When You Think You Know Yourself, but You’re Wrong

I know myself pretty well by now.

I’ve had seven decades to work on the case, and I’m not exactly known for leaving a question alone.

I know what matters to me. What gives me energy. What drains it. What I want more of. And what I have absolutely no intention of putting up with again.

At seventy, I’ve accumulated a fair amount of information.

Preferences. Patterns. Opinions. A fairly detailed operating manual.

After more than two decades as an executive coach, I’m also pretty good at helping other people figure these things out.

I could probably create a beautifully organized PowerPoint presentation about the next chapter of my life.

I’d know exactly how to format it.

I just wouldn’t know what to put on the slides. Which may be part of the problem.

We spend years trying to know ourselves better. Our patterns. Our triggers. Our strengths. Our blind spots. The stories we tell ourselves.

All useful.

But I’m beginning to wonder if self-awareness can eventually turn into something else.

Self-definition.

“I notice this about myself” becomes “This is who I am.”

And once we decide who we are, we can get pretty good at proving ourselves right.

I’ve said for years that I’m not a joiner. It rolls off my tongue.

I love being with people. Well, many of them. But clubs? Committees? Organized groups? Not really my thing.

Case closed.

Except recently I found myself scrolling through Meetup groups near where I live.

Books. Walking. Museums. Films. Travel. Food. Conversation. Practically every interest imaginable.

Who knew?

Apparently, millions of people.

I found several that sounded genuinely appealing. Then I closed the computer.

Signing up was easy. Actually showing up required a separate negotiation with myself.

Suddenly there were emails I should answer. Things around the house that needed attention. And, of course, another episode of Lioness.

Somewhere in the middle of this, I heard myself say it again.

I’m just not a joiner.

This time I caught it. Is that true? Or was it once true?

Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Walking into a room where I know no one has never come naturally to me. It’s easier when I have a role. A reason to be there. Someone waiting for me.

A Meetup is different.

You walk in because you chose to. No assignment. No built-in place. No guarantee you’ll click with anyone.

For someone who says she wants more connection, I can be surprisingly resistant to the awkward few minutes that often come before it.

Maybe “I’m not a joiner” isn’t entirely about groups. Maybe part of it is not yet knowing where I’ll belong. And belonging rarely happens before you show up.

That got my attention.

Because we all collect descriptions of ourselves.

I’m shy.

I’m not creative.

I could never travel alone.

I don’t like parties.

Some are absolutely true.

There’s real freedom in knowing yourself well enough to stop auditioning for experiences you already know you don’t enjoy.

At this point, I have no need to discover one more time that yelling over loud music is not my preferred form of human connection.

We’ve earned some clarity.

But what else may have gotten filed under self-knowledge without really deserving a permanent spot there?

Maybe someone decided in third grade that they weren’t artistic because their drawing of a horse looked like a kitchen appliance.

Sixty years later, they still won’t pick up a paintbrush.

I have another one.

I don’t give dinner parties. Except I like having people in my home. I love conversation. I’ve hosted plenty of gatherings.

What I don’t love is cooking. Somewhere along the way, apparently, I turned that into a personality trait.

Who wants to spend three hours preparing a wonderful meal I could eat in three minutes in front of a Phillies game?

And last I checked, food can be purchased.

So maybe I don’t dislike dinner parties. Maybe I dislike making dinner.

This is not a major psychological breakthrough. But I’m increasingly fond of the small ones.

Then there are the stories we tell ourselves that are a lot more flattering.

Open-minded.

Easygoing.

A great listener.

Think of the person who considers himself a wonderful listener while his spouse has been trying to finish the same sentence since Tuesday.

Most of us carry around an internal portrait of ourselves. Some of it is pretty accurate. Some may have had a little help from the AirBrush app.

That’s the other side of knowing ourselves.

It’s one thing to question a belief that limits us. It’s another to question one we rather like.

Maybe I’m not quite as open-minded as I think. Maybe I’m not such a great listener. Maybe “I’m just being direct” sounds very different to the person on the receiving end.

Those are less fun. Probably more useful.

Lately, I’ve been listening for certain phrases when they come out of my mouth.

I always.

I never.

