I recently witnessed, yet again, how utterly vital self-awareness and discernment are for the job of good parenting.  I’ve known my friend Dan (all names are changed) for a good long time.  Because he’s been in my life for decades, I’ve also known his kids since they were born and have my own relationship with his son and daughter, who are now teenagers.

On a recent walk, Dan was raging to me about his teenage daughter Kim and an incident that had just occurred between them. Earlier that morning Kim had been taking photos and Dan, who knows a lot about photography, had offered Kim a suggestion for how to frame her photos in a more rich and interesting way.  Kim, who is 15, had gotten irritated with her father and rejected his suggestions, telling him to leave her alone so she could take her own photographs the way she wanted to.

Dan was very angry because, according to him, Kim rejected everything he offered because she didn’t respect him.  In his narrative, his daughter didn’t think that he was someone who knew anything of value.  She ignored his suggestions because she didn’t think he was someone whose opinion mattered.

I listened to my friend with a lot of mixed feelings.  I knew that this narrative about not being valued for what he offered had been Dan’s experience since I knew him.  I was aware that my friend had struggled with feeling invisible for his entire life, and that he had always felt unseen, unappreciated, and unvalidated in his work.  I knew that this was Dan’s “stuff” being triggered by his daughter’s healthy need to make her own choices and create in her own way.  I felt sad too for my friend and his desire to have his daughter appreciate him and be valued for all that he did know.

As Dan expressed his anger to me, I also had in my mind conversations I had exchanged with his daughter.  She had shared with me how controlled she felt by her father, how he never could let her do anything her way and had to constantly teach her something and show her what he knew.  She had expressed great frustration that her father was constantly trying to improve her and could never just be with her as she was or let her be who she was.  She felt that she was relentlessly being fed the message that she wasn’t good enough.  She had to do everything better–be better.

Simultaneously, because Kim is an emotionally savvy young woman, she was able to see that when she took suggestions from her father, she felt like the whole experience became about him, like she was being held responsible for making her dad feel valued, important and seen.  She naturally then resisted taking his suggestions because she felt like to do so kidnapped her experience and turned it into a “Look what dad can offer you… see what a valuable person/parent dad is,” all of which she (understandably) wanted nothing to do with.

I knew all this as Dan raged on about Kim’s crimes and how she was deliberately rejecting his wisdom and expertise.  When he got to the end of his rant and wanted me to validate his feelings, I was in a bit of a pickle.  But because he is a dear friend, and because I love Kim too, I felt required to speak a bit about what I saw happening.  And so I empathized with him about his frustration and anger.  I tried to make space for the feelings of invisibility and dismissal that he was expressing.  And then I offered too, a possible other explanation for why Kim might not want his photography advice, one that might lessen the sting, but at the cost of contradicting his storyline.

I reminded my friend that Kim was 15 and needed to learn, but also to be allowed to figure things out for herself and that it was terrific she was playing around with the camera at all.  And I told him that I knew, for sure, that she did not think he was a piece of crap, as he had decided was the case, but rather that she was trying to become a person in her own right and sometimes his suggestions felt like they worked against that for her.  I tried to be gentle with him and decided to leave out the age-old quality of his storyline, how he had been struggling with these feelings long before Kim appeared on the scene with her camera.  I also left out my belief that he was accusing his daughter of intentions that didn’t belong to her.  I knew Dan was raw and that feeling unvalued was his core wound, and so I simply attempted to add another possible experience, truth, or frame (Kim’s) into his storyline, to bring some air into his airless narrative, to break up the solidness and certainty of the story he had constructed around his daughter.

The truth was I felt compassion for both Dan and his daughter, and I wasn’t sure how to help the situation other than to hold up all the truths that coexisted—that meant Dan’s feelings of invisibility, his wish to not only be valued but also teach his daughter where he could (which was a healthy desire), and Kim’s need to be valued as she was, without improvement, and her need to not have to continually validate her dad for his knowledge, to make up for her dad not having been seen by the world.  But what I couldn’t sit by and allow was my friend’s assignment of blame to his daughter for what was his own wound; I couldn’t simply watch as he denied his own “stuff” and placed it on her.  The experience with Kim had indeed triggered his core wound, yes, but not because she intended to do so.  He was making something that had nothing to do with him about him, collapsing his personal experience with a larger truth, which was not okay.

