Showing all posts in November 2016

How to Stop Living in Scarcity

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How to Stop Living in Scarcity

The feeling of scarcity is alive and well in our culture. Advertisers use it to make us feel like we need their products to be happy. Politicians use it to exploit our fear of not having enough, marginalize us, and look to them to give us more. We tell ourselves that there isn’t enough time and money to go back to school. We tell others that we don’t have enough time to call or see them. We tell ourselves that we have to work more, earn more, do more, acquire more, achieve more.

We are not telling ourselves these things because we feel driven to fulfill our life’s purpose. We’re telling ourselves this because we are coming from a deep place of fear and lack. And we are looking for a way out. We tell ourselves this because we’re afraid we don’t or won’t have enough to be happy- enough money, enough stuff, enough accomplishments, enough praise, enough status, enough respect. And if we don’t have enough of these things we’re not happy; we’re unfulfilled. If we don’t have enough of these things we’ll have to pay more attention to why this feeling of fear and lack is surfacing in the first place. So we run ourselves into the ground trying to get money to get more stuff.

The bummer part of all this is that the more we tell ourselves we don’t have enough, the more we don’t have enough. It creates an even greater imbalance. If I’m afraid I don’t have enough money, I’m going to work more which means I’ll have less time to spend with loved ones and do things that nurture me. If I feel like I don’t have enough stuff, I’m going to spend more money consuming the things I think I need or want. Time spent consuming will also cut down on time I could be spending with loved ones, working on a cause about which I am passionate, or doing things that nurture me. I’ll need to work more to make sure I can both pay my bills and consume more stuff. Pretty soon, I’ll be tired from all this working and consuming, more isolated because I miss my loved ones. I might spend more time watching TV or going online. I might eat and drink more. It’s kind of a rough cycle.

There are plenty of times in our lives when we feel capable and grounded in our ability to manage scarcity, times when this cycle isn’t a problem for us because we can keep our feelings in check. But sometimes we find ourselves more vulnerable, less able to evaluate what’s happening for us. We have more difficulty identifying what we need and the healthy steps it will take to get there.

We might fall into this scarcity cycle when we’re feeling insecure about something- our relationships, our economic status, a failure we’ve recently experienced (or a failure we are trying to avoid), the anticipation of a major discomfort. Sometimes stuff/emotional burden might pile up over time. It’ll sneakily cloud our judgment. We might not even notice we’ve fallen into this cycle until we realize how unhappy we’ve been for the past few months.

Getting out of the pit of scarcity-living isn’t easy, but it’s worth the challenge. People just feel better when we’re not dominated by this fear of not having enough. And it’s much more satisfying to uncover how we came to believe that there isn’t enough than to keep throwing clothes, food, money, substances into a sieve.

I often suggest a slow start:

  • Identify cravings, impulses, compulsions.
  • Identify thoughts and feelings of scarcity
  • Be curious about how you feel before and after engaging in craving/impulse/compulsive behavior
  • Exercise self-compassion. You’re definitely not going to judge your way out of this so, just be gentle with yourself.

This will be a good start. If you need further help, let me know and we will set up a time to talk.

 

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

Post-Election 2016

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Post-Election 2016

The U.S. General Election of 2016 has been stressful for most and torture for many. The months leading up to the disastrous outcome supplied us with vitriolic arguments and constant contention. Some of us have been directly impacted by the state of affairs our nation for years, for generations while others are just now feeling the fire, post-election. Some of us were shocked, others are not surprised but disappointed. Postings on social media and articles in major news publications have called this election divisive. They’re right. But the divisiveness and division plagued our communities for generations.

