How to Say No Without Feeling the Need to Make Excuses

“Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.” ~Brené Brown

Saying no is difficult for me. Whether it be to a loved one or a stranger, work tasks or a new hobby, something I enjoy or despise, saying no just plain sucks. So instead I say yes. I say yes to everyone and everything until I’m left exhausted, depleted, and with nothing left to give.

When COVID quarantine kicked-in I was forced to clear my calendar. Appointments, gatherings, travel plans—all cancelled. Instead of feeling disappointed, I began to feel lighter. I now had a valid excuse to let go of my overbooked plans and was granted a socially acceptable reason to say no. For the first time in my life since I was a kid, I had space to just be.

As shelter-in-place restrictions began to lift, the calls and meeting invites began to pour in. Like a damn where the gates once held back the water, I was flooded with requests to do more—reconnect with loved ones, make delayed appointments, join charitable causes, start new projects.

I could feel the anxiety rising as I struggled to keep my calendar clear. I realized if I wanted to maintain space in my life, I had to learn the art of saying no, without the need for an excuse.

In a culture where being busy is the norm and worn as a badge of honor, it is especially difficult to maintain healthy space in our lives. But there is always an opportunity cost to everything we say yes to. When we say yes to everyone and everything, we say no to ourselves.

Why We Say Yes When We Want to Say No

People-pleasing

We want to make people happy and we do so by saying yes, even when it means sacrificing something that is important to us. However, it is near impossible to make others happy if they are dependent on us to provide it for them.

There is a fine balance between compromise and becoming a martyr. When we give up something that is important to us to the point of energy depletion, we will not bring happiness to anyone, especially not to ourselves.

Guilt

When we say yes because we feel a level of guilt, we may engage in activities and relationships that leave us feeling drained. Perhaps we say yes because we feel there is a certain level of expectation or obligation.

In some roles there are responsibilities that come with the territory, such as in parenting or as an employee; however, that does not mean saying yes to every demand. The more we say yes out of guilt, the more energy is sapped from our being and we begin to develop underlying resentment toward the person or activity asking us for attention.

Fear

So often we move from a place of fear and are not even aware it is our driving force, all the while it lies under the surface wreaking havoc on our life.

Buried deep within us is the universal fear that we are not enough. So we overcompensate—doing more, acquiring more, saying yes to everyone and everything. We people please in order to make people like us. We stay in toxic relationships because we fear being alone. We say yes because we are afraid of missing out on an opportunity. Of being less than. This fear of course, is an illusion.

How to Learn the Art of Saying No

Identify your core values.

What are those values that align with your core and help you feel connected to your purpose? What it is that you really want to make space for in your life?

Take time to meditate on what these values are—quality time with family, work life balance, being present, being of service. If quality time with your family is most important to you, yet you say yes to every work opportunity that comes your way, then you are likely out of alignment. Before saying yes to any new commitment, take time to evaluate whether it aligns with your core values.

Plan for space.

The challenge with scheduling plans is that our calendar is fixed while our energy levels are variable. How can we anticipate how we will feel two months from now? How do we know what new opportunities and needs may arise in the future?

Avoid making plans you can’t keep and do not overbook yourself. For example, if you already have plans to spend with your parents on Saturday, don’t try to squeeze in a visit with your friend the same day. Or plan one weekend a month to do nothing. Leave it open. Perhaps you will use the time to catch up on lost sleep or work in the garden, or maybe a spontaneous afternoon hike with a friend. When we make time for space we allow life to flow naturally.

Listen to your body.

If we push ourselves to the point of exhaustion it is inevitable that our body will start to rebel. Headaches, muscle pain, digestive troubles, rashes, these are all ways the body communicates to us we are taking on too much. When I am stressed from too much doing, I inevitably break out in hives. Or my body stores the tension in my shoulders to the point where my hands go numb.

The body does not lie. So take time to tune into what your body is telling you. Often it means more rest and self-care.

Follow your intuition.

We each have the ability to tune into our intuition, that gut feeling we get in our stomach when something doesn’t feel right.

One time I had a trip planned to San Diego to visit a friend. As the trip grew closer, something within myself told me not to go. I talked to my friend about my concerns and they were so disappointed that I decided to go just to make them happy.

The trip of course ended up a disaster. Not only was I resentful for feeling like I had to be there, but my son ended up with a severe allergic reaction to poison oak and I had to fly home early to be with him. Our intuition is powerful. Follow it.

Stop making excuses and apologizing.

Whenever I say no I find myself following up with several different excuses as to why I have to decline. The truth often is just that I’m tired. Or I would rather not. Or it doesn’t align with where I want my energy to go at this time.

I recently got an adorable puppy, Scout, who requires full attention and more time at home. I have said no more over the past two weeks since I have brought him home than I have over the course of the past year.

You don’t have to get a puppy to exercise your voice of saying no. You don’t need an excuse. There’s nothing wrong with being honest and saying, “I’m carving more space for being present in my life which asks of me to make fewer plans.”

Pay attention to your physical space.

Look around the space where you live and spend your time. Is it full of clutter? Your physical space reflects your internal space. My family in particular loves to hand down things to me, and since I have a hard time saying no I end up acquiring way more than I need. Take time to clear out your closet and junk drawers. Practice saying no to things and letting go of what you no longer need. See how much lighter you feel.

