How I Stopped Being Everything I Hated About My Parents

“The beautiful thing about life is that you always change, grow, and get better. You aren’t defined by your past. You aren’t your mistakes.” ~Unknown

When I was an angsty fourteen-year-old, I remember screaming at my parents that I never (ever!) wanted to become like either of them. And I meant it.

My dad was a workaholic who was never at home. When he was at home, he was emotionally unavailable, arguing with my mother, or he’d escape the stress of our house by going to the betting shop to gamble.

My mother had erratic mood swings, did not allow me to have age-appropriate boundaries, and would talk to me about the lack of intimacy between her and my father. These were, unfortunately, not role models that inspired me.

As I entered my twenties and experienced adult life for the first time, I continued to carry the ideation that my life would be different. I was determined not to become my parents. And for many years, I naively lived life proudly thinking I had not turned into them.

Then, one day, I opened my mouth and heard my mother’s voice come out. I can’t even remember what I said, but I recall the feeling of utter despair. Despite all my thinking and wishing over the years, I had become my parents. This prompted me to reflect on my life so far, and I realized that I had repeated many of my parents’ patterns.

I had become a workaholic to avoid feeling my emotions, was in an abusive relationship but didn’t realize this until well after it had ended, and I struggled to know how to develop healthy friendships due to difficulties setting boundaries.

Shit. Damn. Bugger it.

I’d accidentally become my parents! Why was all my thinking and wishing over the years not enough to stop this from happening? I thought that I had more control over my life than this.

During my own self-discovery journey, I found that there are many reasons why we repeat the same family patterns. I also learned that we can change them.

Humans learn from watching and copying other people’s behavior, and children are sponges that soak up everything in their environment.

For example, when I was a child, I remember my dad ordering a meal at a restaurant, and the vegetables on his plate were stone cold. Instead of sending the meal back and asking for hot veggies, he complained about how terrible the restaurant was and ate the cold meal. When I became an adult, I struggled to assert myself in similar situations, which led to a lot of anger and resentment.

Learned behavior is not just a one-time thing. It is passed down from generation to generation.

For instance, my paternal grandparents lived through the Great Depression in the 1930s, before my dad was born.

They taught my dad that food was a scarce resource, so he carried this belief with him into his adulthood, and subsequently passed this down to me through not being able to model assertive behaviors.

This is called intergenerational trauma because the unhealthy family dynamics continue throughout new generations. Generally, intergenerational trauma is defined by events that affect people profoundly, such as child abuse, parental incarceration, poverty, war, natural disasters, etc.

Sometimes, we aren’t even aware that our family dynamics are unhealthy, or we might be aware but are too scared to change. This is usually because humans have a strong desire to be accepted and belong. In fact, this is very important for our survival.

For some people, repeating those family dynamics means that they continue to be a part of the family unit.

From a young age, I was often labelled as the ‘black sheep’ of the family, because I voiced the unspoken, toxic family rules. It became easier for me to distance myself from my family rather than remain enmeshed in a family environment that was detrimental to my mental health and well-being.

The good news is we can change our patterns so that we don’t become (or continue to be) our parents.

The first step is to be aware of the unhelpful patterns that you’re carrying with you. Without awareness, we cannot change.

I started by asking myself what emotions I experienced frequently and whether they ever seemed like they were out of context or disproportionate to the situation.

One emotion I often struggled with was jealousy. Whenever a friend would share something positive about their life—if they got a new car, got a promotion at work, or won a competition—my go-to emotion was jealousy.

This impacted my friendships, as I was constantly comparing my life to theirs and driving them away by trying to find ways to make sure my life was more successful. This led to perfectionism in everything that I did, and let me tell you, it was exhausting! I couldn’t maintain this lifestyle, and I felt like I was drowning.

When I hit a low point after my relationship ended, I sought therapy. Through therapy, I learned that the reason I compared myself to other people so frequently was due to the beliefs I held about myself. I didn’t feel like I was good enough as I was. This made a lot of sense when we explored the relationship I had with my parents.

They regularly compared me to other kids and were only proud of me when I performed better than anyone else. It made sense that, as an adult, I would experience strong feelings of jealousy toward other people. Jealousy meant that I was constantly trying to prove my worth to other people rather than living life on my own terms.

I then looked at my beliefs about this situation/emotion and thought about where and when those beliefs developed. Identifying the patterns behind my behavior was a positive first step in my inner healing journey, because you can’t heal what you don’t know.

Because I wasn’t taught what emotions were or how to understand my emotions as a kid, I needed to learn how to do this as an adult.

My therapist helped me to better understand the motivations behind our emotions and develop new strategies to cope with these.

For example, with my jealousy, I learned that this was a response from fear and insecurity. I was able to learn to identify my thoughts, and when I realized that I wasn’t actually unworthy but rather that was the story I had learned from my parents, I was able to choose different behaviors instead of continuing to follow the same old patterns as before.

I recognized that perfectionism meant I worked too much, so I learnt how to slow down through mindfulness and yoga. Once I was able to recognize my emotions for what they were, rather than reacting to them without awareness, I was able to make better choices about how I wanted to respond to that emotion.

Having that space to understand my emotions meant that I could move out of the comparing myself to other people situation, and I was able to step into the entrepreneurial space and create a business that I love. I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I hadn’t done the inner work to change and not become my parents.

I learned this was why my wishful thinking didn’t work. I knew I didn’t want to be like my parents, but without additional support from a therapist, I didn’t know what to do instead! Therapy helped me learn how to deal with old patterns in new ways.

From there, it was all about practice. These habits and patterns existed for many, many years. I knew they would not change overnight. However, with perseverance and practice, I was able to make meaningful changes in my life. I found it helpful to keep a journal to record my progress so that I didn’t forget how far I’d come.

Finally, it was important for me to remember that my parents are human too. In addition to recognizing the unhelpful habits they taught me, I found it useful to remember some of the positive traits or experiences I’ve gained.

Even though my dad was a workaholic, he instilled a strong work ethic in me, which has helped me when creating my own business. My mother loved to travel, and she has definitely passed that love to me as well.

Reminding myself of these things allows me to acknowledge my parents’ humanness, especially in moments where I find it hard to offer them grace. For me, reminding myself of the positives is a way to honor my need to have compassion for myself.

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About Eloise Tomkins

Eloise Tomkins is a trained psychologist who has moved into the Executive Coaching space. She is passionate about empowering entrepreneurial women to lead from within so they can evolve to a 7 figure mindset so they can amplify their impact on the world and make their bank balance boom. You can find out more by visiting her website at www.eloisetomkins.com or on Insta @eloisetomkins_

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How I Learned the Power of Letting Go After My Father Developed Dementia

“There is beauty in everything, even in silence and darkness.” ~Helen Keller

When I was eleven years old, I would force myself to stay awake until the wee hours of the morning.

I was severely anorexic at a time when eating disorders were considered an “inconvenience” you brought on yourself. Anorexia was dismissed as a rich, white girl’s disease (although we were certainly not rich)—a disease that was easily curable with a prescription for a chocolate cake.

Although my emaciated body was a dead giveaway of my condition, it was school that noticed the change in me first. My once stellar grades began to slip, and I was falling behind in the advanced academic and art program I was a part of.

“Just eat already,” my teachers would tell me, and when I tossed my lunch into the garbage, I’d be sent to the nurse’s office to watch The Best Little Girl in the World. Again.

At home, grape-flavored bubble gum and bouillon cubes were my foods of choice. I did toe-touches, crunches, and jogged at least four times a day, passed out some mornings, and hid my body under layers of flannel shirts on the hottest August days. But even as my disease raged, home was still my refuge, a place where my eating disorder could take its hair down and run wild.

Thankfully, both my parents worked full-time and often through dinner, so mealtimes weren’t much of a struggle. And when we did eat together, I became as much of a master at hiding my food as I was at hiding my body.

