This Is Us

I didn’t become a therapist because I felt I’d be any good, saw myself as hyper-empathic, or wiser than the next gal.  Far from it!  In fact, when I started grad school, I had about as much confidence in myself as a three-legged cat.  There were obstacles.

I became a therapist because I knew I had too.  And for some unidentified reason, I desperately wanted to.  It was and is part of my calling.  

I’ll never forget my very first therapist.  Her name was Angie Smith and I thought she was the bee’s knees.  I was 15 and losing a battle to anorexia nervosa, the presenting iteration of my chronic depression at the time.  We lived in Mobile, Alabama, an unapologetically southern town dripping with Spanish moss and too many syllables.  Lovely? Indeed.  Progressive? Not so much.  I’d never heard of “therapy” before.  I also kept the fact I was in it (and taking medication for depression) on the DL.  High school is brutal enough.

My work with Angie made a lasting impact on my life and work.  I’d meet with her every Wednesday at 2pm, and when I left, I noticed a vague sense of hope well up inside.  This wasn’t because I got to leave school early either.  It ran deeper—it was a feeling I would slowly build on throughout my recovery.

Angie had also suffered from and overcome an eating disorder. Yet today, she seemed so put together—and pretty.  Not to mention she was from Nashville where she’d been a singer-songwriter for many years. So she was smart, pretty, and cool...a triple threat, but in the most inviting way.  

In our work together, I learned the value of having a safe space and person to tell my story to and feel unconditional love and acceptance on the other side.  I was lucky enough to have this from my parents (and big sister when we weren’t fighting over clothes), yet to have a totally objective experience without emotional ties or history was something profound. 

Fast forward a decade and some change.  Thankfully, I’d gotten a handle on my relationship with food. However depression still clung tightly, like a red-faced, wailing toddler to his mom the first day at pre-school drop-off.  

Sure, I’d been in and out of therapy the whole time, and Lord knows it had been a lifeline.  Yet individual therapy didn’t fix my loneliness.  Isolation was often how I’d cope with the sadness and 50 minutes of talk therapy every week or two just didn’t cut it.  This wasn’t a reflection on my therapist either.  In my book, I worked with some of the best.  

I discovered something shocking: I’d been hiding behind therapy.  Mind you, it wasn’t the worst place to hide, it just wasn’t giving me the context to practice the insight and tools I’d been gaining with other humans who might possibly relate.  

Now that was a new concept, and a terrifying one at that.  Yet my depression had become life-threatening once again and I didn’t have a choice.  

Enter Onsite workshops, a beautiful treatment facility right outside Nashville specializing in experiential group therapy.  Just like Angie, Onsite left an unforgettable imprint on me.  It was the ultimate reset button I needed and showed me the vital importance of experiencing healing in community. 

Make no mistake, I wholeheartedly believe in the power and necessity found in individual therapy.  I'm not saying we throw the baby out with the bathwater.  However, I do feel it's simply not enough to get the optimal results we're looking for in our lives.  I believe we need a layered approach consisting of individual and group work.

Before you call it a day and hit the snooze button on this post, hear me out.  This is all about you and me and how we work together in order to bring more wholeness and connection into our daily experience.  

This year, I’m changing up the way I work so as to provide a more holistic prescription that facilitates deeper connection with self and others.  This new model is based on the belief that EVERYTHING is relational—everything.  From relationship with self, to others, to food, to work, to emotions, and so on.  

If this is true, (and it is), we must learn to grow and heal in relationship and community, not isolation.  To that end, I’m thrilled to share with you what I’ve been designing these last few years based on tons of research and inspiration from you.  

Later this month, I’ll be rolling out the specifics and an opportunity for you to take part. For today’s purposes, get excited!  It’s going to be loads of fun and involves three core principles I believe to be the most powerful for the journey we’re on: community, experiential therapy, and the Enneagram.  

Indeed, this is your year to tell your story, be seen, be known, and be loved. But even more, it's our year...2019, this is us.  