See yourself in the eyes of another.

I had a boyfriend once who refused to make any plans. Every time I asked him to make plans, he gave me the response “I’m not sure I will have the energy, let’s play it by ear” or “I’ll let you know as the date grows closer.”

This drove me crazy. Why? Because I had an expectation from him to prioritize me. To make me happy. All he was doing was setting his personal boundaries. Instead of recognizing our priorities were out of alignment, I grew resentful, hurt, offended.

When I reflect back on this relationship, I see he was a teacher for me. I began to recognize my own resistance to others’ boundaries because I lacked my own.

Accept that others will be disappointed.

Just as we are not responsible for people’s happiness, we are also not responsible for their disappointment when we exercise the art of saying no. Accept that inevitably when you set boundaries with your time and energy someone is going to be disappointed. That is just the tradeoff we face. Be assertive and honest. If they don’t understand when you honestly share your truth and communicate your own needs, then that says more about where they are anything.

—

To learn the art of saying no, the first step is awareness. Give yourself time to check in with yourself before giving a response.

Does what is being asked of you align with your core values? Pay attention to how your body feels. What does your intuition tell you? Evaluate opportunity costs, what are you giving up by saying yes? Do you have space around your commitments? Are you being honest with others and yourself in your response?

These are the questions you may begin to ask yourself. From awareness it takes consistent practice. It may feel uncomfortable at first, but the more we say no to the things that are not in our highest interest, the more space we make for saying yes to those things that matter most.

The Most Common PTSD Myths and Symptoms, and How to Cope

“The dark night of the soul is a journey into light, a journey from your darkness into the strength and hidden resources of your soul.” ~Caroline Myss

Growing up in a household with both parents, my grandmothers, and pets, people often assumed we were the picture-perfect family. I participated in dance classes, sports, and we also had a lot of extended family gatherings. We lived in a pretty nice neighborhood, went to good schools, and both of my parents worked and were educated.

But, from a very young age, I witnessed and experienced frightening events and images no child should ever have to see and go through. While I normalized these ongoing inappropriate and tragic images and incidents, I had no idea what they were doing to my mental and emotional health.

I was often afraid to go to bed as a child—I knew I would wet it and that I’d be ridiculed by my father the next morning for doing so.

Family members and friends would constantly point out to me that I would jump and flinch at any loud noise and in my teens till early twenties, people who knew me well told me I was defensive, ready to fight, and had a chip on my shoulder.

They were right.

I was.

Being raised in a hectic household felt like a pressure-cooker that kept me on high-alert and walking around on eggshells.

While my family was good at making sure we had a roof over head, they were also good at making sure I did not divulge family secrets, kept up appearances at all times, and were ultra-focused on image-management.

In fact, they were so good at convincing us we were stable and normal that I overlooked my father’s love of rage, intense frustration, silent-treatment, stonewalling, and dizzying word-salad-speak. I also chose to look away when he’d give a really good and thorough spanking.

My mother’s idea of coping was avoiding, not speaking up, and ignoring tough family moments and me.

Because I considered myself to be strong, I chose to speak up on her behalf, protect her, as well as focus on only the good things that happened in our family while suppressing all of the darkness that our family was centered around.

While I was so busy feeling the need to protect others, I didn’t feel psychologically or physically protected in my own household.

At the same time, I found myself trying to get away from the constant chaotic energy in my household by hiding out in my bedroom while writing copious journal entries trying to make sense of the scariness and secrets.

Despite requesting from my parents several times to see a family therapist, I was always met back with, “Why? We don’t believe in therapy. We’re fine. There’s no reason to go.”

I was clearly asking for support but was being denied the help I felt I needed.

The first time I ever saw a therapist was when I was eighteen. My college offered therapy as part of our tuition and I couldn’t wait to go. I’m not sure that I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about back then, but I think I was hoping the therapist would have a magic question that would unleash a series of answers regarding my deep feelings, sensitivities, and challenging upbringing.

Sadly, when both sessions with that college therapist resulted in him asking me to talk to a teddy bear and punch it, I never went back.

It wasn’t till I was in my mid-twenties when I saw my next therapist because I was concerned about a relationship I was in at the time. On occasion, I brought up my upbringing, and so that therapist administered Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), a common technique used with PTSD patients and people who’ve experienced trauma. Unfortunately, it was not clearly explained why we were doing EMDR, and so the core problem wasn’t really addressed and I left work with that therapist with no diagnosis.

In 2018, after a series of ongoing events within my family, I chose estrangement. While I’d been working in the mental health industry for two decades, I had no idea how estrangement would wreak havoc on my emotional well-being. I truly was not well-prepared for taking such a devastating decision.

Immediately, I was plagued with a daily bombardment of terrifying childhood and adult memories I had completely forgotten. No matter what I did or how I coped, they painfully persisted.

Insomnia became my new “best friend” and I felt agitated, apathetic, and numb.

In waking life, intrusive and bizarre invasive images came to me from nowhere, and while trying to keep it altogether, I wondered if I was losing my mind and what would happen to me.

I always felt I knew myself well. And, I considered myself to be practical, pragmatic, and down-to-earth. Additionally, I’d never been scared to face any challenge head-on, but this seemed to be a beast that wouldn’t quit.

In life, I was a go-getter, went after my dreams, traveled the world, and had been working for myself for the past seventeen years.