I was also smart. Or maybe conniving is a better word. A weekly trip to Friendly’s for ice cream (the irony of that name!) fooled my overworked parents into believing that I was fine.

Puberty had simply shaved off any “baby fat” I had, they reasoned. What they didn’t know was that puberty never had a chance with me. No sooner did my period appear, I starved it away.

But even with the ice cream trips and their growing awareness, I still felt fairly safe at home.

Until that one moment that changed everything.

On a sunny, unremarkable fall day (Isn’t that what Joan Didion tells us? We are most surprised by those tragedies and traumas that happen on “normal” and “beautiful” days…?), my father surprised me by picking me up early from school.

Hurrying to the office for dismissal, there was a tiny, naive part of my eleven-year-old self that thought maybe he was surprising me with a trip to Disney World.

That’s what happened to my friend, Mary, the previous year. When she returned from her impromptu trip, she was sporting tanned skin and a perpetual grin. She then spent most of our fifth-grade year with mouse ears glued to the top of her head.

But there was no Magic Kingdom for me. Instead, without so much as an inkling as to where we were going, my father hustled me into his car, and we drove away. Sitting next to my father, a man who held all the power over me, my stomach ached as I wondered what was about to happen.

My weak heart pounded in my chest, and as we drove, I prayed it wouldn’t give out. Catching a glimpse of my ashen skin and white, cracked lips in the rearview, I knew that I was nothing more than a stray dog in a shelter, ripped from my cage by a complete stranger, wondering if I was about to be put down, thrown into a fight, or worse.

Finally, we arrived at our destination, a medical center in a strip mall. As soon as we walked through the front door, I gagged on the thick scent of medicine and grape lollipops that hung in the air. Without a second to catch my breath, I was whisked into a doctor’s office and onto a scale.

Looking down her nose at me, the doctor snapped, “You’re too skinny. You need to gain weight.” While I stood there on the scale, she turned to my father and diagnosed anorexia nervosa.

Then she looked at me. “If you don’t eat,” she warned in a sharp tone, “we’ll have you put in a place for ‘girls like you’.” She then informed me that once I was locked in that wretched prison of force-feedings and shackles (as I imagined it), I wouldn’t see my family again until I was “fixed.”

When we returned to the car, my father spoke the first words he had said to me all day: “So? Will you gain weight?”

“Yes,” I answered, too frightened to fight. Too scared to advocate for myself. Too terrified to tell him that this wasn’t a choice. I wasn’t choosing to starve myself; I was sick.

But even if I had spoken, he wouldn’t have understood. No one did.

From that moment on, I knew that I was completely alone. That’s when I began to stay up way past midnight, quietly jogging in place. I’d stop only to press an ear to the door, straining to hear what my parents were saying. Would they send me away? To that place?

“I’ll never let it happen,” I assured myself. I would die before I’d go to a place where I was literally stripped of myself.

For the next few years, the games continued, and although there were always doctors and threats, I kept myself just alive enough to stay out of that particular treatment center.

****

Flash-forward almost forty years, and today, my father is an old man with dementia.

As the Universe sometimes works in strange ways, I am now one of his primary caretakers. Although our relationship was strained for many years and I missed out on the experience of having a strong male figure in my life that I could trust, he did walk me down the aisle, and I am here for him now that he needs help.

My father doesn’t remember that day that will forever be burned into my brain. He doesn’t remember the hell I went through the years that followed—the fear, the insecurities, the isolation, and the self-inflicted bruises I sported because I hated myself so very much. More than anything, he was, and is, clueless of the real battle scars—the ones that lay deep inside.

He doesn’t know that that one “unremarkable fall day” when he pulled me from school started a negative spiral in my life, a time when I began aligning with damaging beliefs and inflicting self-harm.

All he knows now is what his dementia allows him to—if the sun is out, if the squirrels ate the peanuts he tossed to them, and whether or not I am there to help him; to deliver his groceries, to take him out on drives, and to care for him.

Yes, this could easily be the ultimate story of revenge, but years of teaching and practicing yoga have brought me down a different path.

The path I have chosen is the path of letting go.

Truthfully, my father’s dementia has left me no choice but to let go, at least of some parts of my life. I’ve needed to let go of expectations, of attachments to the outcome, and even, sometimes, like in those moments when he calls me “Sally,” my own name and identity.

But in letting go, I have found that his disease has brought some gifts as well. I’ve learned to slow down and appreciate the daisy he wants to admire, the flock of chickadees darting in and out of a bush he’s watching, and the feel of the cool fall air on my face as I help him to and from a doctor’s appointment.

Letting go has allowed me to experience all those things that I was previously too busy to appreciate. As Helen Keller said, “There is beauty in everything, even in silence and darkness.”

But letting go because of his dementia wasn’t enough.

I had to let go for me, too.

To let go of the toxic weight from the past, I released that moment when everything changed, all those years ago.

How? By simply deciding to put the weight down—and not just with regard to that event, but in all aspects of my life.

Was it easy? No. But it was doable.

In letting go, I didn’t worry about forgiving (although it is an important step for healing), or seeing someone else’s perspective. I simply unhanded my tight grip on all the “wrongs” I had endured and still carried with me, as well as all those things for which I blamed myself.

Every one of us will live through events, some that we consider positive, and others, not. The only control we have is in how we deal with the circumstances we’ve been given.

We can choose not to shoulder the burden, and to unpack those weights we’ve been carrying. We can close our eyes, breathe deeply, and tell ourselves, “I will put that weight down.”

That’s where our true power lies.

Have I forgotten my past? Of course not. But I have let it go, and in letting go, I have reclaimed an important relationship with my father, and more importantly, with myself.

By letting go, I have released my suffocating grip on life, and reclaimed my personal power.

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About Cathrine Goldstein

Cathrine Goldstein is a speaker, award-winning writer, holistic wellness coach, and creativity coach who specializes in helping people who are looking to start over in all aspects of their lives. A wife, mom, vegetarian, worm-farmer, and tree hugger, she’s also a long-time yoga instructor/studio manager, and the founder of Take 2 Yoga, the Yoga of New Beginnings. To work with Cathrine and for more information, please visit: BeWellandCreate.com and @Be_Well_And_Create. You can also find her at: CathrineGoldstein.com @authorcathrinegoldstein

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Stop Waiting for Perfection and Fall in Love with Your Life Now

I know, so cliché, right? I can practically hear your eyes roll. But hear me out.

In a society driven by results, achievements, and ideals of perfection, there is a huge pitfall that I am becoming increasingly aware of—that we can be so focused on trying to achieve our “best life” that life itself could pass us by and we would have missed it. Missed the beauty of just being here.

We’ve all heard the sayings “Slow down and smell the roses” and “Life is a journey, not a destination.” We hear these sayings and pass them off as embroidery on a quaint pillow, but what if we didn’t? What if life really is in the details?

I mean, how many of us will ever actually attain the “perfect life” we are being sold? Are we just trapped in never-ending, self-defeating cycles of diets, bad habits, and perpetual “self-improvement”?

What if we just paused for a second. Took a break from social media. Blocked out all the outside noise. Just got quiet. What would your inner voice, your subconscious, tell you?

What makes you truly happy? What feeds your soul? Makes you tick? Even reading that back I realize I sound very “new age,” but what I mean is, aren’t we done with being told what will make us happy? And why does life have to be spectacular to be fulfilling? Can’t what we have just be enough?

Recently, I lost my dad after a very short and aggressive battle with cancer. I didn’t see it coming. I thought he would go on forever.

I had been estranged from my dad for a few years before he got sick. We had drifted apart for lots of reasons but mainly because he was never there for me. Our relationship was very one-sided and usually consisted of me running after him, wanting him to notice me, to give me the love and approval I so badly felt I needed from him.