Love & Gratitude,
Katie

Cheers! You've Arrived

One of my favorite pockets of time throughout the entire year is the week between Christmas and New Years.  I try my damndest to carve out some “deep work” time as I call it—time to clear the space, reconnect to presence after all the going and indulging—and map out a vision for the coming year.  My inner dreamer gets to dance around and color outside the lines a bit.  If I’m lucky, I try to take a whole morning or afternoon to do so.

This year was a no-go.  It just didn’t happen—and that’s okay.  I’m learning to give myself more grace and soften into life’s messy edges. 

However, in the spirit of community, I’d like to do this deep work—this dreaming if you will—together, and ease into new year.  

If you’ve been on this self-discovery journey with me for awhile, you may know I’m a huge fan of ritual rather than resolutions.  If you’re new to my blog and this glorious work of deepening self-awareness and transformation, welcome.  You are right on time and I can’t wait to connect with you.  

Here’s why I have a thing for ritual.  I’m convinced, over time, practicing good habits creates this soft light in our lives that draws out potential, undergirds desire, and creates balance where there is imbalance.  They are also built on loving connection with self as opposed to fear-based tactics. 

Interestingly, I think humans find extremes far easier than balance.  We like to react out of fear instead of respond out of desire.  Marketing moguls exploit this behavior big time, and anyway you slice it, they’re clever.  They know we go off the rails a bit over the holidays and tend to wake up today with a foggy head and a few extra pounds.  Swooping in, they save the day with their slashed gym membership prices and programs promising a new you in just one month.

Listen, if you’ve just given Gwyneth Paltrow a run for her money and spent all of yours on the hottest new cleanse, that’s okay too.  I get it.  Been there and have all the tee shirts and half-used supplement boxes to prove it.  

Yet with each passing year, as I show up for myself and my community, I’m learning something invaluable: what we really want is to create a feeling, not just a desired outcome.  As a result, this is why we’re rarely satisfied with any level of success or accomplishment—the feeling fades.  We want more.  

Today, let’s lay some groundwork for the edits, habits, and goals you’d like to see crystallize in 2019. Here are four crucial questions to help you do so adapted from the podcast “The Accidental Creative.” 

I hope you’ll join me and carve out some well-deserved time to journal about the picture you’d like to build in 2019.  Come back to it over and over again.  Realign with its truth or tweak it if your course requires deviation. 

Here we go:

• What do you want to feel more of in 2019? (i.e. energized, awake, confident, accepted)

• Where do you want to go in 2019? (This can be figurative or literal. i.e. I want to explore a new city, yoga class, or I want to go from full-time to part-time at work so I can spend more time writing)

• What do you want to learn in 2019? (i.e. I want to learn to play drums or I want to learn to meditate)

• What do you want to change in 2019? (Reminder: this is desire driven, NOT fear driven!  Approach this from a place of worthiness rather than insecurity.  i.e. I’d like to build-in more margin for rest and play into my life.)

I can’t wait to hear your feedback from this exercise! When we give voice and ink to our desires, we take them from whim to intention.  Let’s ease into the new year, listening, noticing, and responding to its inviting call to action.  If you’d like some extra light for the journey ahead,  I’m your girl.

I can’t wait to see all that 2019 has in store for you.

Cheers, indeed! You’ve arrived. 

Love & Gratitude,

Katie

xoxo

The Long Player

I’ve never met a single soul who made a New Year's resolution and stuck with it.  If you are that person, I’d like to shake your hand.  However, as a rule, resolutions typically don’t stick. Hence my lack of buy in. They seem reactionary and extreme...like damage control or wishful thinking...or both.  The psychology is flimsy, a bit like elimination diets.  You tell me I need to cut out everything delicious in my life and replace it with cabbage soup and kale, and I’ll laugh in your face to mask the panic attack happening inside. 

I need a gentler, more realistic approach to avoid the stress of such a drastic shift and ensure I’ll commit for longer than half a day.  

Again, if resolutions are the way you roll, my hat is off and this post may not be for you.  However, if you’re like me and desire lasting transformation in your life yet often lack the follow-through necessary, keep reading.  It’s deflating to see yet another year pass by and remain in the same place you were this time three years ago.  My theory as to why this happens is we are working with old flat programming.  The thoughts you had about yourself  three years ago are what lead you to who you are today.  