In fact, I worked hard and diligently through yoga, breath-work, journaling, Reiki, coaching, therapy and so many other modalities to get to my truth. But, making this one choice to be estranged from my family—which I felt was the best and only option at that point to preserve my well-being—seemed to open up Pandora’s Box and no matter how many tools I had, it felt like nothing worked.

From the summer of 2018 till January 2020, I didn’t recognize myself.

I felt disengaged from life and from my soul.

I didn’t want to go outside, which was odd because I’m a huge nature-lover.

I lost interest in my favorite hobby and pastime of surfing. This felt so shocking—it felt so counter-intuitive. I had no reason to no longer want to surf but suddenly I felt so removed from it.

Life was blah, dull, and I felt completely disconnected.

Not being able to access the root-cause of what I thought might be an identity-crisis left me terror-stricken—especially being a hopeful and optimistic person.

One day, after constant communication with my husband over my family estrangement and resulting emotional chaos, my husband told me, “I don’t think I’m equipped to help you anymore. I think it’s time to see a therapist.”

He was right. While I tried to use my tools daily, I needed somebody highly trained to inform me of what I was actually going through and what to expect. I made an immediate appointment with a local psychologist and felt relieved that some answers might be around the corner.

As my husband and I waited in the doctor’s office for the therapist to call my name, I felt excited and curious.

The therapist conducted a full intake which left me feeling relieved and shocked—in all the years I’d worked with countless therapists, I’d never had a proper intake! The intake was comprehensive, and I was given the chance to talk about my childhood all the way up till present-day.

Once I completed the intake, the therapist said, “You have PTSD. You’ve experienced trauma and abuse. I want you to see a specialist.”

With just those few sentences, I felt my whole body relax. My shoulders lightened. My jaw was no longer stiff. I had so much more headspace and it was like I finally knew the truth. In that moment, I stopped buying into focusing only on all the good times of my childhood and finally faced openly the dysfunction that was there, too.

I’d worked so hard all my life to keep up the appearance and image of having a perfect family that without even realizing it, I was doing extreme damage to myself by not admitting what I’d been through and witnessed.

It’s been nearly six months since my diagnosis, and I can gratefully say that life has come back to my version of “normal” and fulfilling. I’m back on my surfboard and am joyful and curious about life again. The invasive images have stopped and I’m sleeping better.

Being diagnosed with PTSD didn’t feel like a stigma; it actually brought me back home to me. PTSD brought my soul back to life.

Debunking Myths

There are many myths surrounding the topic of PTSD that I feel are important to debunk.

Myth #1: PTSD only happens to war veterans.

Truth: Research shows that children and people who’ve never experienced combat can have PTSD. People can experience PTSD if they’ve been in an accident, experienced any form of abuse and dysfunction, or even through the course of grieving the death of a loved one.

Myth #2 PTSD is something that only happens to men.

Truth: About 10 percent of women will experience PTSD in their lifetime and women are twice as likely to develop PTSD to men. Between 3 and 15 percent of girls who’ve had a trauma develop PTSD and between 1-6 percent of boys who’ve experienced some form of trauma develop PTSD.

Myth #3 Your therapist or doctor will diagnose you straight away.

Truth: PTSD is commonly overlooked and often goes undetected. One of the reasons this happens is because a person might not experience the PTSD symptoms straight away; in fact, sometimes it isn’t until years later that an individual starts to experience symptoms related to a traumatic event. Additionally, therapists require that a patient experience all of the documented symptoms of PTSD or at least one the symptoms for one straight month.

In my case, it took me two decades, countless therapists, mental health professionals, coaches and healers before I was finally officially diagnosed with PTSD this year.

Myth #4: PTSD only happens due to recurring events.

Truth: One event can be enough to bring on PTSD.

Myth #5 You cannot function or live the life of your dreams if you have PTSD.

Truth: Sometimes undiagnosed PTSD is the very thing that is preventing you from moving forward on your life plans and goals because without you knowing it, the symptoms are preventing you from focus, clarity, and confidence. It is absolutely possible to live the life you desire even if you have PTSD.

Myth #6: You’re not normal and cannot have a fulfilling life if you have PTSD.

Truth: You are normal. You’re still whole and complete even if you have PTSD. And, it is possible that you can have an even more fulfilling, peaceful, and connected life once receiving such a diagnosis because you will learn how to manage and minimize symptoms while practicing being more mindful, still, and deeply engaged in your life.

Common Symptoms

• Walking around defensively. Waiting for somebody to shout, attack, or hurt you. Walking around on eggshells and hyper-vigilance.
• Hyper-arousal. Jumping and flinching at the sound of a door slamming, loud noises, or family or friends yelling and talking loudly.
• Possibly angry when you hear another chew loudly, swallow or gulp, or even the smell of cigarettes or another substance may put you on edge and make you irritable.
• Feeling claustrophobic or annoyed if somebody stands too close to you in the supermarket or on the street.
• May not be able to tolerate crowds or a lot of people.
• Ruminating, having obsessive thoughts or intrusive thoughts that scare you. Sudden invasive images while awake that are random, seem to make no sense and go against your core values
• Digestion issues and food allergies
• Over-working and perfectionism
• People-pleasing and proving
• Over-explaining, justifying, over-apologizing
• Feeling numb, disconnected, apathetic
• Dissociation blacking out
• Brain fog—mixing up words like saying “yesterday” instead of tomorrow
• Decreased interest in things that once truly mattered and were enjoyable to you
• Inability to remember trauma or have blocked it
• A flooding of difficult memories or instances throughout your waking day
• Insomnia or constant disrupted sleep
• Nightmares
• Difficult focusing

 Tips for Coping with PTSD 

The tips below are a little “toolkit” I put together with my therapist, as well as extensive research I conducted. While I have found these tips have helped me with my PTSD, this is not a “one-size-fits-all” package. You may have to experiment a bit on what works best for you. For me, using a combination of the tips below helped a lot.

