What a Trip!

a wooden table topped with lots of plates and bowls.

I haven’t written in a while, but I’ve certainly had some things in mind to share; and I’m grateful to have that opportunity now. As some of you know, I spent a couple of weeks away this month on a visit to Morocco and Spain. It was my first time in Morocco, and though it was a wedding in Marrakech that brought me there, I got a chance to experience a few other parts of the country and enjoy some of the many riches it has to offer. I had few expectations going into the trip; and I’m glad for that, because nothing could have prepared me for the journey it turned out to be. While I was there, and since coming home, I’ve done a lot of reflecting on what I experienced and what all of it had to teach me.

From the moment my flight touched down in Marrakech, I was overcome by the energy of this new place. My senses were overloaded, and it took effort to stay centered. There was so much to take in, so many things around me demanding my attention, something unexpected at every turn. I felt completely scattered, yet totally present. Time flew by while somehow seeming to drag on forever. It was a dizzying experience that, oddly enough, led me to feel more grounded than ever.

Getting immersed in a new place requires a certain degree of surrender, a releasing of patterned ways of thinking and being. But the truth is, we don’t need to stamp our passports to get this experience. We always have this choice—to let go of what isn’t serving us and live into new possibilities; to shed old skin and grow into something new. For me, this trip was a humbling reminder of how much there is in this world, this Life, to be discovered. When we allow ourselves to move outside our context, our culture, our comfort zones, our customary ways of being in the world, we get rewarded and expanded. We move a little closer to the essence of Life, catching a glimpse of its vastness through the small pieces of it we get to savor. It’s a choice we get to make every day—stay small, or expand; close ourselves off, or open ourselves up with curiosity. Remembering that we have this choice isn’t always easy, and sometimes we have to shake things up to realize it again. But when we do, we get to grow.

One of the biggest treasures of this experience was the sense of connection I felt with the people I met in Morocco. Through the brief but significant encounters I had with them, I got reminded of how transcendent human connection can be. We have the ability to communicate with people in powerful ways that go far beyond the words we speak. This awareness came most penetratingly to me through an encounter with a practical stranger that I doubt I’ll ever forget. We didn’t share a language—save for a few words of Arabic and English that both of us could understand—but, in our brief exchange, I experienced trust, understanding, acceptance, forgiveness, and love. We connected and communicated in a way that transcended language, culture, or any other seeming differences between us. It served as a reminder and affirmation that true connection isn’t about the surface stuff. It’s about presence, awareness, attunement, patience, and a mutual willingness to understand. To really connect, we’ve got to slow down and pay attention. We’ve got to hold ourselves in the space to give and receive. Our connections with each other open us up to new worlds; they reveal new insights and understandings; they help us resolve our differences and discover our sameness; they affirm that we’re all having this curious and wondrous human experience together.

For me, this trip was a teacher. It humbled me, expanded me, and got me present to some things I believe wholeheartedly—that new experience is a transformative tool, and human connections are powerful medicine. After two weeks of traveling, I was eager to return home; but I promised myself that I’d hold on to all the lessons I learned while I was away. And now I get to share them with you. Thank you for being the space to receive them. I hope they resonate with a part of you and, in some way, contribute to your own beautiful journey.

Ask a Therapist: How Do I Mend a Broken Relationship?

a close up of two people holding hands.

In this edition of Ask a Therapist, I’m addressing a question I get asked pretty often: How do I mend a broken relationship? Of course, every relationship and circumstance is different; but there are some general considerations that can support the repair process. Whether you’re looking to re-open lines of communication with someone, re-establish trust with your significant other, or mend the rifts in a meaningful relationship, here are a few things to keep in mind.

1) Spend some time reflecting about what happened. This is a crucial step in the repair process, because it’s important to get clear about what happened and how you contributed to it. In the heat of the moment, it can be hard to comprehend what’s happening; and in the aftermath, it’s easy to focus on your hurt feelings and what the other person did to cause them. Before you make any effort to repair the relationship, give some thought to what took place, and see the part you played in it. Look also at how you interpreted the situation, what hurt you most about what happened, what you would have wanted to play out differently, and what you could have done differently to create that outcome. Having a clear, centered, and non-blaming perspective will support you greatly in your repair efforts.