He wasn’t any of the things a father should be. He wasn’t reliable or safe or protective or even present, and I resented him for abandoning me when I was little.

But when it came down to it, when I faced losing him, when I saw him in his hospital bed and he told me he “wasn’t long for this world,” all of that melted away and I longed desperately for more time.

I wish I had let go of my expectations, my resentment, and my pride and just accepted him and salvaged a relationship with him. I loved my dad, and I wish I had spent more time just being with him. Now, that time has passed.

His loss taught me something. Life is precious. We don’t have forever. We have now. This moment. We can choose to love our lives now.

Don’t wait until you’re skinner, prettier, fitter, earning more money, famous, a millionaire. (Most of us will never be those last two things.)

If your life is particularly hard right now and your needs aren’t being met, work to change what isn’t working. But don’t get so focused on what you want that you forget what you already have.

Let’s stop wasting the precious time we have here with the people we love, who make our life beautiful.

Appreciate all the little things that make you happy.

For me, it’s coffee shops and lazy mornings, walks by the river or in nature, grabbing lunch with my friends or dancing the night away, cuddles on the sofa, spending time with my kids, those few precious moments with my partner in the morning before the day begins.

These things are what make a life. While we are striving to “live our best life,” we run the real risk of completely missing the one we are already living.

My one wish is that we all wake up and start appreciating the life we have right now. That we reject the notion that we have to have perfect bodies, perfect faces, perfect houses, families, relationships, to have a truly happy life.

Wake up to the fact that we are being sold this lie purely so that we buy more stuff, work more hours, keep striving for the mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Love your life now. Fall in love with all the little things. Happiness doesn’t come from physical possessions. It comes from appreciating everything money can’t buy. You could already be living your “best life” without even trying.

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About Suzie Headley

Suzie Headley is a SEND Lecturer working with young people with a range of additional needs. She believes that each day of life is a gift and aims to live with mindful appreciation. She recently qualified as a yoga teacher and works alongside a charity making yoga accessible to SEND children and young people. Suzie loves the simple life and believes that it’s the little things that make life beautiful and fulfilling. 

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How ‘Griefcations’ Helped Me Heal from Loss and How Travel Could Help You Too

“To travel is to take a journey into yourself.” ~Danny Kaye

The brochure read, “Mermaid tail, optional.” What forty-something mom doesn’t have a shimmering fish tail tucked in her closet for just the right occasion? Not me. I live in Minnesota. I’d borrow one when I got there.

I took a flight from Minneapolis to Panama City, and then a water taxi to a backpackers’ resort. Not the kind with frozen cocktails and bad DJs. The next thing I knew, I was on a sailboat, swinging from an aerial circus hoop suspended over the sparkling Caribbean Sea, dressed as a mermaid.

I felt free and alive and playful in my body.

How did I, a grieving daughter, sister, and mother, end up there? That’s what I was asking myself. It’s both a long and short story.

After a few years marked by death and loss, an “aerial and sail” retreat called to me. It would be a gift to my wounded self. That’s the short take.

The longer explanation is the most painful, but probably speaks to why so many of us chase adventure or time away from our routines and responsibilities. We’ve got to work on ourselves outside of our regular lives. I certainly did.

After losing my dad to cancer and my brother to suicide within a span of six months, I then had to say goodbye to the daughter we’d made part of our family for four years. We thought we would adopt her, but she went to live with another family.

In my grief, I’ve redesigned my approach to life.

It’s grief that pulls me to say, “Yes, I’ll try that.” Travel. The flying trapeze. Mermaid tails.

An unexpected gift of grief is being cracked open and feeling the urgency of these opportunities. They are too fleeting and too precious to pass up. I’ve also embraced play and movement and taken up circus arts. The retreat offered some of the best aerial coaches out there.

But aside from honing a skill, I craved an escape from the underpinnings of my everyday life and the frequent reminders of my missing family.

Losing loved ones is something we will all experience, no doubt many times over. How each of us grieves is individual, but what I can say from experience—as a trauma psychologist and as someone living in grief—is that taking a journey out of one’s comfort zone can be profoundly healing.

A “griefcation” won’t cure the pain, but meaningful travels can help us cope, possibly even heal.

When I last Googled “griefcation,” it appeared just over 400 times on the search engine, with the earliest hits dated from 2017. That’s not a lot when you compare it to “staycation,” which appeared in more than 100 million articles. But I believe that travel is a conscious way to grieve that yanks us out of a funk of isolation and provides an opportunity for relief, insight, healing, peace, and transformation.

Travel forces us to be in the moment, hyper-aware of new surroundings as we read a map, find a hotel, hail a cab (or look for an uber), and mentally calculate currency exchanges. All of this is a welcome reprieve from the overthinking and overwhelm that comes with grief.

These days there are “grief cruises” and bereavement boats, with a chaplain on call. If you want to dip your toe into a travel experience, instead of fully diving in, retreats—mini-vacations, if you will—can be a good and less pricey alternative.

I’m living in grief, but I am also lucky and privileged to work for myself, with flexible time off and enough travel points accumulated from business trips to orbit the planet. For others, your grief vacation might be closer to home or shorter in duration.

I first sought out a short griefcation in the year after my dad and brother died. I had an urge to be with others who were grieving: those who would just know that I had no words for how I was feeling. I found a “Grief Dancer” retreat in Big Sur with a description that spoke to me: We invite you to a weekend retreat to hold together what should not be held alone.

I flew to San Francisco and then drove the Pacific Coast Highway to what I affectionately called a “hippie’s paradise,” where primal music, soulful rhythm, and unselfconscious dancing helped me find joy in judgment-free movement.

Ever since my dad and brother died, I’ve sought out places to travel, sometimes to escape traditions that now trigger me.

My dad loved the gaudy, over-the-top nature of Christmas celebrations and would string twinkly rainbow lights all over our house in southern California. He collected singing snowmen from Hallmark, too. He had a dozen of them. He’d terrorize us, his grown children, by switching them on all at once so they’d each sing a different Christmas carol, competing for cheery seasonal supremacy.

My dad died from cancer in November and after an early December memorial, my mom and my surviving brother retreated to our respective corners of the country to grieve alone. I hunkered down with my husband and two boys, hibernating in the dark cold of Minneapolis.

And just like that, my family stopped gathering for Christmas. In its absence, I’ve worked to build a new holiday tradition for my sons that has a travel experience at its core. We now routinely head to sunny beaches to relax, read books, play together, and create special moments to remember those we’ve lost. No matter where we find ourselves on Christmas Day, we always set a place at the table for my dad and brother.

I’ve learned that it’s possible to be living in grief, but also experience profound joy. Grief is an invitation to deeply value the moments of your life and find joy where you can, because of a renewed sense of how fleeting they are.

We can travel to escape our grief, or we can focus on our loss as a significant component of the travel experience, creating activities to honor the lives of those we’ve lost.

Dr. Karen Wyatt, a hospice physician and the founder of End-of-Life University Blog, has written extensively about the “safe container” that travel can provide to heal grief and loss. She defined six categories of grief travel to consider when making plans. Restorative. Contemplative. Physically active. Commemorative. Informative. Intuitive.

Before a significant grief anniversary, I took another retreat, this time to Morocco with my husband and other entrepreneurs, to experience “radical self-awareness while leaving our comfort zones in a wild, extraordinary place.” While I wasn’t there to grieve specifically, I am always on that journey. There, my experience—to borrow categories from Wyatt—was contemplative, intuitive, physically active, informative. And commemorative.

In the Sahara Desert near the border with Algeria, I honored the fourth anniversary of the death of my dad. It was a day of beauty and reflection. The shifting sand was a meditation on the transient nature of life. The stark nature of the landscape was an affirmation that life is never guaranteed to be long, and survival is not assured.