1. Guided meditation and guided visualization.

With PTSD, it’s important to give the brain a break, to calm down your adrenals and stop trauma and anxiety responses. Positive guided visualization helps reduce stress and has you visualize successful and positive scenarios while also having you focus on the breath.

2. Reiki, massage and acupuncture (if you don’t have a phobia with needles).

If touch triggers you, this may not be the coping method for you. For me, these modalities showed me I was safe to be touched and were very relaxing.

3. Stress-reducing foods.

Studies have shown that eating blueberries, dairy, non-processed cheese, green vegetables, almonds and drinking chamomile tea have a significant reduction in PTSD symptoms while brining on rather immediate calm.

4. Pet therapy.

Petting your cat, listening to their purrs for example, have shown some ways to calm the nerves and help soothe the PTSD symptoms.

5. Mantras and meditation.

Research shows that saying or chanting a mantra during meditation have been one of the most beneficial ways to reduce PTSD symptoms.

6. Practicing gentleness.

Consciously and intentionally eat, drink, talk, drive, shower, brush your teeth, and all other daily activities gently. When practicing gentleness, you respond versus react and are less prone to trauma and anxiety responses.

7. Avoiding caffeine and alcohol.

Studies show alcohol and caffeine trigger nightmares, invasive images, and rev up the central nervous system.

8. Listening to binaural beats.

The tones and beats of binaural beats have been shown to significantly help with better and deeper sleep, reduce anxiety, help boost confidence, and encourage relaxation.

My hope in sharing my personal story of having PTSD is that you will reframe your PTSD experience by seeing just how resilient and courageous you actually are. Instead of believing PTSD is a debilitating disorder, I hope you can view it as something that challenges you to find your truth and wakes you up to what matters most in your life so you can live the life of your dreams and purpose.

How to Enjoy Social Media and Stop Comparing Your Life to Others

“You never know what someone is going through. Be kind, always.” ~Unknown

A few months back I was at the park and passed a family taking what looked like holiday photos.

The mom’s hair was perfectly coifed, dad was nicely shaven and looking quite dapper, and four kids stood smiling between them—all wearing matching khaki and surprisingly clean white shirts.

I watched the khaki family out of the corner of my eye as I pushed a stroller along the gravel trail, thinking of what their holiday post might say as my baby yodeled her displeasure at facing the sun.

“Kayden is already reading!” I imagined the post beginning. “And Kenzy, Kyra, and Kourtney are now fluent in both Spanish AND Portuguese.”

I giggled to myself as I imagined how the post would go on to detail news of the family travels, the dad’s promotion, and the non-profit the mom had started to benefit children in Siberia. I was checking all the boxes of an Instagram perfect share when my thought stream was interrupted by a piercing scream and some serious commotion.

I looked over to see a khaki child being hauled out of the park’s pond by a now-not-so-dapper looking dad; mom was screaming and holding her white skirt above the mud as the other three kids threatened to join the first, who was now most definitely not clean.

The photographer didn’t seem to know what to do, backing away from the deteriorating situation with a frozen smile and look of terror.

I was far enough away that the scene didn’t involve me, but when I saw the mom break down in sobs I immediately had a stab of guilt: they aren’t some picture perfect social media fantasy, they’re just a regular family with regular emotional breakdowns like all of us have.

My own baby started screaming as I stole one more glance over my sunglasses—this is the stuff you don’t see on social media, I thought. This is the stuff between the posts.

**

It’s important to remember all that doesn’t get shared on social media because otherwise we forget just how very human everyone else’s lives are too.

With the advent of social sharing came the construction of an alternate universe, and the ability to create two-dimensional characters that don’t always match our actual lives.

This sounds quite devious, but it’s not really our fault because social media wasn’t designed to be a play-by-play realistic depiction of who we are. Many refer to it as the “highlight reel” for a reason: most of us aren’t documenting our every moment, as evidenced by how few pictures you see of couples fighting or people picking their noses while staring at a screen.

It’s easy to forget that the aforementioned moments are just as common in many of our lives as the smiling, witty, or thoughtful posts you likely see populating your feed (or even sharing yourself.)

Even as someone who takes great care to be as honest and transparent online as possible, I can still recognize the chasm between my online avatar and my actual human life. Sometimes I’m thoughtful but sometimes I’m crass; sometimes I’m witty and sometimes I stare at a picture for an hour trying to come up with the perfect caption that seems off-the-cuff and effortless.

And even as I recognize this gap between my online and actual self, I can forget that its true for other people as well—I have to consciously remind myself that other people (who may appear quite together and “perfect”) are also living very human, flawed, and sometimes boring lives.

