I am excited to share my first podcast interview with Tom Zamzow and Nicki Simmons of the Go Higher Podcast.
It is on the topic of being stuck at work and how to work with the fear of change. You can listen to it on your preferred player here and scroll down to episode 25.
Putting things off does NOT mean we are lazy or are unable to manage our time. Instead, procrastination tells us that something else is going on.
What are some of the reasons we procrastinate? Are there times when procrastination is creative? And how can we work with procrastination more effectively?
Click on the image below to watch the recording by Creative Mornings Lausanne on this topic.
“The hero’s journey always begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, 'Look, you’re in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that’s not been touched. So you’re at home here? Well, there’s not enough of you there.' And so it starts.” - Joseph Campbell
We know on some level that life happens in chapters, that change will be a part of our lives. Yet there are moments when it feels like everything has been overturned, that nothing makes sense anymore, and we are often left stunned.
Stunned by the upheaval, the questions, or even just the need for something to change we suddenly seem to be facing. How, what we worked so hard to build, no longer seems to matter as much. How that gnawing sense of dissatisfaction keeps telling us something that once worked for us, no longer does.
Or perhaps we wake up to a longing, a desire we had never fully been in contact with before but now feels urgent. We don’t recognise ourselves anymore - we may even act in ways that feels very unlike us. Our habitual way of dealing with things seem to have abandoned us.
Often but not always, these times come with a blow from the outside world: A break-up, a burn-out, a loss of some kind, falling in love or having an affair, a difficulty we must face - and with this comes the sinking realization:
I am no longer who I once was.
Hello, Life Transition. Hello, Crisis. Hello, Opportunity.
As the quote above suggests, these moments in life can be seen as awakenings. Awakening to parts of ourselves we did not know, or had never fully known. Awakening to what is no longer working for us. And maybe, further down the road, awakening to a life that feels more authentic.
When we are in these moments of life, it can feel excruciating and never-ending. Yet looking back there is often a sense of: That was awful, but it allowed me to get to where I am today.
And while the emotional turmoil during these times is very real - often intense anxiety, sleeplessness, depression, even suicidal thoughts - they are also a normal part of being a human who is alive to their own potential for growth.
In my work as a psychologist, and also now as an astrologer, I see several key moments when people come to therapy, and that seem more turbulent than others. These are key moments to navigate these very important questions which mostly center around re-examining and perhaps re-defining: Who am I and what do I want from life?
In astrology, this is a very important time when the planet Saturn has made a full turn around the Sun and is back at the same place as when we were born: The Saturn Return.
The Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung talks about how in the first half of life we establish ourselves as individuals. This is when we typically build our careers, start a family, buy property etc. At this stage of life, we are often influenced by family and society and doing things ‘right’, climbing the corporate ladder etc. Status and achievement matter.
Then we get to 28 / 29, and something seems to shift. This is often a time of growing up, of beginning to define ourselves on our own terms, beyond upbringing / society / culture.
We are asked to get real about what we want in areas of life such as relationships, starting a family, where we live, career, health. Often, this can be a very turbulent, difficult time, with obstacles to overcome. Once we have come out of it, it feels like there is a before and after the 30 year old mark. Those people in their 20’s now seem so young!
When we arrive at the second half of our lives, things start shifting. We have done everything society told us to do, and yet may be starting to feel unsatisfied. Is this all there is to life? What have I worked so hard for? What do I really want?
Astrologically, this is also a very busy time, particularly around the late 30’s (Pluto square Pluto), 40/41 (Neptune square Neptune) and 44/45 (Uranus opposite Uranus).
All the efforts and achievements don’t seem to matter as much as they once did.
Instead, there is often a search for something bigger than ourselves, for meaning. We want to feel like we matter beyond our status or performance. Life no longer feels unlimited and we can start wanting to leave behind us something of value. Often this is the start of a more spiritual quest, a search for the deeper significance of our human life.
But it often isn’t a gentle process. Instead, as astrologer Howard Sasportas writes, it is:
"a time for disassembling ourselves and then putting the pieces back together again but in a different way. Parts of our nature we haven’t integrated yet into our conscious awareness, and which we have been ignoring or not looking at, demand to be acknowledged and examined. Facing the conflicts and crises of this period increases the likelihood of a fulfilling second half of life.”