When I shared Kim’s experience with Dan, an experience that was radically different than the one he had assigned her in his narrative, my fantasy was that he would suddenly feel a wave of fatherly compassion for his daughter, that he would be able to step out of his own ego story, ego defense, and feel empathy for his daughter’s experience of never feeling enough, of always having to be better (so that dad could feel valuable and visible).  But nowhere in me did I really think that scenario would happen, and indeed it didn’t.  My friend stayed loyal to his ego defenses, stuck with his narrative, and exploded at me.  By offering a different truth, namely his daughter’s, I had asked him to look at his own “stuff,” his history and what he was assuming to be truth, and also, perhaps, to open his heart to his daughter’s actual experience rather than the one he was constructing for her.  This, apparently, was not what he was wanting or needing and we decided to convene again when he was calmer.

But all that said, it got me thinking again about how important it is for us as parents to separate out the “stuff” belongs to us, from our histories, and what is actually true for our kids.  What our experience is and what their experience is, letting them co-exist with dignity, as different as they usually are.  We’ve all been Dan at one time or another, and, when we were younger, we’ve all been Kim and had our parents’ stuff hurled onto us.  I grew up in a home that sometimes felt like a house of mirrors, where you were rarely in a conversation that included your actual truth, but rather were related to through the projections of others, always saddled with something you had been assigned (positive or negative) that was part of someone else’s story.  And so, when my friend Dan attached an intention to his daughter that belonged to his story and was not her truth, I felt my own wounding arise.

Often as parents, we are triggered by something our child says or does. If we don’t catch it in the moment or shortly after, if we don’t own our “stuff” as ours and keep it safely away from our kids, we end up in a distorted and confusing relationship with our children, one that denies them the right to have their own truth seen and honored, their own intentions validated, and denies us the possibility of a fresh and truthful relationship with our children.

When we collapse our stuff and their motives, we end up believing that our kids are responsible for re-wounding us in the way that our narrative dictates, when in fact we re-wound ourselves by turning our subjective experience into an objective truth with all the accompanying perpetrators.

Instead, when we are triggered, we can pause, feel the triggered-ness, the wound, and take the experience as an opportunity to bring ourselves compassion.  Our kids, if we can stay awake and aware, offer us the gift that is an opportunity to awaken, pay attention and bring kindness to our own pain.  They show us what’s buried in us; let us not, in our ignorance and defensiveness, bury our kids back in with our pain.

Because we have a subjective experience does not mean it is an objective, capital t Truth.  We can have a very real and strong experience, but that does not mean that the other person is doing that to or at us.  Their actions trigger something in us, but their experience, what’s happening in and for them, is undoubtedly very different than the experience we are having.  And both experiences are true and valid.

Our kids are trying to become people, to individuate and discover who they are.  That’s tough enough without having to figure out, pick through, unstick from, and climb their way out of our storylines.  Our kids awaken in us what we’ve lived, which includes our suffering.  We can bow to our kids, as the messengers of our own pain; they bring it, some of which we might not have even known was there, but they bring it so we can heal from it.

As parents, it’s our responsibility to separate what belongs to us from our own childhoods and adult lives and not intermingle that with our children’s truth.  Their truth belongs to them just as our truth belongs to us.  And all such truths can, with awareness, co-exist in harmony.  Our greatest responsibility as parents, as important as showing up for all the softball games and dance recitals, is our own self-awareness and the willingness to take responsibility for our own “stuff,” to feel what arises without turning it into a story about anyone else.  And in so doing, we offer our kids the dignity of deciding and discovering their own truth and having it heard, without our wounded and wounding intrusions.

The post How to Not Burden Our Kids With Our Own Emotional Stuff appeared first on Nancy Colier.

This is by no means a criticism of my friend’s daughter (or anyone else). What was concerning, at least to me, was that in between being photographed and posting, my friend’s daughter had no interest in the artwork, a fact which didn’t seem to matter or have anything to do with wanting to post herself as someone enjoying the experience.  The only time that she looked at the artwork in fact was when we were photographing her looking at it, and even then, she was mostly gazing in the direction of the art, with a soft focus that didn’t seem to take in the art itself.  When I asked her why she wanted to put up pics of herself in the museum since she pretty clearly didn’t want to or like being there, she smiled, shrugged her shoulders, and asked me to take another photo of her.