2) Give some thought to what you really want from the relationship. It’s uncomfortable, and often painful, to be at odds with someone you care about; but before you rush to make things better, reflect on your intentions. Be clear and honest with yourself about whether and why you want the other person in your life. And here’s a really important part: be sure you want to move forward with this person as he or she actually is, not as you would prefer for him or her to be. This step is all about being honest with yourself and, in some cases, being willing to consider that the relationship may not be worth salvaging. Skipping this step could lead to resentments down the road, so take your time with it. Think carefully about what the relationship means to you and what role you can see it playing in your life moving forward

3) Approach the initial conversation with sincere openness. If you’ve completed the first two steps and still want to move forward in the repair process, the next step is reaching out and inviting the other person into a conversation. Let him or her know that you’ve been reflecting on the relationship and the way things occurred between you, and you’d like to work on repairing it. Understand that he or she might not be ready or willing to talk. And that’s okay. The time may not be right now, but that doesn’t mean repair will never happen. Give it time, have faith, and be open to the possibility of the conversation happening in the future.

4) Communicate mindfully. If you reach out to the other person and he or she is willing to talk, prepare to approach the conversation mindfully. Make sure you’re focused and centered, attending to your breath and staying present and connected throughout the dialogue. Be willing to see things from another perspective, and listen to the other person without defending yourself. When it’s your turn to speak, focus on your experience without placing blame on the other person. Be honest and open, keeping in mind—especially during the more difficult parts of the conversation—that your primary intention is to reconnect, repair, and move forward.

5) Establish boundaries as needed. Sometimes it’s important to have a conversation about boundaries before moving forward in a relationship. This can be a difficult subject to broach, but it’s important to do it so that similar transgressions don’t occur in the future. If your personal boundaries were violated in the relationship, be sure to speak up about it and clearly express what you need moving forward. This is a challenging but crucial step in the process, as it involves truly working on repair instead of simply glossing over what happened and rushing to make things right again. Be willing to speak up, but remember not to reject your understanding and compassion in order to do it!

6) Give yourself credit, and be grateful. Nobody’s perfect, and no relationship is perfect either. Open communication, mutual respect, compassionate understanding, and willingness to forgive are all part of the process—and that process isn’t easy! So give yourself credit for doing the work; and give the other person credit, too. Express gratitude for him or her, and acknowledge your mutual decision to heal and grow together. This is a beautiful way to honor the repair process and build on your relationship, offering it the potential to grow stronger and more fulfilling for both of you.

Ask a Therapist: How Do I Find the Right Therapist for Me?

two glasses of tea with green leaves in them.

In this edition of Ask a Therapist, I’m addressing a question I get asked pretty often. It’s an everyday occurrence for me to receive a phone call or text from someone in my personal network who’s looking for a therapist—and, of course, I regularly have conversations with potential clients of my own. These conversations always center on an essential question: How do I find a therapist who’s a good fit for me? If you’re presently looking for a therapist or think you could benefit from finding one, here are some simple, straightforward steps to get your search moving in the right direction.

1. Start with the end in mind. Therapy doesn’t operate according to a one-size-fits-all model, so it’s important to consider what you want to gain from the experience. Before you start your search, spend some time thinking about what you want to get out of therapy. I recommend doing this by starting with the end of the experience in mind. In other words, imagine that you’ve just completed your last session with your ideal therapist. How will you know that your work with this person had been helpful? What will you be able to do that you struggle to do now? What will be possible for you then that seems impossible for you now? What will be different in your life, and what will you have done in therapy to make that happen? By imagining what you’ll get out of therapy in your best-case-scenario, you can begin to get some ideas about who can best support you in the process.

2. Reflect on what’s most important to you. Many people assume that if they have mental health benefits through their insurance provider, they should start by finding someone who accepts their plan. This is a logical place to start the search process, of course, but it may not lead you to the therapist who’s right for you. If spending as little money as possible on therapy is your primary consideration, then going through your insurance company makes perfect sense. But it may be that other factors are more important to you, like finding someone who has experience working with a particular issue, or working with someone who utilizes a more holistic approach. Think carefully about what matters most to you, and allow that criteria—rather than the cost of services—to guide your search. You can’t put a price on your wellbeing, and your best life is well worth whatever money you’ll spend on your sessions; so before you let your wallet or insurance card make your decision for you, spend some time thinking carefully about what really matters to you. Thoughtfully consider what qualities your ideal therapist will possess. Whether you want someone of a particular gender, age, secondary language, training, location, availability, skill set, theoretical approach, or background experience, there’s someone out there who fits the bill. Get clear about your must-haves, and let these be your guide.