I know its easy to fall into the comparison game or to simply feel isolated (especially in times like the present, when so much of our lives are lived on a two-dimensional screen.)

It’s for this reason I share with you some tips to cultivating a more positive relationship with social media—and more importantly, a healthy relationship with yourself.

1. Remember that these are highlights, not reality.

Though many of us try to be honest online about our imperfect lives, we still can’t possibly bring every fact about our reality to the screen (nor should this necessarily be the intention.) Not every emotion needs an audience, and its not always safe or necessary to bring all of our lives to the public sphere: but when scrolling through pictures of smiling faces and happy families, its important that we (the social media consumer)  remember that we’re seeing a highlight reel, not the “real” reel.

2. Be yourself.

This one sounds obvious, but its easy to put so many filters or edits onto our lives that we stop feeling like our actual selves.

For example, years ago someone told me that I posted “too much” and I believed them; I decided to scale back my online presence in order to stop overwhelming the feed. I wouldn’t interact on social media for weeks at a time, trying to create this appearance of detachment and busy-ness: like I was simply too busy living life to interact online (when really I was totally still there I just didn’t want anyone else to think I was too much.)

It was at this point that I began to hate social media and the people on it, and though at first, I blamed the platforms, I realized soon after that it was my relationship to them that was making me feel terrible.

Once I realized it was because of who I thought I needed to be (or more importantly, who I thought I couldn’t be online—myself) I decided that I was done letting other people dictate who I was. I went back to interacting with friends, sharing articles I found interesting, and commenting on all the posts that my heart desired.

This lightened me up to connect with people as my “real” self, turned off the “right” people who thought I was too much, and also helped me to like social media again. I found out that the energy had been coming from within me all along.

3. Recognize the differences between you and your online persona.

Whenever I start to compare my insides to other people’s outsides, I think about all the (accidental) differences there have been in my own social media posts and my actual life.

For example, I took an amazing international trip a few years back that had me sleeping at the base of volcanos in Iceland and hiking to the top of green hillsides in Scotland.

The pictures and memories I shared were mostly smiles and beautiful landscapes—I didn’t, however, detail my huge anxiety about driving in another country, or the tense moments between a close friend and I as we crammed ourselves into a camper van and tried not to snap at one another each cold morning. These omissions weren’t devious: they were simply not the moments I chose to share with other people. Similarly, it’s important to remember that other people are not sharing their full story with us either.

4. Periodically check out of the online world and into your five senses.

Sometimes I look up and realize that I’ve been scrolling mindlessly on my phone for way too long. I recognize these moments because I somehow end up three years deep into the online album of a person whom I’ve not seen for twenty years (or have never actually met in real life.)

It’s moments like these that have had me swearing off social media all together: after all, why waste precious moments of life staring at other people’s timelines that have nothing to do with me?

But I’ve found that this “all or nothing” approach isn’t sustainable for me either, because the truth is that I truly like connecting with people online—when I’m not mindlessly scrolling down rabbit holes, it’s really fun to check in with my friends and interact with the many people I’ve connected with virtually.

The answer I’ve found is to balance my online interaction with my real-life day.

I make it a practice to set a timer when I’m about to get on social media; finishing my scrolling or comments before the buzzer goes off becomes a game that I play with myself. And if I find myself feeling bad as I look at other people’s posts, I take that as a signal to sign off and look at “where my feet are.” As in: where am I standing, what can I see, hear, or touch?

Checking in with my five senses gives me an idea of what’s real in my life, which gives me a space to decide if interfacing with the two-dimensional world is going to serve me at that moment or in that day. Though sometimes the answer is yes, the space to decide what serves us and doesn’t is the one from which we can enjoy social media interaction.

5. Imagine your favorite celebrity constipated.

Okay, I know that one’s a little crass, but bear with me here: Anybody that seems to have a perfect life is actually still a human just like you and me, with moments of definite imperfection at the same frequency.

Yes, they might have great filters or a house that’s been featured on “lifestyles of the rich and famous”, but I guarantee that they too sometimes sit around picking their nose, have been heartbroken at one point or another, and likely have people that they watch longingly (and with a sense of comparison) as well.

I’ll never forget happening into a group of very wealthy friends when I was young, and then being astonished at the ways they jealously compared themselves to even wealthier people. I was amazed at the houses and bank accounts they took for granted, while they told me about being made fun of in their privileged school for not having a garage full of antique cars or their own yacht, like some other (wealthier) classmates.

As I scooped my jaw up off the floor I was forced to realize that there is no end to comparison, whether it be in real life or online: the key is to take some deep breaths, recognize all that we already have to be grateful for, and then remember just how similar our humanity is beneath the fancy filters and thoughtful captions.

Everyone is doing the best they can—and this looks different online for different people. We are only responsible for what it looks (and feels) like in our world.

**

I hope the khaki family got a picture for their holiday card that day in the park, or that maybe they traded their perfectly posed smiles for some muddy and imperfect shots of real life. I got distracted with my own screaming baby and didn’t see how their shot turned out, but I’m sure that whatever happened, it didn’t all end up online. When I finally calmed my own daughter down, we lay belly up in the grass and I decided to snap a photo.

“So grateful,” I captioned the post, looking at our happy faces beaming back at me from the land of social media. “And constipated,” I added with a smile, loading my daughter back into the car for our trip back home to our perfectly imperfect and very real, actual, life.

