Facing Our Demons

When we experience danger or threats, it's normal to suppress or ignore our emotions to protect ourselves and react effectively. However, if we don't process these emotions properly, they can harm our mental and emotional health and can negatively impact our relationships. Emotions can get stuck in the system, building up over time and interfering with our ability to live healthy and satisfying lives.

John came to our meeting and told me that he had a tough time dealing with the memories from his recent visit to see his dad. He said he was struggling to process them and had been trying to push them away for a few weeks. He described it as like gritting his teeth and just trying to power through. And on top of all that, he was carrying around this sense of impending doom

Unfortunately, it wasn't a great experience for John. While he was there, John saw his dad drinking a lot of whiskey and using abusive language toward his partner. This understandably left John feeling pretty upset and on edge. He'd been trying to shake off the memories, but the one that kept haunting him was the smell of booze and vomit. He'd tried, but he just couldn't shake off that smell. It'd been haunting him the last few weeks.

Emovere

The word "emotion" comes from the Latin word "emovere," which means "to move out." This makes sense when you think about it - emotions are meant to be felt and expressed, not bottled up inside. When we acknowledge and give our emotions the space they need to flow through us, we allow them to move out rather than getting stuck and causing us harm in the long run.

To better understand and take care of our emotions, it's important to confront and acknowledge them rather than ignore or suppress them. When we push our emotions down, they can become stuck and potentially cause harm over time. But when we process and release them, we can resolve what was previously stuck and allow our emotions to flow through us. When our emotions are no longer suppressed or ignored, we can make choices that align with our values and goals, rather than being driven by unprocessed emotions. This can lead to a greater sense of clarity, purpose, and the ability to act in ways that benefit ourselves and others.

Focusing on the Felt Sense

I began our meeting with John by having him focus on his breathing and the physical sensations in his chest and belly to anchor him in the present moment. Then I asked him to revisit the memory of his recent visit with his father and to pay attention to both the memory and the sensations and emotions he was experiencing. By moving back and forth between the memory and the present, John could observe and become more aware of his thoughts and feelings.

His first response was, "It feels icky. I want to pull away from him. I can still smell the scent of puke and alcohol."

I encouraged John to stay with the smell and to notice how his mind and body rejected the experience. As he took in the smells, memories of his father's incoherent, moaned speech started flooding in. Then John named that he was starting to feel frozen, almost like fear.

Our bodies remember past traumatic experiences, and they trigger the release of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, even if there isn't an immediate threat. They still react as if there is. This is because the brain has learned that this response was helpful in the past. During the freeze response, we may feel numb, or like we can't move. This defense mechanism is designed to protect us from danger by shutting down and avoiding any actions that might put us in harm's way.

Acknowledging the Parts

Our inner selves are made up of multiple "parts," each with its own unique thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. When we acknowledge and validate these parts, we can better understand our inner experiences. By empathizing with them and creating a safe space for them to express themselves, we can decrease the intensity of our emotions.

I encouraged John to place a hand on his heart and the other on the lower belly, right below the belly button, to make contact and comfort the part inside that feels frozen by the memory.

Placing a hand on one's heart and belly can have a calming effect on the nervous system, as it promotes the release of hormones that contribute to feelings of well-being and comfort. This physical connection with the body can facilitate the processing of overwhelming emotions.

I then suggested to John, "Perhaps you could let that scared part know that you know it's scared, that you see it, and you promise not to ignore its concerns."

After a long pause, John said, "I felt that part inside, not just scared but angry with me for not taking care of him. And then I said I was sorry. I tried to let it know that I would not ignore it again, but that just made it worse. So then I just said that I was sorry, and I think it forgave me."

Self-Compassion

Acknowledging and validating our inner parts requires a gentle approach that many of us have not yet learned to cultivate. We've often been taught to push away or dismiss our feelings and thoughts rather than really understand and validate them. And in most cultures, personal feelings are not given much importance, which can lead individuals to ignore their emotions and thoughts altogether. But if we can learn to be present with our thoughts and feelings without judging them, we can develop greater self-compassion.

Self-compassion is all about treating ourselves with the same level of kindness and understanding that we would extend to others. When we're self-compassionate, we can accept ourselves, flaws and all, without any harsh judgment or criticism. This can help us feel more connected, stronger, and more emotionally stable, and it can also help reduce our levels of stress, anxiety, and depression.

So I asked John to check back in to see how this scared part inside was doing now that it wasn't so mad at him.

John shared this really interesting visual he had in his mind. He talked about how he pictured himself holding the hand of this scared part of himself and moving it away from his father while he himself moved toward his dad. It was like he was finally able to see his father's sickness and the impact that addiction was having on him. This shift in perspective helped John see his dad's addiction as something separate, like a disease causing harm not just to their relationship but to his dad's overall well-being.

Then John said, "I can see my dad is just sick, and his sickness is not my responsibility. My responsibility is to protect myself from the negative effects of my father's addiction. I can see his hatred, but when I am there, and not that part inside that's so angry, it's still sad, but I don't feel responsible for it."

John realized something really important here. He could see that his father's addiction was an illness and not something that he himself had caused or could fix. And with this perspective, John was able to prioritize his own well-being while still wanting the best for his father.

"I have this feeling that I can wish my dad peace, for him to be serene and let it go. I'm not holding on to his pain. I can let it go."

I asked him how this wish for his dad felt.

"It feels new. I am used to expecting or anticipating the next drama, but I feel relaxed and neutral. I am so used to not wanting dad to be this way, but I can see that it's not so personal."

John's story shows how powerful it can be to give ourselves the time and space to process our emotions in a nonjudgmental way. He turned things around from being really overwhelmed and anxious to accepting and understanding himself and his father's illness. It wasn't easy, but by tuning in to his emotions and not pushing them away, he was able to move through the fear and anger and start on a path toward healing.

It's really important to pay attention to our emotions because they can have a big impact on how we feel overall and how we experience life. Giving ourselves the time and space actually to feel our feelings and understand what they are can help us process them in a healthy way. It might take some patience and practice, but with time we can develop a better relationship with what we feel and learn to see what they're trying to show us. Often when we acknowledge what we think and feel, the intensity of the emotion tends to settle down.

The Many Masks of Personality

The Many Masks of Personality

Chad Herst

The word "personality" comes from the Latin word "persona," which means "mask." In ancient Rome, actors wore masks to portray different characters in plays. The word "persona" has come to refer to our roles in life and the various masks we wear to present ourselves to the world. The concept of personality has evolved, but at its core, it refers to a performance. The mask is just one of the many roles we play; we wear many throughout our lives. If you track yourself over days or weeks, you'll see that your personality shifts from one situation to the next. 

As a child, my mom would become so angry with us, but then she'd switch characters as soon as the phone rang. She'd become cheerful, friendly, and open, almost like she had two different personalities. I used to call her two-faced because of this.

If you look closely, you'll see that we all wear different masks in different situations. We present ourselves one way in the board room, and in the bedroom, we might be completely different. This is a natural part of human behavior. It doesn't necessarily mean that we are insincere or dishonest when we adjust our behavior to fit the expectations of a particular situation or achieve a specific goal. However, it's also important to be authentic rather than trying to be someone we're not.

Now, the question is, where does our personality come from? Why are some people skeptical and others open-minded, for example? The answer is that our upbringing and life experiences significantly shape our views on life, which can influence our beliefs and assumptions and ultimately shape our personalities. The development of our character is a dynamic process that begins in childhood and continues throughout our lifespan, and a range of biological, psychological, and social factors influences it.

Childhood and Personality Development

As we can see in children, character and personality are not fixed and can be influenced by life experiences. Children have a diverse range of character traits at the start of their lives because they struggle to regulate their emotions. As we can see in children, character and personality are not fixed and can be influenced by life experiences. Children start with a diverse range of character traits and may have trouble regulating emotions.

For example, we may quickly shift from one mask to another and have trouble managing our reactions to different situations. Imagine a child playing with their toys and having a great time. Suddenly, another child takes one of their toys, and the first child becomes angry and upset, expressing frustration and disappointment through crying and tantrums. However, once the other child returns the toy, the first child calms down and becomes happy and content again. This example demonstrates how our environment and experiences influence our character and personality.

Our brains are still developing, and this can affect our ability to regulate our emotions and make good decisions. The prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for decision-making, problem-solving, and impulse control, is still in the process of maturation, which can last up to 27 years.

As the prefrontal cortex matures, we become more attuned to social cues and learn how to behave in different situations. This process plays a significant role in shaping our character and personality. We might learn explicit norms, such as being kind and apologizing when we hurt someone's feelings and implicit ones, like maintaining eye contact and using appropriate body language. These norms help us understand and navigate our environment and significantly impact the formation of our personality.

Our parents' behavior and values can also shape our character. For example, if our parents were open about their emotions, we might learn that it is okay to trust certain people and express our feelings. On the other hand, if our parents consistently avoided or downplayed difficult or painful topics, we might internalize the message that it is not okay to express ourselves. If our parents placed a high value on external validation and the opinions of others, we might internalize the belief that our worth depends on how we are perceived by others. Self-esteem issues might lead us to seek approval and validation from others and feel anxious or insecure if we cannot meet their expectations or live up to their standards.

Navigating Peer Pressure and Identity Formation

Changes in hormone levels during puberty can affect our personality development in several ways. We may become more sensitive to stress and more prone to conflict. Additionally, changes in hormone levels can affect our sex drive and desire for physical intimacy, which can impact our romantic relationships.

One of the key developmental tasks of adolescence is forming a sense of self. During this time, we may feel pressure to fit in and seek approval from our peers. The need to conform can lead us to adopt certain social norms and engage in certain activities or hobbies to be considered "popular." We may also feel pressure to conform to certain standards of behavior or attitudes to be accepted by certain groups. Establishing a sense of identity often involves testing the limits of our autonomy and independence. We may even engage in risky or unhealthy behaviors to be seen as "edgy" or "cool."

Forming Friendships and Making Choices in the 20s

As we transition into our early 20s, we may face new interpersonal challenges, particularly as we learn to navigate the complexities of adult life, including entering the workplace. Some of us may start our careers at this stage, while others may continue our education or explore other paths. 

Entering the workplace can contribute to forming our personality through challenges such as learning new social norms and expectations, building professional relationships, and finding a balance between work and personal life. These challenges may also intersect with other interpersonal challenges, such as building independence from family and friends, establishing and maintaining close relationships, and managing and expressing emotions.

During this period, we may be more inclined to take risks and seek out new experiences. This may be due, in part, to the development of the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in decision-making and impulse control. As it develops, it is thought to play a role in our increased tendency to take risks and seek new experiences.

In these years, we might form friendships focused around drug or alcohol use, extreme sports or other dangerous activities, or perhaps engage in risky sexual relationships. However, not all people in their 20s engage in hazardous activities. 

The Late 20s Crisis

Then our personality goes through a major overhaul. Between 27 and 30, we go through a major transition from young adulthood to full adulthood. We may take on new challenges and responsibilities during this period, such as starting a career, getting married, or having children. These experiences send us into a crisis that forces our personalities into a process of refinement and solidification. 

