Extreme Much? Here's another way...

I remember sitting in my therapist’s office several years ago.  Probably twelve.  Gail was everything a brilliant therapist is in my mind: accepting, compassionate, wise, firm, seasoned by her own broken story, and the kind of listener that makes you feel like you’re the only soul on the planet. 

I was in the chapter of my life I refer to as the “falling” stage.  Everything around me seemed to be crumbling and my only job was to let it do so against every ounce of my will.  She held the sacred space for that painful season to unfold.  At every break, she simply wanted to better understand me, not try and fix me.  Gail saw me.

Have you ever been in that frustrating place where the best and safest thing to do is NOT break the fall? Just surrender? Just like with surfing or skydiving, the safest way to fall is to let go and lean into the plummet.

Resisting the challenge with tension, grit, and that secret stash of Xanax bars you snaked from your mama’s medicine cabinet aren’t included.

Gail patiently taught me how to fall, over time.  Something she said to me one day, in the vortex of my despair was this: “Katie, it doesn’t have to look a certain way.  You get to choose.” 

This stuck with me perhaps more than anything she ever said.  Funny how that works isn’t it?  We remember much more poignantly how people make us feel, not necessarily what they say.  However, these are some of the few words still glued on.

Much of my struggle was existing in a world of extremes, all-or-nothing thinking—you know— either-or—black or white.  Either I would be alone and depressed my whole life with little hope for anything or I’d be Miss Perfect: married with kids, a clear cut path forward, an enviable career, oh, and liked by all.

Looking back, I’m so grateful that buttoned up idea of success stayed just that, an idea.  

Falling for me meant moving from this dualistic, binary brand of extremes and living into the open relief that life, in fact, didn’t have to look a certain way.  It could be the messy middle, or, the both-and. 

I could feel sharp depression and understand hope was available.  I could feel lonely, longing for relationship and community and know it very well may look different in several weeks time.  I could long for certainty and lean into the unknown.  Richard Rohr calls it “holding creative tensions.” 

Holding the tension between a longing and its unmet fulfillment is indeed a creative, tight space.  It looks a whole lot like faith.

Does your extreme thinking feel exhausting?  Do you find yourself awfulizing situations by projecting worst-case scenarios onto perfectly neutral possibilities? If so, I feel you. It’s a relentless crapshoot. 

I believe that old way of ‘either-or’ is how we learned to make sense of the world growing up as kids.  However, as adults that rigid mindset needs some revising.  What if we could practice a softer, more curious approach? 

Let’s lean into the contemplative, creative space that invites more possibility, yes?