Now when I was her age, I had no interest in going to museums either, and when I did get dragged there, I couldn’t wait to get out of the building.  Having no interest in art at her age (and any age) is completely normal and not disturbing in the least.  But what is disturbing is how much of a young person’s energy these days goes into creating an image of the life they’re living and the character they “are” in that life.  While creating a self-image has always been a big part of growing up and figuring out our identity, social media seems to have changed the rules of the game.  Social media has not just intensified the pressure and possibility to create a self-generated self-image, but also distorted the process by which we become who we are.  Young people now seem to be creating an image of who they are in place of becoming who they are, posting their life rather than living it. The effort that goes into creating an identity and getting it noticed or “followed” has replaced the effort of actually getting interested in the life that they are posting.

Social media has turned life and its experiences into an exercise in narcissism.  No matter what the experience is actually about, it becomes about you, the person who is living it.  A concert is not about the music, a restaurant not about the food, a sporting event not about the sport, a funeral not about the loss; it’s all about you, the doer, and what the event says about you.  Life experiences are not lived directly so much as they are used as opportunities for announcing what kind of person you are.  Life now is a product through which to promote your image, but (and here’s where it gets really strange) with little connection to whether that screen image accurately reflects the inside you.

Our relationship with social media: the fact that posting where we are and what we’re doing is often more important than being where we are or doing what we’re doing, is one of the most disturbing ways that we are changing in the wake of technology and its offspring.  Our experience has meaning only in the way it says something about us–how it helps create our self-image.  As a result, we feel more separate and disconnected from our life; meaning feels harder to find.  The more we use life to create an identity, the more cut off from life we feel. Instead of being part of it, in the flow of life, we feel as if we have to keep generating new life material, more life stuff, which will announce, establish us, and ultimately, prove our existence.  In the meanwhile, the chasm between us and life grows wider and wider.

An invitation: the next time you are inclined to post your story and all that goes with it, pause for a moment and experience where you are, feel what it feels like to be live what you’re living, sensing what you’re sensing, without doing anything with it—without using life for your benefit, or for anything at all.  Just live, without the narrative.  While it may feel like this exercise could pose a threat to your identity, cause you to miss an opportunity to establish your value, in fact, the benefit it can offer to your true self, to that within you that longs to be part of and not separate from life, will far outweigh any loss incurred.  But don’t take my word for it, try it out for yourself… I look forward to your reports from the field.

The post When “Posting” Your Life is More Important Than Living It appeared first on Nancy Colier.

The post Is Technology Disempowering Us? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

What was clear was that Kate was not only living the experience of fullness that day, but also the experience of what that fullness meant about who she was as a person. It was in that secondary experience, the story about herself, that the unbearable suffering was housed. It wasn’t the Moo goo gai pan in her belly that kept her from being able to be in the present moment, but rather the “me” story her mind had crafted out of the previous evening’s experience, which in fact made her present moment intolerable.

In a similar event, while out walking together, my friend stubbed her toe. I could see from her reaction that she was in real physical pain. But as I soon also witnessed, the suffering that the stubbing caused was not in her toe or foot—the real suffering was in her mind—in the story that she told herself about herself, as a result of what had happened to her toe. In the minutes that followed the stubbing, I watched as my friend transitioned from a happy, confident, and calm woman to a clumsy, inattentive and anxious little girl, the person that her father had berated and in whom he had been chronically and un-correctably disappointed. I watched as she re-dressed herself in an old identity, which included being a person who was perpetually distracted and to blame for not being able to improve her life. The pathways that connected the pain in her toe to the suffering in her mind moved with lighting-speed and were mighty powerful.

Back in my office with Kate, I asked if she could, just for a moment, experience the physical phenomenon that made up what she was calling her fatness and her disgustingness. Quite simply, what it felt like in her body at that exact moment, twelve hours after having eaten the last bite of food. At first she reported a series of emotions; she felt icky, leaky, fleshy, gross, a mess, and more. But all of her descriptions related to how she felt about herself, about who she was. Her body’s experience was nowhere in her description or awareness. I could only hear her mind raging on about how it felt about her, what it had decided about her worth and value—as a result of what she had eaten. When I brought Kate’s attention to this distinction, she immediately switched to a new chapter in the story about herself, specifically, her own psychological problems. At that point, a host of interpretations about herself and why she had eaten the food came tumbling out of her mouth; ideas about her parents, her psychological trauma, and her need to escape the moment into the anesthesia of food. Her body had still not been invited into the dialogue.