The stunning beauty of the place, and the company I was with, was an invitation to honor the magic of this one “wild and precious life”—to borrow from poet Mary Oliver. It was both an embodied and soulful experience to dwell in grief. To hold in my body and spirit the importance of Dad’s memory. I grabbed handfuls of his ashes and sand and flung them into the air. Releasing. Weeping. Celebrating.

You can’t live every day like it’s your last—if I did, I’d be broke, exhausted, and probably in prison—but you can do what makes you truly happy as often as possible.

Travel, like grief, takes you to different lands, where life seems more precious and urgent. If you’re lucky, you will find joy amid the sadness, as I did. The memories stay with you forever.

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About Sherry Walling, PhD

Sherry Walling is a clinical psychologist (PhD), speaker, podcaster, and entrepreneur. Her life’s work is helping high-achieving people navigate painful and complex experiences, including loss. Her podcast, ZenFounder, has been called a “must listen” by both Forbes and Entrepreneur magazines and has been downloaded more than 1 million times. Her book, Touching Two Worlds (Sounds True 2022), is part memoir and part psychological reflections on grief.

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The Power of Waiting When You Don’t Know What to Do

“Waiting is not mere empty hoping. It has the inner certainty of reaching the goal.” ~I Ching 

Waiting has a bad rap in modern Western society. It’s not surprising that I had to look to an ancient Chinese text (the I Ching) in order to find a suitable quote to begin this article. We don’t like to wait! It’s far easier to find quotes on the Internet about “seizing the day” and making something happen.

I’ve been an impatient person for much of my life. I wanted things to happen to me! I had a definite agenda in my twenties: finish college, start my career, get married, and have a family. So I declared a major and started knocking off my goals. When it was “time” to get married, I picked the most suitable person available and got on with it.

I really didn’t know much about waiting. I thought it was something you did if you didn’t have courage or conviction. It was just an excuse not to take action. I know better now.

What I’ve learned since then is that waiting is one of the most powerful tools we have for creating the life we want.  

The ego, or mind, is very uncomfortable with waiting. This is the part of you that fairly screams, “Do something! Anything is better than nothing!” And, because we are a very ego-driven society, you’ll find plenty of external voices that back up that message.

The mind hates uncertainty, and would rather make a mistake than simply live in a state of “not knowing” while the right course unfolds.

There’s a term I love that describes this place of uncertainty: liminal. A liminal space is at the border or threshold between possibilities. It’s a place of pure potential: we could go any direction from here. There are no bright lights and obvious signs saying “Walk this way.”

Liminal spaces can be deeply uncomfortable, and most of us tend to rush through them as quickly as possible.

If we can slow down instead, the landscape gradually becomes clearer, the way it does when your eyes adjust to a darkened room. We start to use all of our senses. The ego wants a brightly lit super-highway to the future, but real life is more like a maze. We take one or two steps in a certain direction, and then face another turning point. Making our way forward requires an entirely different set of skills, and waiting is one of the most important!

There’s a proper timing to all things, and it’s often not the timing we want (now—or maybe even yesterday). There are things that happen on a subconscious level, in ourselves and in others, that prepare us for the next step. Oddly, when the time to act does come, there’s often a sense of inevitability about it, as if it was always meant to be this way.

Look back over your life and you’ll see this pattern. First, look at the decisions that you forced: how did those turn out? Then look for times when you just “knew” what to do, without even thinking about it. What happened then?

The key to the second kind of decision is waiting for that deep sense of inner knowing.

That doesn’t mean you’re certain that everything will turn out exactly the way you want it. Or that you don’t feel fear. But there is a sense of “yes, now’s the time” in your body that I liken to the urge that migratory birds get when it’s time to leave town. They don’t stand around debating whether to go, consulting maps and calendars. They just go when the time is right.

We’re animals too—we have and can cultivate that inner sensitiveness that lets us simply know what to do when the time is right. But to do that we have to unhook from the mind. Thinking is useful up to a point, but we usually take it far beyond the point of usefulness!

We go over and over various options, trying to predict the future based solely on our hopes and fears.

We talk endlessly with others about what we should do, hoping that they have the answers for us (and, ideally, trying to get everyone to agree).

We think about what we “should” do, based on any number of external measures: common sense, morality, religion, family values, finances, and so on.

And then usually we add this all up and just take our best shot.

A better way is to take stock of what you know (and, even more importantly, what you don’t know) and then… wait.

If there’s some action that calls to you, even if it’s seemingly unrelated to the question at hand, do it! Then wait again for another urge to move. Wait actively rather than passively. That means: keep your inner senses tuned to urges or intuitions. Expect that an answer will come. As the I Ching says, wait with the “inner certainty of reaching the goal.”

This is not the same kind of dithering and procrastination that come when we want to try something new but are afraid to step out into the unknown. If your intuition is pulling you in a certain direction and your mind is screaming at you to “Stop!” by all means ignore your mind.

There’s a subtle but very real difference between the feeling of fear (which holds you back from doing something you long to do) and misgivings (which warn you that a decision that looks good on the surface is not right for you).

In both cases, look for and trust that deep sense of inner knowing, even if your thoughts are telling you different. A friend once told me that her father’s best piece of advice to her was: “Deciding to get married should be the easiest decision of your life.” How I wish I had known that when I made my own (highly ambivalent) decision!

My head was telling me that this was the sensible thing to do, and he was a good man. My gut, however, was far from on board. I still vividly recall the many inward debates I held about whether to marry him, and even the dreams I had that revealed my inner reluctance. Unfortunately, I went with my thoughts over my instincts.

Now I know this: If you have to talk yourself into something, try waiting instead. More will be revealed, if you give it some time.

Ignore that voice in your head that says you need to make a decision now. Don’t rush through life. Linger in the liminal spaces and see what becomes clear as you sit with uncertainty. Learn to trust your gut more than your head. Have faith that the right course will unfold at the perfect time. And then, when the time comes, just do it, as simply and naturally as the birds take flight.

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About Amaya Pryce

Amaya Pryce is a life coach and writer living in the Pacific Northwest. Her books, 5 Simple Practices for a Lifetime of Joy and How to Grow Your Soul are available on Amazon. For coaching or to follow her blog, please visit www.amayapryce.com.

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Everything I’m So, So Sorry About (and Why I Think Apologies Are Hard)

“There’s the way that light shows in darkness, and it is extremely beautiful. And I think it essentializes the experience of being human, to see light in darkness.” ~Emil Ferris

I was leading a yoga training in a small village in Greece near the Aegean Sea. One of the trainees was practicing a mindfulness workshop she designed. She led us through a guided meditation based on a beautiful Hawaiian practice for reconciliation and forgiveness called Ho’oponopono. As we sat in the yoga space, she repeated over and over:

I love you.
Please forgive me.
I’m sorry.
Thank you.

There was something about how she slowly said, “I’m so, so sorry” that at one point I felt my heart break open, and tears flowed from its depths.

I have a wellspring of personal and societal hurts tucked in the back of my heartspace that I am so, so sorry about.

I’m sorry that children and animals are abused for no reason except the amusement or the sickness of adults.

I’m sorry that women and children are molested and raped by men whose brains can’t process compassion, and that their need for power is so destructive that they can justify their actions.

I’m sorry that people aren’t given equal access to food, education, and healthcare because of the color of their skin or biases.

I’m sorry for the learned bias that keep us from treating everyone equally.

I’m sorry that children don’t tell adults they have been bullied and base their self-worth on their shame about how their peers treated them.

I’m sorry for daughters whose mothers try to keep them small.

I’m sorry for the boys who’ve been told that they can’t cry.

I’m sorry that saying sorry is sometimes too vulnerable.

I’m sorry for any time I have ever said or done something that was hurtful because I was trying to make myself look good.