I’m just not someone who…

I don’t automatically argue with them. I just make them show their work. When did I decide that? Is it still true? And maybe the question with the most bite:

What do I get to avoid if I keep believing it? Feeling awkward? Looking foolish? Finding out I’m not particularly good at something? Walking into a room where nobody knows my name?

Sometimes the story is protecting something. And sometimes it’s just old. That’s what interests me.

Not reinvention. I’m a little tired of that word.

We talk as though we periodically toss out one version of ourselves and unveil a shiny new one. That hasn’t been my experience.

I’m still the girl who rode her bike everywhere. The young woman who became a television journalist. The woman who walked away from that career and built another one.

They’re all still here. They just don’t all get a vote on every decision.

Maybe our earlier selves leave behind more than memories. They leave rules.

I’m not a joiner.

I don’t give dinner parties.

I would never do that.

That’s just not me.

Maybe.

Or maybe the rule has been sitting there so long nobody thought to ask whether it still applies.

The unexamined life may be a problem.

I’m beginning to think the overexplained life has hazards too.

You can get so good at telling yourself who you are that you stop noticing when life starts giving you different information.

I know myself pretty well. I hope I always will.

I’m just less interested these days in turning that knowledge into a permanent job description.

I’ve spent seven decades becoming the woman I am. It would be a shame to assume I’ve met all of her.

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About Jill Chernekoff

Jill Chernekoff is a seasoned executive leadership and communication coach, former Emmy Award-winning news anchor, and writer. She believes a good question can change everything, especially when we’re willing to ask it of ourselves. Visit her at chernekoffcommunications.com and on LinkedIn: Jill Chernekoff on LinkedIn.

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What One Great Loss Is Teaching Me About How to Live

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.” ~Mary Oliver 

I’ve spent much of my life living in fear of countless imagined tragedies—especially the untimely death of those I love.

Growing up, within the span of a few years, three children I was very close to lost one of their parents. The emotional devastation that followed taught me that people can disappear in an instant, shattering a world that had once felt happy and safe. My newfound awareness of the fragility of life led to panic attacks about my own parents dying.

These childhood experiences intensified my terror of death and further cemented the challenging emotional legacy I inherited from my parents: an activated nervous system perpetually primed for disaster.

My mother and father were both Holocaust survivors who’d been orphaned during the war. They’d each lost almost their entire family and every single material possession. The emotional atmosphere in our home was thick with unspoken grief and fear.

To me, death always felt apocalyptic—not a natural part of life. It’s no wonder that I spent decades struggling with intense anxiety about the innumerable catastrophes that could befall me and my family.

But in recent years—thanks to much healing work and a steadfast commitment to practices that calm my nervous system—I’ve been slowly learning to live with more ease.

Then tragedy struck one of my closest family friends. Seth Pollack—wise and wonderful, joyous and generous—was hit by a car during his morning bike ride. He died instantly.

Seth’s wife is my treasured friend, and our lives are closely interwoven. Suddenly, she and her daughters were thrust into a new life of tremendous loss and grief.

Devastated and in shocked disbelief, all my age-old terrors came roaring back. Once again, life felt unbearably painful, menacing, and fragile.

Now, almost a year has passed. While the anguish of losing Seth has not receded, his death, the beautiful way he lived, and the brave and honest way his family has been coping with his absence have all been teaching me important lessons about how I want to live.

Accepting the Truth of Impermanence

My friend’s death proved that although my anxiety about tragic loss has been intensified by trauma, my fears are not irrational. There is no way to guarantee that the people we cherish will be here tomorrow—or that we will be.

The truth is that the terms of being a human on this earth are non-negotiable, and worry is not protective. Constantly fighting against a reality that none of us can change is completely futile.

While knowing that nothing lasts forever can be frightening, it can also awaken us to the preciousness of the life we have right now.

Suddenly, I understood with startling clarity that I have two distinct choices about how to live the rest of my life: remain imprisoned by terror of inevitable loss or let the certainty of impermanence deepen my appreciation of the present moment—not scare me away from it.

Cultivating Presence Instead of Fear

When someone we deeply love and admire dies, they become extraordinarily present in our thoughts, bringing the qualities we most appreciated about them into sharper focus. Their light can even seem to shine brighter and serve as aguide, illuminating the path we want to follow.