It took many attempts, but when Kate was finally able to drop out of her mind and down into her body, this is what she found: a tightness or presence at the waistband in her pants, a kind of achiness in her knees and pelvis, and a mild sense of fuzziness in her head. When the body’s present moment was allowed, such was the extent of her actual experience of the Moo goo gai pan and the whole event. A bit of tightness at the waistband, an achiness in knees and pelvis, and mild head fuzziness. When Kate was able to experience the moment directly, having untethered it from what it said about her and her identity, she felt profound relief. She even started to laugh, and suddenly she was entirely present in the room, the very same room she was going to have to leave just minutes before.

In that moment, stripped of its “me” story, the bloatedness (as she called it) in her body could just be what it was, a set of mild, completely bearable sensations. She realized that the problem, the suffering, had never been the sensations or the food in her belly. In fact, the sensations themselves had never even been experienced, never made it past the mind’s gate and into awareness. At last her experience could simply be what it was, which amazingly, was virtually nothing. Lightness entered the room, and the day once again belonged to Kate. Having unhitched her me-story from the present moment, disrobed her experience into its sensorial nakedness, Kate was delivered back into her life.

In the Advaita tradition (a part of Hinduism) there is a remarkable expression. It says this: you are not experiencing suffering, you are suffering your experience. Experience arises but how we want to be in relationship with that experience is up to us. An experience always appears as sensation in the body; it may be unpleasant or not, but either way it need not become an experience of profound suffering. Our experience becomes suffering when we give it to our mind to run with, and to use as material in its narrative about who we are and how we’re doing in our life.

As an experiment, try unhitching your experience from what the experience says about you. Try experiencing the present moment directly, as sensation. Try refraining from using the moments of your life as material with which to construct your “me” story. Try experiencing your life instead of using your life to define yourself. It turns out, not taking your life so personally can bring great relief and even give you back your life!

The post Dropping Your “Me” Story: How to Stop Taking Your Life So Personally appeared first on Nancy Colier.

My 10-year-old was invited to a party this weekend, a camp reunion sleepover, given by one of her closest friends. Unfortunately, this same weekend, she has an event that she can’t and doesn’t want to miss, a competition for which she has trained diligently and for many months. The other little girl is very angry with my daughter and has accused her of being a bad friend and bad person because she won’t give up her event in order to attend the party. She wanted to know why my daughter was doing this to her and purposely spoiling her event.

While it is age-appropriate maybe for 10-year-olds to feel and behave this way, many “grown ups” behave in a similar fashion, which is not age appropriate. I was recently at a party with a friend. Knowing that I had to get up early for something important the next day, I left the gathering by midnight. My friend, a woman in her 40s, was furious that I could do that to her. She was having a good time, had met a man she was interested in, and didn’t want to stay there on her own. She felt that my leaving was unkind, and that I should have stayed longer as a form of support for her. In another example, some years ago, after sitting for a whole day with an ill friend, I decided to go for a drive, to spend some time with myself, which I desperately needed. To this day, my friend tells me that I left her in her time of need, and wasn’t willing to stay with her unconditionally. The fact that I also needed some self-care was and still is experienced as abandonment and an aggression against her. The 10 hours spent with her that day, as far as her internal world is concerned, never existed.

It is very difficult for some people to see anything as happening separate from and not in relation to them. People who suffer with this view of the world experience everything as a reflection and commentary on who they are, an abandonment or affirmation of themselves. Whatever it is you do, even those things that have nothing whatsoever to do with them, somehow, are either for or against them. Such people simply can’t see anything as not being tethered to them. Sometimes it can be quite baffling to even figure out how your action could possibly be related to them, for or against, but through this kind of lens, everything you do is indeed about them, even when it makes absolutely no logical sense. This form of narcissism is in fact quite prevalent in our culture, and very challenging to know how to handle in close relationships.

A painful aspect of being in relationship with this kind of person is that since nothing can be about you and your life, you end up feeling not seen and not known, invisible, except as an object that they use to make themselves feel better or worse. The experience is that you don’t really exist at all, and simultaneously, that you are continually invalidated, not permitted to be a separate being who might actually have her own experience. Why you might make a particular choice, for yourself, is viewed not only as untrue and absurd, but yet another aggression — against them — that you could dare to think that you have your own internal world, and separate life. Imagine! How could your choices possibly be about you when you don’t really exist?

