Let It Hurt, Let It Heal

a large wave is breaking in the ocean.

On any given day in the US, nearly 700,000 prescriptions are dispensed for pain medications. If this number seems staggering to you, that’s because it is—especially when you consider that rates of opioid addiction and overdose in this country are at an all-time high. What can start as a pill here or there to manage pain can quickly unravel into a debilitating dependence. We don’t tend to (or want to) think about it this way, but many of the people who die from heroin overdoses started out in a doctor’s office. We’ve got a troubling epidemic on our hands in this country, and for the last several years of my career, I’ve been on its harrowing front lines.

I’ve worked with many people suffering from addiction to opioids and other substances; and while I treat each of my clients according to their unique circumstances, I often find that my conversations with them venture into familiar territory. One of the topics that comes up most often when I speak to these clients is a common one that also comes up when I speak to my other, non-addicted clients. That’s because it’s a topic that relates much more to the human experience in general than to the unique experience of becoming an addict.

The topic I’m referring to is pain. Not just physical pain, of course. I’m talking about the pain of everyday living. From momentary sadness to crippling regret; from a broken heart after a breakup to the devastating loss of a close companion. No matter who you are, no matter how fortunate you’ve been, pain is (or surely will be) part of your reality. And the truth is, your mental health and overall capacity to function in your life depend critically on your ability to effectively manage it. When I see the overwhelming numbers of people losing their lives and their loved ones to addiction every day in this country, I can’t help but think about how different things might be if we could all learn more adaptive ways to manage discomfort and cope with the tough stuff. People are suffering—and far too many of them are doing so in an effort to avoid feeling pain.

Though not everyone turns to substances, we all have ways of seeking to numb ourselves and avoid facing the parts of life that feel uncomfortable and unpleasant. We overeat, oversleep, overwork, or otherwise disconnect from our experience in the moment. And, in some ways, this makes sense. Pain avoidance is woven into the fabric of what makes us human, so it’s only natural that we look for ways to make ourselves feel better whenever pain arises. The problem is, instant gratification and immediate relief are terrible long-term strategies. They serve to lower our tolerance to pain so that we’re less equipped (and more afraid) to manage it the next time it comes up. It’s no wonder our society is more obese, addicted, and depressed than ever before. Our efforts to tune out and feel good in the moment only end up harming us in the long-run.

Life transforms dramatically when we learn to let ourselves feel pain. Trust me; I make a living helping people through this process. Many people spend their lives developing strategies—both consciously and unconsciously—to resist and avoid pain. But this is the worst thing we can do with painful emotions once they’ve arisen. The resistance only serves to strengthen the pain, making it harder for us to move through it. Think about how difficult it is to swim upstream. When you resist the current and try to move in the opposite direction of where it’s flowing, you make the journey to your destination much more difficult. You get stuck. You wear yourself out from the effort. When, however, you move in the direction of the current—going with what’s already flowing—you move much more swiftly. This is the way it works with our emotions, too. Though we’re naturally inclined to resist feeling painful emotions like anger, sadness, regret, or loneliness, we can move through them much more quickly and easily when we allow ourselves to feel them—going with the current, so to speak—than when we resist.

Our society compels us to believe that we should always turn that frown upside-down or find the silver lining on every dark cloud. But the truth is, life is as much about the difficulties as it is about the triumphs—as much about the happy feelings as the painful ones. Pain takes on a whole new meaning when we can learn to greet it and keep it company. Once we learn to let it hurt, we’ve taken the first step to letting it heal.

If something hurts for a while, or you experience difficult emotions every time you think about a particular part of your life, it doesn’t mean something’s wrong. Hurting is part of healing, and sometimes the healing process takes longer than we’d want or expect it to. If you find yourself stuck in this process and unsure how to manage it on your own, know that support is available to you. I sometimes think of myself as a tour guide or compassionate companion along the journey through pain; I’d be honored to keep you company. But whether or not you work with someone through this process or go it alone, trust that your efforts to make contact with your pain will lead you down the path toward healing. And not only will you heal, you’ll also strengthen your ability to face life courageously and open-heartedly, knowing you can handle whatever comes your way.

