Mental Health and Self-Care: the new power couple

One of the first questions I like to ask clients I work with takes some by surprise.  It helps me steer our entire therapeutic journey.  It’s simple…and very complex.  

Tell me about your relationship with you?

Typically, after a long stare back at me like I have eight heads, they respond:  “Um…good question. I don’t think about it much.”

Exactly.  How we relate to ourselves doesn’t exactly stay top of mind.  Others, more likely.

Yet how we relate to ourselves—how we treat, take care of, and talk to ourselves directly impacts everything else in life. Everything. Including our mental health.

Why? Because we can’t live and give out of an empty vessel.  

Four years ago, myself and two dear friends founded and hosted the Self-Care Workshop.  It was powerful because we realized how desperate our souls, especially as women, are for deep, true self-care.  

I’m not talking mani-pedis and facials and wine nights with the girls.  Those are all fabulous and can be nurturing, but let’s call a spade a spade. Those are forms of pampering…and  pampering is a good thing!  Yet we’ve sold self-care short if we deem it expensive beauty treatments and indulgences.  We approach it as a luxury—the stuff that ensues out of an abundance of time, energy, and resources.

And yet I firmly believe the less of those three resources we have, the more important it is to fight for self-care. Our mental health depends on it. 

Actually, I’d like to rebrand self-care as self-compassion because I feel self-compassion looks more like true, life-giving self-care than spa treatments do.  

So what is self-compassion?   

Self-compassion is the practice of befriending ourselves.  It’s learning to think of, talk to, and treat ourselves with kindness and compassion like we would do a friend we deeply care about.  

Yet self-compassion also takes notice of some important things.    

1. It recognizes our hurt and suffering.

2. It moves towards this pain with a kind and open heart instead of trying to fix it, shame it, or numb it.  

3. It is built on the foundation that the human condition is fragile and this frailty is the  connective tissue that binds us all together.  

Guess what? Whereas “self-care” in a traditional, indulgent context has been tough for most of us, self-compassion is available and necessary at every turn. (Oh, and free!)

My own mental health journey has been wrought with peaks and (more) valleys.  However, by the literal grace of God, I’ve always fought to protect my self-care, namely writing, movement, and meditation practices.  

As I’ve learned to befriend myself along the way, I’ve stayed tethered to truth and tenderness.  I’ve also had some rockstar therapists who have made all the difference.  

Learning to extend compassion to yourself and truly nurture your whole wellbeing takes exercise. But, if you are ready to connect to true self-care and compassion, I hope you’ll join me in the Practice, my enneagram-based self-care membership program.  It’s a privilege and joy to support you in your story!

It's Mental Health Awareness Month...Let's Get Personal

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. It’s a time of renewed purpose and remembrance of why I do what I do as a therapist and mental health advocate. I have spent my fair share of times hopeless, folded over in defeat and loneliness. I know exactly what it feels like to want to end it all.  By God’s grace, I’m still here. And whereas I feel like I’ve lived lifetimes since my darkest night, I still see that fragile desperate girl so clearly.  I’ve come to love her and hold her—the space between us is liminal.  

When you and I have the luxury of perspective, our vision is more defined and in alignment with the truth of who we are. It’s kind of like being 30,000 feet up, looking down below to a distant terrain with toy like homes, buildings, lakes and other signs of life. We can see life for what it is as opposed to feeling stuck in the weeds of it—enmeshed with the sticky mess of our thoughts, feelings, and projections of what is happening around us.  

Everyday we have the opportunity to choose alignment with our higher selves—our divine essence. Interestingly, small children are incredibly in touch with their divinity. As we “grow up,” we lose touch with this inherent goodness and beauty. Some days we are able to access this virtue, aligning with the truth of who God made us. Other days this remembrance  feels impossible.  

The days and months when it feels difficult to connect to the greater story of our truth are the days we often fall victim to tidal wave-like depression, anxiety, and other all-consuming emotions. These days seem to defy our ability to make sense of the world. I’m no stranger to these days that often turn into seasons.  

We know in our head what is true, but the belief in our heart is weak. 

In these seasons, the work is simply this: to learn to hold ourselves with  care and compassion, minute to minute, day by day.  This, and to reach out to a safe person who knows how to listen—not prescribe.  

This is the passage of self-compassion through the dark night of the soul.  Though it feels never-ending, it is not final—no feeling is. 

As a therapist and client very familiar with these complex and despairing seasons, I can confidently stand in the gap as you or someone you love navigates these waters. If the last four years has given us a gift, it is the normalization of seeking help for mental health and emotional distress.  It may be time to receive this gift, reaching out for extra support as you sit in space of chaos and fear.  