3. Do the research. Once you have a sense of what you want out of therapy and what qualities your ideal therapist will possess, you can begin the actual search process. Therapy is an intimate interpersonal experience, so word-of-mouth referrals and recommendations from people in your network are a good place to start. If you’re comfortable doing so, reach out to people in your life and ask them to share the names of therapists they’ve worked with and would recommend. Start a list of potential therapists based on the responses you get. Then start exploring other avenues, like the Psychology Today online database or even a Google search for therapists or counselors in your area. Keep adding to your list of potential therapists until you’ve got somewhere between 3 and 10 possibilities. Gather as much preliminary information as you can about these therapists, and narrow the list according to the information you gathered in the first two steps of your search process. Use your personal criteria as well as your intuition to come up with the top 3 therapists on your list.

4. Start the audition process. Once you’ve gotten to this point in the process, the trickier, more annoying stuff is out of the way. Now it’s just a matter of picking up the phone! Many of my clients tell me it took them months, sometimes years, to pick up the phone and call me—and they almost always say they wish they’d done it sooner! I know how intimidating it can be to make that first phone call, but if you’ve done the work of generating a list of potential therapists based on your personal search criteria, you’re likely to find that the initial call is a pleasant and encouraging experience. It’s bringing you one step closer to that future you envisioned, where the problems leading you to therapy are no longer problematic! As you carry out this step, remember that you’re essentially auditioning or interviewing your potential therapist. Prepare a short list of questions to ask during your initial phone call, to be sure you’re talking to someone who’s right for you. Make your phone call(s) at a time when you feel relaxed and won’t be interrupted. You want to be as centered and focused as possible, so you can get a sense of whether or not the person is a good fit. Make an appointment with whoever you feel best about, and remember that you don’t have to commit to the process until you’ve found someone who’s right for you.

5. Evaluate honestly. Once you’ve had a session with a therapist (or two, or three, depending on how you choose to go about the audition process), reflect on what you experienced during the session. Did you feel a sense of connection with the therapist? Did he/she show an interest in getting to know you without judging, labeling, or jumping to conclusions? Was the environment somewhere you can feel comfortable accessing deep emotions and getting vulnerable? Did you leave feeling hopeful? Remembering your reasons for seeking therapy in the first place, reflect on your experience and evaluate accordingly. If the session was unpleasant or the therapist wasn’t a god fit, don’t be discouraged! You may not find the therapist who’s right for you on the first go-around, but that doesn’t mean he or she doesn’t exist. Go to the next person on your list, and keep trying. You are worth the effort it takes to find someone who’s right for you—and when you do, you’ll be glad you put in the work and stuck with the process.

Making Friends With Fear

a boat floating on top of a lake at night.

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

This week’s post begins with a confession. When I first sat down to write this, I wound up spending a good amount of time staring at the blank word processor page in front of me, struggling to come up with a way to start this post. Something told me I needed to write about fear, but I wasn’t sure why, and I wasn’t sure how. Not feeling particularly inspired, I temporarily gave up. I toggled over to my web browser and decided to scroll through Facebook for a bit. In less than 30 seconds’ time, I was inundated with news headlines announcing another suicide bombing, this time in Lahore; videos featuring political mudslinging, with countless incendiary comments underneath; invitations to join groups taking action against threats to our natural environment; and more than a couple status updates reflecting negative views of the world and pessimistic thoughts about the future. After stepping away from the computer for a while to center myself and gather my thoughts, I came back to say this:

We have every reason to be afraid.  

I don’t mean to be discouraging or dramatic; I’m merely pointing out the undeniable reality of what it means to live in the world today. Everywhere we turn we’re flooded with news that calls into question our safety and security. Naturally, this evokes fear—the kind of fear that has the potential to overwhelm us and steal our peace.