It is nearly impossible to feel truly cared for when the other is not interested in knowing you in any way other than how you make them feel — about them. You might feel liked when your behavior is interpreted as favorable to their self-worth, but this is not the same thing as feeling genuine friendship or love. In relationship with this kind of narcissism, it can feel like your life and very self are kidnapped — dis-allowed by the other. In truth, your very existence separate from them, is the ultimate betrayal, and what they seek to obliterate. Related to as an object that needs to be either controlled or obliterated, love is a difficult and unlikely endeavor. As a result of all this, such relationships are fraught with profound loneliness, grief and raging frustration as you fight desperately to be visible and known for who you — genuinely — are.

Some time ago, I gave a memorial for a close family member. As I was shopping for cookies for the gathering, I reached for the vanillas because my kids enjoy them. Immediately, my mind shot back with the thought that I was choosing vanilla to punish this relative, the one who had died, since she would have chosen chocolate. I waved hello to my old thought tape and bought the vanillas.

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of a relationship with this kind of narcissist is that you come to experience your own life as actually being about the other. You lose touch with your own intentions, as if their narcissistic lens, pointed at you, gradually corrupts even your knowing your own truth, and simultaneously, steals the dignity that comes with that knowing. You not only start changing your behavior, morphing yourself into a deformed system, refraining from doing things that (while not about them) they will experience as about them, but also, you stop believing in your own experience and intention. The fact that your actions are for and about you, not them, stops being completely clear. You begin to doubt what is really true for you, as you are no longer quite connected to your own truth. In this way, their narcissism acts as a toxin to your connection to self. You may defend that what you are doing is about you and not them, but some part of you stops believing this fully, and the strength behind this knowing is lost. While you may go on fighting to be seen accurately and truthfully, the other has taken away your ability to own and believe this accurate and truthful version of yourself. Your truth (being true) comes to depend on their believing it — being able to prove it to them. Even the struggle for you, they eventually own.

Most important in this sort of relationship is to stay in touch with your own intentions. Rather than defending yourself, proving your own truth (as if you should have to), be that separate entity that they refuse to acknowledge. A simple, “I am sorry that you are experiencing what is about me — to be about you,” can suffice. Chances are you are not going to get this other person to see you clearly, without an umbilical cord between you. Let the attempt to be seen accurately go, if at all possible. The more you try to be known, the more you threaten your own connection to self. We all have the right to be the keepers of our truth and no one has the right to determine or corrupt our intentions, to turn our being into an extension of them. With each moment that you are misunderstood and your truth distorted, spend two moments confirming and marinating in what is so for you, your actual truth, uncorrupted. And think too, carefully, about whether you want to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to or have the capacity to genuinely know you, as a being unto yourself. Ask yourself if this kind of relationship strengthens your sense of dignity and self-worth, encourages your authentic nature, makes you feel known, understood, loved, or just plain good about yourself. If the answer is no, then what is the best choice for YOU, the choice that is in line with your wellbeing? Sometimes the only way to honor your separateness is to make the choice to separate.

The post How to Love a Narcissist Without Losing Yourself appeared first on Nancy Colier.

The point of mindfulness, ultimately, is to get free from the tyranny of ego mind, to unhook our being and our identity from the unstable mind. The goal is to be able to see what is happening inside ourselves, without ownership, judgment or reaction. And simultaneously, to lose our great belief in and reverence for the productions of our mind. When we are identified with mind, that is, believe that we are only our mind, we are constantly being dragged around by it, having to respond to and interact with each thought and feeling it generates, regardless of whether it is interesting, important or serves us in any way. Mindfulness gives us a seat from which to watch the movements of mind, its carnival of cravings, complaints and opinions. Without the need to react to everything the mind suggests, we are then free to choose where to place our attention, and consequently, how to live our life. Mindfulness allows us to use mind for the incredible tool that it is, but without needing to be the mind. Mindfulness helps us to discover the awareness to which our mind’s play appears. I think even our minds would agree to such an opportunity, at least as a concept.

While any toe dipped in the practice of awareness is beneficial, there is a trend in mindfulness, a habit if you will, which can interfere with and obstruct the full power of the practice. Without awareness of this habit, we can spend many years lost and asleep in yet another ego prison, another trap of the mind, and as a result miss out on the real gifts of mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is trendy; it’s hip. This is good news. But we must be careful that like other trends, this one does not get swallowed up in the next stream of orange, girls, yoga, tats and the like. With mindfulness on the radar, let’s not miss the chance to change what this powerful practice can change, namely, who and how we are.