I’m so, so sorry

The Vulnerability of Being Sorry

Saying I’m sorry is a vulnerable place. We have to admit that we were not perfect. We have to disclose that we made mistakes.

Sometimes I’ve raced around my brain desperately looking for some way to justify my actions so that I didn’t have to apologize because it felt too vulnerable. But sometimes, even in a relationship where I wanted to be vulnerable and close to someone, I have defaulted to not apologizing—sometimes out of habit.

During the pandemic, I came down with COVID-19 and had to call the people I’d been around and tell them. It was hard. One of my friends was very upset with me. It was during the holidays, and after spending a lot of time alone, she had plans for New Year’s Eve.

I didn’t blame her for being mad. The isolation was driving us all crazy. I was sorry. Apologizing and listening to her anger was uncomfortable. Her friendship was more valuable than the temporary discomfort of her processing her disappointment. I was grateful that I had the courage to be present.

If we want a relationship to grow, we—the one who erred—need to own the mistake and the apology, no matter how uncomfortable it feels. Without the apology, it’s one more brick in the barrier to growing closer in a relationship.

We all know people that never say I’m sorry—it just feels too exposed. Alternatively, more worrisome, is that they feel beyond reproach.

Cindy Frantz, a professor of psychology and environmental studies at Oberlin College and Conservatory, said that when we do something wrong and skirt responsibility by not admitting our wrongdoing, the interaction feels incomplete.

I know from experience that waiting for an apology can cause a relationship to feel like it is hanging in midair, waiting to get grounded.

She also warned, “Don’t apologize as a way to shut down the conversation and wipe the slate clean. That’s a shortcut that won’t work.”

When It Isn’t Safe to Say I’m Sorry

Some people will use our apology against us—so we keep ourselves safe by not apologizing. Self-preservation might be the best choice when dealing with someone with mental health and abusive issues. It can take a toll on how we feel about ourselves though.

In the eighties, I was in a twelve-step program for my eating disorder. I wasn’t able to fully complete the fifth step by making amends to my parents for all the extra food I ate to fuel my bulimia. It just didn’t feel safe. Now that I’m in my sixties I could do it, but my parents are deceased.

I found some comfort in apologizing “in spirit.” I’m still in the process of fully letting go of the conversation that I wish I could have had.

Over-Apologizing

I was in a coffee house, writing this article, when I overheard a conversation. A man asked a woman if he could reach across her to get a chess board from a shelf that was next to her. She said yes and then said, “I’m sorry.” His friend said to her, “Why are you apologizing? He’s the one inconveniencing you.”

Like this woman, I can be very free with my apologies.

Saying things like “I’m sorry to bother you” instead of “Do you have a minute to talk?” can be a sign of our sense of self-worth or the habits we developed when we weren’t confident.

Findings show that women report offering more apologies than men, even though there is no evidence that women create more offenses than men.

For women, over-apologizing can be just a matter of learned language. But when we hear ourselves apologize for taking up space when someone else bumps into us, or apologize for being late rather than thanking people for waiting for us, or apologize just for saying no when someone crosses our boundaries, this can be a sign of self-worth challenges.

If we listen to ourselves apologize repeatedly, we literally talk ourselves into low self-worth.

What a Sincere Apology Feels Like

I can offer a sincere apology when I know the mistakes I make are just a part of being human. I truly don’t want to hurt others. I don’t want them to be suffering from my words or actions.

I can offer a sincere apology when I forgive myself for not being perfect. I seek to learn from my mistakes and apply insights to my future responses and actions. I refrain from using my mistakes to bring up all my past mistakes and emotionally beat myself up.

Psychotherapist Sara Kubric says that a genuine apology is more than a statement. It has to be sincere, vulnerable, and intentional. She offers an apology recipe that could look something like:

1. Taking responsibility for making a mistake
2. Acknowledging that we have hurt someone
3. Validating their feelings
4. Expressing remorse
5. Being explicit about our desire to make amends

Apology as a Test of Confidence

When I sincerely apologize, I know that I am confident. No one is beyond making mistakes. I know that my spiritual growth depends on my ability to be vulnerable.

I continue to learn new ways of communicating that don’t involve over-apologizing for taking up space or being a normal human being. I know that there are pain, challenges, and injustices in the world that I can’t control, and I can be sorry, sad, and discouraged when they happen. This is the way I can live consciously and compassionately in this, my community.

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About Nancy Candea

Nancy Candea is an author and internationally known yoga therapist specializing in trauma, addiction, and chronic pain. Her book, PRESENT: The Art of Living Boldly in the Second Half of Life, and her talks help women make peace with their past, gain self-acceptance and confidence, reconcile with their past, and live a wholehearted, healthy, purpose-filled life. She is the founder and director of the non-profit Living Boldly Project. Find out more about Nancy at NancyCandea.com.

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7 Lessons from My Father That Have Made Me a Better, Happier Person

“A father is neither an anchor to hold us back, nor a sail to take us there, but a guiding light whose love shows us the way.” ~Unknown

I couldn’t understand his grateful mindset, especially given his obvious rapid decline. My dad was dying. None of us could reconcile a life without our mentor, hero, spouse, brother, uncle, friend, and champion of cheesy dinner table games.

But it was coming, and we all knew it. Still, he’d tell us he’s “counting his blessings, not his struggles.” This from a man with a failing liver and ammonia on his brain.

When that fateful morning arrived, my mom and I were in direct alignment with him. We’d stayed by his bedside all night, watching for any changes to his breathing. It seemed to settle—at least, the rattle was gone. Soon, we were also unable to breathe as we watched him slip away to his next chapter.

He didn’t really look like himself, but he looked peaceful. I felt an immediate panic that I’d left unanswered questions on the table. About his past. About my grandparents that I never knew. About how to maneuver through an uncertain future… Do we lock in for the longer-term mortgage rate? Do we renovate the house now, never or in a few years? Do we pull our kid out of school for an epic family adventure?

Dad would know these things.

Despite my aching heart, I’ve realized over the last few months that my dad left us with a legacy of Golden Rules. These will pop into my head randomly, but sometimes I wonder… It seems whenever I long for his wisdom, I hear his voice whispering:

“Count your blessings, not your struggles.”

Easier said than done, right? But we can all find something to be cheerful about. My dad weathered deep pain in his last month of life. His leg cramps were the worst! It was torture to see him suffer, but more torturous to witness his declining cognitive function.

Because my dad was a capable, super-human of a man. He built companies from nothing, organized events to support our city, and could relate to anyone he ever met. To watch him struggle with his phone, and to hear his slurred, slowed-down speech, killed me. And yet… Even ten days before his last day on earth, he continued to believe he was lucky.

“If it weren’t for my liver disease, I wouldn’t have all these check-ins by my grandkids!” 

“If it weren’t for the ammonia on my brain, I wouldn’t have had all this extra time with you, Sammy.” (I’d taken a leave of absence from my serving job to be more available.)

His courageous outlook inspires me to do better. Instead of lamenting my long list of grievances, I can choose to focus on the good in my life. I’m healthy. My kids still think I’m cool. My husband supports my new business gig. I’ve let my gray grow in and have been told it’s not “that cringy.” I believe in myself. I have a lot to be grateful for.

“You can’t teach a lamb to bark.”

For years, I tried to mold my youngest daughter into the person I thought would be her best self. I fought her incessant quest to be online, even though she had some prodigious knack for beating all the levels in her games. I pushed playdates on her, because they seemed “age-appropriate” and a “better use” of her time when all she wanted was to be alone.

I’d lecture her on speaking up; I’d answer for her whenever adults put her on the spot; I’d correct her sometimes quirky behaviour; I’d badger her for not opening up to me.

The list goes on.

One day, for reasons related to my nephew and not my daughter, my dad politely informed the family that “you can’t teach a lamb to bark.” It took us a beat, but then it sunk in.