‘Disassembling ourselves’ can mean letting go of the armor we have learned to wear, the ways we have learned to please others, the ‘adaptations’ to getting our needs met we had to learn in the first half of life. Often, as children, we had to sacrifice authenticity for safety simply as a way of surviving and getting our needs met. We had no other choice. We learned to people please, to perform, to do what others expect of us, to diminish ourselves - whatever was needed to ensure attachment with our caregivers.
At midlife, this no longer works. We now yearn to be seen for who we really are. We crave real connection. A part of us wakes up and starts to whisper: what if my needs also matter? who am I when I am not just taking care of others? I want to live out loud! I want to be ME.
If you consider that we all contain multitudes - different villagers in our internal village that all want different things - the conflict comes when the parts of us that prioritised safety now start to collide with the parts of us that are starting to come out of the shadow and demanding a place in our internal village.
As Carl Jung wrote:
“…we cannot live the afternoons of life according to the programme of life’s morning for what was great in the morning will be little in the evening, and what in the morning was true will in the evening have become a lie.”
All the ways we have learned we need to be in the world now feel inauthentic. Disingenuous. This can feel very confusing and destabilizing, almost like we are losing our ‘religion’, without yet having a new ‘religion’.
We know that we can no longer be the person we once were, like clothes that have grown too small or are simply outdated - yet we do not yet know who we are to become. We do not yet have new clothes - and even worse, have no idea what we want them to look like.
In particular around the ages of 50 (Chiron Return) and then again at around 58 / 59 (Second Saturn Return) according to astrology, this is a time of questioning one’s own role as an ‘elder’ or wise person of the community.
It is a time of questioning what adjustments are needed to ensure this final part of life is meaningful. There is often a desire to impart knowledge and wisdom to the younger generations and to act as guiding lights for improving our world. Often, old wounds that have not been fully healed might also resurface during this time and this is an opportunity to work through them.
The challenge in all these moments of life is: ‘I am no longer who I once was, and not yet who I am to become.’
Doesn’t being in this in-between state help make sense of the anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, confusion, panic we might be experiencing during these times?
One of the most important ways of navigating these times, is to accept them as a natural unfolding of life, as a part of what it means to be living a life we are awake to, and perhaps to use this opportunity to move with the changes that are asking to happen, rather than trying to resist them or avoid them or even avoid reflection. The one thing we can always do is not add on extra layers of pain and instead get curious about what these emotions are trying to tell us.
During these time, we are hanging out in a liminal space: An in-between space where we are not meant to stay but simply to pass through, like corridors or stairways that are necessary because they lead from one place to another. Liminal spaces are also often seen as a sacred space, where our old selves can fall apart, and something new and bigger is revealed - almost like a rite of passage.
Just because we are feeling this way right now does not mean we will stay here forever.
The most difficult part is accepting that we cannot yet know who are to become, yet need to let go of old identities and ways of being that are no longer working. We need to trust the process that is unfolding.
In this space, can we face what needs to be faced, let go, allow transitions to happen, shift our identity, make changes that are aligned with our unique path? While these times will never feel easy or enjoyable, perhaps viewing them as an awakening to something more aligned to our soul that we have yet to uncover can help us navigate them more serenely.
We are in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while slowly losing our youthful beauty. This is a brutal untruth. Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again. - Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
photo by bjornrapp.com
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.
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.
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.
photo by bjornrapp.com
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.
“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final” - Rainer Maria Rilke
Never have so few words meant so much. I first saw them last December. It was at the end of Jojo Rabbit, a film that was creating quite a stir at the time as it was a satirical take on Hitler seen through the eyes of a young boy. Some thought it was completely disrespectful; others, like myself, thought quite the opposite. It showed how utterly absurd the war really was. Like everything, it all depends how you look at it.
A few months later another type of ‘war’ was declared, and soon after, I began my own battle with Covid-19. Little did I know that these few words from a film would be a savior in the dark days ahead.