The dangerous habit is this: The mindful witness itself is becoming yet another form of ego, a new identity, a new somebody that we wear with pride. That said, we must be mindful that the one who is becoming aware of the mind is not also being kidnapped by the mind. Take the following scenario… You become aware (through your mindfulness practice) that certain thoughts are arising within you, let’s say worry thoughts. This is a good step; there is a little space between you and your mind and you are witnessing what your mind is up to. But don’t rest yet… and don’t congratulate yourself yet either. What you may not be aware of is that the witness who noticed those worried thoughts has her own ideas about what she observed. For example, she may not like that such thoughts are arising inside you. She may judge and reject you as the person responsible for thinking such worried thoughts. Or, perhaps, she may feel pride and arrogance at being able to notice such thoughts, She may identify you as someone spiritual whose “got” awareness practice down. In either case, the mindful witness here is not a mindful witness at all, but rather ego mind hiding inside a new costume. This presence masquerading as mindful witness is not actually willing to observe mind as separate and autonomous from you, with its own random happenings-inside your awareness. This mind in a costume of mindfulness blames or congratulates you for its own output, and in so doing, surreptitiously merges you again with itself. The witness in this case is not an impartial witness, not true awareness, not a path to freedom. Rather, this witness is just a sub-structure of the very ego mind you are trying to observe, and liberate from. This witness will lead you down the same rabbit hole of mind and waste your time in the process, creating a whole new spiritual ego. The mind in its cleverness puts itself everywhere. It just does this; it is not your failing but rather something else to simply notice.

In our practices to observe the ego mind, we must remember and be ever conscious of the mind’s sheer brilliance and fierce survival skills. It doesn’t want to be watched. The ego mind will camouflage itself in infinite hiding places in an effort to avoid direct light upon it. It will mask itself as awareness, compassion, spirituality, wisdom and all the best places, all in order to keep from being seen, from becoming the object and no longer the subject. The mind will take on whatever traits it needs to in order to avoid a status demotion from our identity and the captain of the self-ship to just a worker bee, a tool that awareness can use when needed. Ego mind will take up residence in any location that is not watched vigilantly. So be vigilant. Don’t lose the chance that mindfulness practice offers, don’t go back to sleep inside another incarnation of mind itself.

In order to prevent the mind from posing inside the mindful witness, ask yourself a simple question again and again… and again. With each observation, each witnessing of something happening inside you, a thought, feeling or sensation, ask the following: Is there a feeling about the feeling, a thought about the thought? Observe this. And furthermore, Who or what identity is here now? Who is there witnessing what is being witnessed now? After some practice this way, you may realize that the mind is a bit like one of those Russian dolls, each one inside another. Behind each thought sits another thought, a thought about the thought, and another, and another, each a little harder perhaps to catch sight of. Behind each identity sits another identity, and another… and another. The place where they no longer come, where what is observed is no longer observed by an ego someone or something, when we are just eyes seeing, without reaction, without good or bad… this is the place towards which we practice. This is what warrants the buzz at the water cooler.
Mindfulness is an ancient and powerful practice and well deserving of all the attention it is receiving of late. Careful though, mindfulness is more than a social media trend, more that just an “About” entry on a Facebook page. True mindfulness is a challenge that requires the fierceness of an awareness warrior, but it is a challenge that is well worth the effort. Mindfulness practice requires not only becoming aware of what the mind is saying at any moment, but also of how that very same mind seeks to inhabit the ears of the one who listens. Simply put, don’t take your eyes or ears off your mind, not even for a moment—not even if it says it’s napping, it isn’t. When you become aware of the way the mind sneaks its way behind the eyes of the witness, and steals the seat of the one who is observing, then, you are indeed free—free to watch and experience yourself and your life radically change. This is mindfulness in its fullness.