While the relationship between brain development and personality is complex and not fully understood, it is thought that the maturation of the prefrontal cortex may contribute to an increased ability to make sound decisions, plan for the future, and regulate emotions. Additionally, the limbic system, which is involved in emotional processing and regulation, continues to mature and become more efficient during this time, leading to an increased ability to manage and express emotions in a healthy way. 

John was once very ambitious, always striving for promotions and willing to take on any responsibility that came his way. However, when he was promoted to SVP at a FinTech company and became a father at the same time, the pressure became too much for him. He began experiencing panic attacks and struggled to manage his responsibilities at work and home, leading to a leave of absence. With the help of coaching, John learned to slow down, become present, and prioritize what was important in his life. He also practiced gratitude and meditation, which helped him feel more confident when he returned to work. As a result of these changes, John became more emotionally relatable to his colleagues and less driven to constantly seek out the next milestone. Instead, he became more present and focused at work and with his family.

As we enter our late 20s, it's common to experience a crisis that prompts us to reassess what we value and the qualities of character we want to embody moving forward. The development of our brain during this time may force us to realize that our choices in our early 20s may not align with our desired future or the goals we truly care about. As a result, we may decide to shed personality traits that don't align with the lives we hope to lead.

The Importance of Resilience in Personality Development

After the prefrontal cortex makes its final maturation at 27 years old, the personality continues to develop and change throughout our lifetime. Life experiences, such as relationships, education, career, and other personal and professional challenges, continue to shape and influence our personality. Some studies suggest that personality can continue to evolve and change throughout our lifetime, even in old age, as long as we are open to new experiences and continue to learn and grow. 

Research shows that resilience, our ability to adapt and recover from adversity, is a key factor that allows us to continue evolving. It is often developed through experiencing challenges such as depression, isolation, loss, trauma, failure, or change. By exploring tools that help us work through and ultimately grow from adversity, such as meditation, art, dance, writing, or seeking support from others, we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Our adversity can then be a gift rather than a curse, a necessary catalyst that helps us become more self-accepting, open-minded, empathetic, and well-rounded.

I have some amazing friends and family in their 70s and 80s who have been dancers and artists. They have sought various therapies and philosophies. They've done yoga and meditation. They've experimented with psychedelics, traveled, stayed connected to friends and family, and remained creative. Their personalities remain open and receptive. I can share my wacky ideas and all the things I am exploring with them, and rather than scorning me, I'm met with wonder and curiosity.

Then there are those in my life who have become closed off, stuck in their ways and find it hard to relate. If we don't actively work through the adversity that comes our way, our personalities may become rigid. Some research suggests that the brain's ability to adapt and change may decline with age, potentially leading to the development of more inflexible personality traits.  

My godmother, who I adore, has always been very perfectionistic. She never learned to work with this personality trait. She meditated and was involved in a Tibetan Buddhist meditation group, but I always sensed that she was using her spiritual practice to enhance her perfectionism. She never used to shine a light on the pain and trauma in her childhood that spawned it. 

As she's approaching 80, she's taking care of my godfather, who has a brain disease like ALS. He is experiencing symptoms such as memory loss, difficulty with thinking and problem-solving, visual hallucinations, movement problems, and sleep disorders. As she cares for him, her perfectionism has become so acute that she lives with constant anxiety. The pressure she puts on herself to ensure he is well cared for provokes severe insomnia. She's become impossible to be with. She nitpicks at her friends' flaws. This situation with her husband is so difficult because she never addressed her perfectionism, and now that mask is the only one she knows how to wear.  

If we don't continue to develop new tools and skills to help us overcome life's inevitable obstacles, our personalities tend to become inflexible and resistant to change. By avoiding adversity or rejecting novel ways of thinking or being, we may miss out on opportunities to continue to grow and evolve as individuals. This stagnation may lead to a decline in our personality, causing us to become less adaptable and resilient, making it more difficult to handle future challenges and changes. As a result, our character may become less open-minded and less able to empathize with others.

However, by recognizing the complexity of personality and the various masks we wear, we can approach these masks with a sense of playfulness and flexibility. By bringing awareness to the roles we play and the masks we wear, we can make more authentic choices about who we want to be in a given moment and explore different aspects of ourselves. Understanding our essential nature as the true face behind the mask allows us to be more open to being authentic in our interactions with others.

Summary:

1. Personality is the mask we wear to present ourselves to the world.

2. Our upbringing and life experiences shape our personalities.

3. Personality is a dynamic process that changes throughout our lifetime.

The Consequences of Ignored and Rejected Expressions

I had a long-term working partnership that went sour.

We ran a yoga studio together. In the beginning, we shared a strong connection and many profound conversations. That began to change when I suggested creating a contract that would define the financial split if either of us ever wanted to leave the partnership.

My business partner became angry and accused me of being greedy. Trust broke down, and the connection between us began to disappear.

We tried to repair the relationship, but each new misunderstanding seemed to deepen the divide. Eventually, I reached a tipping point and ended the partnership—even though doing so meant giving up my ownership of the studio.

The relationship ended, but the conflict did not end inside me.

I was still angry. I still felt misunderstood. I believed my former partner had twisted my words and used them against me. The conversation had never reached a true resolution, and I was left with what I call an incompletion: an unresolved experience from the past that continues to affect us long after the relationship—or the moment itself—is over.

Principle #1: Unacknowledged thoughts and feelings keep us stuck in the past and prevent us from fully connecting in the present.

An incompletion is the nagging feeling that remains when we try to communicate something important but do not feel truly understood. Sometimes our words are dismissed. Sometimes they are contradicted. Worse, they may be distorted and used against us.

Whatever form it takes, the result is the same: frustration and hurt from the past continue to occupy the present.

This experience of not being received or understood is at the heart of an incompletion. One person tries to express something, but the other person rejects it, minimizes it, argues with it, or simply fails to grasp its meaning. The person speaking is left feeling that something essential never landed.

They tried to communicate, but their experience was not acknowledged. They feel misunderstood, rejected, hurt, and often alone.

This happens in nearly every relationship. But when it happens repeatedly, trust begins to erode. We can no longer relate to the other person as they are in the present because part of us is still trapped in the moment when we were not heard.

If that continues for too long, we may begin to shut down. Eventually, we stop communicating altogether.

Principle #2: Misunderstandings breed mistrust.

When we feel that we are not getting through to someone, we usually respond in one of two ways: we confront or we withdraw.

Some of us raise our voices, repeat ourselves, or become increasingly insistent. Others avoid the conflict, pretend nothing is wrong, and hope the problem will disappear on its own.

Neither response resolves the underlying incompletion.

If we keep trying to make ourselves understood and the other person still does not seem willing or able to hear us, we eventually become exhausted. We start censoring ourselves. We hold back what we really think. Or we stop communicating entirely.

Not every misunderstanding is a crisis. But even small moments of being ignored or misread can accumulate. We all want to feel understood, especially by the people closest to us. When someone repeatedly cannot—or will not—see our point of view, trusting them becomes difficult.

Silence begins to feel safer than risking another rejection.

When this happens with a partner, family member, or close friend, the damage can become profound. Left unresolved, it can cause the relationship itself to collapse.

Principle #3: Incompletions distort our perception.

When we feel misunderstood, our view of the other person begins to change.

Their flaws grow larger in our minds while their good qualities recede. We exaggerate their negative traits and overlook the qualities that once drew us to them. Gradually, we stop seeing the whole person and begin seeing only the source of our pain.

That is what happened with my business partner. In my mind, she went from being a trusted colleague and friend to “a crazy lady with a personality disorder.”

That distortion is one reason incompletions are so difficult to heal. The unresolved experience remains with us, whether we never addressed it or tried to address it and became too overwhelmed to find a resolution.

The relationship may continue under the weight of that frustration, or it may come to an unhappy end. We may even move on and find someone new, hoping to leave the problem behind—only to discover the same pattern emerging again.

Principle #4: Pain that is acknowledged and felt can heal; pain that is ignored festers.

We can begin recognizing incompletions by paying attention to how our relationships feel.

When something seems off—when there is tension, distance, or a persistent sense that something is not quite right—an incompletion may be present. We can also look back across our relationships and ask whether any important misunderstandings remain unresolved.

Once we recognize an incompletion, we have to be honest about its effect on us. That means allowing ourselves to acknowledge and feel the pain beneath it.

This can be difficult, particularly when we have already shut down or disconnected from the person involved. But ignoring these feelings does not make them disappear. They remain hidden in the mind and body, weighing us down, dimming our spirits, and clouding our clarity.

When we are willing to confront them, something begins to open.

We can start to understand what we were trying to say that the other person could not receive. We may also begin to recognize what they were trying to express that we could not hear.

Principle #5: To repair a relationship, we must be willing to listen first.

Repair requires someone to break the stalemate.

Counterintuitively, that may mean temporarily setting aside our own hurt and frustration so we can genuinely listen to the other person. We might begin by saying:

“Okay. I’m willing to listen. Can you tell me again what I haven’t been hearing?”

When we feel misunderstood and hurt, distancing ourselves from the person who caused the pain is a natural response. But if we want to resolve an incompletion, the first—and often most difficult—step is becoming willing to hear the other person, even when they have not yet been willing to hear us.

This does not mean denying our experience or pretending our pain does not matter. It means creating enough space for the other person to express the assumptions, disappointments, and feelings they have been carrying.

Someone has to create that opening.

Principle #6: Take a step back and see the situation from the other person’s point of view.

To move beyond an incompletion, we have to become curious about the other person’s perspective—even when it feels uncomfortable and even when we disagree.

Understanding is not the same as agreeing.

We do not have to adopt their interpretation or abandon our own. But we do have to acknowledge that their perspective makes sense within the context of their history, experiences, and understanding of the world.

When we invite someone to tell us what we have previously rejected or deflected, we are attempting to step into their shoes. We are trying to see how the circumstances appeared from where they stood and how their experience emerged from the life they had lived.

We are not listening merely to their words. We are listening for the world beneath them.

Principle #7: Completing the past allows us to fully embrace the present.

An incompletion begins to dissolve when we sense that the other person genuinely understands our experience.

The nagging feeling that something remains unresolved begins to disappear. We no longer feel that the person does not understand us—or does not care enough to try. In that moment, we are no longer trapped in the past.

We are complete.

Melissa, for example, becomes upset when she feels that household responsibilities are not being shared equally. Sometimes she expresses that frustration through criticism or shame. When that happens, I become resistant to hearing her perspective or acknowledging her feelings.

But when Melissa can understand the deeper impact of her words—and the emotional history those words activate in me—something changes between us. I feel understood, which makes me more receptive to understanding what she needs from me.

When the incompletion disappears, we become more available to enter the other person’s world. We become less invested in proving that we are right and more interested in understanding their experience.

When we feel understood, the impulse to understand the other person often arises naturally.

But somebody has to begin. Somebody has to create the opportunity for the other person to empty out everything they have been carrying. That move may feel counterintuitive, but it can generate profound relief.