This post is for anyone who feels like putting one foot in front of the other  is next to impossible. Take heart, dear one, this too shall pass. As Mr.  Rogers said, these are the times to “Look for the helpers.”  

Please reach out if you need help connecting to extra support right now, and I encourage you to share this email with anyone you think needs it.  

What's Your Story?

The stories we tell ourselves keep us safe because they help us make sense of the world.  Here’s the catch though, these stories don’t have to be necessarily true—they just have to be complete in order to do so.    

I love, love, love this brilliant explanation by neurologist and novelist, Robert Burton:

“Because we are compelled to make up stories, we are often compelled to take incomplete stories and run with them.  Even if it’s a half story in our minds, we earn a dopamine ‘reward’ every time it helps us understand something in our world—even if that explanation is incomplete or wrong.” 

Damn.

For decades, I told myself a story that I was somehow wildly deficient.  Everyone else made it out of labor and delivery just fine.  Not me.  I was flawed and had to work overtime to measure up—to show up.  

What facts supported this story?  What was the payoff for believing it?  These are two questions I didn’t start asking myself until my late 20’s.  And man were they gnarly narratives to untangle.

We unconsciously adopt self-defeating narratives early on in childhood in order to make sense core wounds and our childish beliefs about those wounds.  I came to the binary conclusion about my own that paid off in dividends because it helped me overcompensate and avoid its possible effects moving forward.  How?  By armoring up with perfectionism and the insatiable desire to prove the world wrong:  I am indeed enough and will work realllllly hard to show you!

This worked well until it nearly killed me.  

You and I are very much alike in that we both live out of stories— some of them life-giving, some of them need serious editing.  

I’ll never forget the first time I sat in my therapists office and said these words out loud, albeit wobbly and with a tentative tone, “I’m…okay?”

Now that’s a narrative that changed everything.  If I was in fact, “okay,” I could drop the act and quit hustling for worthiness.  As a recovering perfectionist, this would be a long, humbling process—and a risk.  

Oh but the risk far outweighed the expired reward of that old, broken story.  It’s proved much more fun as well.

I’m leaving you with a writing prompt to push around this week.  It may help you identify a few broken records you’ve been unconsciously wearing out for too long.  

If I could write the next chapter of my story and play the hero instead of the victim, it would go something like_________________________________.

Spend 10 minutes to an hour with that one.  Tell me how it goes…

3 reasons you should be meditating

There are volumes of scientific research boasting all the reasons meditation is a game changer.  I’m sure they are quite thorough and convincing, too.  

However today, I want to share from my heart and experience how meditation has and continues to change my life for the better. 

This post is for all you fellow perfectionists, control freaks, planners, cardio-lovers, results oriented, make-it-happen folks who feel 20 minutes of meditation sounds like a large helping of time-suck.  

Oh, I know you…

About 7 years ago, I began noticing an overarching intense physical discomfort out of nowhere (or so I thought). My throat and jaw locked up.  My mid-back twisted in a knot.  It became difficult to sing and speak, even in sessions with clients. Sleep became a distant wish.  

As a health-conscious, avid exerciser who’d done her fair share of work in therapy throughout the years, I felt discouraged—and powerless.  

After seeking out every alternative healing modality I could find, I noticed a subtle common theme emerging from acupuncturist, chiropractor, voice coach, and therapist alike.  Quite simply, their sage voices all harmonized in a singular chord.  It was in the key of: RELAX.

I wasn’t depressed or anything. In fact I was quite content. Yet I’d been running so hard on a treadmill of survival mode that had become my norm.  My body, brain, and emotions formed a strike, actively rebelling against the grueling pace I’d had them on for decades.  

Meditation has been my vehicle into this new world of rest, yet interestingly enough, has also opened up my life in a new way, allowing for increased willingness and opportunities.  Funny how that works.  I firmly believe we all need to develop some type of mindfulness practice, now more than ever. 

Here are the three big reasons I think we should all be meditating:

1. We Build more self-awareness and self-acceptance.   Self-awareness is the biggest indicator of success in life, relationships, and work.  However, we’re so busy (and often stressed) we don’t carve out the time to practice the stillness required to grow that necessary muscle of self-awareness. In my experience, I’d over-developed the muscle of self-criticism and judgment instead. Practicing meditation or other mindfulness exercises allows space to unlearn that harsh inner critic and grow the safe, neutral observer needed to bake in healthy self-awareness, compassion, and positive sustained change. 
   

