Negative feedback or criticism from others is never an easy thing.
I wanted to share this short video on how we can respond to this within ourselves, not necessarily in what we say to the other person, but in how we receive it first within ourselves.
Once we have done this, I think we can then choose how we respond to the other person, or whether we respond at all - and it will probably come from a more centred place.
I hope you find this useful!
“Time is one of the most powerful influences on our thoughts, feelings, and actions, yet we are usually totally unaware of the effect of time in our lives.” - Philip Zimbardo, Psychologist + Author
I think that for most of us, this is the first time our lives are being impacted to such an extent, and at such a global scale by something largely out of our control.
This is naturally shifting our perspective of TIME in many different ways.
I wanted to share five shifts around the notion of TIME that might be helpful to work with during this particular time we are living through.
This is based on a Facebook Live I did - if you prefer you can also watch the recording at the bottom of this post.
Before the pandemic, many of us had a sort of naive arrogance or what the ancient Greeks might have called hubris that we could plan things and that it was quite certain they would happen.
We had plans. We had booked things in advance.
It is possible that in the Western world, we lived under the assumption that time is in my control more than in any other time in history.
Now we are learning in a very potent way that this is not always the case.
We can work really hard, plan things, do everything in our power to make them happen…and then something completely out of our control strikes and we are left staying at home and obsessively washing our hands.
With this new reality, it is really, really, really important to allow ourselves to GRIEVE what will not happen, the plans we have had to let go of, at least for the foreseeable future.
It doesn’t matter how big or small the plans were. It doesn’t matter if others are more affected than you. And you won’t get stuck in the sadness or grief. Emotions tend to flow through us when we allow ourselves to feel them completely and without resistance. What we resist, persists.
And perhaps the learning here is that while time was actually never fully in our control, the way we respond to ourselves still is. We can still, and always, choose kindness and allow ourselves to feel what we are feeling without resisting it.
It’s OK to feel what you are feeling.
Check out this great podcast episode with Brené Brown grief expert David Kessler or this article by David Kessler.
Nobody knows when this will end, and that sense of the unknown for our old-school human mind = DANGER. No end in sight is really disconcerting.
Yet when we look back on history, we have experienced pandemics before, and we have come out of them. Not having a clear end date does not mean this will go on forever.
An emotion that often accompanies the unknown is ANXIETY.
—> Anxiety as an emotion is about helping us prepare for a perceived threat - usually by imagining all the things that could go horribly wrong so we can take action to avoid this from happening.
If you can, take action - do what you can to help yourself prepare as this can help with anxiety.
Yet at other times, there is no action we can take in the moment.
So for example, anxiety might be telling you your parents who live in another country might be affected. What action can you take? Can you do online shopping for them? Check in with them regularly?
For the stuff we can’t control, acceptance of the limits of what we can do, is often helpful. Perhaps even feeling the vulnerability and caring underneath the anxiety.
As anxiety tends to get caught up in imagining future worst case scenarios, when working with anxiety, it can be helpful to keep coming back to the present moment.
Right now things are mostly OK. I am feeling this anxiety because I care.
I am also finding it helpful to take one day at a time right now. We can get through one day - and the reality is that we have no idea what the future holds.
This is probably the first time for many of us that we are being confronted with the utter vulnerability of being human - the first time we are being confronted with illness, with death, with not feeling safe in the world in this way.
Time is our most precious resource and yet the way we go about our lives does not always reflect this. We tend to live our lives as if our time here was unlimited.
What we do with our time right now can still be a choice - even if we have less freedom than before.
We may not have the RESPONSIBILITY for our time that we thought we had before the global rug was pulled out from under our feet, but we still have RESPONSE-ABILITY - the ability to choose how we respond to the current circumstances, who and what we say YES and NO to during this time.
TIME is still our most precious resource, and perhaps some questions worth asking ourselves are:
—> How would I like to show up during this time for myself and others?
—> Looking back at this time, how would I like it to have changed me?
It’s also OK if the only thing you can think of is: I survived. I made it through one day at a time. There is no need for lofty ambitions or self-improvement if that doesn’t feel right or possible for you at the moment.
Time feels frozen in a way - not because it has stopped or is waiting for us - nature continues just fine and is even thriving and regenerating without us. The seasonal cycles continue and time keeps going.
Yet on an individual level we can see this time as a sort of musical chairs where the music has stopped and we have had to ‘sit down’ and really be confronted with our lives and the choices we made the last few years.
What if we took a look around at our lives with kindness and curiosity and asked ourselves:
Is this the life I want to be living?
—> Do I like the work I am doing?
—> Do I like the relationships I am in?
—> Do I like how I show up with family and friends?
—> Do I like where I live?
—> How can I tread more gently in the world - through the choices I make right now, for example by buying local products and supporting small businesses if I can?