When both people feel understood, it is as though a weight has been lifted. The relationship becomes lighter, clearer, and easier. From there, we can work together to prevent similar misunderstandings and create new possibilities for the future.

If that ease does not emerge, something may still remain unheard or unacknowledged. More patience, honesty, and effort may be needed.

It is easy to ignore what we feel. It is easy to let misunderstandings slide, avoid confrontation, or sweep discomfort under the rug. But what we refuse to address does not disappear. It creates distance between the people we care about and us.

If we are not willing to courageously understand the other person, we may never create the conditions in which we can be understood ourselves.

Listening is how we begin to heal. Understanding is how we find our way back to one another.

There is also a quieter version of incompletion—one that does not look like conflict.

You notice the thing.

You decide it is not worth saying.

You offer the smoother version instead, or say nothing at all, and the day goes on.

Do that for years, and eventually the incompletion is no longer only with them.

It is with you.

I wrote a book about that.

The first chapter is twenty-eight minutes long, read in my own voice. Enter your name and email, and I’ll send it to you.

The Costs of Withholding Truth

Do you ever find yourself in a situation where something is bothering you, and you have the urge to say it but hesitate because you anticipate a negative reaction from the other person? We don't want to deal with their response because it may be overwhelming and could cause more conflict or discomfort. We can all be conflict-averse. So instead, we decide to stop speaking up. We start holding our tongues and ignoring our own needs. We know it isn't healthy, but the alternative seems impossible.

Michael has been married to Louise for three years. He never wanted to be married to her in the first place. Before they did so, he would voice his misgivings, but Louise would always fall into despair. He eventually stopped sharing his concerns and consented to marry her because the guilt and shame became too overwhelming.

Even today, whenever he considers sharing any reservations or upsets, guilt and shame immediately take over, stopping him from saying anything. Not telling the truth is eating away at Michael's confidence. He fears he'll always be stuck in that relationship, without choice or his voice.

Sometimes we must find the courage to tell someone the uncomfortable truth despite how much it may hurt them. Being honest is one of the essential components of any healthy relationship dynamic – without it, any sense of trust or emotional closeness between both parties will corrode over time. Being dishonest with ourselves and others can lead to anxiety, guilt, shame and insecurity.

Telling the truth can be difficult for many reasons, even if it serves a healthier and more fulfilling relationship. For example, Michael has stayed in his marriage to Louise out of fear that voicing his true feelings may cause her to become too distraught. A fear like this can make us feel like we have no choice but to keep our concerns unaddressed and remain in an unfavorable situation. 

Additionally, when trying to express difficult truths, there are practical barriers such as feeling overwhelmed by words, not knowing how to start a conversation or gaining the courage to speak up. On top of these worries, there are also certain emotions tied with telling the truth, such as guilt which can further impede any progress towards expressing our true thoughts and feelings. 

Finding Our Clarity

Speaking up after having withheld our truth can be difficult, as emotions can often be overwhelming. This feeling of damming up can make it difficult to express our thoughts and feelings clearly and rationally. The fear of unloading our emotions, which have been so tightly held for so long, is daunting. We often feel like we cannot control the raw emotion that follows when we finally open up to someone. It's an intimidating process.

When we prevent ourselves from communicating our true feelings, it can become difficult to see the situation objectively. Our blocked emotions cloud our judgment and create a sense of hopelessness that makes us doubt the chances of finding a solution. We view the other person in an unfavorable light, failing to recognize the human component that intrinsically exists in all relationships.

When we put our feelings on the back burner, it can be difficult to see the entire issue. Taking time to acknowledge the backlog of emotions is key to regaining clarity and objectivity. We might do this in meditation, journaling or dialogue with a friend or guide. Approaching our feelings with understanding and kindness can feel counterintuitive, particularly if we're inclined towards relying on shame and guilt to hold our feelings back. 

Additionally, it is important to sort through the impact our past experiences and traumas might have on our present relationships and work through those issues healthily and honestly rather than allowing them to dictate or harm one's current relationships. We might explore how our emotional reactivity might be related to events from our past. It can help to gain perspective by uncovering patterns that we could not see before.

Finding Courage

Before Michael ever had the conversation with Louise, he'd need to find his courage. We can be assured that the other person will react in hurt and dismay whenever we commit to telling the truth after holding it back for a long time. They might be angered. We don't know their reaction. We can be sure, though, that there will be upset feelings.

It can help to acknowledge the critical parts that doubt that anything good would come of telling the truth. It's easy to sink into a cynical point of view regarding honest communication. Our past experiences with one another convince us that nothing good could come out of open dialogue, so we keep our feelings hidden. But while this may seem like the safest option, it can often lead to a disconnect between individuals. This severing of ties diminishes the level of connection and understanding in the relationship, leaving both sides feeling isolated and unable to move forward. 

Not only do we have to acknowledge the cynical parts, but we want to acknowledge the scared ones, too. Telling the truth can be daunting. We never know how the other person will respond. When we withhold our honest thoughts and feelings, we avoid pain, but we step right into it when we tell the truth. To be courageous, we willingly step into and embrace uncertainty. By learning to accept the unknown instead of shying away, we can become more courageous in the face of uncertainty and find ways to overcome difficult situations.

Small steps are key to building courage, allowing us to explore our potential at our own pace. We can gradually develop more confidence in speaking up and expressing ourselves instead of hiding our thoughts and feelings. Over time, these small steps will help us prepare for the "big conversation" and the uncertainty that may come with it.

Clarifying Your Intentions

Sometimes, it's not just cynicism and fear that hold us back, but it can also be a lack of clarity about what we want. We need to better understand what we want from the conversation. What is our desired outcome? In many cases, we may think our desired outcome is clear-cut and not particularly complex. However, upon closer examination, it is often the case that our goals are more nuanced. 

For example, when considering a conversation between Michael and Louise, Michael may think the discussion is about separating. Still, on deeper introspection, it could very well be that his goal is far more nuanced. It could be that he wishes to find ways of speaking about topics that are off-limits in the relationship without emotions getting elevated. He may hope to create structures of relating that feel safe for both him and Louise. He might seek to rebuild trust, foster a healthier dynamic, or even gain some closure. Perhaps he may want to ensure that Louise understands his feelings and respects his decision to end the relationship. 

Understanding the desired result before beginning a difficult conversation is essential, as it may be more complicated than originally thought. Additionally, having an intention guides the conversation, keeping us focused on the outcomes we seek. Failing to clearly indicate what we want from the conversation can lead to confusion and, ultimately, an unsuccessful outcome. Consequently, it is imperative to keep an intention in mind throughout the conversation to ensure that it remains productive and focused. 

Holding back our true thoughts and feelings can result from various factors, including fear of negative reactions, guilt, shame, and past traumas. It can lead to a lack of clarity and objectivity in our relationships and erode trust and emotional closeness. However, it is important to find the courage to express our true thoughts and feelings, even if it is difficult. This can involve taking time to acknowledge and process our emotions, seeking support from friends or guides, and exploring past experiences that may influence our present relationships. We can work towards healthier and more fulfilling relationships by finding the courage to speak up.

Summary:

• Withholding our truth wreaks havoc on our relationships not just with others but with ourselves.

• The weight of unspoken truths can drag us down, but the courage to speak them can bring us freedom.

• What is not faced, will fester. What is faced, will heal.

The Unspoken Assumptions of Relationships

The Buddha's teaching on the First Noble Truth is that suffering, or dukkha in the Pali language, is an inherent part of life. This includes not just physical pain but also the suffering that arises from change, separation from what we love, and the inability to obtain what we desire. The Buddha's message exposes a basic blind spot within society, even 2500 years ago, by challenging the hidden belief that if we're unhappy or suffering somehow, something must be wrong. His message was that no, there isn't something wrong with us, and we can expect life to be filled with ups and downs. What a relief. We don't have to pretend that everything's always awesome and wonderful, and we don't have to feel bad about ourselves when it isn't. 

In many ways, you could say the same thing about relationships. Relationships might not be suffering exactly, but they can be inherently disappointing. Sometimes it's us who changes, and sometimes it's them. Either way, if we are attached to a particular form of relating and try to hold on, we inevitably suffer. Another way that relationships can be dissatisfying is when there is a mismatch in values between the two people. For example, if one person values honesty and open communication, but the other person values keeping the peace and avoiding confrontation, it might lead to conflicts in the relationship.

The most common way relationships can bring about dissatisfaction is that we have expectations that don't get met. We often have expectations of how we want our relationships to be, and when these expectations are not met, it can lead to suffering and dissatisfaction. For example, we might have expectations about how our colleagues should behave, contribute to the team, or what they should do in certain situations. We might also have expectations about their roles and responsibilities or how they should support and communicate with us. When our expectations are not met, it can lead to dissatisfaction and frustration.

Phase 1: The Enchantment

All relationships, whether they are romantic or professional, start the same way. In the beginning, things seem perfect, and the relationship will work out. During the initial enchantment phase of a relationship, people often feel highly connected and positive about the relationship. They may experience a high degree of openness and trust. Everything seems to be going smoothly, and people feel deeply connected and in sync. 

Phase 2: Unmet Expectations

But what do we know about enchantment? At some point, we wake up and experience disenchantment. Why does the spell where off in our relationships? It does so because it is of our expectations. We generate expectations about one another, are not explicit about our expectations and are inevitably disappointed. These expectations take shape below the level of our everyday awareness. We don't even realize we're doing it. 

In a relationship, unmet expectations can affect the potential for experiencing complete openness and trust. Imagine a puzzle with all the pieces fitting together perfectly, representing a relationship where these qualities are fully present. Whenever someone in the relationship has an unfulfilled expectation, it's like adding a piece that doesn't fit into the puzzle, disrupting the sense of connection and trust. 

Trust decreases as disappointments mount. Initially, though, it might not feel so bad. The relationship might not be as alive as it was during the enchantment phase. We may not be as eager to be open. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, as disappointments keep building up, the level of connection declines. With it, so does our openness. We might feel a sense of distance or disconnection. Perhaps we are less invested or motivated to communicate or connect with them. We might feel like the relationship is not as close or fulfilling as it once was. 

Phase 3: The Breakdown

As the disappointments continue to add up, our mind starts playing a very interesting game with us: we lose respect. Once we have lost respect for someone, the relationship moves into the decline phase. We might view them as unreliable, untrustworthy or incompetent. We may start to second-guess their intentions or ability to follow through on their commitments. We may even consider them unintelligent. We might then treat them with less consideration or kindness and be less inclined to show them care. We might also be more prone to criticize or blame them or become less patient or understanding. 

If you observe your thoughts and feelings when a relationship has entered a phase of decline or breakdown, you may notice that your perception of the other person becomes more negative and one-dimensional. You might categorize them in an unflattering way. We lose our ability to see the other person in a nuanced way and instead view them one-dimensionally. Rather than human beings with various qualities, they might be stupid, vindictive, manipulative, dishonest, or unfaithful. It takes conscious effort to remember that the person who has disappointed us is human and fallible. 