Copyright 2014 Nancy Colier

The post Has Your Ego Slipped Inside Your Witness? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

While it is age appropriate maybe for 10-year-olds to feel and behave this way, many “grown-ups” behave in a similar fashion, which is not age appropriate. I was recently at a party with a friend. Knowing that I had to get up early for something important the next day, I left the gathering by midnight. My friend, a woman in her 40s, was furious that I could do that to her. She was having a good time, had met a man she was interested in, and didn’t want to stay there on her own. She felt that my leaving was unkind, and that I should have stayed longer as a form of support for her. In another example, some years ago, after sitting for a whole day with an ill friend, I decided to go for a drive, to spend some time with myself, which I desperately needed. To this day, my friend tells me that I left her in her time of need, and wasn’t willing to stay with her unconditionally. The fact that I also needed some self-care, was and still is experienced as abandonment and an aggression against her. The 10 hours spent with her that day, as far as her internal world is concerned, never existed.

It is very difficult for some people to see anything as happening separate from and not in relation to them. People who suffer with this view of the world experience everything as a reflection and commentary on who they are, an abandonment or affirmation of themselves. They feel entitled to assign an intention to your actions, that is based solely on their experience of it. Whatever it is you do, even those things that have nothing whatsoever to do with them, somehow, are either for or against them. Such people simply can’t see anything as not being tethered to them. Sometimes it can be quite baffling to even figure out how your action could possibly be related to them, for or against, but through this kind of lens, everything you do is indeed about them, even when it makes absolutely no logical sense. This form of narcissism is in fact quite prevalent in our culture, and very challenging to know how to handle in close relationships.
A painful aspect of being in relationship with this kind of person is that since nothing can be about you and your life, you end up feeling not seen and not known, invisibilized, except as an object that they use to make themselves feel better or worse. The experience is that you don’t really exist at all, and simultaneously, that you are continually invalidated, not permitted to be a separate being who might actually have her own experience. Why you might make a particular choice, for yourself, is viewed not only as untrue and absurd, but yet another aggression—against them—that you could dare to think that you have your own internal world, and separate life. Imagine! How could your choices possibly be about you when you don’t really exist?

It is nearly impossible to feel truly cared for when the other is not interested in knowing you in any way other than how you make them feel—about them. You might feel liked when your behavior is interpreted as favorable to their self-worth, but this is not the same thing as feeling genuine friendship or love. In relationship with this kind of narcissism, it can feel like your life and very self are kidnapped—dis-allowed by the other. In truth, your very existence separate from them, is the ultimate betrayal, and what they seek to obliterate. Related to as an object that needs to be either controlled or obliterated, love is a difficult and unlikely endeavor. As a result of all this, such relationships are fraught with profound loneliness, grief and raging frustration as you fight desperately to be visible and known for who you—genuinely—are.

Some time ago, I gave a memorial for a close family member. As I was shopping for cookies for the gathering, I reached for the vanillas because my kids enjoy them. Immediately, my mind shot back with the question, why was I punishing her, the relative who had died, since she would most certainly would have wanted chocolate. I waved hello to my old thought tape and bought the vanillas.

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of a relationship with this kind of narcissist is that you come to experience your own life as actually being about the other. You lose touch with your own intentions, as if their narcissistic lens, pointed at you, gradually corrupts even your knowing your own truth, and simultaneously, steals the dignity that comes with that knowing. You not only start changing your behavior, morphing yourself into a deformed system, refraining from doing things that (while not about them) they will experience as about them, but also, you stop believing in your own experience and intention. The fact that your actions are for and about you, not them, stops being completely clear. You begin to doubt what is really true for you, as you are no longer quite connected to your own truth. In this way, their narcissism acts as a toxin to your connection to self. You may defend that what you are doing is about you and not them, but some part of you stops believing this fully, and the strength behind this knowing is lost. While you may go on fighting to be seen accurately and truthfully, the other has taken away your ability to own and believe this accurate and truthful version of yourself. Your truth (being true) comes to depend on their believing it—being able to prove it to them. Even the struggle for you, they eventually own.

Most important in this sort of relationship is to stay in touch with your own intentions. Rather than defending yourself, proving your own truth (as if you should have to), be that separate entity that they refuse to acknowledge. A simple “I am sorry that you are experiencing what is about me—to be about you” can suffice. Chances are you are not going to get this other person to see you clearly, without an umbilical cord between you. Let the attempt to be seen accurately go, if at all possible. The more you try to be known, the more you threaten your own connection to self. We all have the right to be the keepers of our truth and no one has the right to determine or corrupt our intentions, to turn our being into an extension of them. With each moment that you are misunderstood and your truth distorted, spend two moments confirming and marinating in what is so for you, your actual truth, uncorrupted. And think too, carefully, about whether you want to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to or have the capacity to genuinely know you, as a being unto yourself. Ask yourself if this kind of relationship strengthens your sense of dignity and self-worth, encourages your authentic nature, makes you feel known, understood, loved, or just plain good about yourself. If the answer is no, then what is the best choice for YOU, the choice that is in line with your wellbeing? Sometimes the only way to honor your separateness is to make the choice to separate.