Allow this time to shape you, to strip life to the essentials. What actually really matters?
We can see this as a time to gather information without needing to do anything more about it at this stage - simply a time to take stock and notice with kindness and curiosity towards ourselves, the aspects of our lives that are working, and the ones that are not.
I don’t think it is healthy to only stay with what is happening in the present - to only talk about the pandemic.
We still have an identity beyond this pandemic. We are still humans with a past and a future.
We can draw on the past: memories, photos, videos that give us energy and help us to reconnect with who we are. We can share this and connect with others on this level, too, instead of only talking about the pandemic.
It also feels important to me that we still have dreams - that we can dream, envision, even take tiny steps towards a future self - even if we can’t yet put a timeline on this.
So maybe during this particular time, allowing ourselves to dance flexibly between our past, present and future selves, without getting stuck anywhere - is something we can explore and be aware of.
Surrender to the way things want to happen next, even though this often involves a vast and terrifying loss of control. Trust the magic that was born into your soul. - Martha Beck
It starts with a whisper. A nagging sense that something is not right. That what seemed OK up until now, even something you chose or wanted, no longer is.
A relationship. A job. A situation.
You resist. Try to numb this feeling with food, with alcohol. You even take up running. You add more things. Busy busy busy. Don’t feel this. Don’t think about it. Don’t question things. Don’t shake the boat.
You convince yourself it’s all OK. That it’s your fault. You chose this. Nobody forced you.
You tell yourself you want too much. That you’re not trying hard enough to make it work. That you’re never happy. WHY CAN’T YOU JUST BE HAPPY??
It would be so much simpler if you could just suck it up. Go through the motions. Act like everything is OK - because in so many ways it is! YOU SHOULD JUST BE GRATEFUL!!
It would be so much simpler. It would be…and yet you can’t.
You get to the point where the whisper become more persistent. Where the whisper becomes an incessant thought. Where it it morphs into an obsession. NOT WORKING. NOT WORKING. NOT WORKING. DON’T WANT THIS. DON’T WANT THIS. DON’T WANT THIS.
You can’t ignore it anymore.
Resigned, you give up fighting. You give up and you begrudgingly listen. You listen to what is going on underneath the obsessions. Underneath the chaos.
And when you really listen, you realise:
This isn’t working for me anymore.
And with this come the desires, the needs you have been trying so hard to ignore.
I want something different.
I want more.
The realisation hits you like a ton of bricks.
This isn’t working for me anymore.
With this honesty, you feel a wave of sadness.
This isn’t working for me anymore. It once did, and now, it no longer is.
Maybe because you’ve outgrown it. Maybe because you want something different now. Maybe because you’re finally being honest with yourself. Maybe because you’ve learned to respect yourself. Maybe just because.
This isn’t working for me anymore.
You allow yourself to hang out in this space. This space that Nancy Levin calls the “space between no longer and not yet”.
You don’t know what the ‘not yet’ looks like. You only know that the way things are no longer works for you. That you can’t continue like this.
Being honest about this opens up a space where you recognise you need something to change, even if you don’t yet know what that looks like.
You stop fighting your own truth. You allow yourself to want what you want and to no longer want what you don’t want, even if this feels shaky and uncomfortable and unknown and scary.
You allow yourself to hang out in the space of
This isn’t working for me anymore.
and
I want something different.
Without necessarily doing anything different in the outside world yet. You don’t make any big decisions or changes. You don’t know where you are going - you have no idea - but you start there.
You start by simply being honest with yourself.
You start there.
“it is being honest
about
my pain
that
makes me invincible.”
- Nayyirah Waheed
Did you know that the first Sunday of January has the highest number of sign-ups on online dating platforms like Tinder or Bumble? (source)
I think it is part of the new year energy, of wanting something to be different this year - and perhaps wanting to avoid being alone for Valentine’s Day.
And yet, like New Year’s Resolutions, a lot of people give up on this quite quickly. Dating feels too uncomfortable, too confronting, too awkward.
Yet if we want a different outcome in our lives, we also need to do things differently.
So what if instead of fighting the awkwardness, we learned to embrace it instead? I share some thoughts on this very human emotion in this video.
Even if you are not dating, this can also apply to the awkwardness in social situations.
(I love the word awkward. I can definitely identify with it and I love how even the spelling of it feels…awkward).
I will remember 2019 as a tough and transformative year. For me, and also many of the people I worked with this year, it brought a no-bullshit, face the reality and grow-up sort of tough love energy with it.
This year brought some letting go and questioning of deeply entrenched ways of operating in relationships, both with myself and others. Out of all this, I found beauty and love, and a more honest way of being with myself and the world around me.