When disappointments in a relationship become severe enough, they can trigger our fight or flight response, activating the amygdala and causing a surge of adrenaline. We might react by lashing out, becoming aggressive (fight response), withdrawing or distancing ourselves from the situation (flight response) or feeling paralyzed and unable to take action (freeze response). 

Phase 4: The Repair

One issue with expectations is that we don't always communicate them clearly to others. Another, and maybe the more important, is that we may not even realize that we have certain expectations until we have been disappointed. Then when that happens, we don't tell the truth. We do no one a favor when we hold back, certainly not ourselves or our relationships. Whenever we hold back in a relationship, we can be sure that it will go into a form of decline.

Identifying past hurts or disappointments is important to address issues in our relationships. We can do this by identifying and articulating what we were assuming, hoping, and expecting. Once we understand our own expectations, we may realize that the breakdown in the relationship was not necessarily all the other person's fault but rather a lack of clarity on our part and that we never conveyed our expectations to the other person in the first place.

Just as suffering is inherent in life, so is dissatisfaction in our relationships. The Buddha believed that we suffer in life because of our attachment to impermanent things and experiences. Similarly, we experience dissatisfaction in our relationships because we expect others to act in certain ways. We assume that they have the same expectations we have. We might even believe they should be able to read our minds about the expectations we have for them. Relationships don't have to be disappointing. It would be nice if we could eliminate our tendency to generate expectations of the people in our lives, but we cannot. We all have preferences. We all desire others to behave in a certain way or have certain qualities or characteristics. If we hope to transform the disappointments in our relationships into understanding, it starts by clarifying what we were expecting in the first place. And then the obvious next step is to communicate it.

Summary:

• Suffering is an inherent part of life, including disappointments in relationships. 

• Disappointments occur because we are not explicit about what we assume, hope or expect, either with ourselves or them. 

• If we never pay attention or are explicit about what we expect in our relationships, we can be sure that they will decline.

The Power of the Story We Tell Ourselves

Have you ever had a hard time giving someone the benefit of the doubt, particularly when they’ve disappointed or hurt you? It can be tough to open our minds and hearts to others’ experiences, especially if they challenge our own beliefs. But have you ever stopped to consider that this difficulty in seeing things from someone else’s perspective might be a fundamental blind spot in your understanding of yourself or the world around you?

It's easy to get caught up in the idea that our perceptions are the be-all and end-all, but let's be real - we're just a bunch of flawed humans trying to make sense of one another. We see what we want to see, and our explanations and interpretations are often influenced by our own biases and experiences.

It's like we're all walking around with our own little filters on, distorting one another in our own unique way, and we're all convinced that who we see through those goggles is the only truth. But the thing is, we're all seeing the same people, but we're each interpreting one another in our own way.

Principle #1: Even though we believe we see others clearly, in reality they are not always as they appear.

It's natural to have our own perspectives and interpretations of one another, but it's important to recognize that these perceptions may not always be accurate. Have you ever heard a rumor about someone and automatically assumed it was true, only to later find out that it was completely false? Or have you ever had a disagreement with a friend or family member and found it hard to see their perspective, even when they presented valid points?

It's possible that our understanding of the world is limited and that there isn't a single objective truth that we can all accurately perceive. We all have biases and preconceptions that prevent us from seeing the full picture. Even though we may acknowledge that we don't have a complete understanding of reality, it's still difficult for us to break free from our narrow perspective. These biases and limited perspectives prevent us from seeing one another as they truly are. If we're not aware of them in our relationships, we risk misunderstandings, communication breakdowns, and conflicts that could have been avoided.

Principle #2: In the absence of information about what’s going on with another, we make up stories that have little to do with reality.

The language we use and the stories we tell ourselves about one another shape our understanding of our relationships. We're not just describing what we experience in them. The language we use forms our entire comprehension of who they are to us. We observe the people in our lives through the filter of the stories we tell ourselves about them.

We don’t want to admit, but we’re just making stuff up because whatever story we tell is going to be limited. We are all much more than the characterizations others make of us. Imagine you have a colleague at work who always seems to be in a bad mood. You might start telling yourself a story that this colleague is difficult to work with, or that they don't like you. However, the reality might be that this colleague is dealing with financial stress and having difficulty making ends meet. If you don't take the time to try and understand what’s happening for them, you risk damaging your relationship and missing out on the opportunity to be a supportive colleague.

Melissa and I have dear friends who recently moved to another state. During COVID lockdown, they were in our close circle of friends. Melissa's birthday recently passed, and while the husband reached out to wish her a happy birthday, the wife did not. Melissa has been feeling hurt and disappointed, and has assumed that our dear friend has written us off.

It's easy to jump to conclusions and make assumptions about others' actions or intentions, especially when we're feeling hurt or vulnerable. We don't always have all of the information and it's possible that there could be a reasonable explanation for someone's behavior. If we let the stories we tell about a situation or an interaction determine our point of view, we run the risk of misunderstanding what might actually be happening.

There are other ways to understand what might be going on with our friend. One possibility is that she simply forgot or got caught up in other things and didn't mean to hurt Melissa's feelings. Another possibility is that she's going through a tough time and hasn’t told us. Alternatively, there could be some underlying issue in their relationship that Melissa isn’t aware of.

If we don’t know what’s going on, we tend to think the worst. This is a basic blind spot we have. In the absence of information we make up stories that have little to do with reality. We tend to jump to conclusions that lead to unnecessary hurt or conflict. We can't always know what's going on in someone else's head or heart, even though we assume we can. Before creating more conflict than needed, it’s important to bring an awareness to the stories we tell ourselves, to recognize that they may only be partially accurate or not at all.

Principle #3: The stories we tell about others shape how we relate to them.

Here’s why awareness of our stories can be so important: Our actions in life are always a response to the stories we tell.

Melissa’s choice of action will greatly depend on the story she tells herself about their lack of communication on her birthday. If Melissa tells herself a story that our friend doesn't care about her or that their relationship is no longer meaningful, she may decide to distance herself and reduce their interaction, continue the relationship but hold onto resentment, or engage in unhealthy coping mechanisms. Alternatively, a story that promotes understanding and the value of relationship repair might lead Melissa to choose to communicate with our friend and try to resolve any underlying issues in their relationship.

It all depends on whether Melissa would be willing to reframe the story she has about our friend. She could either continue to assume that our friend has written us off, or she might consider the following alternatives:

• "I value this relationship and I want to work on any issues we might have."

• "I believe that open and honest communication is important for the health of a relationship."

• "I don't want to assume the worst and risk damaging the relationship without trying to find out what's really going on."

• "I don't want to let my own feelings of hurt or resentment fester and potentially lead to a breakdown of the relationship."

• "I want to be proactive and take ownership of my own feelings and actions, rather than reacting to the situation in a negative way."

All of these reframes will help her to take actions that might help her find resolution with our friend.

Setting Clear Boundaries

This isn’t to suggest that every relationship deserves a second or third chance, particularly when someone's behavior continues to be hurtful or disrespectful after we have tried to communicate openly and address any issues. In such cases, setting clear boundaries can help to protect our well-being and self-respect and might also communicate to them that their behavior is unacceptable.

We will be exploring boundaries in future modules, but suffice to say that boundaries help us to feel more in control of our own lives and can help us to better understand and assert our own needs and wants. It's also important to consider that setting boundaries doesn't necessarily mean ending the relationship. It can simply mean setting limits on the behavior that we are willing to tolerate or the amount of energy and emotional labor we are willing to invest in the relationship.

We don’t tend to think that the way we interact with others correlates to the stories we tell or the assumptions we make, but we do. If we're not aware of the stories that shape our understanding of an interaction, we may be unable to respond skillfully and may become stuck in fixed, narrow perspectives. This can prevent us from seeing the full picture and inevitably lead to conflict or suffering.

This means acknowledging that our understanding of a situation or an interaction may not be complete and that there may be other perspectives or factors at play that we are not aware of. By being open to the possibility that our understanding is limited, we can be more understanding towards others, as we recognize that their actions may be based on their own limited understanding and that they, too, may be telling themselves stories.

Summary:

• Our biases and experiences can distort our perceptions of others.

• It's easy to assume that we’re right.

• We have to be careful of this tendency because the stories we tell ourselves determine our reactions to them.

Recognizing Our Shared Humanity

Recognizing Our Shared Humanity

Chad Herst

Have you ever noticed a pattern in your interactions with others where you consistently misjudge a situation or miss an important detail? In the Buddhist tradition, this is referred to as "avidya," which comes from the Sanskrit roots "a-" meaning "not" and "-vidya" meaning "to see." A more accurate translation of avidya is "not seeing," rather than "ignorance." It refers to the concept of blind spots, which are areas of our understanding or perception that are incomplete or flawed.

A blind spot is a part of an individual's visual field that cannot be seen, even when using both eyes. In the context of driving, a blind spot refers to areas around a vehicle that are not visible to the driver when using the mirrors. In interpersonal relationships, a blind spot can refer to a flaw or weakness in our understanding or perception of ourselves or others.

For example, someone might have a blind spot about their tendency to be overly critical of their colleagues or subordinates, which could cause strain in their working relationships. This critical behavior may be unintentional, and the individual may not be aware of the impact it has on others. Blind spots can prevent us from seeing the full picture of an interaction and can lead to negative outcomes, such as a negative work environment or decreased morale and productivity.

We often have blind spots in our interpersonal relationships. One common blind spot is a lack of awareness of how we are interconnected and dependent on others. We often see ourselves as isolated and disconnected from others. We might sometimes feel like we’re surrounded by people, but there’s somehow a barrier or wall that’s separating us.

According to the mindfulness tradition, we often view ourselves as separate and disconnected from others, failing to recognize the ways in which we are interconnected and interdependent. This misunderstanding is like a blind spot that prevents us from seeing our connection with others and all of life. However, in rare, transcendent moments, such as during deep meditation or profound emotional or sexual intimacy, we may feel a sense of merging with others or the wider cosmos. In these moments, we feel more whole, more connected, and more alive.

Interbeing

This experience of unity or oneness with others is known in Sanskrit as shunyata, which translates as emptiness. However, the term 'emptiness' can be misleading, as it might be understood as a kind of void or nothingness. But the experience of unity, even if it is rare, suggests that emptiness is not void or empty at all but is instead filled with wonder and mystery.

This is why I prefer the Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh’s translation of shunyata. He calls it “interbeing.”

About thirty years ago, I was looking for an English word to describe our deep interconnection with everything else. I liked the word “togetherness,” but I finally came up with the word “interbeing.” The verb “to be” can be misleading because we cannot be by ourselves alone. “To be” is always to “inter-be.” If we combine the prefix “inter” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, “inter-be.” To inter-be and the action of interbeing reflects reality more accurately. We inter-are with one another and with all life.

"Interbeing" refers to the interbeing of all things and the idea that everything exists in relation to everything else. It suggests that everything we experience is interconnected and dependent on other things for its existence.