If we choose to see it this way, being in pain can serve as an opportunity for us to be with ourselves, slowing down and tuning in to our experience so we can move through it as gracefully as possible, learning what’s there for us to learn along the way. I invite you to begin the process of letting your painful emotions come and go; allow yourself to flow through them, supported by the knowledge that they will pass, so long as you let them.

If It Isn’t Yours, Don’t Take It

a purple flower with rain falling down on it.

You know that person at the office who’s always sick with whatever bug is going around and chooses to go to work anyway? No matter how hard you try to avoid making contact, you somehow always end up catching whatever he or she’s got. It’s unnerving, uncomfortable, and seemingly unavoidable. Unpleasant though it may be, it’s the nature of office culture and contagious illness: if someone catches something, everyone else is likely to catch it also.

But the common cold isn’t the only thing that gets spread this way. Emotions, moods, and attitudes are just as contagious. Whether it’s a negative person in the workplace or a family member who’s perpetually on edge, there’s always going to be someone whose energy can contaminate you—that is, until you learn to immunize yourself from it.

Years ago, one of my mentors shared something with me that forever changed the way I conduct therapy and relate to other people in my life. We were having a discussion about one of my clients and the particularly challenging family issue she was working through in our sessions together. Week after week, this client arrived to our sessions distraught, anxious, and desperate for things to be different. The 60 minutes we’d spend together every week—during which she’d spend most of the time complaining, and I’d spend most of the time shrinking into my chair—felt like torture for me; by the time each session ended, I’d be worked up and bent out of shape. Noticing this, my mentor said the following to me: “If you absorb the emotional energy she’s emitting, you’ll be in no position to support her. You have to keep your emotional and energetic space clear if you’re going to have a shot at helping her clear hers.” “That makes sense,” I told him. But how do I do that?” “It’s simple,” he answered. “Whenever you’re in her presence—or in the presence of anyone whose emotions are affecting you—ask yourself this question: Whose emotion is this?” Time stopped the moment I heard those words. The question struck me as so powerful, so profound in its simplicity, that I had to pause for a moment and center myself. What this question has yielded for me and the clients I’ve shared it with over the years has made all the difference in the world.

You see, human beings are wired for connection, and certain cells in our brains—known as mirror neurons—cause us to automatically react to other people’s emotions. It’s the reason we instinctively cringe when we see someone get injured; it’s why we cry when the protagonist in a film experiences something painful. We can’t help but be affected by each other; we’re contagious in this way. So it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish other people’s emotions from our own. But, thankfully, we have the ability to choose how much we want to be affected by the emotions we come in contact with in the course of our relationships with others. The more skillfully we can do this, the less susceptible we are to getting weighed down by other people’s emotional baggage.

Here are some tips for developing that skill:

  1. Practice mindfulness. The more grounded and centered you are in your own experience, the easier it will be for you to distinguish your emotions from those of other people. Practice checking in with yourself on a regular basis, noticing what you’re thinking, feeling, observing, and experiencing in the moment. The more familiar you get with what’s going on inside you, the more quickly you’ll notice when you’ve absorbed someone else’s stuff.
  1. Set clear boundaries. It’s possible to have empathy for people without burdening yourself with their emotions. This requires setting firm boundaries and maintaining a clear sense of where others end and you begin. Sometimes, of course, that’s much easier said than done. No doubt, some people will challenge your ability to keep your emotional space clear, but it’s your responsibility to keep the boundaries in place. If you notice yourself getting worked up on a phone call with a perpetually pissed off relative, it’s okay to lovingly end the call. If the coworker you have lunch with always spends the time complaining, and you find yourself returning to the office in a bad mood, it’s okay to tell her you won’t be joining her for a few days. Caring about others and being supportive doesn’t require you to take on their emotions. The clearer your boundaries are, the clearer that distinction will be.
  1. Practice the catch and release method. Sometimes it’s impossible to avoid catching emotions that didn’t originate from you. But the quicker you notice that it’s happened, the quicker you can do something about it. Whenever you see that you’ve been affected by another person’s energy/mood/vibe, inhale deeply, say to yourself, “I’ve picked up something that doesn’t belong to me,” and on the exhale, focus your attention on releasing it. The more regularly you do this, the better you’ll become at it. Before you know it, you’ll be letting other people’s emotional energy pass right through you without it getting stuck, and you’ll be in a much better position to stay in connection with them without being negatively affected.
  1. Make your emotional health a priority. When you commit to being emotionally well, you build your immunity from other people’s emotional junk. So make your wellbeing a priority. Take care of yourself, manage your stress level, keep company with people who make you feel good. The healthier you are, emotionally speaking, the less likely you’ll be to absorb other people’s emotions.