My kid is an introvert. She should not be shamed into behaving more gregariously. My kid likes gaming, and she’s good at it. Why should I take that away from her if we have some healthy boundaries in place? She doesn’t want to be forced into social situations just because other kids her age want that. My kid is a lamb. I should not expect her to bark.

“Sit on an emotional email for a day or two.”

This rule saved my bacon countless times over my sixteen-year career in finance. In the heat of some frustrating situation—often defied by any sense of logic—I’d craft seething emails to send to our head office. In my rookie years, I sent some of them and regretted the fallout immediately.

Having an emotional response to disappointing news is a natural reaction; it’s part of our humanity to feel. But he would always say, “Sammy, imagine your email is printed on the front page of the Globe & Mail [our national newspaper]. Make sure you’ve digested everything first and given yourself the space to think critically.”

His technique led to dozens of phone calls rather than heat-infused emails whose tone could potentially be misinterpreted. Or I’d sit on them and just never hit send, later realizing, my knee-jerk reaction would have set off a chain of even more difficult situations I’d rather avoid.

Then there were those that I would send. I’m proud of them… because I was able to express myself from a place of patience, time, and space. Our initial reaction to things does not always end up as the final say.

“No amount of past trauma can hold you back if you can forgive and find purpose.”

As a young boy, my dad was molested by a close family member for years. He repressed this abuse, until one day, the world he built to hide his unconscious pain crashed down on all of us.

The details are difficult to relive. He was accused of some terrible things. He lost his high-powered position in finance. He’d been living a double life, fighting a sex addiction that had manifested out of his childhood trauma. Something none of us, including him, knew anything about. I was eighteen at the time. I thought for sure my mom would leave him. I remember thinking we would lose the house, and that there could be no way through this.

When his hidden truth rose to the surface, he began to dig into his past and we watched him fight to keep the family together; rebuilding, restoring, and recovering. In his quest to prove himself worthy, he took on a new purpose. He was not going to let his past define him. He was going to forgive. And he was going to help other male survivors of sexual abuse.

It was hard for us to watch him speak so candidly about his addiction and past. But the more open he was in his speaking engagements, the more courage he passed onto others who’d been suffering in silence. To witness my father rise above and advocate so passionately has taught me the greatest life lesson around: we have more power than we realize.  

If we don’t like the chapter we’ve written, we can start a new one. We can make productive choices to use our pain in the service of others. We do not need to stay victimized.

“Just say the truth.”

If I had a dollar for every time I pulled my dad’s sleeve and asked, “What should I say to this person, Dad?” I’d have a lot of extra dollars! It used to annoy the Bejesus out of me, because his blunt reply seemed to come without any actual consideration.

One day early in my career, I was in “a slump.” I hadn’t managed to secure any prospect meetings in weeks and was feeling lousy about myself. Desperation exuded out my pores. I did have one appointment coming in, though; he was a friend of a friend. But I thought for sure he’d already have his financial ducks in a row. He was a doctor, after all.

About an hour before the meeting, the sweat stains began to show through my tailored navy blazer. What could little old me possibly do to help this guy? I was certain our mutual friend had called in a favor to get him to meet with me.

“Dad, what do I even say to him?”

“Just say the truth.”

“That I’m a rookie and nervous to meet him?”

“Yup.”

“Not helpful, Dad.”

As it turned out, I went with his whole “say the truth” guidance, which seemed to immediately disarm this nice man. And as that turned out, he gave me a chance to review the plans he had in place. I wound up saving him money and replacing his unreliable ‘parachute’ with a more airtight solution.

My relationship with this client eventually morphed into a specialization in looking after physicians’ insurance needs. He told me it was my down-to-earth nature and zero “know-it-all” attitude that led him to trust me.

Since then, I come back to this favorite line of Dad’s anytime I begin to concoct an excuse for backing out of plans. It’s easier to say it like it is: “I bit off more than I can chew; can we reschedule?”

“You can’t steal second without leaving first.”

That was my dad’s shortened version of the Frederick B. Wilcox quote, “Progress always involves risk; you can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.” Dad loved a good baseball analogy!

I’ve applied this to my life countless times when mulling over whether to take a chance. I used it when I was twenty-four, after being dumped by my fiancé just months before our wedding. Ended up dragging my sad ass to the city we were going to start our lives in, without having secured a job. I told myself I was young and had nothing to lose. That I’d figure it out. And I did.

I used it when my husband and I opted for expensive fertility treatments. We knew it was a crapshoot, but we wanted another child. On the other hand, the money we had set aside made us feel secure. Thank God we took that chance. Our little Saffron was born nine months and two weeks later.

The highest stakes use of this mantra came when I began to dread going into work several years ago. I felt like a hamster on the treadmill, always under pressure and in hot pursuit of a carrot I could never reach. If it wasn’t my insomnia, the leaking left eye and chronic stomach aches were enough to tell me something needed to change.

I’d had dreams for the future, but no real battleplan. I knew, however, if I sold my business, I’d have a little runway to try my hand at reinventing myself. Still, I clung tightly to security. I was the main breadwinner and couldn’t be so foolish.

I ended up walking away, deciding life was too short to hate my Monday through Friday for another fifteen, twenty years. Others had managed to reinvent themselves. Surely, I could, too.

That chapter in the Book of Sam is still unfolding, and I don’t consider my reinvention reckless. I consider it vital to my life force. If I’d kept my foot on first base, I’d still be there… looking off in the distance at second… wondering if I could make it. That wondering would haunt me. I’d rather know I tried than skip it altogether.

“Don’t wait until funerals to tell people they’re special.”

More than a decade ago, a friend of ours lost his battle with cancer. He was a legend in the business and a close pal of my dad’s. He lived in another city, and though we’d meet for focus groups once a year, we regretted not having the chance to tell him how special he was.

When Randy died, Dad took immediate action. He invited some clients over for a dinner at his and my mom’s home, motivated to seize the day. At first, I thought it was bizarre he’d bought these wigs and weird hats at some costume store, insisting we all don something ridiculous while we ate our meal.

But when that client was killed in a plane crash a few months later, I finally got the message. We cannot wait to let someone know they matter.

On December 2^nd, 2019, I walked into a so-called ‘networking’ event thinking, “Just a few more of these and then this career and I are done!” Instead, it was a surprise retirement party,” hosted by my dad, in honor of me.

I was floored. Instead of thinking about himself and the impact my leaving would have on his succession plan, my dad got busy concocting a farewell party. He flew in my sister from out west. Colleagues from down east. Clients were there. He managed to assemble every special person in my life, and I spent the evening listening to people tell me that I mattered.

It was like a reverse funeral. Let’s call it, the death of my career… cheered on by those I loved and had helped in my years as a financial advisor. I could cry thinking about the effort he put into this special evening.

If my dad were alive right now, I think he’d be proud to know these lessons have sunk in. But just like you, I’m a work in progress. I’ll be needing his guidance as I continue to walk my new path. So, to all the dads that have shown up for their children, thank you. Not everyone has had this blessing in their life.

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About Samantha Plavins

Sam Plavins is a Gen-x mom, wife, adventurer, writer, and recovering over-sharer. In 2019, she hiked 800-km across Northern Spain and had the epiphany that her career in finance was killing her. So she decided to walk a new path, launching She Walks the Walk to help women like her lead more authentic, inspired lives. She wants you off society’s treadmill, or at the very least to question it! Find her at shewalksthewalk.com, Instagram, YouTube, or her travel blog, and check out her podcast here.

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Change Made Easy: How to Get Unstuck by Doing What You’re Already Doing

“Don’t wait for your feelings to change to take action. Take action and your feelings will change.” ~Barbara Baron

You are stuck because you are waiting to want to do the things you know you need to do to get better. You aren’t doing the things you know you need to do because you don’t want to feel bad, but you already feel bad. You are already doing what you don’t want to do. Why not choose to do something that you don’t want to do that will actually move you forward?