On some level, all of us are affected by the current climate of fear, and without realizing it, we’re likely participating in perpetuating it. That’s because fear spreads and expands in the form of a giant feedback loop: Individuals experience fear and act with the intention to defend themselves against whatever caused that fear; these actions produce fear in other people, which leads them to react defensively; those actions spur more fear and more defensive reactions; and on, and on, and on we go.

The cycle of fear that we’re currently living in is facilitated by the technology that gives us instant access to information, and the media that delivers the information to us in particular ways. While it’s good to know what’s happening in the world, staying informed has a downside: It’s hard to avoid becoming fearful, anxious, or even paranoid when we’re constantly besieged by reasons to feel afraid. But we have a choice. We don’t have to keep participating in the cycle of fear.

How do we break the cycle of fear?

To understand how to break the cycle, we must first understand the nature of fear. The truth is, fear is an evolutionarily adaptive mechanism that keeps us alive. It’s an emotion designed to allow living beings to react to anything that threatens their survival. In the most simplistic sense, it works like this: When something in your environment provokes fear, your brain and body rev up to prepare you to respond by fighting, fleeing, or freezing.

While the fear response system is designed to help us survive, it’s not without its drawbacks—the biggest being that we experience fear and act to defend ourselves even when our survival isn’t being threatened. Just anticipating that something might threaten us is enough to make us fearful and reactive. It’s important to know this if we want to learn how to do fear differently.

When it comes to fear, what we need to determine is not how we can avoid feeling it, but rather how we can learn to develop a healthy relationship with it. As challenging as this may be, it creates the potential for a much more peaceful, much less reactionary existence.

So what does a healthy relationship with fear look like?

In my view, it’s a relationship that’s characterized by three fundamental qualities: Curiosity, Compassion, and Courage.

Curiosity – When we are overwhelmed by fear and anxiety, our minds seek certainty in an attempt to stabilize and feel safe again. Since what we tend to fear are things that are unfamiliar or unknown to us, our initial instinct may be to recoil or shut down. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We are capable of responding differently to the things—or people—that stoke our fear. Instead of allowing the emotion to repel us from that which makes us afraid, we have the choice to get curious about it instead. You see, curiosity is an incredible antidote to fear. When we are curious, we enter a childlike state of wonderment. We open ourselves up to discovering something new, allowing ourselves to be inquisitive and exploratory. When we learn to respond to our fearful instincts by soothing ourselves with curiosity, we loosen fear’s grip on us.

Compassion – As I mentioned earlier, humans have built-in mechanisms that prepare our bodies to fight (or freeze, or flee) when something threatens our survival. Thankfully, we don’t have too many immediate threats to our survival these days; but even feeling threatened is enough to make us act defensively. As our fight-or-flight mechanism starts pumping adrenaline through our system, we might find that other emotions—like annoyance, anger, disgust, aggressiveness, or contempt—start to make an appearance. In no time, our fear can become rage. The implications of this can be devastating—many of our current news headlines are proof of this. But once again, we have options. We don’t have to relate to fear this way. We can learn to respond to the things we fear with a sense of compassion. Of course, this isn’t easy. It takes effort and practice. But when we can extend compassionate kindness to the things we fear, aiming to accept them as they are, we make it possible for the fear to dissipate. Building a compassionate relationship with fear also means extending compassion toward ourselves whenever we feel fearful. There’s no denying that life can be scary, and fear is a natural human response. It’s important that we allow ourselves to feel the emotion of fear without becoming overwhelmed by it or judging ourselves for feeling it.

Courage – Something beautiful happens when instead of turning away from the things that make us fearful, we begin to move toward them instead. But this is no easy feat. It takes remarkable courage. Many people believe that to have courage means to live without fear; but that isn’t the case. Living courageously means acknowledging that the fear is there, taking a breath, and moving forward anyway. The world can be a terrifying place, and there’s no doubt we live in uncertain times. But we don’t have to be consumed by terror. We don’t have to close ourselves off from the things we are uncertain about. We can, as Eleanor Roosevelt said, learn to look fear in the face. And when we do, we will surely find that beautiful things start to happen.

“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”– Jack Canfield