For example, a person is not an isolated entity but rather is interconnected with and dependent on other people for social support, resources, and a sense of belonging. They are also dependent on the natural world for resources such as food, water, and shelter and on the social and economic systems in which they live. Emotions, too, are not isolated entities but rather are interconnected with and dependent on the thoughts, experiences, and circumstances that give rise to them. Emotions can also be interconnected and dependent on the emotions of others, as our own emotions can be influenced by the emotions of those around us.

We are not just individual selves but are made up of a complex network of relationships, experiences, and influences. As Lewis Thomas writes in his book "The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher," our human bodies are "shared, rented, and occupied" by countless other tiny organisms without whom we could not move, think, or feel. In fact, there are more non-human cells in our bodies than human cells. Thomas emphasizes that no being exists in isolation on this planet and that we are all interconnected and rely on each other in a symbiotic relationship, much like the various parts of a single cell. The planet is one giant, interconnected organism.

Everything in the universe is interconnected and relies on one another to exist, including stars, clouds, flowers, trees, and people. We constantly influence one another's moods, thoughts, beliefs and values. We even affect one another's hormones. Seeing someone else in a stressful situation or hearing about their stress can also trigger the release of cortisol and adrenaline in our own bodies. When we are around someone who is experiencing strong fear, we may feel fear ourselves to some extent. This is known as emotional contagion, which is the ability to "catch" emotions from others. We are interconnected and interdependent on one another, and our interactions can influence not just our emotions and thoughts but our very biology.

In Tibetan Buddhism, the image of Indra's Net is used to symbolize our interconnection with all other beings. It is depicted as a vast net with countless jewels hanging from its threads, each jewel reflecting all the other jewels in the net. Each jewel is said to contain within it the reflection of all of the other jewels in the net, just as each of us is interconnected with and dependent upon everyone and everything else. The image of the net is used to encourage us to recognize the ways our actions and choices have an impact on every other being.

The Cost We Pay for Believing Ourselves to be Separate

When we remember our interbeing, we see that what we do and say matters. Our own well-being is deeply connected to the well-being of others. If they suffer, so do we. It’s impossible to be completely at peace knowing or sensing the suffering in the world. Interbeing helps us to understand that our own spiritual progress and well-being is interconnected and interdependent with the well-being of all other beings. We cannot truly awaken and reach our full potential unless all other beings also have the opportunity to awaken and reach their full potential.

Although we may sometimes have a sense of our interconnectedness with one another, it is easy to forget it in a culture that values and celebrates individuality. Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok often encourage users to showcase their unique qualities and achievements, and we are often drawn to celebrities, success, wealth, and personal freedom. It can be easy to focus on our own needs and desires rather than recognizing how much our actions have on others.

When we do not recognize and value our interbeing with others and the natural world, we may prioritize our own needs and interests over those of others. This can have negative consequences, such as increased isolation and loneliness and a tendency to view others as separate or distinct from ourselves. This can lead to dehumanization and a lack of empathy, making it easier to harm or discriminate against others. Additionally, a lack of appreciation for our interdependence with the natural world can result in environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity, as well as negative impacts on the climate.

Self-Awareness

There's a profound cost to our blindness, but if we can bring attention to how we are self-centered and lack empathy or self-awareness, we can make a difference. No matter how small we are in the big scheme of things, we are each a jewel in Indra's net. Our actions matter.

One day, a man was walking along a beach covered with thousands of starfish that had washed ashore. As he walked, he came across a young boy picking up the starfish one by one and tossing them back into the ocean. The man asked the boy what he was doing. The boy replied that he was trying to save the starfish from dying on the beach. The man chuckled and told the boy that there were too many starfish. The boy couldn't make a difference. But the boy picked up another starfish and tossed it back into the water, saying, "I made a difference to that one."

It can be easy to fall into pessimism about the state of the world, particularly when we focus on individual actions or events rather than recognizing the larger interbeing of things. This is the basic avidya or lack of understanding we will be trying to wake up from in this module. We will attempt to wake up to our interbeing, recognizing that what we do, think and feel in our relationships with others matters. Whether we realize it or not, we are all connected. To break this spell, we will explore how we dissociate from the people in our lives, how we delude ourselves, and how we wake up from the fantasy of our disconnectedness.

Summary:

• We carry fundamental ignorance that we are disconnected. 

• The Buddhist concept of emptiness suggests that we are interdependent and interconnected.

• In this module, we're attempting to wake up from the ways we delude ourselves into thinking we are alone and separate.

When We Feel Like We’re On Our Own

When We Feel Like We’re On Our Own

Chad Herst

Are you constantly feeling burnt out from always having to support and help others? It may seem like your loved ones, friends, or team members are always leaning on you for time, energy and attention. It can be tough always having to be the one in charge, making decisions for everyone, and being the go-to person. It would be nice for once to have someone else be the go-to person and not always have to be in charge. Being the main one to guide and direct can be both tiring and unfulfilling.

Take Sara, for example, she runs a successful venture capital firm, but she's feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work and decision-making that comes with being the boss. Despite having a team, she finds it hard to trust them and delegate tasks. She feels like she's the only one who can make things happen, and everyone depends on her. It's not just at work, though. She feels the same way in her personal life too. Her kids, husband, and family members are always asking her for advice and opinions on everything. It's like they can't make a move without her say-so. It's understandable that she's feeling the stress, and it's taking a toll on her health.

It's normal to have doubts about other people's abilities and to wonder if we can trust them. But when these doubts become so strong that they prevent us from trusting anyone, it can be a problem. At work, we might start to think that our colleagues aren't smart enough, experienced enough, motivated enough, or dedicated enough to do what we need them to do. At home, we might secretly start to wonder if our loved ones are selfish, unsupportive or just inept.

Deep down, we might wonder if this is just how things will always be - that we will forever be expected to focus on everyone else's needs. It can feel like a heavy burden, almost like carrying a ton of bricks. When it seems like we can't count on other people, we tend to believe that we're alone and that nobody's got our back. Instead of feeling like we have a team or a family of support around us, it feels like we're the only ones doing all the work.

The Dangers of Underestimating Others

Sara tends to treat her team members as if they were children rather than capable adults. She consistently micromanages them, preventing them from making mistakes and making decisions on their own. Her team members feel unable to make decisions independently and are afraid that if they do, they may face repercussions.

This tendency to micromanage and lack of trust in others also affects her personal life, particularly in her relationship with her husband. She finds it difficult to relinquish control and delegate household responsibilities to him, which leads to her dissatisfaction with the outcome when he does take charge. Furthermore, she worries that he may resent having to do the work in the first place, which preemptively makes her feel guilty.

When we underestimate the capabilities of others, we may treat them like children instead of adults. This behavior is not intentional, but it stems from a lack of trust, which leads to excessive interference, nitpicking or taking over. When we don't have confidence in their ability to handle tasks effectively, we may disregard their opinions, ideas or assistance. As a result, individuals who we expect to develop and grow are not given the support they need to do so.

Additionally, when we don't trust others, it can create an environment where they may be hesitant to express their doubts or admit to mistakes. They may fear that they will be seen as incompetent or that their mistakes will be met with negative consequences. This lack of trust can lead to a lack of communication and a lack of open dialogue. Furthermore, it can lead to a lack of confidence and cooperation among team members, which can negatively impact the overall performance of the team.

Uncovering the Root of Our Mistrust

If we don't investigate and initiate the process of healing the source of our mistrust, we may never be able to overcome it.

When Sara was a girl, she had to act like a grown-up and look after her dad, who was an alcoholic and her mom, who was a narcissist. Her parents depended on her to make sure her dad's drinking didn't get out of control, and her mom's need for emotional stability was always taken care of.

Growing up, a lot of us had to take on grown-up roles when the adults around us acted like kids. Maybe our parents had an addiction, mental health issues, or tough backgrounds. We might have had to step up and take care of our siblings, manage the household money, or manage our parents' emotional instability.

We often find ourselves taking on the responsibility of our siblings or filling in for our parents to ensure that our family is stable and functioning well. We may feel like we have no choice but to step up and take charge to maintain a sense of normalcy in our lives. The alternative is chaos, and there may not be anyone else to turn to. We take on these responsibilities in order to prevent things from getting worse. Without stepping up and taking control, our lives may have spiraled.

The Perils of Being a Caretaker

As a result of not being able to rely on others, we may develop an unhealthy view of ourselves, thinking that we are only valuable when we are constantly taking charge and doing things for others. This can be especially detrimental when we have to take on adult responsibilities and care for others at a young age. It can lead us to believe that our worth is solely based on our ability to focus on and take care of others and that taking care of ourselves is somehow wrong or selfish.

We may feel like we are being selfish or neglecting our responsibilities if we take time for ourselves. This can manifest in various ways, such as feeling guilty for taking a vacation or taking time to pursue personal hobbies or interests. This can cause us to constantly put others' needs before our own and neglect our own self-care or personal growth.

It's tough to find people we can trust and connect with when we're not used to trusting others. It can make it hard to pick out who we can rely on and who shares our values. This can make building healthy relationships and making good decisions about who we let into our lives difficult. It can also make it hard to be open and vulnerable in relationships, which is so important for building trust and intimacy.

We might also have trouble setting and sticking to boundaries.

In her personal life, Sara finds it tough to turn people down. She's always putting her family first - her kids, husband, sister, mom, and extended family - even if it means she doesn't get anything in return. That can make her feel taken advantage of and unappreciated, which eats away at her self-esteem.

Giving and not getting anything back in relationships can make anyone feel like they're being taken advantage of and mess with their self-confidence.

It's natural to be suspicious of other people's skills and reliability, but when that suspicion is all-encompassing, it's important to remember that these doubts usually come from our own insecurities, not from them. Our trust issues usually come from when we were kids and had to do more than we should've had to, like taking care of others when our parents couldn't.

When we're young, it's easy to go along with what other people want, but as grown-ups, it can be exhausting and make us feel like we're being taken advantage of if we're always helping out. It's important to get to the bottom of why we have trust issues, especially if they stem from our past. Once we recognize and understand these issues, we can start to work through them and create healthier relationships down the line.

Summary:

• Doubts about others' abilities can be normal, but when they prevent us from trusting anyone, it's not good.

• Trust issues often stem from childhood experiences, such as having to take on responsibilities beyond our age.

• Acknowledging and understanding these issues can help us build healthier relationships.

Sh*t Happens: Dealing with Discomfort and Change

You will do the right things, give it your all, and still come up short. People you counted on will let you down. Your plans will get dashed and your goodwill will get used. Some mornings you'll be flooded with enough that you don't want to get out of bed.

There will also be glories. The work pays off. People surprise you. You get love and joy. All of it moves. The sun goes behind clouds, the storm comes and doesn't rage forever, the seasons turn whether you're watching or not.

So the question isn't how to stop the weather. It's what you do when it turns.

We are built to avoid discomfort. On a dark day you want to move heaven and earth to bring the sun back. On a good one you want to bolt the sky in place. And somewhere you picked up the idea that if you can't make good things happen, something must be wrong with you. Some books will even tell you the problem is your own thinking, that your beliefs are blocking the life you want. That's a clean way to make the ache your fault.