2. We release tension and toxins in our bodies that create long-term negative health effects. It was a lightbulb moment the day I made the connection between disease in our minds and bodies with literal “dis-ease” and tension we hold tightly within.  This stress, or contraction, will eventually exacerbate, causing much bigger health concerns down the road unless we learn how to release it.  Practicing meditation trains our bodies and minds to slow down and release that arthritic grip we unconsciously develop over time.  Added bonuses include better sleep, mood, energy, and creativity that crop up as a result. 
   

3. We begin to connect to our essence, or true self, as we become aware of unconscious habits. As we move from the false self, or ego, to the true self, or essence, we experience deep spiritual transformation.  It’s letting go of fear in order to embrace openness to something greater than ourselves.  We simply can’t do that if we are living out of our blindspots on autopilot.  Over time, as we commit to a meditation practice, a natural byproduct becomes this relaxation of old programming and an exploration of the love and curiosity that’s been there from day one.  We were born loving, open beings.  We learned fear to help us survive.  Yet, lasting positive change is rarely built on fear.  We must create the precious space in our days to excavate that little person inside that desperately longs to be seen and known.  She’s honest and wise beyond her years, too.  Some people swear practicing meditation over time slows down aging.  I can’t speak to that, however, I believe connecting to the most loving and true parts of us inevitably lend a softer lens to whatever we may be facing in life.  In this sense, we do recover that childlike part of us that sees more beauty in everything.  

If you are looking for an enneagram-based mindfulness toolkit, I’d love for you to join The Practice, my online membership community! 

3 Tips for Navigating Workplace Conflict

Conflict in the workplace is inevitable.  This does not, however, make it easy (for many, that is.) As an enneagram four, I remember so many times in my 20’s when I’d take constructive feedback at certain jobs deeply personal.  It became yet another reason on my never ending list why I didn’t quite measure up.  Conflict felt scary. I might be rejected…or worse… misunderstood!?

I must have completely missed the class Conflict Resolution 101 in college.  

So, how do you manage conflict successfully?  In one word? Self-awareness. Self-awareness is an integral piece to navigating conflict. Knowing the thoughts, behaviors and motivations behind what you think, act and feel allows you to understand how your attitude and behaviors affect others and how they affect you. Recognizing your own hot buttons and those of others, gives you the opportunity to take a step back and respond intentionally rather than react emotionally.

Developing self-awareness doesn’t come easy though. It requires us to take an honest look inward. The Enneagram provides us with the tools to foster that self-observation and introspection, that in turn, makes room for empathy and compassion for others…including our colleagues.

When you understand your Enneagram type and the personality styles of those you work with, it breeds a culture of understanding, respect, and connection so that when conflicts do arise, they can be resolved more quickly.

Here are 3 tips to help you navigate conflict in the workplace: 

1.    Consider the perspective of others.  The Enneagram teaches that each of us views the world through a different lens. This applies to how we approach conflict as well. How do you typically react to conflict?  Do you avoid it? Engage in it? Assume you are correct and everyone else is wrong?  For example, let’s consider The Challenger.  Eights can have powerful/bold reactions when there is a conflict and aren’t shy about letting you know where they stand. They seek a strong reaction from you as well. Without one, they may assume you aren’t taking the situation seriously. They also have a strong desire to resolve the problem quickly and once the issue is resolved they move on. 

On the other hand, conflict is extremely uncomfortable for some types, such the Enneagram 9. Their approach is to avoid or deny conflict altogether. An Eight’s in-your-face approach can feel intimidating and aggressive to a Peacemaker.  Instead of assuming your coworkers approach conflict the same as you, challenge your perspective and consider how your coworker(s) might see things differently.

2.    Practice empathy.  Take a moment to acknowledge your own feelings about the situation so you can approach it with a clear head. But also consider the emotions of your team members before responding or engaging.  Empathizing with how they view or feel about the situation creates a margin of time and understanding that is necessary in order to build safety in times of conflict.  There is nothing worse than having to engage in workplace conflict in a culture of fear and toxicity.

3.    Establish open and transparent communication. Be upfront and honest about your thoughts yet ask questions and practice active listening to build trust and respect among your colleagues.  This act of openness encourages collaboration and can more easily lead to a mutually agreeable resolution.

The enneagram is an elegant framework for the often clunky conflict that inevitably comes up at work.  If you’re experiencing unchecked conflict in your workplace, I’d love to guide your team toward a positive resolution.  Click here for more information.