No matter how heartbreaking Seth’s sudden death was, everyone who knew him felt that he’d lived a magnificently full and meaningful life—embracing this world’s wonders and pleasures while enriching and uplifting the lives of so many others.

Seth lived with faith, not fear. He would never want his legacy to be that those who loved him became more frightened of living.

His example makes me wonder how I will feel when I look back on my own life. Will I have allowed my worries to steal so much of my peace and joy, or will I have figured out a way to live with more serenity and faith?

Since I’ve never been able to reason myself out of anxiety, I decided to try a new experiment. I asked the frightened parts of myself if they would be willing to put their anxiety aside for just a few hours and try to embody the qualities I found so inspiring in my friend and still feel so strongly despite his physical absence.

I wasn’t demanding permanent change from parts of myself that had spent a lifetime being vigilant. I was simply asking: Could we try presence instead of fear for one afternoon?

For the next few hours, whenever fear arose, I acknowledged it and reassured myself that I could attend to it later—just not right now. Rather than trying to suppress or push fear away, I returned to the present moment, tuning in to the feelings of relaxation and trust I was trying to cultivate.

That afternoon turned out to be one of the most pleasurable I can remember, even though I simply went about my usual routine. Nothing outwardly changed; what changed was my experience of it.

I felt lighter, more relaxed, and more open to pleasure and connection. I could hold my husband’s gaze longer, sing with gusto while walking my dogs, and initiate lengthier hugs.

The Cost of Living in Fear

My experiment helped me understand that fear doesn’t just make me suffer—it closes me off and diminishes how fully I engage with life. Fear narrows my perspective and breeds wariness and suspicion. It directs me toward everything that might go wrong and away from what is actually happening in the present moment.

That one afternoon not only illuminated what fear has been costing me, it also allowed me to taste what’s possible when it no longer co-opts my attention and drains so much of my energy.

While fear insists that I need certainty before I can feel safe, trust lets me participate wholeheartedly in a life that has never offered certainty to anyone.

I’ve been returning to this experiment regularly, and the more often I do it, the easier and more natural it gets. I’m slowly learning that I don’t have to follow fear every time it appears. Life is far more magical and enjoyable without it.

Choosing What to Carry Forward

I have a powerful legacy of fear to contend with, but tuning into my friend’s enduring light and joyous buoyancy is giving me a taste of a much happier way to live. This practice is showing me that deeply ingrained patterns from the past do not need to define me. I have the agency to shape my own future.

Being so close to the type of tragedy that has always terrified me confirmed that we can lose someone we love without warning, and the pain will be devastating. But it also proved that endlessly anticipating that pain will not protect or prepare me, which has weakened some of fear’s hold.

I’m beginning to understand that mortality can teach the opposite lesson from the one fear has taught me for so long. Fear says, “Because I could lose this, I need to constantly brace myself.” But another voice is becoming stronger: “Because I could lose this, I want to fully appreciate it while I can.”

The inevitability of loss does not need to be an argument for living fearfully. It can be a powerful reason to love more deeply and to savor life more unreservedly.

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About Myra Goodman

Myra Goodman is the award-winning author of four books and the creator of Quest for Eternal Sunshine—an online platform offering free resources for healing and well-being. In her first career, Myra co-founded Earthbound Farm, where she spent thirty years growing the company from a backyard garden into the world’s largest grower of organic produce. Sign up for her free monthly newsletter and follow her work on Instagram and Facebook.

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The Day I Heard My Own Voice Coming Out of My Child’s Mouth

“Children are not things to be molded, but people to be unfolded.” ~Jess Lair

Growing up, I was often drawn to classmates who were soft-spoken and gentle. I admired how calm they seemed, because inside me was the opposite. I had a temper that flared at the smallest things.

I always gravitated toward people and situations that gave me a sense of peace, the very thing I didn’t have at home. As a child, I couldn’t understand why I craved that peace so badly. It took me becoming a parent to finally understand why.

My childhood home wasn’t peaceful. There was heavy drinking in the house, and my parents fought almost every night. Slowly, without any of us realizing it, that environment was breaking something inside my siblings and me.