The post Loving A Narcissist Without Losing Yourself appeared first on Nancy Colier.

And now… the event. I was entering my gym and realized that I had my iPhone, but had forgotten my headphones, which meant that I would not be able to listen to music during my run. Not a disaster by any means, but nonetheless, an annoyance. Toying with whether to return home (a mile away) or workout to the thumping (and agitating) soundtrack of the gym floor, I decided to ask the 30-something woman at the desk if there were any headphones that had been left in the lost and found, that (in an ideal world) I might borrow for an hour. She checked but to no avail. And then she did the thing I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. She offered to lend me her personal headphones. “I won’t need them over the next hour,” she said with a friendliness that felt unfamiliar and dare I say, shocking. Within a minute we were heading back to her office so she could fetch her headphones out of her purse. “If I’m not here when you’re done, just drop them back on my desk,” she called back to me as she headed back to her post up front.

That’s it, the whole event. It was that small, and yet it signifies something so big about who we are as a culture and how we are changing. My strong response to her simple kindness was what tipped me off to the importance of this anachronistic event. As we were walking back to her office together, I found myself thanking her profusely, over and over again, as if she were offering me a kidney. I felt such a deep sense of gratitude and surprise as a result of her action, and found myself thinking about whether I should buy her flowers, an iced latte, a new-fangled something… something to honor her out-of-the-ordinary gesture. The fact is, her action, as simple as it was, is not an action that happens often, at least not any more.

What is so amazing about what this woman did is that she took personal responsibility for a situation. She became personally involved. She thought about what she personally could do to solve the problem that was in front of her. She did not need to get one hundred other people involved in her decision. She did not suggest I register with their web site to find out more about what to do in the case of missing headphones. She did not assume a passive (and self-protective) attitude of non-involvement. She did not invoke the corporate-speak or reference the company’s policy on missing headphones. She did not defer my problem to someone else, or claim that she did not have the authority to make such decisions. She did not refuse involvement for fear that I would sue her in the event that her headphones got wrapped around my neck and choked me. She did not make me fill out a thousand forms or leave a deposit and a blood sample. And finally, she did not tell me there was nothing she could do. She simply got up out of her chair and went and got her own headphones, without thinking twice.

Oddly, I found myself feeling protective and worried about whether she would get into trouble for doing what she did. I have even chosen not to mention her name here because of my fear that she will be fired for having broken some corporate rule that forbids employees from getting personally involved in a member’s life. As crazy as I think it is that she could get into trouble for this simple act, I also realize that it is possible. And further, my own worries demonstrate how deeply the fear of personal involvement has burrowed itself into and infected our cultural consciousness. The beautiful truth is that this woman saw a person who needed something that she could give, and so she moved from the heart without worrying about (or inventing) potential consequences. She did not hold back in order to keep herself safe, but rather put herself out there and perhaps found a different kind of safety in the act of giving.

We are no longer encouraged to be helpful on a personal level, to take action–one person for another, and thus to listen to our heart’s natural inclination to be kind. Quite the contrary in fact–we are being trained to see direct involvement with other human beings as potentially dangerous to our own wellbeing. Rather than living organically, seeing ourselves as part of a larger whole, we are being brainwashed to protect our own individual borders, in an effort to stay safe. This woman’s simple, direct, and completely natural action reminded me yet again of what we human beings are really made of, and what sits below our modern fear-soaked conditioning. Our basic nature is kindness, helpfulness, and the desire to be of service. Let us not forget this. In the moments where our basic nature peeks through, it is a profound event, and something worth noticing. Instead of always trying to defend ourselves, perhaps we can remember to ask the simplest but most important question of all… How can I help?

And to my friend at the gym, in the hopes that you are reading this, a deep and heartfelt thank you for reminding me of who we really are.

The post The Most Important Question Of All: How Can I Help? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

The post Why Blog? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

The post Why Do We Blog? Part Two appeared first on Nancy Colier.