I Am a Survivor, Not a Victim, and I’m Grateful for My Pain

“Emotional pain cannot kill you but running from it can. Allow. Embrace. Let yourself feel. Let your yourself heal.” ~Vironika Tugaleva

I was nine years old, sitting on the couch with my dad, watching a Very Brady Christmas (on my sister’s birthday, December 20^th) when he first molested me. Terror, confusion, disbelief, and shame comingled to create a cocktail that would poison me for many years to come.

We grew up in a family that, from the outside, seemed ideal.

We would attend church with my mom’s side of the family every Sunday, going to breakfast at a restaurant after. My brothers, sister, and I spent weekends partaking in fun activities that would range from spending the whole day building towns made out of clay to rollerskating while my mom baked homemade bread. To anyone that knew us, we seemed like the perfect family.

And then one day we weren’t anymore.

After that horrible night, my dad promising me it would never happen again, I was lost and confused. Was there something inherently wrong with me to provoke him to do that to me? Had I in some way invited him to touch me inappropriately? I felt disgusting, soiled, and used, convinced that it was all my fault.

These feelings followed through me the next three years of being molested, then spread and grew through the aftermath of me finally telling my mom what had happened. Even after the abuse stopped and with my dad safely behind bars, I carried guilt and shame with me daily. A badge of honor to remind me of what I had been through and survived.

Survival became my top priority, and it didn’t matter what I had to do to attain self-preservation.

As I grew older, I found survival through drugs and alcohol. For a small moment each day when that liquor touched my lips, when that pain pill was ingested and absorbed, I was free. The incessant dark and ugly thoughts that plagued my mind were blissfully silenced and I was able to breathe a little easier.

Once this method of forgetting no longer worked, I graduated to an abusive relationship, playing out the codependency and toxicity that I had grown up with. I ran from anything that was healthy or good for me because, on some level, I believed I didn’t deserve it. How could someone who had had been molested be worthy of true love and happiness?

I sentenced myself to a lifetime of misery and defeat because I truly believed that I was not deserving of anything but pain.

Living this way was exhausting. I was tired of this so-called life that I was sleepwalking my way through, and I knew that the path I was on would eventually lead to death or an existence filled with depression day in and day out.  

So I started making changes to my lifestyle. I went cold turkey cutting out the pain pills and the alcohol. This is not something I would recommend doing, as it’s always best to follow a physician’s orders, but I knew in my heart that I had to stop immediately because if I didn’t stop at that moment, I never would.

Losing the security blanket that the pills provided was one of the scariest things I have ever had to experience. I felt like I had lost a deep, integral part of me, my best friend. I had to walk through life with my eyes open; I was exposed and raw and didn’t know if I could make it through without the assistance of those little pills. Many times I had to reevaluate why I was doing this and what this new journey would look like.

I also started therapy. I knew that I could give up my vices, but if I didn’t start delving into the deep and complex emotions I carried over from childhood, I would not grow as I needed to. For someone who had learned from an early age to sweep everything under the carpet and pretend like nothing was wrong, therapy was difficult, to say the least.

I had been forced to see a therapist on and off as a child and my teens after the molestation, but I never went willingly. Now, as an adult who was doing her best to start making real changes, I tried to approach therapy with an open heart, willing myself not to quit when it got too rough. It’s one of the best gifts I could have given myself.

I started attending therapy diligently, week after week, slicing myself wide open, plunging my hands deep within my heart, pulling out those long-buried emotions, and holding them to the light where they were addressed head-on, albeit somewhat reluctantly.

I began to sift through the complicated feelings that I had held onto for so long. I sat with the emotions and felt them. I cried, I screamed, and I laughed, broken wide open. I was naked and vulnerable and even though it was terrifying, it was also exhilarating. By finally allowing myself to feel what I had repressed for so long, I was able to move through the feelings as I should have all those years ago, to feel truly alive.

Once the feelings were addressed, I begin to journal in earnest. To write about what I could not speak of for decades, to put down on paper what mattered to me, even if it was inconsequential to anyone else.

I began to understand that I matter, that what I felt was important and necessary.

Through journaling, I began to understand that I could look at what happened to me as something horrible, I could continue to feel sorry for myself and wish it had never happened, or I could choose to find reasons to be thankful. Yes, thankful.

Though I wouldn’t choose to be molested, the experience made me stronger than I ever thought possible. I became resilient and self-sufficient, learning that I could turn my pain into something bigger than myself.

One of the main things that helped me shift my thinking  from victim mode to empowered, was starting a gratitude journal. I listed ten things I was grateful for daily, and the more I journaled, the more I found myself seeing the beauty in the hardships I was dealt.

There are going to be things that are out of our control, things we wish hadn’t happened. But if we can look at these experiences with appreciation for what they taught us, for how we have grown because of them, we’ll find it much easier to heal—and handle anything life throws at us.

If you find yourself in a situation where you see yourself as a victim and can’t seem to get past the pain, I urge you to look at the situation as a growing opportunity. See everything you’ve learned and how you might even use those lessons to help other people.

Gratitude is a powerful tool that we can come back to again and again throughout our lives. Not only does it help us reframe our past, it makes us more compassionate—toward ourselves and everyone we encounter.

We begin to see that others struggle just as we do, and we are able to be a little kinder when we understand that we all share a common ground through our pain.