The result was a child who grew into an adult carrying too much anger and irritability. People started calling me “short-tempered,” and eventually I accepted that label as simply who I was. I never once stopped to ask myself why I had become this way.

It was only after becoming a parent that I understood something important. A child’s growth begins in the environment of their home, long before anyone starts giving them lessons in right and wrong.

If we want our children to grow into successful, kind, grounded people, we have to give them a stable emotional foundation. A tree only bears good fruit when its roots have been cared for from the very beginning.

My own parents didn’t have much education, and I don’t think they ever realized how deeply the tension at home was affecting us. Perhaps that’s why, even now as adults, my siblings and I still carry traces of that environment with us.

Meeting My Opposite

Everything in my life began to shift when I got married. They say opposites attract, and that’s exactly how it was with my partner. Where I was quick to anger, he was calm, patient, and never one to panic.

His father had been in the military, so his childhood home was built on discipline and steadiness. That upbringing shaped him into someone remarkably even-tempered, and being close to him started to change how I saw myself.

I began to realize something I’d never questioned before: you don’t have to lose your temper over every small thing. Getting irritated just because you don’t feel like doing something ends up hurting you in the end, not just the people around you.

But old patterns don’t dissolve just because you can finally see them. My partner stayed calm and steady while I remained quick to anger. And without meaning to, I began raising my own child the exact same way I had been raised.

Seeing Myself Reflected Back

When my child was small, my outbursts were simply accepted without protest. Honestly, I was satisfied with that. I believed that raising my voice and reacting sharply was how I maintained discipline in the house.

I didn’t realize the damage I was doing underneath the surface. I wasn’t teaching discipline at all. I was planting fear, and my child began to associate every small mistake with the fear of my anger.

Slowly, my child started pulling away from me and growing closer to my partner instead. It wasn’t hard to understand why. He listened, stayed calm, and explained things with patience instead of volume.

I didn’t fully grasp what I had done until the day I experienced it myself, reflected back at me. One day, by accident, I tore a page out of my child’s notebook while tidying up.

The reaction was immediate and sharp: “Don’t you realize this is my school notebook? It’s not your property—you can’t just tear pages out whenever you feel like it.” The words themselves were ordinary, but the tone was unmistakable.

It was my own tone. My own sharpness, spoken back to me in a child’s voice. In that single moment, something in me went still, because I recognized exactly what I was hearing.

This was what I had been giving for years, and I was only now feeling what it was like to receive it. For the first time, I understood what I had actually been teaching at home.

The Decision That Changed Everything

That day, I made a decision that reshaped how I showed up as a parent. If I wanted my child to grow into a secure, emotionally healthy adult, I had to change first, not the other way around.

Whatever we consistently give our children, in tone, in patience, in reaction, is often what they eventually reflect back to us.

Who we are as parents shows up in our children, often more clearly than we’d like. They are mirrors of us, whether or not we’re ready to see our own reflection in them.

What I’d Want Every Parent to Know

Our children don’t just learn from what we tell them. They absorb who we are, moment by moment, especially in the moments we’re not consciously trying to teach anything at all.

The environment we create at home becomes the emotional foundation our children carry for the rest of their lives, long after they’ve grown up and left it behind. That’s a heavier responsibility than most of us realize while we’re in the thick of daily parenting.

If you find yourself repeating patterns you didn’t consciously choose—an unpredictable temper, harsh words, a habit of raising your voice when you’re overwhelmed—please know you’re not a bad parent. You’re likely repeating what was modeled for you, without ever having the chance to unlearn it.

But the moment you notice the pattern, you have the power to interrupt it. That noticing is the whole turning point. It’s the difference between passing pain forward and finally setting it down.

You can choose to pause before reacting. You can choose patience over panic, even when it’s hard, even when old habits pull you the other way. It won’t happen perfectly or all at once.

Start small. The next time you feel that familiar flash of irritation rising, try naming it silently to yourself before you speak. That tiny pause is often enough to change the entire tone of what comes next.

It also helps to apologize when you get it wrong. Telling a child “I raised my voice, and that wasn’t fair to you” doesn’t undermine your authority. It teaches them that accountability and love can exist in the same sentence.

