How do you grieve?

How do you grieve? 

Let’s back up.  What do you know about grief?  How is it different from sadness or depression?  

We know they are look-a-likes.  Both involve intense sadness and even  despair.  Grief, however, is the normal and appropriate response to a great loss, often the death of a loved one.  Whereas they share several characteristics such as heightened emotions, fatigue, appetite disturbances, loss of pleasure, and inability to enjoy things, they are not the same.  

A big contrast is depression is usually marked by a tendency to isolate from others with little or no experience of pleasure.  The grieving person usually stays connected to others through the process and hopefully experiences  pockets of joy or pleasure along the way.  Something I learned from the  grief guru himself, David Kessler, is that grief must be witnessed—loved one(s) hopefully walk alongside and see this pain integrating into our lives  so we can process it better.  

There’s also this thing called anticipatory grief:  deep sadness for what will be lost.  The fact that life will never fully go back to the way things were pre-covid is what that tastes like.  Just as air travel did after 9/11, this virus has and will mark history in an unprecedented way.  

You may know there are five main stages of grief:  Denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and acceptance.  So as it pertains to the pandemic that’s coursing through the unwilling veins of our world: 

1. Denial:  This won’t affect me.

2. Anger:  I’m so pissed we didn’t act faster as a nation.  And I hate staying at  home all the time without work and independence!

3. Bargaining:  If we wear a mask and keep our distance, this will all be over, yes?

4. Sadness:  I feel helpless because there’s no real endpoint.

5. Acceptance:  This is really happening and I can do my part to help out.

Grief is complex and not linear.  For all you type A’s out there, beware of trying to grieve neatly.  It won’t happen.  It’s messy, cyclical, and much like whac-a-mole.  

One day we can be fairly poised, the next mad as hell, and the next denying anything’s actually happening because the weather’s finally warm and sunny.  

As you can imagine, the real power lies in the acceptance piece.  When we are able to simply allow what’s coming up emotionally and let it move through us, we can access acceptance more quickly.  After all, the word “emotion” is mostly comprised of the word “motion.”  That said, we must allow them to come up and move through us as they are created in our bodies.  If we don’t do this, we create bigger problems down the road.

So how do we grieve what used to be?  The lovely life you’d grown accustomed to? The lifestyle and rituals you carved out over the years?  How do you make sense of this new normal?

By assigning meaning to it.  

We must appropriate purpose to our grief.  Eventually, we must be the hero in our grief story as opposed to the victim. 

David Kessler, (grief guru) actually built out the grief process to include “meaning” as the sixth stage.  How powerful is that?   

Let your grief work for you and create deeper, richer meaning in your life right now.  Your shock is appropriate, your tears are precious, your anger—valid.  We are all on this spiritual journey together as we become more real through our pain.  

P.S. Need a safe space to process and grieve?  I’d love to support you on your journey.  Fill out my online inquiry for a free 20-minute discovery call.     

Your (Easy) Guide to Self-Care

There’s a lot of talk about self-care these days. That said, a lot of it is fluffy…bloated if you will.  So much so, I started a monthly membership program called the Practice that is devoted to helping you create and maintain a true self-care plan using the Enneagram as a roadmap.  More on that later… 

Unfortunately, society has taught us a version of self-care that falls drastically short in terms of actually promoting deep care and restoration.  It makes sense to me that many of us have lost hope in it or see it as indulgent and even selfish.  Spa treatments, retail therapy, and wine nights to take the edge off might appear to work temporarily, however they fail to  support our process in any lasting change.  They can also get really expensive! Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge proponent of pampering and celebrating, yet we need to be clear about the fact that these are not the same as self-care.  

So if these self-care imposters temporarily boost our spirits (and appearances) yet leave us feeling just as empty as before, don’t you think it’s time we take a deeper look at what real self-care looks like?  Let’s do it. 

Life continues to present us with challenges.  We know that now more than ever.  We need a brand of self-care that will help us stay present as opposed to escaping our lives–one that will connect us to more compassion, energy, perspective, balance and grace in order to move through the tough times and even thrive amidst the chaos.  