Through gratitude, I learned to start having compassion for myself and I realized I could make a difference in this world. By sharing my pain, I found my voice. I am no longer a victim. I am someone who was dealt an unfair blow, but who has emerged stronger and more resilient, appreciative of the good things in life for having gone through the bad.

By speaking out about what happened to me, by sharing my story with others, I have given that nine-year-old the words she never had. It is for her that I expose myself, that I bare my deepest, darkest secrets.

It is my biggest hope that another person reads my story and knows that they are not alone. If you can relate to anything I wrote, know that you too can turn your pain into something useful to others. You are not broken. You matter, you are loved, and you are worthy.

How Are You Trading Your Time, Energy and Life?

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” ~Henry David Thoreau

We all make trades in life.

We trade our time. We trade our energy. We trade our hard-earned money. We trade our attention.

Many of us move through life in constant motion, never stopping to reflect on where that motion is taking us. If it’s helping or hindering us. If the trades we are making daily are letting us live our best lives. If the trades are giving us more quality time with those we care about most. If we can turn up for them fully engaged, energized, and enthused.

Or are we turning up for them tired, distracted, and frustrated?

The trades we make in life take a toll on us physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Trading My Time, Energy, and Enthusiasm for Status and a Corner Office

Like many of us, I spent part of my life chasing the corporate dream. You know the stuff—more money, more responsibility, catchy job title, more kudos.

But an interesting thing happened along the way. With each new pay hike there was always someone earning more. Each job title change got stale quickly. More responsibility often came with a lot more headache and often more politics (something I have a low tolerance for). Progress never really felt like progress for long. I always felt like I was hitting a glass ceiling.

I noticed these feelings and wanted to understand them, so some personal reflection and introspection followed. I came to I realize I felt this way because I was pursuing things I thought I should chase rather than things I really wanted to chase. A simple but powerful distinction.

The corporate grind, hustle, and ‘networking your way to the top’ is a well-established path, but It’s also someone else’s path. It never really fit for me, and the deeper within a corporate machine I tried to embed myself, the more I realized I was seeking something else. More than that, I needed something else. This model was always going to be an ill fit for me.

So, this is the part where I tell you I decided to chase my dreams and live off my ‘passion project.’  Well, not exactly.

I make the decision to set myself up as a company of one, me. No longer would I have to wait years for a ‘directorship’; I was now director of my own ship. Thankfully, I have a skillset and experience that others find valuable and have been able to make a living since (nearly ten years as I write this).

This time hasn’t all been champagne and roses. I’ve had some very barren periods where I thought I might need a new plan. Countering that, I have also had very rich periods full of rewarding work, clients, and healthy paychecks.

Is this my job a dream job? No. There are other potentially more fun ways to earn my living (writing full time, for example). And knowing that you must find your own work focuses the mind and is inherent with a degree of risk, so it’s definitely not for everyone. You also need thick skin for this line of work.

However, my work does give me a degree of freedom and flexibility that I really appreciate (allowing me to take off and travel for long periods for example). Within reason, I get to decide the work I say yes to. I also rarely have to be in the office ‘showing my face’ and punching a clock day in day out. I can work from home, from a coffee shop, or somewhere else. My output gets measured, not how often people see me in the office.

These aspects (freedom and flexibility) are particularly important to me. More so than job titles and corner offices.

My work provides me an intellectual challenge that I appreciate. And occasionally, I get to work with some very cool people, learn lots, and make some meaningful change.

There can be gaps between clients and projects at times, but when I am engaged, I earn well (by most people’s standards). This pays for the adventures and travel, so is enough for me while also being a fair price for the people I work with.

To be clear, there’s also nothing wrong with working for others. In fact, whether you work directly for a corporate entity (employee) or are self-employed (like me), we are all serving someone. We are not all carved out to be entrepreneurs or self-employed, and that’s okay. Find your own fit and embrace it I say. There are many ways for us to earn our living.

My point is that I am aware of my trades and I am mostly happy to make them. If that changes, I will need to make a new plan.

Broader Lessons

While my example involves becoming a company of one, to support the way I want to live my life, that may be the opposite of where you are and what you need.

Your trades might be aligned to finding a corporate job where you get a paycheck and pension and someone else finds the work. That’s fine, your trades need to be trades you are willing to make.

What I am advocating is that we have an awareness of the trades we are making in life. That we aware of where we are spending our energy, time, and efforts. Essentially, aware of where we are spending ourselves.

This is a powerful prism through which we can objectively view everything we do.

Yes, sometimes we will have to make trades that may not be our first choice, but we can do so intentionally. Realizing there is a greater good or longer-term goal in play.

Equally, we may realize we are making trades we would rather not, trades that are taking more from us than they are giving back, and we can then take action accordingly.

Questions We Can Ask Ourselves

We can keep the trades we are making front and center in our minds by asking some simple but searching questions of ourselves.

Are the trades we are making worth the energy/time/effort/money we are spending on them? Are we likely to see a return on our investment?

Are the trades we are making helping us get closer to our goals?

Are the trades we are making beneficial to our relationships? Are we present and available for the people we care about most?

Are the trades we are making leaving us energized?

Are the trades we are making aligned with our moral code?

Are the trades we are making giving us the best chance of living a good life?

If not, maybe we should be making different trades.