Your children are watching you far more closely than they’re listening to you. The most powerful gift you can give them isn’t perfection. It’s your willingness to grow, to reflect, and to change when you see something in yourself that needs healing.

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About Jyoti Yadav

Jyoti Yadav writes about simple living, minimalism, and finding clarity in a world that often encourages excess. Her life journey reflects experiences that many readers can relate to, making her writing genuine, practical, and deeply personal. Through her articles, she shares real-life insights that help readers navigatge a complicated world with greater ease, purpose, and peace of mind. You can explore more of her work at jyotisimplelife.com.

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When Life Reminds You That Nothing Is Guaranteed

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” ~Albert Camus

A little over a year ago, I went to a bookstore on a cold night to meet a friend at the café. It’s taken me this long to finally write about it.

We had one of those conversations you need when you’re trying to make sense of things during the busy rush of life. The kind of conversation that makes you feel like you’re in the right place at the right time and you’re making progress.

I left the bookstore feeling like I was a little bit closer to being on the right track in life, got into my car, and started driving home. I was thinking about the conversation, feeling grateful.

Then I stopped at a traffic light on one of the major roads. I looked into my rear-view mirror and saw a car coming toward me at full speed. In an instant, I realized the driver wasn’t slowing down.

There wasn’t time to think. I braced myself for the impact.

I watched him try to swerve, but he couldn’t avoid me. He struck the left taillight of my car with such force that I don’t remember what happened in the few seconds afterward.

The next thing I can recall is being on the side of the intersection, apparently having rolled several hundred feet from where I’d been waiting at the light. I was disoriented and trying to figure out where I was.

The police arrived and asked some basic questions about what had happened. When I tried to answer, all I could do was stutter.

I couldn’t get the words out. I kept repeating myself. A paramedic told me I was in shock.

Being in shock is a strange experience. Your mind is working to comprehend the situation while your body is still freaking out.

I called my wife, and she came to get me. We found out that the person who hit me had fled the scene and had struck several other cars as he escaped.

Several of us were standing in the median with flashing police lights surrounding us. We all started talking, and I learned that one of the women was celebrating her birthday.

I remember looking across the street and seeing a bakery. I thought about going over and getting her a cake. That would’ve been perfect.

We were standing in the middle of a major intersection after a violent collision, surrounded by damaged cars and flashing lights, and still could’ve had cake!

I wanted to celebrate the fact that she was still here. That we all had survived this experience and could still make something good from it.

I’d love to say we had a wonderful time on the side of the road eating cake together, but it never happened. We walked to the bakery, and it was closed.

Standing there on the grass between traffic lanes, looking at that closed shop, something shifted in me. The strange tenderness of wanting to buy a stranger a cake in the middle of a crash site felt just as real as the collision itself.

I like to imagine that life is more predictable than it is. We make plans, build careers, raise children, fall in love, save money, make appointments, go to bookstores, sit at traffic lights, and assume the next moment will resemble the one we’re currently experiencing.

Most of the time, it does.

But sometimes a car comes barreling through a red light. Sometimes a phone rings with news we never expected. Sometimes someone we love gets sick.

Relationships change. Jobs that once felt secure become uncertain. The future we imagined disappears and leaves us standing in a place we never intended to be.

The difficulty I’ve found is that we can’t shield ourselves completely from any of it. That realization can make us afraid. It can also make us awake.

I’m starting to understand that maybe the question isn’t how we can make life safe enough that nothing terrible will ever happen. Maybe it’s more like focusing on the kind of person we want to be while we are here—the choices we make, the way we love, and the way we respond when life doesn’t go the way we had hoped.

I’ve spent decades searching for answers because I want to understand how a human being can live with uncertainty without becoming consumed by it.

I’ve learned that I can’t control everything that happens to me. But I can become more present to what is happening.

I can notice my fear without becoming identified with it. I can embrace my longing for approval without allowing it to determine my actions. I can face the places where I feel empty inside and become curious about them instead of trying to fill them right away.

Right now, I’m writing this essay at a park with my bare feet on the grass. The breeze is cool on my skin, and I hear children laughing on the playground.