We’ve always been stronger together and now is as good a time as any to exercise this strength. It’s easy to let our feelings dominate us and react, especially when people’s safety is at risk. And it’s easy to get defensive. Some people deal with this by avoiding all information and actively disengaging from the issues. Others inundate themselves with information, mobilize, and march for justice. Some people are relieved Clinton lost. Others are devastated. Many felt that neither candidate was suitable. Let’s use this process as a way to learn how to be better with and for each other. Instead of avoiding conversations and each other, let’s use this to make us stronger, to help us see what else needs to be done, and to take responsibility for ourselves as part of the solution. Here are a few suggestions to stay grounded and connected to loved ones during this time:

 

  • Put your energy into action to ensure that you’re doing everything you can. If you’re angry and scared, find out how you can translate that energy into something that will make you feel productive and empowered. If you’re tired of fighting, rest and ask your network to hold your torch for a while.
  • Don’t get lost in self-blame if you didn’t vote, if you didn’t participate in activism or social justice activities, or if you don’t live your life in the margins. Instead, educate yourself on what next steps need to be taken and take them.
  • Don’t just apologize to your Muslim, POC, LGBQ, Trans, Undocumented, Migrant, Sexual Assault Survivor, Female friends. Ask what you can do to support them. Fight alongside them.
  • Have conversations about this with others if you feel up to it and give yourself permission to walk away if you don’t.
  • Remind yourself that it is not your job to take care of your friends’ feelings if they are experiencing white guilt, straight guilt, privileged group guilt, etc.
  • Donate your time, your energy, and your resources.
  • Keep talking. Be compassionately curious about other people’s experience. Ask questions and communicate with others about why they believe what they believe. This is to lay the groundwork for empathy and understanding. Both are critical in productive communication and soltution-finding. When we shut down and stop talking, stop listening, we cut ourselves off from finding workable solutions.
  • Educate others where you see a need for it. Much of the research has shown us that our nation is in this position of making hate/fear-fueled choices based on a severe lack of education and lack of exposure to diversity.
  • Respect others’ grieving processes and how they choose to express it. Be sensitive to their needs and experience. Everyone’s process is different.
  • Remember to engage your self-compassion. Check in with yourself and give yourself what you need as you become aware of it. When you need soothing or validation  try repeating to yourself, “Even though I am feeling________________, I deeply and profoundly accept myself.” Self-compassion is a fundamental resource available to us.
  • Identify and surround yourself with whatever and whoever connects you to hope.

 

And please let me know if you need anything. I’m always here.

 

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

What is Your Avoidance Telling You?

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What is Your Avoidance Telling You?

Avoidance isn’t always unhealthy. In fact, there are plenty of times that it’s really adaptive. I want to avoid getting a parking ticket, so I move my car during the specified times. You want to avoid getting fired so you do the parts of your job that you’d prefer not to do. I want to avoid getting scratched by that mysterious cat, so I won’t bend down to pet her.

Sometimes we’ve personally experienced something that has taught us to avoid a certain stimulus and other times it’s common sense or a gut feeling. In my early twenties, I had to learn through a few different experiences that Hot Cheetos should be avoided if I wanted to side-step heartburn and a fairly sizeable stomach ache. I did not, however, have to learn through personal experience that the assignments for my Abnormal Developmental Psychology class needed to be completed and handed in on time. My instincts told me that my professor had zero tolerance for tardy assignments.

And really, it’s up to us to decide what we’re willing to endure. If you don’t mind getting the parking ticket, dealing with heartburn, or getting a bad grade, you probably won’t move your car. You’ll eat that bag of Hot Cheetos while procrastinating your assignments. We all have varying levels of tolerance to discomfort. And we even label discomfort differently. I might experience public speaking as uncomfortable, but you might label it as one of the more pleasurable ways to pass an evening. It really depends on what we tell ourselves about the experience we are having.