My word for 2019 was MYSTERY and unexpectedly, it is through embracing mystery that I have also began embracing reality more and more - and by doing this, uncovering a magic in the reality of what is.
I focused mostly on individual sessions, doing about 800 session throughout the year. I participated as a speaker in two events: One with Victoria Sardain’s Brunch Club which included yoga, a workshop on building healthy habits and brunch at Tibits and another as a guest speaker at a conversation on burnout held by the Organisation of Women in International Trade (OWIT).
While I loved participating in both these events, I had no desire to organise my own events this year after the whirlwind of activities last year.
At the end of June, I closed down my Geneva practise which I had had for about six years. This felt like a very difficult decision and it took me a while to make it, yet as soon as I had done it, it seemed to make sense on so many levels. I still have some Geneva clients who continue to either come in person or meet online, and I am touched and grateful for this loyalty.
I attended an advanced self-compassion retreat for therapists in Thailand in February and the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) conference which was in Dublin in June. Even though I was told that Guinness tastes SO MUCH BETTER in Ireland, you can tell from my face I was not convinced!
Blog-wise, I only wrote a few posts this year, and this one inspired by an idea from Elizabeth Gilbert’s new novel, City of Girls, was the most read.
It is based on a theme I worked on a lot with clients, around letting go of expectations:
The world ain't straight. You grow up thinking things are a certain way. You think there are rules. You think there's a way that things have to be. You try to live straight. But the world doesn't care about your rules, or what you believe. The world ain't straight, Vivian. Never will be. Our rules, they don't mean a thing. The world just happens to you sometimes, is what I think. And people just gotta keep moving through it, best they can. - Elizabeth Gilbert, City of Girls
I also invested heavily in therapy supervision and my own therapy and feel immensely grateful for all the ways both my supervisor and therapist have helped me grow both as a human and as a human sitting with other humans.
It makes me think of this quote by C.G. Jung:
Know all the theories, master all the techniques, but as you touch a human soul be just another human soul.
One of the themes that came up for me in both supervision and my own therapy has been around the importance of being willing to be disappointed instead of trying to guard against it - by over-preparing, trying to be in control or not fully letting go or being vulnerable.
I learned that disappointment and regret are simply a part of life and not a sign of failure and that we can learn from them and grow, instead of trying so hard to avoid them.
One of the first disappointments was right at the beginning of the year with a brief but intense and highly manipulative relationship. When this ended with the quintessentially modern dating experience of ‘ghosting’, I went through a period of thinking I should have known better, that I should have had better discernment as a psychologist. And yet, this experience was very humbling too, as it showed me that I was just human, and that I was prone to flattery and manipulation, like anyone else - even if I know on a theoretical level what to look out for.
It brought some deep questioning of my tendencies and I realised that I was not with the reality of who he was but who I wanted him to be - what I wanted to believe. Hello, self-deception.
This difficult realisation became the start of a more honest stance with myself, without the filter of self-deception, self-forcing, wishful thinking or denial.
And this started a whole new way of being that rippled into other areas of my life.
It is only when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are, without any sort of self-deception or illusion, that a light will develop out of events, by which the path to success may be recognized. - I Ching
Continuing on the difficult path of stepping out of denial, I finally chose to confront the reality of the genetic kidney condition I am living with, a chronic disease which progressively decreases kidney function over time.
I did an MRI for the first time in 10 years to monitor the progress of this disease. I shared the below on Facebook and Instagram:
While conventional medicine says there is no cure, I have nonetheless discovered some alternative approaches that involve strenuous diet and lifestyle changes to attempt to keep my current state of health for as long possible and I am slowly starting to put these into place.
While this has been very difficult to face, it also feels more empowering to know I am doing what I can, and I am hopeful about what is in my power to change and more accepting of what isn’t.
Strangely enough, by being more willing to be with what is without filters, I was also able to embrace mystery - the unknown - a little more.
The therapist I am currently working with has a Depth Psychology approach, and he also integrates astrology in a way that was completely mind-opening for me.
I was never really interested in astrology or horoscopes, I barely knew what my sun sign was (Gemini!) and yet the birth chart reading I did with him was so revealing that I have since become curious about astrology as yet another way to understand humans.
I am starting a training in astrology birth charts next month, and I am curious to see where this will take me.
The most incredible thing to happen this year was finding love when I least expected it.
I was feeling kind of worn out, having been through the break-up of my marriage, and two other relationships in the past three years. I wasn’t really looking for anything specific when I met this man.
This wasn’t the intense, sparks flying, feeling on top of a cloud kind of relationship. It was more like a fern, slowly unfurling with time and the more we got to know each other.
It has only been six months, yet so far this feels like a healthy foundation for a relationship, to slowly build trust and safety.
I feel this is the first time I am fully with the reality of the person: I am willing to accept him exactly as he is, without needing him to change or ignoring certain aspects. Being with the reality of our relationship in this way is so much more relaxing and enjoyable!