If you are waiting to want to do the things that will create change, you will remain stagnant.

I was stuck in misery and self-hatred for most of my life. I knew there were things that would help, like diet, exercise, and therapy. I also knew that there were parts of myself that I was afraid to acknowledge or confront. Like how selfish I could be, or how poor my attitude was about almost everything, or how I felt used by men when I too was using them.

We all have a shadow side; we all have shame and guilt. We are all perfectly imperfect. When I stopped running and trying to hide these parts of myself, from myself and others, it gave me space to heal and nurture myself. It created space for me to take one small step to take control of my mind, which then led to another step, and so on.

What you need to start doing depends on your level of depression, misery, or disconnection with yourself and spirit.

If you are at the point where you can’t get out of bed because you hate yourself and your life, then start with mirror work. It’s not easy for most of us to look into our own eyes in the mirror. We have to face ourselves instead of focusing on other people, and this can bring up a lot of self-judgment. But over time, as we say loving words to ourselves, it becomes easier to challenge that judgment.

Start with something simple. Simply place your hand on your heart and tell yourself, “I am trying to love you.” “I want to learn to love you.” “I love you.” Repeat this over and over.

If you need a friend to come over to pull you out of the bed, then call and ask a friend.

It might feel like you’re the only one struggling, and you might fear that asking for help means you’re weak, inferior, or a burden. But no one has it altogether. And people want to help, but we often don’t know how or what to do. It’s okay to ask for help. It’s brave and takes courage to ask for help. Give yourself props for having the courage to ask for help.

Creating a better life for yourself does not require you to make big changes all at once. Consistently doing small things is what will move you forward. But you might even resist the small things.

Let’s say a friend suggests you try painting, journaling, going for a walk in nature, meditating, or stretching. More than likely, you’ll say, “I don’t want to.” More than likely, you have received this advice before. I would pick the suggestion you have heard most frequently or the one you feel the most resistant to.

Let’s use painting, for example. Your knee-jerk reaction might be to say, “I am not an artist” or “I am not creative.” That’s a lie. That is your mind trying to keep you where you are because that’s what the mind does. Even if you are in a bad spot mentally, the status quo feels comfortable to your brain. It is what your mind and body are familiar with.

We are all creative beings with an unlimited amount of knowledge that resides within us. We have the ability to heal ourselves. To reconnect ourselves to something greater than our mind and our thinking. You have that power within you, but you have to take a different approach to what you are already doing, and that means doing what you don’t want to do.

Ask yourself: What is the smallest step, the smallest thing that I don’t want to do, that will move me forward?

For me, it was committing to three minutes of daily meditation, which I knew was an achievable goal. I found that once I got into the practice, I usually ended up spending more than three minutes. In the beginning, I often felt uncomfortable and restless, but after a couple months I started to really enjoy it. Sometimes my heart feels expanded, my mind has only positive thoughts, and it feels like pure bliss.

I now spend ten to twenty minutes a day in meditation. Once that became a habit, I added to it.

Meditation has helped me pause and get curious about my thoughts instead of getting carried away with them.

For example, let’s say I have the thought “OMG, he has not called me in two days. He must not like me. I suck. No one is ever going to choose me. I am so boring. Maybe I should text him. Wait, no, don’t text him…”

Mediation has given me the ability to hear the first thought—“OMG, he has not called me in two days”—and stop it right there.

I learned, with consistent practice, to pause and change the course of my thoughts.

So now my internal dialogue would sound like “He is probably busy, but if he doesn’t like me, that’s okay too because I like me. What is something I can do in this moment that will bring me joy?”

Mediation has also helped me create space for hidden parts of myself to come forward and for creative ideas to surface. You see, we can only have one thought at a time. If you are constantly ruminating, having negative, judgmental thoughts about yourself or others, there is no space for creative, loving, supportive, healing thoughts to come through.

I have been on the road to recovery and healing from trauma for years. There were times when I felt frustrated and would spiral back down, but by making things I don’t want to do habits, I’ve changed my life. All by committing to taking simple, small steps.

Commit to one tiny thing that you don’t want to do, that you can do every day, for a hundred days, and see what happens. Be prepared to have your mind blown.

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About Katie Creel

Katie Creel has worked as an RN for eighteen years. She is the Owner of Orenda Life Coaching, LLC, where she practices as a certified health and life coach and certified Creative Insight Journey instructor. Katie believes that we have the power within ourselves to create the changes we need in order to create the life we want. She teaches tools and exercise to help you reconnect with your intuition and creativity.

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How Sensitive People Can Stop Taking Things So Personally in Their Relationships

“The truth is that the way other people see us isn’t about us—it’s about them and their own struggles, insecurities, and limitations. You don’t have to allow their judgment to become your truth.” ~Daniell Koepke

As a child growing up with a highly sensitive mom, I often noticed her go quiet at the dinner table after my stepfather would make some little comment. Looking back, I know he was just tired and a bit grouchy from a long day at work, but my mom felt hurt by his words.

Over the years, the comments didn’t lessen, but I noticed my mother being less and less bothered by them. They seemed to slide off of her like water off a duck’s back. As a result, my parents seemed to have a lot more fun, laughter, and ease together—and still, forty some years into their marriage, live happily side by side.

Just like my mom did in the earlier days of her marriage, it’s so common for sensitive people to take things personally–both in our intimate relationships and in general–and for that to make the relationship more painful and less fulfilling.

Up until seven or eight years ago, I, too, found myself getting easily hurt by things my husband did, or most often, the things he did not do.

It stung when my husband didn’t seem to be listening when I was talking, when the scenery seemed to captivate his attention more than my heartfelt words, when he forgot to do the thing I’d asked him to do, or when he interrupted me when I was speaking—all of which happened (and still does) with regularity!

One thing that felt especially hurtful then was when my husband would fall asleep while I was vulnerably sharing deep feelings about our relationship. I felt so hurt by his sleeping, like he didn’t really care about me.

I’ve known many other sensitive people to take it personally and feel hurt when their partner doesn’t give them verbal appreciation when they do something nice or helpful, or when their partner isn’t as affectionate or openly enthusiastic about spending time with them.

It is true that many partners do not always act with kindness or consideration. Yet, when we take it personally, the hurt we feel can show, often in how quiet we suddenly get, or in a slightly defensive reaction, or in outright tears.

As we hold onto that hurt, over time, it takes a toll in our relationship and our emotional well-being.

If you take things personally often in your relationship, it’s likely to build up some deep resentment and disappointment.

It can also lead to defensive interactions with your partner, escalating arguments, and withdrawal or criticism from both sides—which only results in even more disconnection between you.

Eventually, in my own marriage, I realized that taking things so personally was really rough on our relationship. Not only did it simply feel bad to me, but I also didn’t act how I really wanted to in my marriage. When I felt hurt, I would often retaliate with some criticism, like “Talking to you is like talking to a stone wall!”

Needless to say, that led to more distance, discord, and deep unhappiness between my husband and me.

So I looked to my mother and her wisdom. What she told me opened the door for me to the power of not taking things personally—and developing a whole arsenal of tricks to help me become someone who hardly ever takes anything personally anymore.

What a blessing this has been in my marriage, and even in my career, allowing me to feel more confidence and calmness, and to love my hubby—and feel loved by him—more deeply than ever. (Yes, even if he spaces out—or falls asleep!—when I’m talking to him.)

Not taking things so personally is possible for you, too, and it will allow you to have much more connection and loving intimacy in your relationship–which you were born for as a highly sensitive person.

Here are six tips to help you, as sensitive person, become someone who no longer takes things so personally in your intimate relationship.