Here's what I keep running into. Most of what sets us off day to day is not a threat to our life. Someone criticizes a call you made. No one sees it your way. You don't get the thing you wanted. It stings, and the body braces like it's a tiger. It isn't. But we treat the discomfort as the emergency, and then we pile on. We panic, we deny it, we lash out, we go numb, we eat the whole pint.

The reactions are the extra misery. The weather was going to pass on its own.

None of this is a stiff upper lip. Denying what you feel is its own way of leaving. So is bracing for the other shoe to drop. The move I keep coming back to is smaller than any of that. Stay in the storm without adding to it. Feel the discomfort without needing to do something about it right away.

It's going to happen to you. It happens to all of us, all the time

When Your Caveman Brain Takes Control

A few years ago I was at a dinner party, talking politics, when someone said something that landed as racist. I wanted to say so. I could feel the heat come up in my face and the words right there. Nothing came out. I sat there tongue-tied while the moment passed.

I tend to freeze. That's my move. You have one too.

Most of the time you're fine. Someone cuts you off in traffic and you let it go. A colleague hands you hard feedback and you can take it. You've got a window you operate inside, a range where you can still think and choose and act like the person you mean to be.

Then something pushes you past the edge. It might be volume: you were holding a newborn and a deadline and a crisis, and the whiny email is the thing that breaks you. It might be an echo of something old, this moment a carbon copy of one that once flattened you. Whatever it is, you slip outside the window, and an older, faster part of you takes the wheel.

That part isn't subtle. It doesn't think, and it doesn't empathize. It reacts. It was built for a tiger, and it can't tell a tiger from your mother-in-law. Embarrassment, failure, conflict: to the old brain those all read as threat, and it does what it's always done. It moves before you can.

It has four moves. Fight, flee, freeze, appease. Most of us live in one. Some people puff up and attack, with a glare or a jab or a raised voice. Some go small and scarce and change the subject. Some go blank, the way I do, the fog coming down. And some appease.

The appease move is the one I want to name, because it's the one that looks like getting along. You keep the peace. You play nice. You laugh at the comment you hate and change the subject, the way I've watched people do at a trade show booth, going along so the powerful men in the room stay comfortable. From the outside it reads as easy. Inside, you're trading a piece of yourself for the safety of not making waves, and if you do it long enough you stop noticing you're doing it. It eats at your confidence from underneath. The more you play nice, the less of you is in the room.

None of these are character flaws. Each one kept somebody alive once. The work isn't killing the reaction. It's learning to recognize it early, the way it feels in the body before it fully has you: the heat, the racing, the fog coming down.

The Power of Attention

You can't make a good call on ground you haven't really looked at. And a lot stays hidden from you. Whatever got you here, you're still human. Your read on things is partial, and it's slanted.

Most of us know this in the abstract. We can see it plainly in someone else. When it's our own situation, though, and especially when we need clarity most, we don't believe we might be missing something. We rarely meet a problem with fresh eyes. Our assumptions get there first and stand between us and what's in front of us.

That's how the blindside happens. The marriage that was fine enough comes apart when one person meets someone who wants what was ignored for years. The project that looked on track goes off the rails because nobody looked up from their own lane. We thought we knew what was what, so we stopped paying attention.

Attention isn't only aimed outward. It turns in. Open it up, and you notice the jaw that clenched when something went unsaid. You notice the tone of voice that doesn't match the words. You notice the thing you've been steering around.

That's the part that gets skipped because it isn't always comfortable. Really looking can make you question a conviction you were sure of, or walk back a plan you'd already committed to, when everything in you wants to push ahead. It's easier to stay busy. The clenched jaw is information, and information you didn't ask for is the kind we tune out.

You will lose your attention. Everyone does. The mind wanders off like a kite with the string let go. The practice isn't never to wander. It's noticing you've wandered and turning back to the thing in front of you, even the part you've been steering around.

What Mindfulness Isn’t

Most of what gets written about mindfulness makes it sound like a club for people who can recite two hundred digits of pi. Impressive, dull, out of reach. It's none of those.

It also gets sold as a way to rewire yourself into a calm, productive machine. That might happen as a side effect. It isn't the point. Mindfulness doesn't turn you into something better. It wakes you up to what's already here.

So let me say what it isn't.

It isn't blocking out distractions. That isn't even possible, and it's the wrong aim. You want to open awareness, not narrow it. Your sensations, feelings, and thoughts are carrying information. A faint whisper that something is wrong, a flicker of an idea, a pull toward one path over another. Wall them off, and you miss all of it.

It isn't mind control. The mind runs like a river, sometimes drifting, sometimes flooding. You can't stop the flow. You can notice when you've been carried off, before you've gone too far, and turn back.

It isn't harsh. Yank your attention around like a dog on a short rope, and you get a stubborn, closed mind.

It isn't passive. It's choosing. Where to put your attention, how to respond. Being mindful doesn't mean you never raise your voice. Sometimes shouting is the honest response.

It isn't magic. It won't hand you special powers. It hands you back a clarity that was already in reach. You see what's there, instead of what you hoped was there.

Notice the shape of all of it. Mindfulness runs opposite to the move most of us make all day, which is to override whatever's inconvenient and keep going. It asks you to turn toward what's here, the parts you'd rather not feel included. Not to wall off the whisper that something is wrong. To stay near it.

Peeling Away Layers of Our Onion

Just when we think we have completed a body of personal work like overcoming shame, self-loathing or chronic insecurity, it can sneak back up on us. The tendency is to think that we've regressed and that all the previous work we'd done is null and void. This perspective can leave us feeling hopeless.

What's happening is that we had learned one side or aspect of what our pain was attempting to teach us. The realizations we previously came to were useful, but as we evolve, and life around us changes, our previous breakthroughs don't always hold up.

That we revisit old, painful patterns isn't a step backward but an opportunity to come to understand ourselves at a more profound level. Emotional pain calls us into a deeper relationship with ourselves. It's as if we have peeled away one layer of an onion, only to discover that there is another layer. We mistakenly believe that there will come a day when we will no longer have layers to peel away.

The sooner we come to grips with the fact that our wounds never go away, but instead are like sirens calling us into a deeper accord with ourselves, the less we will resist them. The point isn't to eliminate them, but to learn to accept them as a doorway to our next level of evolution.

Dismember to Re-member

Collectively we are all being forced to reassess what's important and what matters. Shelter-in-place is forcing many of us to look within, to find out what we're made of, what's driving us. This virus is forcing us to remember, to remember our dreams. In a way, we are being dismembered in order to re-member. We are being disintegrated in order to reintegrate.

Are we going to try to go back to the way things were? We so easily forget what it was actually like only a few months ago: the striving, the pressure, the speed and intensity, the addiction to being busy. Most importantly, we overlook the twin misconceptions afflicting our collective consciousness: the fallacy that we are never enough as we are and that something outside of ourselves will pacify this emptiness we feel inside.

We aren't skinny enough, aren't young enough, aren't smart enough. Our rampant materialism has been an unconscious attempt to cover up this subtle feeling of inadequacy and dissatisfaction. Material things can never fill this void. What we desire exists only in relationship to ourselves, to another, to others and to spirit.

As we consume more than we need, we lose touch with our interdependence with one another and to this earth. Our disconnection upsets what truly matters. We upend the balance of nature, which we are utterly dependent on for our survival. Our waters become poisoned, and our earth is scorched to feed our insatiable greed. We can see its effect in our own homes as we watch our children growing addicted to video games and drugs.

Nature has been poking us to remember for some time, but we have been ignoring her calls in the form of natural disasters, mass killings and lying politicians. The more we ignore her, the more we can see how it affects not just ourselves but everyone around us. It's hard not to see today that this fundamental choice to come back home to the heart and to remember what matters effects everyone.

We don't like to feel confined in our homes, but sheltering in place is the perfect excuse to drop in and confront our ego's delusion of not enough-ness. We will never find what we are looking for through our consumption. Until we figure this out, nature will continue to humble us, to remind us that we are of the earth. We are related to all life and to The One Life. This moment is dismembering us so that hopefully we can re-member.

Blind Spots

Lettuce in your teeth is no big deal, but it stings to learn about it after the meeting, when everyone saw it, and nobody said a word. People stay quiet because pointing out someone's flaw feels rude. If it's that hard to mention lettuce, imagine how rarely anyone tells you you're on the wrong career path, or marrying the wrong person. And you wouldn't want to hear it from them anyway. What do they know?

Here's what I keep running into, though. The signs are usually there. The selfish partner is the same one who stiffed the server on the third date. The eighty-hour job started with an interview that asked for a dozen examples of how you go above and beyond. When you miss the signs, it isn't that they weren't there. Something in you did not need to see them.

The blind spots that run deepest come from beliefs set so early they feel like the marrow of you. Bigger is better. Hard work earns your worth. Needing things is weakness. You don't examine these. You live by them.

My friend Jamie pivoted her business and got good feedback on the vision, but she couldn't sell it past the early adopters. She pushed harder. Hard work had always paid off for her before. She wanted to build a multimillion-dollar company, double revenue for ten years, and employ a big team.

Two things stayed hidden from her. In front of her, the market wasn't ready for what she was building. Inside her, her gut kept saying the real work was with her clients, not an empire. She ignored her gut for a long time. Then she hit a wall, overstretched and burned out, and couldn't ignore that working harder wasn't working.

When she stepped back, she saw what had been driving her. She had always measured her worth by what she achieved. Grades, money, title. If she didn't hit the goals, she'd let people down, and letting people down might mean she wasn't good enough. So she looked hard at "good enough" and found it was a moving target she could never reach.

She asked a different question. What if I'm good enough already? What's really in front of me, and what do I want?

The CEO she was trying to become had not come from her. It came from school, from her family, from the places she'd worked. It was a rule she never chose, running her life from a spot she couldn't see.

Meet Your Inner Critic

Somewhere in you there may be a part that doesn't buy your own worth. It has the evidence ready, filed and tabbed. A chain of failures. Every criticism you ever took. Side-by-side comparisons with people who are better. What could have been.

When you're absorbed in something, it goes quiet. When things stall, it starts up. There you go again. You're not enough. You're lazy, weak, and inept. If people knew what you were really like, they'd want nothing to do with you. You're not enough.

It's one looping track, the same lines remixed. Sometimes flat and matter-of-fact, like coordinates read over a radio. More often with a cutting edge. And it comes with such authority that you take it for the voice of your deepest truth.

It isn't. This is the inner critic.

It forms early, around five, when you're first stepping toward independence and absorbing everything. What the adults expect. What gets you approved of? What gets you in trouble? It's built to keep you safe by getting ahead of the criticism, landing it before anyone else can. That's the whole job. And it works with a five-year-old's idea of safety, even while it sounds like an adult. When you're down and need to get back up, it's just as likely to shove you deeper in.

I've worked with hundreds of people. CEOs, founders, people the world calls successful. I have never met one without an inner critic. Even Mr. Rogers wrote about wrestling his, after twenty-five years of teaching children, they were lovable as they were.