Now I know this process might seem frustrating and even confusing.  However, I don’t think it has to be.  I firmly believe whatever we practice, we improve.  In my monthly subscription, we will explore your dominant Enneagram type and what the best self-care practices are for you to process difficult, stressful emotions and create balance where there is imbalance.  

When you learn a few practices that are clinically proven to help you grow, you’ll have a self-care routine that will eventually help you flourish.  Not only that, you will know and understand yourself so much better, gaining clarity into the why behind how you think, feel, and act.  You will start to heal old wounds that keep you stuck and perhaps most importantly, you’ll open up to lasting desired outcomes you once thought out of reach.  

I believe self-care is a process of befriending yourself.  Much like self-compassion, it’s showing yourself the heartfelt care and support you’d show a loved one in need. It’s learning to speak to yourself with a softer tone.  It’s developing practices that promote connection rather than isolation.  

You’ll not only become a more integrated, or whole, version of yourself, you’ll:

• reduce stress and anxiety

• learn how to identify and take care of your felt needs

• promote deeper connection with yourself and others

• develop healthier relationships

• understand what you want and how to get there

• develop better eating, sleeping, and exercise habits

• improve your overall mood, and

• connect to an overall mental, spiritual, and physical well-being.

So, are you ready to take your self-care to a whole new level?

Join me in The Practice.  Click here to sign up today.

Three Ways to Use the Enneagram for Transformation

First came type.  Everyone and their dogs flapping their gums about what’s your Enneagram type? Oh, and the memes that tell you how you take your coffee as said type.  And don’t forget the Instagram reels boasting how to dress for success as your type.  

If this gets old fast, it’s for a reason: most people don’t like being reduced to a number.

More recently, Enneagram teachers, myself included, have focused on going deeper, beneath the optics of type, to the ways in which we can practically apply the wisdom of the Enneagram.  After all, knowledge is power but knowledge plus implementation is transformational.  

So today, I want to share my favorite three ways to implement the Enneagram in our lives.  In the Practice, my Enneagram-based self-care subscription program, I’ve set up a roadmap and support along the way to do this work in community and it’s been powerful.  Here’s a bird’s eye view of the ways we’re practicing the life-giving work of the Enneagram.

1. Self-Observation.  This is first base and a huge game changer if you’re new to the idea.  Basically, we take the role of the student, the neutral observer of our own experience, and bear witness to our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, beliefs, and interactions.  This is a powerful way of creating more space between the “stimulus and response” as Viktor Frankl said.  It’s a way to bake in deeper self-awareness and understanding.  And don’t be fooled if this sounds like a walk in the park—it’s actually quite difficult at first because we are so used to living on autopilot! 
   

2. Vice to Virtue.  Each type has a passion, or emotional habit that keeps us stuck in the pitfalls of our type.  It’s like the catalyst for our habits of thought and emotion within our type structure.  Each type also has a virtue, or a state of essential wholeness and receptivity.  When we practice the vice to virtue movement, we become aware of how our passion operates in our daily lives and make the conscious movement from the vice, or passion, to the virtue, or state of open presence and the higher parts of our personality.  This invitation is always waiting and always expansive.
   

3. Balancing the Centers.  Last but not least, the Enneagram teaches we are three-brained beings as opposed to one.  We have thinking intelligence, emotional intelligence, and instinctual intelligence.  Every type operates dominantly out of one of these.  When we work to bring balance to the centers, we practice becoming aware of the other two intelligences we tend to downplay and dial up our awareness with them so as to create more balance and increase a well-rounded, grounded experience in life. 

So, are you ready to take your Enneagram practices to the next level?  Join me in the Practice!

This Writing Exercise Changed Everything for me

When was the last time you wanted to confront an issue with someone but didn’t know how?  Perhaps it felt too scary or threatened connection with that person?  Avoiding conflict is an easy habit to fall into, especially if you’re a recovering people-pleaser like me.  