I’m breathing. I’m here. I’m alive.

Somewhere, someone is sitting at a red light without giving a second thought to what might happen next.

Being awake means knowing that this moment is not guaranteed and choosing to enter it anyway. It means doing the work that feels like ours to do and loving people even though we can’t keep them forever.

I’m also discovering how important it is, for me at least, to tell the story.

When I share my life’s stories, I don’t know exactly who will read it.

You might be struggling with your own uncertainty. You might be someone who has experienced something much more frightening. You might be sitting at a crossroads in your own life, wondering who you really are and whether there is still time to become that person.

Maybe you’re carrying something nobody else can see; I don’t know. But, when I tell you my story, something beautiful happens. For a moment, I’m not alone in my experience, and I hope that as you read, you’re not alone in yours.

We can’t prevent every collision or know what’s coming through the next intersection. And there’s no guarantee that the bakery will be open when we need a birthday cake.

But we can stand together in the median for a while. We can look at one another and say, “We’re still here.”

That’s enough to make us stop, breathe, and realize what an extraordinary thing it is to be alive.

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About Daniel H. Shapiro

Dr. Daniel H. Shapiro is keynote speaker, author, and mentor. He is passionate about human connection and the stories we carry with us. For more information about his book, The 5 Practices of the Caring Mentor, or his mentoring and speaking services, check out mentoringwithcare.com.

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How to Stop Letting Anxiety Control Your Reactions

“Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.” ~ Bessel van der Kolk

For years, I thought my anxiety was a character flaw. I thought I could think my way through it. Reason with myself long enough, and I’d finally get to the other side of it. I never did.

Every time I thought I had made peace with it, something small would happen, and I’d be right back in that place. Heart racing. Hands shaking. Anticipating a fallout in something that hadn’t even happened yet.

In my previous marriage, I learned to read a room before I even understood I was reading it. I could tell from the sound of a door closing how the night was going to play out. I walked on eggshells for years.

My body knew things my mind hadn’t caught up to yet. I’d feel my chest tighten and my stomach drop, and I’d start smoothing things over before I even knew what I was smoothing over. I called it being “sensitive” or “too much.” I never once called it what it actually was.

When I finally left that marriage, I thought the anxiety would leave with it. It didn’t. Years later, in situations that weren’t dangerous at all, I’d still feel that same tightness in my chest. A raised voice in another room. A delayed text back. Someone going quiet during an argument. My body would react like I was in danger even when I wasn’t.

My mind would spend hours afterward trying to talk myself down from something it hadn’t fully understood in the first place.

I didn’t understand what was actually happening until I started training as a health counselor and studying attachment theory.

My anxiety was a nervous system that had learned a long time ago that danger could show up without warning. It built a whole set of reactions to keep me safe. Reactions that fired on their own long before my conscious thoughts ever got a vote.

That’s what anxious attachment looks like from the inside. A nervous system that learned early that connection could disappear without warning, so it stays braced for loss even when nothing’s actually wrong.

This is what nervous system dysregulation looks like day to day. A body that learned, at some point, to treat ordinary stress like a real threat. It keeps sounding the alarm until something teaches it otherwise.

This is the part that took me the longest to understand. No amount of reasoning with myself touched it. That reaction lived somewhere older and faster than the reasoning part of my brain.

A part of me that had learned its lessons through repetition, emotion, and the body itself, long before I had words for any of it.

A nervous system responds to repetition, emotion, and physiology. That’s how change actually happens and new neuropathways get formed—by working a new pattern into the body the same way the old one got there.

The shift that changed everything for me started very small. I started paying attention to the reaction while it was happening.

Even now, in a relationship where I’m safe and loved, I sometimes catch it. My partner goes quiet for a few minutes, and my chest tightens before I can stop it. The old questions surface: Is he mad? Did I do something? My body braces for impact that isn’t coming.

But now I notice it. Right as my chest tightens, right as my shoulders creep up toward my ears, I put my hand on my chest and breathe deeply until it softens. I name what my body is actually doing. My chest is tight. My shoulders are up around my ears. I’m holding my breath. That’s all.

Just naming it, staying with it, letting it move through me. I remind myself that silence doesn’t mean what it used to mean. I stay in the present moment instead of disappearing into old stories.