Vitamin C, rest, physical exercise, and a healthy diet will help you maintain your body’s immune system. To keep your emotional immune system healthy, mindfulness, self-care, and clear boundaries will do the trick. The next time you notice yourself picking up someone else’s emotional baggage, ask yourself “Whose emotion is this?” If the answer isn’t “Mine,” gently set it down. Because if it isn’t yours, why would you take it?

Fanning the Flames of Anger

She was mad. No, not just mad; she was enraged. She’d walked into my office for the first time just 20 minutes before, and shortly after launching into her story about why she’d sought therapy, her anger reached its boiling point. She was seething. After finishing a particularly pointed sentence about how furious she was over her husband’s “stupidity,” she looked up to find that I was sitting with my hands folded in my lap, breathing peacefully and looking at her with compassionate interest as she shared her story with me. Upon seeing my expression and posture, she became even more angered and said, quite passionately, “Ughhh! Seeing you sitting there so calm like that just pisses me off even more. It’s exactly what my husband does when I’m yelling at him. It’s like he doesn’t even care that he hurt me.” I gently stopped her then and asked if she could remember and repeat the last three words she’d just said.

“He hurt me.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, her eyes welled up with tears. Her rigid posture softened, and her once tense shoulders slumped down. She leaned forward with her hands in her lap and cried quietly, allowing herself to express the new set of emotions that my question had invited. Then, suddenly, she began to laugh. She looked at me with smiling eyes and tear-stained cheeks and said, “Damnit! It’s so much easier to be mad than sad.”

It is, isn’t it?

Anger is a normal human emotion. Like fear, it’s typically a response to some stimulus in the environment that activates our nervous system and triggers a fight or flight reaction. Whereas fear tends to invoke a flight response, anger gets us into fight mode. It creates a surge of activating energy that’s sometimes accompanied by a motivation to act out on the emotion and somehow discharge it. In this way, anger is energizing and emboldening.  In the English language, words such as “fiery,” “hot,” and “burning” are used to describe it, evoking a sensation of heat that is often associated with the emotion. If you’ve ever been overcome with anger—the way my client started out when she arrived to our first session—you know how intense the scorching flames can be.

Contrary to what some psychotherapists will tell you, anger is a legitimate emotion. It’s not, as some would argue, a cover-up for fear and sadness. It’s important to understand this distinction, because acknowledging what we’re feeling and accepting its legitimacy is an important part of managing, relieving, and overcoming it. I didn’t tell my client she shouldn’t be angry, nor did I ask her to tell me what was beneath or behind all that anger. Instead, I kept her company while the emotion surged through her, making space for it and remaining curious about her experience with it. That’s because I understand that as with any emotion, the first step to letting anger pass is acknowledging its presence.

According to the teaching of the Buddha, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” Because the heat of anger has such an activating effect on us, we can easily become consumed by it. It can erupt in an aggressive outburst or spawn a desire to get revenge. But as the Buddha so wisely pointed out, whenever we hold on to the emotion with the intent of using it to cause others pain, we’re the ones who wind up hurting the most.

The trouble with anger isn’t the anger itself; it’s the automatic assumption that just because we feel it, we have to do something about it. Simply allowing the emotion to pass through, without attaching to it or acting out because of it, gives way to a process that can teach us a lot about ourselves. You see, although anger is more than just a secondary emotion, it usually doesn’t operate alone. As my client discovered, anger is typically associated with other emotions. If we can sit with it long enough for the flames to die down, what we’ll likely discover is a host of accompanying emotions like sadness, frustration, humiliation, disappointment, and fear. What my client realized was that she wasn’t just angry at her husband; she was also feeling hurt by him. The anger, as she explained, was easier to feel. So long as she was charged up with rage, she didn’t have to experience the vulnerability that comes with feeling hurt. But once she made her way through the complex emotions she was experiencing, she was able to get some clarity about her situation. By the time she left my office, she had a better understanding of what happened in the encounter with her husband and what she wanted to do about it.