And yet we know that honesty is so important.  When I learned that people-pleasing was, in fact, just another form of dishonesty, I decided I needed to shift my mindset around “speaking straight,” as I like to call it.  

However, There are times when honest conversation is not so helpful.  The other person may not be able to give you the thoughtful response you’re looking for.  In fact, it might be downright dangerous to initiate this form of transparency with the person who has caused you pain.  

Whether you’re dealing with fear around confrontation or a not-so-safe situation where a clear conversation may be counterproductive, this writing exercise is a game-changer.

I’m talking about letter writing.  It’s an effective, non-threatening way to process difficult emotions or experiences you have with someone…even yourself.  

The best part?  You can be brutally honest, working out past or present frustrations, and mentally, emotionally, and even physically manage situations that feel overwhelming.  

How does it work?  You simply put everything you need to say to someone down in letter-format.  You can write several drafts, starting out raw and unfiltered and eventually rounding it out with a bit more tact.  And, the best part is you get to decide if it’s worth sending the letter or not.  

This is so effective because YOU now step into your power by saying all you need to say—the good, bad, and ugly—for YOU.  When we can let go of the outcome and make this all about processing negative feeling emotions towards another person, we take responsibility for our process and slide into the driver seat of life.  

We shift from the victim to the hero of our story.

Sure, you can send the letter if you want.  But again, the secret sauce is in owning our power by letting go of outcomes and taking responsibility for our experience.  This exercise becomes more about a healthy way to process difficult experiences and less about manipulating or fixing what’s been lost, even if you are in the right. 

So, who do you need to write a letter to? What do you need closure or clearing around?  

Grab a pen and some paper and let’s get to it…

How to get out of your own way

Have you ever felt like you are your own worst enemy?  If you could only get out of your own way, life might be a lot easier?  

Me too.  I often feel I wrote the book on self-sabotage.  

I’ll never forget sitting in my old therapists office about eight years ago and hearing the strangest homework assignment I’d ever gotten to date.  Here’s what he said,

“Katie, I want you to spend the whole week simply being a student of you and your experience.”  

“Excuse me?”  I thought to myself as I quizzically stared back at him like he had eight heads.  This would be interesting…

This seemed nearly impossible at the time because I’d become so accustomed to ruthlessly judging myself without even noticing.  To merely “observe” or “witness” my daily experience would require me to slow down that automatic self-criticism.  It would require me to be a neutral audience.  This in turn, would require me to be a bit…kind?

It was perhaps the most profound assignment I’d ever been given.  I felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted from my weary frame.  I remember feeling curious, even intrigued by myself and my behaviors.  Miraculously, I’ve never done drugs before, but this little experiment felt as close as I’d gotten up until that point.  It was out-of-body.   

Part of my lifelong work has been learning to grow that neutral observer, or inner witness, inside that allows for self-awareness and compassion to take root and grow over time.  The more curious we can get about anything, the less time we spend in rigid judgment.  As a result, we move from a fixed mindset to a growth one.  Otherwise, we live in reaction mode, constantly being triggered and judging ourselves and others.  Not a good look.  

Here’s two things I’ve learned about human nature:

1. 99.999999% of us have a pretty nasty inner critic at some point along the way.  Human beings, by nature, have a negative bias.  As the saying goes, “we are our own worst critic.” 

2. It’s much easier to react out of emotion than respond out of self-awareness. 

I also believe you are your absolute greatest asset in this life.  However, in order to be MVP on your own team, you may need to clean out the dank and dusty attic of your thoughts, like I constantly do.  

So try this…

Assume the role of a neutral observer, a student if you will.  Pretend like you’re doing research for a project and any and every bit of information is fair game.  It’s okay if you bounce back into  the judgment seat.  That’s good information too!  Record your findings with this journaling prompt:  

What do I noticing about myself and my experience?  How can I be more curious throughout the day?  

If you get discouraged along the way, take heart.  In a science experiment, everything is good information, even failure.  And remember, you are the ultimate expert at you.