Over time—and it did take time—that pause grew. The gap between the trigger and my reaction went from nothing to a second. Then a few seconds. Then long enough that I could choose what happened next.

I started responding to what was actually happening in front of me, paying attention to the present moment on its own terms. That gap is where my life changed. Slowly, in all the small ordinary moments where I used to disappear into old patterns without even noticing I’d left, it began to shift.

If you’ve spent years feeling like your anxiety is some kind of personal failing or something you should’ve fixed by now through sheer willpower or enough therapy or enough journaling, I want you to hear this. Your body is doing exactly what it learned to do to keep you safe, and it’s still doing that job today. Even in situations where you’re not in danger anymore.

Healing starts in the body, with noticing what’s happening there before your mind even catches up to explain it. Regulating your nervous system can start right where you are, with something as simple as noticing one sensation and staying with it a few seconds longer than usual.

Here’s what I’ve learned about working with a nervous system.

First, notice before you narrate.

The instant something happens in your body, your mind wants to jump in with a story about what it means. Before you get to the story, just notice the sensation itself. The tight chest. The shallow breath. The urge to apologize or explain or disappear. Notice it the way you’d notice weather moving across the sky, without deciding yet what it means about you.

Let’s say someone you love goes quiet. Before you ask what’s wrong or start replaying the last hour looking for what you did, pause. Put your hand somewhere grounding—your chest, your belly, your thigh. Notice what’s happening in your body right now. Name it without explaining it. Tight chest. Shallow breath. Urge to fix. That’s the first step.

Second, breathe through it before you decide what to do next.

Anxiety wants you to act immediately. Fix it. Explain it. Smooth it over. Most of the time, there’s no real emergency requiring that speed. A few slow breaths won’t cost you anything, and they give your body enough time to remember it’s not actually under attack.

In that same moment, with the quiet partner and the tightening chest, try this: Breathe in for four counts. Out for six. Let your exhale be longer than your inhale. Do it two or three times before you say or do anything. You’re not ignoring the situation. You’re giving your body a chance to come back online before you respond from a place that isn’t actually about what’s happening right now.

Third, expect this to take repetition.

The pattern took years to build, and it won’t undo itself the first time you try something new. Every time you pause before reacting, even for one extra second, you’re teaching your nervous system something it didn’t know before. That adds up slowly. Then one day you realize the gap that used to be a fraction of a second is now long enough to actually live in.

This shift is available to you no matter where you’re starting from. Even if therapy hasn’t touched it yet. Even if you’ve read every book and tried every technique and still find yourself reacting the same old way.

The body holds the pattern, and the body can learn a new one. It happens through paying attention, gently and consistently, until your nervous system finally believes what your mind’s known for a while now. That you’re safe and that you get to decide what happens next.

I still catch old patterns sometimes. A voice raised in another room can still make my chest tighten for half a second before I remember where I actually am. The difference now is I notice it. I breathe through it. I get to choose what happens next, and so do you.

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About Rebecca Wells

Rebecca is a certified health counselor through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and an attachment theory certified life coach specializing in nervous system regulation. She created the Wounds to Wisdom Pathway for working through attachment patterns in the body and has logged more than a thousand hours of private coaching alongside her own healing journey. She is the author of seven books and the founder of Wellness with Rebecca. Connect with her at wellnesswithrebecca.com.

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When You Can’t Get Everything Right at Once

“I once heard someone say that a sign of enlightenment was the ability to say (and mean it) ‘Well, this isn’t what I want, but it’s what I got, so okay.’” ~Sylvia Boorstein

I once met a speed-cuber, one of those people who could solve a Rubik’s Cube in sixty seconds. Nice friendly young guy.

I hated him.

Not personally.

I hated him on the level of metaphor.

I hated him because I was jealous. Life always felt to me just like one big insoluble Rubik’s Cube. I could never get things under control on all sides at once. The harder I tried to make one side of my cube all one color, the more infuriatingly multicolored the other sides got.

It’s still like that. I still can’t get everything right at once. I can see clients or do chores around the house. I can spend time with my family or work on my book. I can go to dinner with friends or watch my weight. I can keep up with my professional reading or read mysteries to relax.