As I faced my kidney disease, I also practised a level of openness and vulnerability I had never brought to a relationship. While a part of me was terrified, and expecting him to walk away when he knew all this, I took the risk and I am immensely grateful that this has brought us closer.
I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring. - David Bowie
To be honest, I am not sure where I want to go next.
I want to stay open and curious to new ways of understanding humans. If there is something I learned this year, it is how not having specific expectations and being curious can lead us to places we didn’t even know existed.
I also know I need to prioritise self-care even more radically.
For 2020, the word I am choosing is MAGIC.
Strangely enough, by embracing reality and being aware of all the ways I was operating under denial, life actually feels more magical.
This is a magic that feels grounded, that feels like what is truly there and yet we miss it when we are caught up in expectations, in denial or in trying to guard against disappointment.
Magic doesn't sweep you away; it gathers you up into the body of the present moment so thoroughly that all your explanations fall away: the ordinary, in all its plain and simple outrageousness, begins to shine -- to become luminously, impossibly so. Every facet of the world is awake, and you within it. - David Abram
I want to discover the magic in the every day, a magic that comes from being fully with what is - even the hard stuff - and with who people really are, instead of burdening them with my expectations or wishes.
Thank you for being part of my 2019. Here’s to a 2020 filled with more growth and love and magic!
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”- Roald Dahl
In a previous blog post, I introduced the idea that we are made up of multitudes.
And I wanted to build on this because simply knowing we are made up of different parts without knowing how to work with them might seem confusing. With all these different villagers and their clumsy ways of trying to protect our internal village, how do we make decisions? How can we not feel torn or fragmented?
Are we that angry part that gets triggered in an argument and takes over? Are we the shame that shows up after the argument in response to the angry part? Or the loving part that was there just moments before the argument erupted?
The reality of being human is that we are all these parts - they are a part of us - and we are also bigger than them because no one villager or part of us defines who we are entirely.
Richard Schwartz of Internal Family Systems (IFS) compares our different parts to an orchestra made-up of many instruments. None of the instruments alone makes up the orchestra and yet each instrument contributes to the overall music.
In order to avoid chaos, we need the conductor to direct the orchestra in the same way our internal villages also need leadership.
Enter the Wise Village Chief (or Chiefess or Village Council if that feels more appropriate).
This is the part of us who is able to take a step back, take stock of the situation and make decisions that are in line with our values or integrity. This is where our innate wisdom lies.
The role of the Wise Village Chief(ess) is to:
Take a step back and notice and name all the different villagers showing up.
Listen to and validate the villagers who are showing up instead of trying to resist them or get rid of them, as we so often tend to do with annoying villagers. These parts of us do not show up randomly to make us feel bad - they are a response to what is happening or has happened in the past and are showing up for a good reason.
Just because we are listening to these different parts of us does not mean we have to do what they are telling us to do. Instead, we can choose what we do next based on what matters to us - making choices in line with our values instead of being triggered or allowing the ‘loudest’ villager to simply react to the situation without consideration.
For example, if we have an angry part that shows up, the role of the Wise Village Chief(ess) is first to notice and name their existence.
A part of me is angry
Oh hello, angry villager.
And then to listen to what this villager has to say. What makes this villager so angry? What do they see as their job description for the village? Sometimes, simply listening and validating this villager’s response can be very helpful:
‘It makes sense that a part of me is angry right now given what happened earlier.’
From this perspective, we are then able to choose our response to the situation by bringing in our values instead of allowing the noisy villagers to take over:
What kind of person do I want to be?
What really matters to me here?
How do I want to show up in this situation?
Looking back, what would I like to say that I stood for in this situation?
So we can FEEL anger and listen to what that part is telling us (punch them in the face!) and still choose to respond in a way that is in line with how we want to be as a person. So if standing up for myself is a value, I can calmly yet firmly tell the other person that their actions were not OK instead of punching them in the face or ignoring my anger and not reacting at all.
This is very different from what we tend to do, which is either let the villagers totally take over, and then maybe responding in a way that feels agressive or suppressing these parts of us with beliefs like: I shouldn’t be feeling this way, or I’m overreacting.
This approach is about normalising our reactions. What we are experiencing inside - in our internal village - is ALWAYS OK. What we are feeling is never wrong, disproportionate or over the top. We are always allowed to feel what we are feeling.
We do not fully choose the emotions or thoughts that show up inside of us, but what we get to choose is in how we react outside - in the physical world, with other people or in the choices we make.
The role of the Wise Village Chief(ess) is to notice, name, and validate these parts of us, and then choose how to respond in the external world - what to do next.
Through this process, we bring that moment of pause which Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl so famously talked about:
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.