Lisa was a star in tech. She'd started and sold two companies by thirty. She thought of herself as an extraordinary leader, and so did everyone else, until her husband left her within a year of their child being born. He'd been having an affair with her best friend. She was leveled by the betrayal and by running a company alone with a newborn. That much would flatten anyone. But her critic went to work on top of it. It berated her for not seeing the affair. It listed every way she'd failed the marriage. By the time she came to me, she'd decided her whole career had been luck, and that the divorce proved she was unlovable.

Here's the move that helps, and it isn't fighting the critic. Fighting it makes it louder. You step back and get curious about it instead. Take a breath, notice it's here, and ask what it's afraid of.

The critic tells Lisa she's weak, and she doesn't deserve the job. So the question isn't whether that's true. It's when she first learned that being weak wasn't safe. Who was watching? What she was protecting. Underneath, most of the time, is a rule you took on so young it never occurred to you it was a rule. Be strong for everyone. Never need anything. Don't be a burden.

The critic is enforcing that rule. It thinks it's keeping you safe, keeping you from being left. What it's doing is holding you to terms you never agreed to, and it's done it so long that you took its voice for your own.

Stop! Look! Go!

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose a response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

—Victor Frankl

The saying goes that "You reap what you sow," but we are not always aware of the seeds we scatter about. Taking a mindfulness approach to our leadership means that we are taking responsibility for how we influence others. Responsibility is often understood as a duty. Instead, what I am implying by the word responsibility is the ability to respond in any given situation. When we are able to respond, we can choose which seeds we would like to plant and which ones we won’t. Do we want to create a wave of anxiety throughout the workplace because we aren’t close to meeting our year-end numbers, or do we want to motivate with excitement by creating a challenge that causes those around us to step-up?

Having the ability to respond allows us to put mental time and space between a stimulus and an action. Because we think what we feel instead of feeling what we think, from a neurobiological perspective, this space of mind enables the range of possibilities to be considered. Having the ability to respond affords us the choice to be our "wisest self" possible in a given circumstance we find ourselves in, whether it is charged with emotional intensity or not.

I want to share a useful three-step formula from Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk known for interfaith dialogue and his work on the interaction between spirituality and science. He came up with a three-part “Recipe for Grateful Living: Stop! Look! Go!” that he shares in this TED Talk. Brother David designed these steps as a down and dirty gratefulness practice, but it works equally as a practice of engaged mindfulness, of being present enough to achieve a high degree of "respond-ability" in any situation.

Stop!

For Brother David, stopping is about pausing for “the gift this moment offers you.” From the perspective of mindfulness, we stop to come back to the here and now. It is only in the present moment where we can effect change, and we miss it when we move non-stop. We don’t often take a break out of our unceasing momentum, except when we sleep. We tend to run in an automatic, unceasing momentum, thanks to caffeine and the high value our culture places on productivity. Stopping can be particularly difficult, especially when someone hands us a hot potato and we are sent into a fit of rage, or we are asked to make a decision but are not sure how to respond. The only place, though, where we have the power to create, to generate something new, something appropriate is in the present moment.

Developing the knack for breaking motion can be very powerful, as it stimulates the middle prefrontal cortex, the portion of the brain that allows us to move through the world with wisdom, foresight, and level-headedness. Stopping does not require that we always halt for hours or even minutes. A stop can be as short as a moment. It need only be long enough to:

1. Note how does the situation affect the depth and speed of our breath? 2. Note the emotional charge in our body by quickly: a. Locating it b. Labeling the emotion(s) c. Noting sensations

As an example, it comes to our attention that a new employee has mismanaged a longstanding customer relationship, and we notice that we’re triggered: our faces are red-hot and our breath is shallow and rapid.

The more we become habituated to pausing, the less reactive we are. An interesting neuroimaging study by researcher, Julie Brefcyznski-Lewis and her colleagues revealed that when long-term meditators were subjected to negative sounds, like a woman screaming, they showed less amygdala activation compared to novice meditators. The more hours one meditated, the lower the activation. Simply by practicing mindfulness meditation, we develop an innate capacity to pause before we act, especially when we feel strong negative emotion. That way we are not trapped by our autopilot-like ingrained behaviors.

Look!

Once we’ve stopped, that middle prefrontal cortex is stimulated. It will naturally dampen whatever amydgala hijack might be taking place. It will also help us to use the time and space we’ve created to see, as Brother David puts it, “the opportunity available now.” From the standpoint of mindfulness, before we react, we:

1. Look at the circumstances we find ourselves. 2. Consider results we want to create 3. Formulate a response that bridges the gap between our desired impact and the situation we are attempting to effect.

By pausing and looking, we can distinguish between the emotions we feel and the outcomes we want to have. As a result we can tailor a response that meets the latter rather than the former, or we can figure out a way to have both expressed in a way that has positive impact.

In the example above of the employee who has mismanaged a customer relationship, we might initially be angry or frustrated, but by stopping, as we did before, we will become less triggered and cannot help but see that the employee is a novice. It is likely that he or she is not aware of his mistake. So we might consider this breakdown as a training opportunity for the employee.

Like stopping, looking can take time, but not a great deal of time is needed. We may not have endless time to get a subtle read on the internal sensations or mull over lots of options. Sometimes we are so triggered that any answer will be one of reaction. In that case, we are not ready to choose, and so we may respectfully ask for more time. If clarity of action isn’t forthcoming in the time that is allotted, a quick rule-of-thumb is to pause long enough to allow our emotional reactivity to diminish enough so that we can see options that are non-defensive or aggressive. The quality of our mind has a strong impact on the outcome. If we have made a choice from a place of clarity, we will experience more clarity. If we make a choice from a place of unrest, the results will often lead to more unrest.

Go!

But when we are clear, we go. And this is what makes Brother David’s recipe distinct from most contemplative practices. Instead of endlessly staying in the cave of stop and look for the next 20 years, Brother David is encouraging us, “To do something with this precious opportunity!” And when we engage, we give ourselves complete permission to follow the clarity that emerged in the look phase. Mindful action does not mean that we always speak in soft, whispering, pseudo-meditator-like tones. When we are engaged in a mindful way, we bring whatever energy is needed for a given situation. If intensity is needed, we bring that. Whatever the course of action, we do so whole-heartedly. We don’t hold back.

Sometimes we must take strong and forceful action. Maybe someone is being aggressive toward a weaker person. If that is the case, we might sense an obligation to stop him or her. In the case of the employee who does not recognize the mistake, we might previously have paused before reacting and offered our respect by attempting to see his or her perspective. We might even have attempted in mild ways to let them know that we do not agree with them or that they’ve disappointed us. If he or she continues to disregard us, it can be useful to take hard action.

What makes the orientation of Stop! Look! Go! unique is that we do what needs to be done in a given situation, but we do so without losing the balance of our minds. When we must take strong action, we Stop! and Look! By doing so, we notice the quality of our emotions and thoughts. If we are agitated and act from this place, we will only be planting seeds of agitation. If, on the other hand, we are centered and even-minded, the quality of seeds we will plant will most likely result in a positive outcome.

What Buddha Understood But Freud Didn't

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

-Albert Einstein

Wise people across all cultures and from time immemorial have essentially been repeating the same maxim: “Know thyself.” In spite of all the things we do to know ourselves, we remain a mystery to ourselves throughout our lives. We all have multiple natures. If told a secret, one part of us wants to honor the vow by not telling the secret; however, we also experience a little relief by telling someone about the secret we’ve been asked to keep in confidence. We are truly divided: we simultaneously want to grow up and don’t want to grow up; hunger for sexual pleasure, dread sexual pleasure; hate our own resentments but are unwilling or somehow unable to forgive. It is as if we are not one monolithic identity or self but, rather, a myriad of selves with various and opposing drives.

The notion of the unconscious is a term Sigmund Freud used to connote all of the irrational forces that drag us hither and thither, that cause us to act and react in ways that we cannot and do not totally understand, nor can we consciously identify with. The goal of psychotherapy, according to Freud, was to come to an understanding of these subsurface urges through psychoanalysis, which consisted of dream interpretation and talk therapy.

Ultimately, at best, the psychotherapeutic patient, according to Freud, could not be cured of his or her divided self, but, instead, could become reconciled to the fact that he or she was made up of complex and multifarious drives. This simple knowledge would allow the individual to, once again, function as a contributing member of society.

Freud initiated the West’s fascination with the unconscious, but individuals in the Indian subcontinent had been exploring the divided self for thousands of years prior to Freud. People like Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Buddha, had been experimenting on themselves as far back as the sixth century, B.C.E. in order to overcome life’s uneasy and sometimes even distressing qualities.

Like Freud, these “self-scientists” saw the suffering that resulted from their divided urges, but the goal was different; in fact, it was more thorough. They weren’t trying to fit into society again. Instead, they sought total freedom; not freedom from society per se, but freedom from the divided self. They sought access to resolving this divide. They sought a kind of wholeness. And their approach was quite different.

Je Pense, Donc Je Suis

In 1637, the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes turned the West’s model of reality inside out when he stated: “Je pense, donc je suis,” or “I think, therefore I am.” What he implied in this statement was that being is conditional upon thinking. This notion that the human was first and foremost a thinking entity set a course for philosophical development in which the mind and body were separated, that the body was of a lower nature because, unlike the mind, it was not rational.

Descartes believed that minds and bodies were distinct kinds of substance. Bodies, he held, were spatially extended substances, incapable of feeling or thought; minds, in contrast, were thinking, feeling substances. Freud’s methodology is a byproduct of this paradigm; only through the use of the rational, logical mind can we come to terms with our divided self.

However, the more complex the thought patterns, the more we become separated from the fundamental problems and conflicts we experience. Thinking, while useful in solving some problems, often begets more problems, more fragmentation, and more complexity.

This is the fundamental difference between Freud and the Buddha: Freud sought to make rational sense of the divided self. The Buddha agreed that the self was divided, fragmented, and, ultimately, a great mystery, but he recognized that the thinking mind could not resolve the mystery. In other words, he couldn’t think his way out of the problem of fragmentation. He needed another methodology, another approach.

At first, the Buddha’s path was pretty extreme. He spent six years attempting to conquer the parts of himself that he didn’t like by trying to overcome the appetite for food, sex, and even comfort. He fasted. He took vows of celibacy. He slept in brambles and exposed himself to extreme heat and cold. In fact, his efforts in self-abnegation through fasting were so fierce that when he found himself near-to-death, he accepted a bowl of rice from a young girl.

Once he had eaten, he had a realization that physical austerities were not the means to overcoming the divided self. Starvation didn’t help. It only reinforced the divide by killing off the physical body. And so, instead of negating the various urges, trying to get away from them, he developed his own methodology of facing them. What he discovered was that when he could observe his body’s frustrations, anxieties, hurts, and longings in a non-reactive way, they lost their hold on him.