The problem with resolutions, or any type of short-term goal, is they focus on tactics rather than strategy.  They tend to advocate behavior change without accounting for the mindset–or belief system–necessary to support them.  

For example, you decide you’d like to learn to play the cello this year.  You’ve always loved its hauntingly beautiful sound and every time you listen to Yo-Yo Ma, you weep.  This is your new calling in life and 2019 is the year you own it.  You hire a teacher, buy a cello, set up a space in your home office to practice, apologize in advance for the ruckus about to be made to anyone living in close quarters, and get right to it.   

Three months in, deadlines at work are foreboding, the kids are struggling in school, and your precious sleep dwindles as you lie awake in bed playing mental Tetris to rig the next day’s schedule together.  What gives? Your dream of playing Royal Albert Hall next February.  

Why? Because your identity allows you to opt out.  You’re a working mom learning to play cello as opposed to a practicing cellist.  

When dreams are challenged by circumstance, it’s dig deep time.  We must practice our beliefs about the goal rather than just strive to reach the goal itself. If I stretch my identity and think bigger about my goal, I’m not thrown off course when my day(s) gets hijacked by unexpected interruptions, and they will. 

What is the transformation you long to see this next year?  Is it your health, finances, relationship status, or entrepreneurial success?  Here’s an idea: set longer term goals if they are really important to you.  Zoom out a bit and practice seeing yourself as the cellist with the supporting thoughts and beliefs necessary for that desired outcome.  Consistent action will follow and sustain only if your belief about yourself can support it.  Otherwise, you’ll act out of urgency instead of desire—scarcity instead of enough.    

January one is right around the corner.  Let’s do it differently.  Why wait? 

Today—and everyday—is your stage.  Be the long player, not just the stand in.  

Love & Gratitude,
Katie

Joy Division

After a decade working as a therapist and holding space for the brave, beautiful stories I encounter along the way, I’ve had a curious finding.  Not one of these stories is identical, yet there is a familiar melody that builds if you back up and listen from a distance.  It’s like sitting on the back porch after a long day in the sweaty palm of summer as the crickets and katydids show off their grand cacophony against the stillness at dusk.  No song is in perfect harmony, yet the dissonance makes perfect sense.  

I’ve found this common theme checks out despite age, race, gender, or religion.  You ready for this?  Here it is: 

Humans are terrified of Joy.  

Beyond anger, sadness, grief, shame—you name it—we are far more resistant to feel joy than other emotions.  

Why is this?  

I call it “the other shoe syndrome.”  If we bask in moments of joy, small though they may be, eventually, the other shoe will drop, leaving us disappointed, or perhaps irresponsible, or even worse...empty.  We’re so afraid of the let down so we settle for scarcity and self-protect.  

Brene Brown says it best,

“When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding.  As a result, we dress-rehearse tragedy and beat it (vulnerability) to the punch.” 

In other words, joy is too risky.  Something terrible might happen on the other side so we opt out altogether and dumb down desire.  After all, if we run tactics on worst-case scenario, we have nothing to lose.  

Not so fast, Cowboy.  You simply can’t opt out of vulnerability.  You’re not like the rest.  You want more.  Hell, you’re taking precious minutes of your day you’ll never get back to read a blog post about self-awareness and development.  Chances are, you’re also a little weird.  I sure hope so.

To walk around on the planet with a heartbeat and a dream we must practice vulnerability.  Expansion requires it.  

Human beings have a negative bias.  I’ve heard it said, “we’re like teflon for the positive and velcro for the negative.”  After all, fear has kept us alive through the ages as a species.  However we don’t need it for survival in the same way we once did.  We can soften into joy if we practice it.  This takes some rewiring, though, hence the word “practice.”  

How do we practice?  I’m convinced it’s a three-fold process.  

When Joy flashes her tooth-y grin in your direction,  don't quickly look the other way—get curious.  Flirt with her, even if she’s there for just a minute. 

Then what? 

Pivot to gratitude.  Research shows the most joyful people in the world are also the most grateful.  This blows far beyond circumstance.  It’s a result of practice.  When we pivot to gratitude instead of scarcity, we build up new accessory muscles we didn’t know existed.  This, in turn, becomes habit over time.  