1. Tend to your stress levels.

As highly sensitive people, our nervous systems tend to get overloaded more quickly than non-HSPs, due to how deeply we process stimuli.

This means you will feel more easily overwhelmed and stressed than non-HSPs if you are not attending to your nervous system regularly.

Interestingly, research shows that when we have higher stress levels, we misinterpret neutral comments from others as criticism, or see their behaviors in a more threatening, negative light.

In other words, unless you are regularly de-stressing, you are likely to see and experience everything your partner does or does not do in a much more negative way, take things more personally, and feel hurt a lot more.

That hug your spouse resisted? If you were stressed, it may have seemed like he was actually snubbing you instead of just distracted by the kids. If you had been calm and centered, it would have been no biggy; maybe you would have even appreciated it that he was attending to the kids and taking some work off your hands.

A huge part of our emotional well-being, and feeling connected instead of feeling hurt, depends on tending to our nervous systems regularly to keep our stress levels moderated.

Some of my favorite ways of doing so include a medium-paced walk in nature, meditation, coherent breathing, yoga nidra, and dancing wildly or gently in my living room. There are many options. Find ones you like and add them—even just for a few minutes here and there—to your daily routine.

2. Know your goodness.

Other people’s words or actions cause a lot of pain when we think it means something about who we are and don’t keep our own good opinion of ourselves at the forefront. Because the hurt we feel from taking things personally actually comes from believing other people’s negative judgments of us.

In other words, if we don’t feel great about ourselves, whenever anyone else isn’t caring or kind, we can more easily take it to indicate something bad about ourselves.

When you can hold the clear knowledge of your own goodness in your awareness, you will have a much easier time separating other people’s confused thoughts from who you really are and letting them roll off you like water off a duck’s back. So make sure your opinion of yourself is a good, healthy one.

For many HSPs this can be especially hard because we have been misunderstood and perhaps treated like something is wrong with us for much of our lives…which can convince us this is true and lower our self-esteem…which makes it even easier to feel hurt when someone says or does something that could indicate disapproval or lack of care about us.

But as an HSP, you have so much to feel good about yourself for!

So it’s well worth your energy to spend time actively seeing what you like and even love about yourself. What do you know about the goodness of who you really are? (Need some hints? This post will help.)

Deeply knowing your goodness will prevent and ease the pain of taking things personally.

3. Think about your thinking—both yours and your partner’s.

Our own thinking is the biggest culprit of taking things personally as HSPs. This is great news because it means we can shift our thinking to minimize the pain of hurt feelings.

As HSPs, we tend to be so conscientious, attentive, and attuned to those we care about, so we unconsciously expect the same from our partner. If it turns out that they aren’t as attuned and caring naturally, we think it means we aren’t as important to them as they are to us, that we aren’t loved, that we aren’t good enough, that we have done something wrong—or are wrong.

I can’t tell you how many HSP women I know have told me that when their hubby says, in a tone, something like, “What, you can’t give me five minutes to get to xyz?!!” They think to themselves, “Oh no, I’ve done something wrong. I suck.”

This is what I call a negative misinterpretation. And our HSP brains naturally do this a lot! This negative interpretation is where the pain of hurt feelings really comes from.

Let’s get a quick understanding of this: For survival reasons, the human brain is wired by default to see and hear things negatively. We unconsciously focus on flaws, on what’s wrong, or missing. This is called the negativity bias of the brain. And HSPs, we have this even more strongly than non-HSPs.

You can use this knowledge to help you observe when your brain tends to put a negative spin on things—and decide to stop drinking that Kool-Aid. Just because your brain thinks what it thinks, it doesn’t mean it’s true!!

Can you see how in the above comment, one could have interpreted it to mean many things other than “I‘ve done something wrong. I suck.”? You could interpret it as “He’s having a hard day,” or “He feels pressured.” Which is way closer to the truth than “I suck.”

Nowadays, when I’m sharing from my heart to my husband and his eyelids start getting heavy with sleep, I no longer interpret it to mean he doesn’t care about me. I see it for what it is: he’s tired after a full day of working to support our family.

So, when you feel that familiar sting of hurt feelings, step back and notice what your negatively biased brain is interpreting the thing your partner said or did to mean. And get curious about what else might be going on that is closer to the truth.

4. See it as their inner disconnection or their confusion about you.

What if your significant other really does say something harsh about who you are—or does something truly mean or negligent?

Remember, they have a flaw-seeking brain, too, that also sees in a negative way by default. And just because they may be having a negative thought about you doesn’t make it true!

What’s really happening is they are having a moment of confusion about you, or they can’t see beyond their flaw-brain at the moment.

The truth is, when someone sees bad in you, or treats you poorly, it is always a symptom of their own inner turmoil and distress. Unloading on you is just an unskillful way of trying to reduce their own inner turmoil. It means nothing about you.

As my mom wisely said when I asked her the trick to not taking those dinner table comments personally,  “I remember that it’s just his stuff.”

If you can remember this truth, you may even feel compassion for your partner instead of hurt—and let me tell you how much better that feels! I’ll take compassion over hurt feelings any day. Because it is from there that we are best able to effectively advocate for and create more caring interactions.

5. Be your own zone of safety and love.

As you learn to break the habit of taking things personally, you will want to be able to hold yourself through any hurt feelings that still arise with kindness and love.

This means, instead of trying to avoid the feelings of hurt, learning to be with them in a loving way.

When they come up, gently move your attention from the spinning thoughts in your mind to how the hurt actually feels in your body. Be curious about the sensations. And hold them with your gentle and compassionate attention the way you would hold a baby bird in your own soft hand—spaciously, with warmth and tenderness.

It can help to place your hand over your heart area in a gesture of love and care for yourself, and imagine the sensations in your body are soaking up that kind attention.

As awkward as it may feel at first, by being with your painful feelings in this way, you will move out of them more quickly, and experience much more peacefulness with them as you do. And even experience more love in your life.

As I learned to make this kind of space for any hard feelings that come up, the most amazing thing began to happen: The hard feelings became a doorway to feeling a deep warmth and a loving intimacy with my own self, and a sense of inner safety I never before knew was possible.

Now I no longer fear the harder feelings of life because I trust myself to always lovingly support myself through them. Which has made my relationship with myself so loving and strong—and my relationship with my husband much more peaceful and less reactive.

6. Re-root in love.

In our committed intimate relationships, what always soothes and heals is coming back to love. First and foremost, love for yourself, and of course, love for your significant other.

To do so, simply ask yourself: “What is the most loving way to see this?” Or, “What might love’s wisdom want me to know right now?”

Perhaps the answer will be a reminder of how amazing you are, or to remember your partner is doing the best they can with the skills and experiences they have had, or that the truth is your love for each other is strong enough to weather these less than harmonious moments. Or maybe the answer will be to set strong boundaries for yourself, or even end the relationship.

But if you come back to love, these harsher moments will be like a tiny, whitecap in a big sea of love—and have very little power to rock you or the depth of you and your partner’s love for each other.

—

Please don’t misunderstand that any of this means you should stay with someone who doesn’t care about you or treats you badly. You want to be able to discern whether you’re tolerating things you shouldn’t be and staying with someone who is not good for you or just taking things personally that you really don’t need to be.

If you’re doing the latter, you can completely transform your relationship by putting these tips into practice. When you do, you not only remove much of what is dragging you down in your relationship, but you also allow yourself to start seeing and feeling more of the love that is already there, which will invite more of it to keep pouring in.

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About Hannah Brooks

Hannah Brooks is a love and marriage coach for sensitive women (and their partners). She helps them create the supportive, loving, light and connected relationship they really want. Don’t miss her podcast, Highly Sensitive, Happily Married. For further tips and guidance grab her free guide, The 7 Most Powerful Phrases To Deepen Connection in Your Marriage. Find her at lifeisworthloving.com.

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