture has set for us. Our human truth is far more complex and layered than the fairy tale we’re holding ourselves accountable to.

Furthermore, we need to take ourselves back to the basics. That is, to remember what this season is supposed to be about (and in this case “supposed to be” is a good thing). We need to reconnect with the values that are at the heart of this season, values that our maniacal consumerism and mandatory happiness have led us away from. We must reorient ourselves towards kindness, compassion, service, love, and simplicity — the qualities that this season’s teachings are all about.

We ask ourselves first, can I offer myself kindness and compassion during this time of year, without expectation and judgment? Can I form a relationship with my own experience (no matter what it is) that is friendly and loving? Can I promise myself my own kind company for this season and all seasons? And can I offer others kindness and compassion, and help them to know they’re not alone? Can I give others my full attention and listen without judgment? Can I be with others in a way that is loving? With these questions in mind and heart, we uncover a safe refuge from the stories we’re sold (and sell ourselves) about this time of year. With kindness for self and others as our center line, our guiding compass, we can be fundamentally okay, even if we’re not okay, no matter what season it may be.

The post How to Be Kind to Ourselves Through the Holiday Season appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Even if you don’t have a stack of books on your bedside table detailing the newest ways to fix yourself, you still might be. And it wouldn’t be your fault if you were. Our  conditioning from a very young age is to believe that we need to become better, new and improved versions of ourselves, even if at first we don’t know exactly how or why. But soon enough we have filled in the why’s with our shortcomings and failures, and self-help provides the how-to’s with unending methods for self-correction. Armed with our story of deficiencies firmly in place and a surplus of paths toward improvement, we set off on our life mission—namely, becoming someone else. And we are proud of, and celebrated for, this mission. Growing and evolving, becoming a better person—it all sounds so virtuous. Who would turn down such an opportunity?

And yet, growing and evolving are too often code words for what is really “fixing” or correcting our basic unworthiness. From the time we are young, we are infiltrated with the belief that the basic problem underlying all other problems is, put simply, us. We are what’s wrong. As adults, we search the globe for the right teacher; we attend seminars, buy books, hire coaches, consult shamans, and everything else under the sun—all in an effort to make ourselves into something good enough or maybe just enough.

But are we good enough for what or whom? Did you ever wonder?

If we boil it down, we keep fixing ourselves in the hopes that we can, finally, just be as we actually are. Once we’re fixed, enough, worthy—whether that means more compassionate, more disciplined, or whatever shape our more’s have formed into—then we’ll be entitled to feel what we feel. We can think what we think, experience what we experience—in essence, be who we are.

The fear that fuels our self-betterment mission is the belief that we are, at our core, notwhat we should be: We’re faulty, broken, unlovable, or some other version of not okay. To give ourselves permission to be who we are, to give up the mission for a better version of ourselves, would be tantamount to accepting our defectiveness and giving up all hope of fruition. And that, of course, would be unwise, naive, lazy, and a cop out. To suggest that we stop striving to be better than who we are is not just counterintuitive, but frightening and dangerous. Such a suggestion incites fear, scorn, anger, confusion, amusement, and an assumption of ignorance.

Self-help, while useful in certain ways, strengthens our core belief that we are inherently defective. Self-help starts with our defectiveness as its basic assumption, and then graciously offers to provide us with an unending stream of strategies by which to fix our defective core—which, once fixed, will award us the right to be who we are.

The problem is that the strategies keep us stuck in the cycle of fixing—and more important, in the belief that we are broken. If you notice, we never do become that person who is allowed to feel what we feel, and experience what we experience. We never do get permission to just be who and as we are.

This is where spirituality enters, and offers something radically different than self-help.

Most people think that spirituality and self-help are the same thing. They’re not. In fact, they are fundamentally different. We have tried to turn spirituality into self-help, another method for correcting ourselves, but to do so is to misunderstand and eradicate the most profound (and beneficial) teaching spirituality offers.

True spirituality is not about fixing ourselves spiritually or becoming spiritually better. Rather, it is about freedom from the belief of our unworthiness, and ultimately, about acceptance. Spirituality, practiced in its truest form, is about meeting who we really are, and allowing ourselves to experience life as we actually experience it.

In this way, it is more of an undoing than a doing.

In truth, we need to take the risk that it is to lean back into who we actually are. We need to do that before we even know that who we are will be enough, or even that there will be anything there to catch us. We need to relinquish our self-improvement plans before we believe that we have the right to stop improving. The whole thing—true spirituality—requires a kind of faith. It’s not faith in a system, story, or methodology, but a faith that trusts that we can’t think our way into what we truly want. No matter what path we practice, there comes a point where we have to let go of the reins; when we have to give up the quest to be good enough.

What happens when we stop trying to change ourselves into something better is nothing like what we imagine: We envision stepping off the self-help train and landing smack inside someone incomplete and unsatisfactory. And yet in truth, the simple (but not easy) act of inviting ourselves into our own life has the effect of placing us at the center of something beautiful and extraordinary. Giving ourselves permission to be as we are miraculously creates a kind of love for ourselves—not so much for our individual characteristics, but for our being. It’s not just for our being, but for the truth, whatever that is. It is as if whatever we find inside ourselves, whether we wish it were here or not, is okay and we are okay. Ultimately, we shift from trying to become lovable to being love itself. And amazingly, from this place, the not-enough person we thought we were has simply vanished, or more likely, never was.

Try it out for a moment—this moment. Just let yourself be. Give yourself permission to have the experience you are having, whatever it is, with no story about whether it is right or wrong, good or bad. Feel how you actually are. It’s that direct and that simple. No judgments allowed. It won’t make sense…it takes a leap…so leap.

The post When Is It Time to Stop Trying to Fix Ourselves? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

This is a meditation to help you remember where home is.  You are always here, in your heart, closer than a breath away.  Your heart is always awaiting your presence, awaiting your attention, awaiting you.  Know that your refuge is always available to and inside you.  Come home to you.

The post Meditation: Coming Home to Your Heart appeared first on Nancy Colier.