Anger can teach us a lot about ourselves. It can help us gain access to places inside of us where we otherwise might not travel. If my client had ignored her anger or simply acted upon the impulse to lash out at her husband, she likely wouldn’t have accessed the hurt and sadness underneath it. It was through the process of being with and peeling back the many layers of her emotional experience that she came to a sense of clarity and resolution. Had she dismissed her anger, this process would have been cut short, failing to yield any useful understanding or awareness; had she exploded because of it, she wouldn’t have learned much and might have acted in ways she’d later regret. If we let it, anger can become the source of deep self-awareness and exploration.

In his book entitled Anger, Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh offers the following perspective: “Embrace your anger with a lot of tenderness. Your anger is not your enemy, your anger is your baby. It’s like your stomach or your lungs. Every time you have some trouble in your lungs or your stomach, you don’t think of throwing them away. The same is true with your anger. You accept your anger because you know you can take care of it; you can transform it into positive energy.”

Every emotion we feel is an opportunity to become better acquainted with our inner world. And it’s through this self-understanding that we learn how to navigate life’s challenges, guiding ourselves with the wisdom of our own experiences. What if the next time you felt angry you embraced it? What if instead of dismissing or discharging the anger you listened to it?  What might you learn about yourself? What might you discover?

 

 

Feeding the Gentle Wolf: The Power of Mindfulness Practice

a wolf is standing in the grass looking at the camera.

Much of the content I write about on this blog, and a big part of the work I do in therapy, is grounded in centuries-old Eastern philosophies, particularly from the Zen Buddhist and Taoist traditions. I find that this ancient wisdom has significant relevance to the kinds of things many of us experience in our daily lives. Perhaps the most profoundly impactful of these concepts—and certainly the one I talk about most —is that of mindfulness.

Mindfulness has become a bit of a buzzword in our culture recently. It’s been referenced in numerous publications, incorporated in countless studies, and suggested as an intervention for a great number of modern-day challenges. So what is this extraordinary concept all about?

Well, to tell you the truth, it’s really quite simple. Mindfulness is essentially the practice of paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment. It involves observing our experience as it’s happening and responding to it with a spirit of acceptance and non-judgment.

When we live mindfully, we attend to our experience in the here-and-now, taking stock of whatever is happening around us and inside of us. This enables us to stay grounded in the present moment and appreciate our thoughts, sensations, emotions, and surroundings.

The practice of mindfulness is essentially a practice of bringing your mind to meet your body in real time. If you stop to think about it, you’re able to perform most of your daily activities without dedicating 100% of your attention to them. Your body completes the tasks without your mind needing to be fully present. Take washing your hands, for example. While your body goes through the motions, your mind is free to wander—and wander it likely does. The practice of mindfully washing your hands considerably transforms the activity, as it involves bringing your full awareness to the experience. It means feeling the contours of the faucet against your hand as you turn it on, sensing the temperature of the water as it rushes over your skin, seeing your hands move through space to reach for the soap and sponge, smelling the soap as it slips over and between your hands, watching the bubbles encase your hands and then be washed away by the stream of water that you can hear gushing out of the faucet. It’s quite a departure from the typical hand-washing experience, which basically involves going through the motions while mentally time traveling to the past (“I really didn’t like the tone he took with me in that email”) or the future (“What was that item I said I needed to get at the store later?”).

In reality, unless we’re acting mindfully, we’re not really acting at all. To act requires consciousness and intention; so when we go through our daily activities on autopilot, we end up having a passive experience of our lives. It’s no wonder we so often experience boredom, frustration, dissatisfaction, and agitation without knowing why. When we think and emote mindfully, we tune in to our internal experience, getting curious about our thoughts and learning from our feelings. We practice responding to our internal and external experiences rather than impulsively reacting to them. Approached mindfully, a rush of anger is not a command to act aggressively but an invitation to turn inward and find out what caused it to arise. A troubling thought is no longer an introduction to suffering but an opportunity to witness the natural tendency for thoughts to come and go.