At first I wasn't concerned. I wasn't 'at risk', so I paid more attention to the symptoms of friends who were sick at the same time. Each day we would check in to see how everyone was faring. 'Je respire' became our catchphrase of the moment.
Until day four when I found myself gasping for breath and calling an ambulance.
What followed was many months of terror and very little beauty. I had every imaginable symptom, including breathlessness, extreme fatigue, violent diarrhoea, a brutal loss of smell and intense muscle pain. I lost 10% of my bodyweight, went to hospital twice, took three full months off work, with a further 6 weeks half time, and spent many, many days oscillating between the couch and the bed. I poured money at things that didn't help at all, such as energy healers and naturopaths, and others that did such as osteopaths and respiratory physios.
I made use of the crisis counselling service offered by my employer in the times when I couldn't handle it anymore, and my friends felt helpless in my plight. It allowed me to cry shamelessly, and the counsellor even made a useful remark: Sometimes we place judgements on certain symptoms that aren't necessarily correct. Being breathless or having that crushing feeling on my chest, for example, didn't necessarily mean it would intensify and I would die.
It was the worst of times and the best of times, living alone and terrified of dying with no-one to feed the cat, mixed with lots of loving messages and calls and friends running errands and everyone asking after me.
But it went on for months, and when, despite all the tests and scans and doctors perplexed I was still battling away, I realised that the only one who could save me was me.
I discovered there was a 'rehab Covid-19' centre near Paris for those with persistent symptoms, with lots of helpful advice. I took all I could: a psychologist for post-traumatic stress, a respiratory physio to get me breathing normally, and eating eating eating to get the weight back on.
I also asked myself so many questions. Why did I get it so badly? Why am I even alive? What is the point of life if it is riddled with so much suffering?
One thing was clear was that I couldn't return to my life pre Covid. There were things that had to go. Toast for dinner every night was one. Being so harsh on myself (a work in progress) was another. So too was a university course I had applied for related to the wine industry, which I longed to work in, which felt like an impossible task and had caused many many sleepless nights. Out that went. Going out five nights a week was finished. I asked existential questions, explored spirituality, religion, the afterlife.
September came and I went on holiday with a friend and felt happy to be alive. I felt that Covid had been a gift. It made me put things in perspective, appreciate what I did have. Take things slower, be kinder to myself.
Yet when I returned from holiday I fell into a black hole. Everything had changed yet nothing had changed. I continued to get relapses, albeit much milder and less frequent. I felt worn down by it all, and by the million tiny hurts, such as the incomprehension of friends, the cancelling of plans and the inability to make future ones, the fragility I felt. I guess I had hoped that there would be some great reward at the end of all this. Yet my life was the same, and my health even worse.
I continued with the search, signing up for a retreat along the lines of healing body and mind in a remote part of France. It all seemed rather unpleasant, but the teacher convinced me he could 'fix' me and all would be so much better in the end.
Yet halfway into it, the teacher fell ill.
I felt a huge surge of relief. Hallelujah! The following day I found myself crying with joy in the middle of a vineyard in the Côtes du Rhône region.
Why on earth didn't I do this before? I didn't need to have a reason, or a university degree to wander in the vineyards! I felt so happy, so alive.
It finally hit me that I didn't need to improve anything. I had everything I needed right there. I had friends, good ones, and a job, also good. I had health that was 'good enough'. I was done with fixing. It was time to start living.
While on one hand Covid has weakened me, and I still suffer from 'bad' days and bouts of anxiety, it has also given me a confidence and insight like never before. It stopped me still in my tracks to make me be here now instead of constantly striving for better or more. I would never have known that simply staying on a winery would give me so much joy. I would never have allowed myself to just be.
As for all the existential questions, well, the only conclusion I came to was that I didn't have one. I just had to live.
And when the pains return and the stress of this period weighs heavy, I try and remind myself to let everything happen. The beauty and the terror. To just keep going, because no feeling is final.
Clare Naden is a New Zealand writer living in France and working in Geneva.
“You," he said, "are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world, and that, I believe, is why you are in so much pain.” - Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls
Growing up, we may have had parents who were present. They were caring. They provided material comfort. They were consistent.