Be aware of where you are making trades in your life. Make them selectively. Give them your full attention and handle them with the care they deserve.

How to Be Your Own Best Friend When You’re Grieving

“This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment. May I give myself the compassion I need.” ~Kristen Neff

Your best friend just lost her husband and her mother within five days of one another. Her husband was terminally ill. Her mother was eighty-six. You don’t know how she is going to get through this. You know that she was assuming that after her husband died, she would console herself by spending time with her mother. But that is not how it is going to work out.

Your best friend is grieving. Doesn’t she deserve your compassion? And by the way, by best friend I mean you. You are grieving, and you need to treat yourself with compassion. How do I know? Because in November of 2014, my mother died and then five days later my husband died. I had no idea how I was going to make it through the day, let alone a month, or a year, or beyond.

I quickly learned that I needed to be my own best friend, to wrap myself in self-compassion.

Understand your limitations, while gently pushing beyond them.

Being self-compassionate includes being self-aware and empathetic.

For example, during the first two months after Mom and Ed died, I would reach a certain point in my day where I was just done, mentally and physically done for the day. The problem was that, initially, this was at about 4 p.m. At 4 p.m., I felt like I could not do one more thing. I also knew that it was far too early to go to bed.

When I felt like I could not do one more thing, I would pick just one more thing to do and then, after I completed it, I allowed myself to be done for the day. Next, I would meditate. At first, I could only meditate for a few minutes, and it was a major sob fest. But that is okay, I needed those tears.

Include the people in your life who will help you regain your strength. And stay away from those who drain your energy.

Being self-compassionate includes minimizing the amount of time you spend with people who drain your energy. This is a great rule for us to follow at all times, but now it is even more important. You are running on empty both physically and emotionally, and you need take care of yourself first. Remember put your own oxygen mask on first!

Trust your intuition. A friend who I had fallen out of touch with learned that I was navigating the death of my mother and my husband. The good news for me is that she had forgotten my address. I say that because she began bombarding me with messages about how she needed to come be with me. I needed someone to come take care of me, and I could not be by myself.

In the past, I had watched her method of taking care of others, and while she meant well and had a heart of gold, she was loud, and she was overbearing. Her way to take care of someone was to take over every aspect of their life. As an introvert, all I wanted was quiet. I could not imagine having someone in the house with me, telling me what was best for me.

Tell your inner critic to be quiet.

You would think that during a time such as this, your inner critic would just be quiet. But that’s not what inner critics do, is it? Your inner critic might be telling you things like:

“You should stop crying so much.”

“Why aren’t you crying more? What’s wrong with you?”

“You should be able to concentrate on your work.”

“You should be more productive.”

“You should, you should, you should…”

There is no such thing as should, there is only what is. Pay close attention to what you are feeling.

Don’t use self-compassion as an excuse for self-destruction.

Being self-compassionate is not a free pass to being self-destructive. It does not mean that it is okay to eat a pint of ice cream every day or to drink a pint of vodka every day. Keep an eye out for self-destructive behaviors.

You still have responsibilities, and you will handle those responsibilities. This is the time to really sort through the difference between what are nice things to do and what are required things for you to do. Paying your rent or your mortgage, let’s call that required. Going to an event because someone said it would be good for you, let’s call that optional.

Being self-compassionate does not mean you never do anything difficult. The day comes when you need to go back to work, or interact with the public, or attend social functions. Be aware of your limitations.

Keep an eye on yourself.

You are going to have days where all you want to do is stay under the covers. This is normal. Allow yourself a day to mope. However, do not allow yourself to spend seven days a week under the covers.

Most days you want to get out of bed at a normal time and get dressed. Groom yourself, whether you are leaving the house or not. Eat healthy meals. Resume your exercise routine. Keep in touch with the right people, the people who do not drain your energy.

If you are having severe difficulties getting up and getting dressed and handling day-to-day living, then get help. Seek out grief support groups and counseling. Ask trusted friends for help. Nobody said you had to go through this alone.

Allow grief to be a part of your life. 

I found that I was able to return to instructing and also to attending classes within a week. On my way to teaching, I would cry in the car all the way to class. When I was in front of the class, I was able to concentrate on my students and, for that short period of time, I was able to forget about my sadness.

Once I left the classroom and got back in my car, I would cry all the way home. I learned to keep a good supply of tissues and eye makeup with me at all times. And I learned not to judge myself for needing to cry.

About two months after, I was scheduled to travel to teach a corporate class across the country. I went, because I thought it might be good for me to leave the house and because I believed that I could be sad anywhere.

I was right; in some ways it was good for me, and it was true, I could be sad anywhere. Living my life was not about denying the grief, it was about supporting myself in a way that I could get back to the business of living, and, for me, the business of living included making room for grieving. 

Don’t impose an end date on your grief.

Even while I was teaching others how to plan and schedule and meet deadlines, I began to realize that there is no specific timeline for grief. There is no magic date on which your sadness expires. As you move forward your days will be different. Your grief will change from a sharp stabbing pain, to a dull ache. Do not let anyone tell you when you should ‘get over it.’ Everyone’s path is different.

Please be your own best friend.

You are the one who knows yourself the best. Be kind. Do not use your own self-talk to say things that you would not say to others. Your best friend is grieving, and he or she above all others deserves your compassion.