I like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” 

In that practice of gratitude for this joyful moment—breathe it in—stay with it.  Brain science tells us it takes three deep breaths or eleven seconds to form a new neuropathway in your brain.  By basking in these joyful moments, you are literally rewiring your brain to make you a more wholehearted, receptive person. 

By the way, this post is really for me.  They all are.  We write what we know because we’ve had to learn it.  I’m guilty of constantly chasing the extraordinary.  In this chase, I miss out on the tiny, ordinary moments bursting with joy: the quiet flurry of snow, the faint song being played on the piano in the other room, a perfectly poured latte, my niece’s delicious laugh, a text from a friend “just saying hi.” These simple sightings of joy are oxygen for the soul.   

This joy, this “sharp and wonderful stab of longing” as Lewis describes, is bittersweet.  It’s the good and the bad, the black and the white.  It’s toggling the both-and.  This season, I’m committed to that creative tension.  I’m committed to practicing those tiny, two-degree shifts that bolster desire.  I don’t want to go it alone though.  Will you join me?

Love & Gratitude,

Kati

Finishing Strong

Last week, a dear friend said something so profound in conversation.  I’ve been marinating in it since.  She said, “I’m struggling to find my now.  I’m either stuck in the past or out somewhere in the future.  I desperately want to find my now.”

Can you relate to this?  I sure can—especially in this eleventh hour of 2018.  It’s tempting to camp out in what “could have been”: more productivity, success, health, passion, what have you. This temptation is then compounded by the seductive tendency to run tactics on a fresh new start right around the proverbial bend.  

You know the drill.  The diet and exercise folks join forces and broker a zillion dollar deal every fourth quarter counting on you and I to wake up January 1 after sipping on the stiff and steady cocktail of two parts bloated, one part foggy, and a heavy shake of shame.  We buy-in to the ultimate extreme makeover our resolution(s) of choice promises only to throw in the towel a week later hangry, and with the selfless support of your dearest pint: Ben & Jerry, or Stella Artois.   

It’s so predictable, right?

I believe it’s high-time we outgrow this brand of insanity. Thankfully, there is another way. Conscious living invites us into self-awareness. If we accept this invitation, we immediately enter a room full of freedom—and responsibility.  

Viktor Frankl, Austrian psychiatrist, Logotherapy creator, and Holocaust survivor, said it best, 

“Between the stimulus and the response, there is a space.  In that space, there lies your freedom and power.”  

The month of December presents us with a vital passageway—a sacred space.  Incidentally, it’s one of the tightest spaces in which to remain present and self-aware.  If we consciously choose presence, that powerful space of the here and now, as opposed to the sugar-laced trans of consumerism, I believe we will finish strong.  

“Buzz-kill much?” you ask. 

Fair enough, however, I wholeheartedly believe our most powerful, abundant lives are built with consistency, brick by brick, and experienced moment to moment.  Why?  Because if I am present in each moment, I hold the keys to reality and relationship.  By this I mean, I live in wakeful presence and respond truthfully to my desires, to my needs, and to those of others.  I also forgo the trap of extreme, reactionary living. 

Speaking of the needs of others, the Holiday season is often one of deep pain and loneliness in the hearts of many.  I’ve known this pain well.  Yet at the same time, there is this massive expectation to shine up the shell of appearance and ignore the voice of pain that hums a haunting cry for help.

When you and I narc-out in trance, we are unavailable to those needs all around us.  Likewise, we silence our own.  Needs such as connection, compassion, and rest get overrun by the loud liturgy of commerce and consumption.  

These next several weeks, give yourself and others this gift of presence.  Enjoy the heck out of them, consciously choosing to come back to the moment, no matter how often the drone of chaos calls.  Each time you make this choice, you step into your freedom...your power.  Don’t bother eliminating the noise. That’s an isolating crap-shoot. Simply cultivate an inner peace amidst the noise as you loosen the grip of control and soften the lens of extremes.  

Finishing strong looks more like staying soft than hustling hard.  

And so we celebrate the end with a conscious awareness of now’s beginning….

Love & Gratitude,

Katie