The Nervous System

Like Freud, he discovered two minds occurring simultaneously: the conscious mind (the mind of apparent reality) and the unconscious mind (the mind below the surface). While Freud used dream analysis to understand the hidden meaning of one’s unconscious thoughts, drives, and desires, the Buddha made use of an even simpler and more direct tool for making sense and working with the unconscious drive. What he observed was that when he lost contact with a presence of mind, he almost always left his body. If the thoughts were anxious, angry, or stimulating, and he brought his attention into the body, he would also notice his heart racing along with jittery feelings that made it difficult to sit still. If, on the other hand, he touched hopeless/helpless thoughts, thought forms associated with shame or overwhelm, he noticed his heart and breath rates would slow down, that he would feel drowsy, shut down, empty, and cold. He also noticed that whenever these feelings came on, a reflexive patterning of behaviors would ensue, behaviors that would prolong his loss of contact from presence.

Upon discovering this pattern, he devised a path out, a path he called mindfulness. Simply by observing, by staying present, non-reactive and gentle with himself when he fell into various qualities of fight, flight or freeze responses, he could settle his nervous system enough. By doing so, he developed a capacity to settle his nervous system’s reactivity.

Essentially, what the Buddha recognized was that this awareness, this means of knowing that what rests below the surface-the network of nerve cells and fibers that transmit nerve impulses between parts of the body and the brain-always remains inaccessible to us until we slow down and feel. While we have a great deal of training in thinking about the circumstances we find ourselves in thanks to Descartes, Freud, and pop-psychology, we have little to no training in working directly with our nervous systems. When we develop greater awareness and skillfulness when we lose the balance of our minds, we also gain a greater capacity to heal.  

Befriending the Inner Child

One of my clients describes this experience she had in grammar school. Being the chubbiest and slowest of the other kids performing wind sprints in Mrs. Wahlberg's P.E. class, my client would often come in last. Already tired and overwhelmed from being beaten, Mrs. Wahlberg would make her run several more wind sprints on her own while been scoffed at by the other kids. To this very day she pulls out her own Mrs. Wahlberg when the tax bill hasn't been paid; the bags from last weekend's vacation haven't been unpacked; and, oh yes, when she has totally forgotten to write a thoughtful response to that person who emailed her last week. As the "to do's" build up, so does the overwhelm.

The anxiety can be so debilitating that it swirls inside of her, almost like a lava lamp. Throughout most of her day, she anxiously wonders to herself, "What have I let slip through the cracks? Am I doing 'the right thing' at this moment? Am I on the right track?" Secretly she wonders, "Will I ever know what 'the right track' is?"

Instead of gathering her wits about her, my client invites Mrs. Wahlberg and the kids in her class to mock her: "You're chubby. You're slow. You're weak. You're lame." All the while, my client mistakenly believes that this will somehow motivate her to get unburied from the mountain of tasks, known and unknown, that await her.

This may sound like someone else's story, but it's actually all of our stories. We've all come to believe in some particular way that we are weak, slow, defective, ugly, unlovable or just plain, "not enough." We've gathered plenty of evidence that validates our insufficiency. When we find ourselves yet again in situations that confirm our flaw, we beat ourselves up.

Here's the kicker. We mistakenly believe that if we're mean or cruel enough, somehow we will slough off our bad habits. Instead, we're practicing being cruel to ourselves, which stimulates the stress hormone, cortisol, into our blood, sending us into a depression that deepens the hole we're already in.

Below the self-loathing and the accompanying longing that we'd just get this part of ourselves handled is a deep and old wound. It's the kind of wounding that can happen in Mrs. Wahlberg's P.E. class; when dad married the bitch that wished I hadn't existed or; as in my case when my brother took his life and nobody knew how to help.

These experiences leave exquisitely tender marks on the mind, body and spirit. To make contact with these imprints can be like putting our hand on a hot stove. They burn. We don't know how to keep these parts of ourselves company; in fact we've spent a lifetime wishing they would just go away.

There comes a point for many of us, however, when we stop running from them, when we stop attempting to beat ourselves into submission. Maybe someone shows up who can help us, or maybe we end up completely overwhelmed and can no longer keep up the facade. However it happens, instead of running from them, we turn around and look. We find a gentle and tolerable way to keep these parts of us company. When we do, we begin to discover that instead of needing to be excised, these parts of ourselves are actually hidden with treasures of insight, compassion and wisdom.

As my client learns to keep this underlying pain company, to welcome it, to have compassion for herself, she's starting to discover that when she's triggered, she can use it as an invitation to come back, come back to the chubby, little girl being abused in Mrs. Wahlberg's class.

"Above all else," she says, "We don't abuse children. Above all else, I don't abuse myself."

Freeing Yourself from Your Mind

Unlike adults, children don’t get hung up on not knowing the answers. When, for example, they learn to walk, they do not get fixated on looking foolish for having fallen. Their lack of self-consciousness enables them us to keep picking themselves up whenever they fall. They do not let the crippling sense of their ineptitude keep them from continuing to try. They don’t think to themselves, “I hope they won’t see what a fraud I am at this thing called walking?” 

We adults are not so quick to take risks, especially in the areas of our lives where we feel stuck. This reticence is due in large part to changes in our brains as we become grow up. Slowly, as we gather information about the world around us, we develop mental models that prevent us from being surprised or caught off-guard. Most neuroscientists currently operate under the paradigm that an adult brain is a prediction-making machine.

We naturally compare a previous set of experiences to the circumstances we find ourselves in. People remind us of other people we know, and experiences remind us of earlier experiences we have had. This association is how our brain predicts. Our mental models allow the brain to take in as little information as it needs to make guesses about what will happen. These assumptions allow us to forecast and anticipate outcomes using as little brainpower as possible. 

Where these energy-efficient predictions tend to fail us, however, is when we confront circumstances that do not match our expectations, like when all of a sudden, someone we love unexpectedly dies. Such experiences send us into shock. Unfortunately, the mental models we acquire don’t take into account life. As the adage goes, “Humans plan, and God laughs.” When predictions, assumptions and expectations fail us, we inevitably refuse to accept reality; in fact, we resist it.

Avidya

In the language of Yoga, Sanskrit, this denial of reality is called avidya. Avidya often translates as ignorance, but a more accurate one is not understanding. When we are in avidya, we refuse to accept and, in fact, reject the facts when they do not accord with what we want, hope or expect. Avidya is like having a thick layer of gauze over our eyes. It blocks our capacity to acknowledge or even experience what is so. 

In the first of his Four Noble Truths, the Buddha famously pointed out that life can be dissatisfying. That might sound pessimistic, but I think you’d agree that it’s also reality. We’re not always happy. Rarely do we experience contentment or do things go according to plan. Even though we know this, we somehow refuse to admit it. 

We keep wishing the circumstances we find ourselves in would be some way other than what they are. Our refusal to accept reality is what causes us to be so frustrated with life. Whenever we take the facts on their terms, we’re not so bothered by it, but the more we resist something we don't want or like, the more it lingers. 

When we refuse to accept people in our lives as they are, we tend to experience more conflict. When we spend energy trying to fix circumstances that don’t need our fixing, they tend to get worse. When we refuse to acknowledge our own feelings because they don’t accord with an image we have of ourselves, those repressed feelings undermine our lives. 

If, on the other hand, we can learn to find acceptance, to, at the very least, acknowledge reality, we can work with it. We can make changes that accord with our higher nature. Without the resistance of nonacceptance, we see options and possibilities. With resistance, all we see are possible conflicts and insurmountable obstacles.

Limiting Beliefs

From the moment we come out of the womb, we are trained to resist reality, to wish for things to be other than the way they are. Pain and pleasure are our primary teachers. If a parent continually betrays our trust, the pain of that leaves us less inclined to be forgiving. If we felt loved and accepted at our church, synagogue, mosque or other religious institution, we are more apt to want to continue participating in our religion in our adult years   

Not only are we conditioned through pain and pleasure, but we also involuntarily absorbed and adopted beliefs and values about the world from our parents, caretakers, teachers and friends. At early stages of development, particularly before we had a chance to form our own ideas of the world and life, they showed us what life was and what its rules were, either through their example or through language. We learned do’s and don'ts, should’s and shouldn'ts, right's and wrong's, can's and can not's, always and never’s.

• I'll never meet someone who will love me for who I am.

• I want to, but I cannot trust myself.

• I won't be worthy of love until I've lost the weight. 

• I'll always be lost. I'll never know my purpose. 

• If I let someone in, they'll hurt me.

• I'll never figure out what I want or need.

• Who am I to be happy and successful?

• If I offer others my feedback, they won't like me.

• There's no time to wander, to explore, to meet new people, to learn, to plan fun activities, to travel.

Our parents and caretakers imparted these rules because they believed we needed to learn them to survive life. Instead of enlarging our lives, these beliefs and values tend to narrow them, especially when we take them on face value and don’t, in fact, question and explore their validity through our own life experience. When absorbed unquestioningly, they limit what’s possible in our lives. Rather than experiencing the myriad of ways to live, we avoid life altogether.  Our acquired ideas about the way the world is and isn't tend to imprison us in bubbles of predictability and monotony. We rarely take risks outside of the known.

Beginner’s Mind

Kids are not limited in the way we adults can be. They don’t filter reality through concepts and ideas. They experience it directly. When they’re sad, they cry. When they’re angry, they get mad. They don’t think to themselves, “I better not cry. If I do, they’ll think I’m soft.” Instead of wishing that reality was different than it is, they are more willing than we adults to explore it with inquisitiveness. This child-like quality of exploration is what the Zen tradition calls the Beginner’s Mind, which is curious, open for new learning and free of pre-conceived opinions, beliefs and judgments.

Nan-in, a Japanese master…received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. 

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!”"

Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?” (1)

When we hold our beliefs as if they are authentic representations of reality, we do not experience life directly. Our conceptual models keep us at a distance from the unmediated experience of life. They are filters through which we judge whether the circumstances we confront as either good or bad, wanted or unwanted. They don't allow us to experience life’s immediacy. Keeping it at a distance prevents us from letting our challenges and obstacles grow and morph us. They are not errors but opportunities that compel our transformation. 

When we let go of the conceptual mind and step into Beginner’s Mind, we are free to use our senses to explore the obstacles we face in a very direct manner. Feelings, emotions, pictures, sense perceptions and memories begin to flow through us. We can pay attention to what the body wants to show us in precise and unambiguous ways. No longer relying on assumptions about right and wrong to guide us, but instead on what the body knows and communicates naturally, we begin to tap into a quality of mind that lies at the core of who and what we truly are. 

Applying Beginner’s Mind

We know we're not in Beginner's Mind when we're upset. That's a tell-tale sign that we are not accepting a situation as it is, that we're resisting something. We might be withholding our love or trust, rejecting someone else's feelings or our own. We might be anxiously anticipating something we believe will happen. We can ask ourselves the following three questions when we are anxious, sad, frustrated or angry:

1. For me not to be upset, how should I or others have behaved differently, or how should the circumstances be different?

   Note: The "should" we uncover in this question will reveal the hidden belief compelling us to resist reality.

2. How is this belief impacting me in this situation and throughout my life?

3. What would I have to feel and experience to be with the circumstances as they are rather than how I hoped they would be or how I think they ought to be?

Footnote
(1) Reps, Paul and Nyogen Senzaki. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings. Tuttle Publishing. Rutland, Vermont. 1985.