When we are mindful, we give ourselves permission to gently stay with our present-moment experience rather than resist it or try to turn it into something more pleasant. We surf the wave of our emotions, trusting ourselves to respond to them thoughtfully, calmly, and responsibly. When the wave breaks, we enjoy, with appreciation, the experience of having ridden it, and we wait patiently to see what the ocean presents to us next.

I’ll be offering much more food for thought on the concept and practice of mindfulness through this blog. In the meantime, I invite you to watch the delightful (and short) videos below on the power of mindfulness and its potential to transform our experience of life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6T02g5hnT4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzKryaN44ss

 

 

Inside Out: A Lesson on Emotions

For quite some time now I’ve been wanting to write a post about the critically acclaimed, award-winning Disney Pixar film Inside Out. If you haven’t yet seen it, I highly recommend that you add it to the top of your must-watch list. Though deceptive in its animated format, the film offers a brilliant exploration of human thoughts and emotions that is relevant to people of all ages. I’ve shared it with numerous clients, all of whom have found deep significance in its core message.
When I came across an article on mindful.org, about the five things Inside Out teaches us about emotions, I couldn’t wait to share it with you. The article captures the essence of the film, highlighting the important lessons it teaches us about what it means to be an emotional being. It grounds the film’s central premise in a mindfulness context, reminding us of what we can draw from it to enrich our emotional lives. Check out the article here, and share your thoughts with me. Did you see the film? What did you take away from it?

You’ve Got To Feel It To Heal It

a woman holding a pink rose in her hands.

It makes me happy when clients come to session in the midst of emotional discomfort.

Now, I know what you must be thinking, so please allow me to explain. No, I’m not a sadist. I don’t take pleasure in my clients’ pain. But I do know an opportunity for healing when I see one.

What I mean is this: When it comes to emotional pain, most of the efforts people make to stop feeling it end up having the opposite effect. The more they try to numb or escape the emotion, the more they end up suffering. This numbing can come in various forms. For some people it’s drugs and alcohol, for others it’s work. Some people dive into relationships to escape unpleasant feelings, others dive into chocolate cake and ice cream. While some of these approaches are more dangerous than others, they all have the same underlying motivation: to avoid, suppress, distort, or deny whatever’s going on inside. We all have our own methods for doing this, and we can all likely agree that even if they seem to work a little at first, the relief doesn’t last. It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a deep wound—some of the surface gets covered, but the real affliction remains untreated.

The reason I get happy when clients come in feeling bad is that I know they’re in the perfect position to heal themselves. That’s because when it comes to the emotional stuff, you’ve got to feel it to heal it. This might seem like unfortunate news—after all, who wants to make direct contact with something that feels so awful? But you need to know that it isn’t all bad. You see, what you’ll come to find when you begin to practice healing through feeling is that you start to feel better much sooner than when you attempt to numb and avoid. Ever heard the expression what we resist persists? Well, it applies perfectly here. Whenever we try not to feel what we’re feeling, whenever we try to push out the pain, we end up getting even more tangled up in it. We add an extra layer of suffering to something that’s already agonizing.

When my clients sit across from me in a state of emotional distress, I have them start by inviting their pain to the proverbial table and asking it to have a seat. This begins the process of keeping company with the emotion. It also begins the process of relieving the pain. Next, I have them identify the emotion as specifically as possible. This is based on research that shows people who are able to identify their emotions and distinguish one from the other are more effective at coping with them. I have my clients track the physical manifestations of the emotional pain throughout their bodies. They might find that nervousness feels like a tightening in the chest or sadness feels like heaviness in the shoulders. Getting in touch with the embodied aspects of the pain furthers the process of addressing and healing it. The rest of the work is a deliberate and compassionate practice of making room for the emotion, learning from it, and trusting that it will pass. It always does.

If therapy or any form of self-work is to be effective, it has to go directly to the source. We have to be willing to go inward and visit the places we don’t want to go. We have to learn how to keep company with all of our emotions, not just the ones we like to feel. We have to make a practice of tuning into our internal experience and asking ourselves the difficult question: What am I trying to keep myself from feeling?

When you feel bad it’s natural to want to feel better; but once you start practicing this stuff, you’ll never again want to settle for feeling better when you know you can actually get better. You are capable, and you are worth it.