Yet we grew up with a sense that something was off. Something never quite felt right beyond the appearance of everything being fine.
We then become adults who feel disconnected from ourselves. We don’t know who we are or what we want.
There is an emptiness inside of us that we keep trying to fill - with the next achievement or with food or alcohol or validation from other people. Yet nothing fills that hole, that emptiness or numbness inside of us.
Spending time with our family can feel confusing, or be done out of guilt. Even though everything looks fine on the surface, there is a sense of distance, or fakeness or the feeling that we can’t be fully ourselves with them.
Yet everything was fine growing up. Nothing bad happened. Others had it so much worse. So it must be my fault, we conclude. There must be something wrong with me. Why can’t I just be happy? Why do I feel so empty all the time?
What didn’t happen is that your internal village of emotions, needs and thoughts wasn’t taken into account enough.
Being loved and cared for growing up is essential. And we also need to feel seen, to have our inner world or village reflected back to us.
One of the roles of a parent is to help their child get to know their own village, to help them understand and mirror back to them their emotions and needs - their internal world.
Yet it is very difficult for a parent to provide this, if they didn’t experience it themselves growing up, or if they were overwhelmed with parenting, grieving, depressed, or struggling with another child who needed more attention.
This isn’t about blaming parents - it is about understanding and bringing compassion to ourselves that it is difficult to really see and understand ourselves if this didn’t happen to us growing up.
How were emotions dealt with in your family? Were they talked about in a healthy way? Were all emotions welcomed, even more difficult ones, like anger or sadness? Or were they ignored, or played down or invalidated? Perhaps only certain emotions might have been allowed, like happiness - but there was no room for more vulnerable emotions like sadness. Or maybe emotions weren’t really shown, or talked about. You were never asked about how you felt or what you wanted or needed. Perhaps there was a need to keep up appearances that meant avoiding conflict or showing anything ‘real’ or vulnerable.
You might have heard things like:
There’s nothing to be upset about.
Boys don’t cry.
Suck it up.
You think that’s bad, other kids have it worse.
Don’t be sad. Count your blessings.
There’s no room for anger in this home.
I don’t like seeing you like this. Cheer up.
And because emotions are such an important part of us as humans, we might have concluded that WE don’t really exist, that WE don’t really matter, that WE are not interesting. Because we were not really understood on a deeper level, WE don’t really understand ourselves as adults. Because we weren’t really held and told it’s OK to feel what we are feeling, that all emotions pass, and that it’s OK to be feeling this way - we now don’t know how to hold ourselves as adults.
This is the result of emotional neglect.
As Dr Jonice Webb writes:
“Emotionally neglectful parents may be loving and well-intentioned but they still, perhaps through no fault of their own, fail to notice your feelings and respond to them enough. And by failing you in this way, emotionally neglectful parents fail to teach you the emotion skills you will need for your lifetime.
Now, as an adult looking back, you may readily recall all that your parents gave you, but it is far more difficult to see the vital ingredients they failed to give you: emotional validation, attention and attunement, emotion skills, and emotional intelligence.”
Jonice Webb compares emotional neglect to baking a beautiful cake but forgetting the sugar. It looks good, yet lacks sweetness. Emotions provide sweetness. Emotions are what give us a sense of aliveness. They are like signposts in our internal village that provide information about what we like, what we don’t like, when something feels right or not.
As adults, it is not about blaming our parents for what they did or didn’t do. But it isn’t about blaming ourselves either and thinking there is something wrong with us. Having a term like emotional neglect can help us accept the reality of what didn’t happen growing up. We can stop blaming ourselves or thinking there is something wrong with us and instead start taking responsibility for giving ourselves what we need as adults.
If you are a parent yourself, it’s never too late to start doing this with your own children. Emotion skills can be learned - all they require is a willingness and curiosity to explore your inner world.
Perhaps a really simple step is to pause and simply take a moment every day to ask yourself:
What am I feeling right now?
What do I want / need?
Physical sensations like being hungry tired, thirsty, energised count too, and can be a good place to start.
If this resonates with you and you want to find out more, you can download my PDF on emotions here and find out more about emotional neglect on Dr Jonice Webb’s website here.