Year in Review: 2020 — WiserHumans

2020. A year that needs no introduction. A year that started out normal enough and morphed into one of the most unforgettable and perhaps even transformative years many of us have experienced.

Like every year, I took a look back at what my year looked like work-wise.

a normal start…

In February, I participated once again in Victoria Sardain’s Brunch Club as one of the speakers in an event which included yoga, discussions on resolutions, goal-setting and self-sabotage, followed by brunch.

Looking back now, it feels even more precious to have been part of this event, as it was one of the few group events I attended this year.

then the pandemic hits

Remember March? We had no idea what was happening and whether we would be safe or if there would be enough food (and toilet paper!).

Quite early on, I moved all my sessions online and this lasted about two months before doing some sessions in person again during the summer.

While I have always done online sessions, I have never done only online sessions, and this proved quite different. I quickly learned that I couldn’t do the same number of online sessions as in person ones, that I needed to space sessions out more and take more breaks. Hello, Zoom fatigue.

Nonetheless, I am very grateful to have been able to continue working throughout this time and interestingly, sessions took on a different flavor with themes such as death, the meaning of being alive, health anxiety, what really matters in life. With the Black Lives Matter movement, topics around injustice, evil, discrimination also surfaced.

This year really felt like we were all world citizens, impacted by events and movements that were larger than us. This obviously affected me also. Working from home, often in yoga clothes and going through similar experiences to what was affecting my clients, I couldn’t hide behind a role or therapy approaches. This hit even closer to home when my 84 year-old father in Jordan caught COVID (thankfully, he recovered and didn’t infect anyone else in the household).

I felt a humility and sense of really just being a human soul sitting with another human soul without even pretending to have answers or ‘solutions’. Seeing the people I work with in their home environment surrounded by their pets and plants, it all felt more real - like we no longer needed (or could) play a role.

This more human relating, stripped bare of our usual artifices showed me we are all interconnected in our humanness and not just by a global pandemic.

Our common humanness: An obsession with homemade bread!

Uncovering my inner introvert

Learning to enjoy my own company has been a theme of the past few years, and this year catapulted me to the next level. I spent two weeks without seeing or talking to a real human and I was surprisingly OK.

I know that many people had similar experiences, while for others, it revealed the opposite: That they perhaps need people more than they had realized. Both good learnings in my book!

With the usual ways of topping ourselves up no longer being as easily accessible, I sought different forms of self-care and what I found most nourishing this year has been being in nature. I created a habit of going on solo walks almost daily and these became my greatest source of comfort. The wisdom of nature, the timelessness of the moon and the trees felt more ‘true’ to me than anything else, especially amidst all the uncertainty.

The holidays I took were all in the Swiss mountains and I realized how lucky I am to live in a country with such beautiful nature and to be with a man who has such an inspiring relationship to nature.

Inner journeying

What I missed most this year was traveling. I realized just how much I had taken for granted being able to hop on a plane and go somewhere; just how much I rely on travel as a way of recharging, seeking inspiration, broadening my horizons, being with the people I love.

With travel in the outer world not really being an option this year, I turned more inwards.

One of my passions this year was astrology. Being able to follow the astrology of 2020 was a very interesting experience in making sense of what was happening; in seeing it as a cycle, with a beginning, a middle and an end.

I started an astrology course in January to learn to interpret birth charts and just completed this. I did many readings with friends and clients to practise throughout the year. I am currently specialising in Psychological Astrology, a two-year Diploma course based on the work of Swiss psychiatrist / psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, and modern Astrology.

Astrology is a mysterious yet surprisingly concrete way of understanding who we are, a different and perhaps quicker way of learning about the important themes for us in life, as well as our strengths and struggles. For me, it is a very powerful way of connecting to something bigger than us, to the planets and moon and the seasons in a way humans have done for thousands of years.

my own growth

I also continued with my own therapy, working with a therapist who focuses more on the unconscious / depths of what it means to be human. Becoming more and more interested in this approach and the work of Carl Jung, I had the great fortune of visiting his house in Küsnacht, near Zürich in a guided tour given by one of his granddaughters.

I also continued to invest in supervision and training, focusing particularly on Coherence Therapy, a powerful way of changing habits and behaviors where we previously felt stuck.

Coherence Therapy is based on research in memory reconsolidation, the only known neural mechanism that allows long-ingrained, learned behavioral and emotional reactions / beliefs that drive behavior to be ‘unlearned’. This is often done by repeatedly reading a statement based on an ‘emotional truth’ we uncover during session. Most of the people I worked with this year will have noticed the use of statements after sessions becoming a regular addition!

I felt that I needed to update my website with these newer ways of working, and in December I updated the look and content of this website.

I always try to integrate the body in my personal work, and this year I found working with Leena Rose Miller, a medical intuitive in the USA who regularly comes to Switzerland, particularly helpful.

blogging + other resources

I focused mostly on social media this year and only write a few blog posts.

My personal favorite and the most liked post this year was one I wrote in February: This Isn’t Working for Me Anymore. This is about what I later called soul whispers: That knowing which often doesn’t make rational sense and yet cannot be ignored if we want to live an authentic life.

The blog post that seems to have struck a chord with people most is this one on emotional neglect, When Love is Not Enough - something invisible that touches many of us despite well-meaning and loving parents.

During my birthday weekend in the mountains, my partner helped me create this free video series on my concept of The Village: A metaphor for our internal world comprised of thoughts, needs, emotions - all represented by different villagers.

Turning 40

This year I also turned 40. I shared the photo and post below on Instagram and Facebook which feels like a fitting theme of the year around embracing the messiness, the unknown, the uncertainty of life.

our common humanness

If there's anything this crazy year has shown me, it's how interconnected we all are: Not just through a virus, but through our shared humanness.

This year, I experienced how this shared humanness can allow us to be more real, more open, more human with each other. That we can be broken and messy, and that maybe that is how we can connect to each other, instead of playing a role.

This year stripped our lives down to the essentials: What really matters when so much is taken away? I really hope that as we (hopefully) resume a more ‘normal’ existence, we never lose sight of this question or take for granted the stuff that brings meaning to our lives.

Thank you for being a part of this messy, beautiful adventure with me! I no longer know what to wish for for the coming year, so I will simply say: Thank you, 2020. You have shown us we can handle more than we think. And welcome, 2021. Please be gentler with us.