The one thing I can’t do is everything. I’m trading off all damn day long.

That seems to be how change works in the larger world too. The more we try to force life to meet our expectations, the more life pushes back.

It is a point made by cautionary tales as old as Midas and Scrooge and as modern as Jurassic Park.

And it is especially relevant to those of us who struggle with addiction to control.

I should explain that I consider myself a control addict.

I consider you one, too.

I don’t mean we’re all bossy or domineering. By control I mean our deep human desire to make reality cooperate—to make people, situations, and outcomes conform to our needs, wants, and expectations.

I’ve spent years thinking about how we do this, and why.

Along the way I’ve come to see three paradoxes hiding inside our attempts at control.

The first paradox is that the more control we need, the less in control we tend to feel. The second paradox is that the harder we try to control other people, the more we force them to control us back

But it’s the third paradox that made me hate the speed-cuber:

To get control in one place, you must give it up in another.

I am not alone in hating this idea.

I can think of many people whose determined attempt to get control over one area of their lives triggered a loss of control in another.

The drinker who used alcohol to manage his feelings, only to lose control of his need for alcohol.

The business executive who achieved success and status at work but became estranged from his wife and kids and extended family.

The mom who made her children the focus of her existence, then found herself so disconnected from her husband that they essentially stopped speaking.

The depressed man who spent years successfully hiding his feelings from everyone, then one morning found himself too exhausted to get out of bed.

And so on.

You’d think watching the third paradox in action over and over again would teach me to remember it.

You would be wrong.

I still want to write the book and spend time with my family. I want to earn money and take time to rest and play. I want bagels and pizza and the number on the bathroom scale to drop.

One thing has changed, though.

I’m getting better at not treating the scrambled side of the cube as meaning I’ve screwed up.

For most of my life, I took the scrambled side as evidence of failure. If the house was a mess, I should have cleaned it. If I wasn’t writing, I was wasting time. If I was writing, I was neglecting something else. If I ate the pizza, I shouldn’t have. If I skipped it, I was missing something I wanted.

There was always another side of the cube accusing me.

Now I see it as a reminder of something.

It reminds me that I’ve made a choice.

That inside every “yes” there’s a “no.” That a good writing day means chores don’t get done. That a good chore day means the book doesn’t get written.

Every choice costs me something.

Stated that plainly, the lesson seems Duh-obvious.

That it’s not obvious, for me or for most people, returns me to the idea of control.

Because there’s a part of each of us that simply wants what it wants. That wants and expects and demands and feels hurt and angry when that demand is not met. That doesn’t just want choices, but choices without cost. That wants to have the cake and to eat it at the same time.

Call this part stubborn, or childish, or addicted, as I do.

Whatever you call it, I’m guessing you carry some version of it too.

Don’t misunderstand me. I still envy that kid. I’d still love to know what it feels like to watch all six sides click perfectly into place.

But the addicted part of me is also coming­­­­—slowly —to accept that life isn’t a Rubik’s Cube.

Let me close with a story that shows what I mean.

During a routine physical my doc runs a cardiogram and finds a blip that suggests a TIA (transient ischemic attack). He tells me to drive to the ER. I feel fine, but I go.

At the hospital they put me on a gurney and park me in a hallway for four hours while they run tests. I have to cancel six client sessions, calm my worried wife over the phone, wonder what all this will cost, and then just lie there and wait.

At one time I would have reacted to all this with frustration, worry, or anger. Now I surprise myself by taking a one-hour nap. It’s a pretty good nap, too.

The surprise here was discovering that the addicted part of me has become willing to accept tradeoffs without protest.

To believe I’m not failing at life just because I can’t solve it.

And that the one thing I can’t do is everything.

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About Steve Hauptman, LCSW

Steve Hauptman, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and the author of Monkeytraps: Why We Try to Control Everything and How We Can Stop (2015; revised edition forthcoming), a book about our addiction to control and the problems it creates in our lives and relationships. His writing explores control, emotional safety, relationships, and what becomes possible when we stop trying to make reality cooperate. Learn more at https://monkeytraps.wordpress.com and https://ift.tt/FvYLVlZ.

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