Avoidance becomes more troublesome or unhealthy when it gets in the way of our relationships, responsibilities, and the way we want to live our lives when it becomes our thinking-doing pattern. If I think, “Ugh, I really hate this meeting. I don’t want to go. We never get anything done, and it just goes on and on forever,” and then I skip the meeting once to stay back and get some work done, that’s not the end of the world. But I’m definitely going to want to get that thought process under control. If I constantly tell myself how much I hate the meeting and label it as something undesirable, I’m going to believe that it’s something I need to avoid. I’m going to make it pretty hard on myself to motivate when it’s time to go to the meeting. The more difficult it is for me to find the motivation to go, the more I’ll probably find ways to get out of it. That becomes a problem with both my thinking and my doing (behavior).

I’m not saying avoidance is bad or that we need to manipulate or trick ourselves out of feeling it. I’m saying we need to be curious about it. If I’m curious about why I don’t want to go to the meeting, what makes me so uncomfortable, I’ll probably learn something. I might learn that I need to speak up about it. I might learn that I can effect change by using my voice. Maybe I’ll see that I need to talk about it with my boss and we’ll both discover that my time is better spent doing something else. Upon further inspection, I might find that this is a much more chronic problem than I realized and discover that it’s time to look for a new job. If you allow yourself to contemplate why you’re often late with assignments, maybe you’ll discover that it’s because you don’t want to be in the field you’re studying. Maybe you’ll even find that you don’t want to be in school at all right now.

This is one of the gifts of avoidance. “If I don’t think about it, I don’t have to deal with it.” We can just keep skipping the meeting rather than thinking about training and searching for a new job. We can continue not to get credit for late assignments and focus on that problem instead of risking what it might be like to tell our parents that we don’t want to be in school right now. We can come home to our partner after a long day and sit in front of the TV with our phone in our hand and not think or talk about the fact that we haven’t felt very connected lately. When we avoid, we don’t have to do the thing, and we don’t have to think about why we’re not doing the thing.

I like to use mindfulness when I’m dealing with avoidance, my own or someone else’s. Give it a try. Ask yourself what you notice about the situation you are avoiding. What’s it like to do it? What’s it like to avoid it? What are the sensations associated with both? What does it mean to do the thing you are avoiding? And what does it mean to avoid it? What meaning are you making out of the sensations? How are you labeling them?

Bringing a little mindfulness is a good start to hearing what your avoidance is trying to tell you. You deserve to know.

 

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

Giving Versus Giving In

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Giving Versus Giving In

Being in a successful, healthy relationship requires prosocial behavior. We must employ tools such as active listening, curiosity, giving the benefit of the doubt, assuming the best intentions, empathy, honesty, cooperation, and sharing. All of these actions sit under the umbrella of giving. Most of us are familiar with the saying “relationships require give and take.” Giving is an essential part of any relationship.

I’ve seen a lot of people who confuse giving with giving in. And the two have very different implications for a relationship.

Giving comes from a loving, strong, and often courageous place. When we give someone the benefit of the doubt, for instance, we’re allowing ourselves to trust, to be in a vulnerable position. We are not defending ourselves with skepticism or assumptions. We’re giving out of love and in doing so enriching our relationship.

Much can be given from such a loving, strong, and courageous place within ourselves- boundaries, empathy, second chances, forgiveness, patience. We can navigate our own limits of giving with more confidence and self-assuredness when we come from this place. We can teach cooperate, receive and give back. We can truly give.

But sometimes it’s hard to inhabit this place that lives within us. We feel drained or exhausted or alone or overwhelmed. We want to avoid the feelings we’re experiencing from the situation that’s causing us to have to decide what and how much we will give.

Most of us have been there. Most of us have found ourselves saying something like, “Fine, take the ice cream.” Or “Yeah, I’ll just do it. Whatever.” Instead of giving, we’re giving in. If we do this enough, we can build some pretty hefty resentment. We start to feel totally disempowered, that we have no voice (or that our voice doesn’t matter). We might even begin to assume that this is what everyone expects- for us to just give-in and soon we believe that everyone has an agenda. We start to feel defeated.

Some of us give in more than others. When we are afraid of confrontation, we give-in. Some of us do it because we’re afraid we’ll be rejected if we don’t. Some of us believe that that’s our role, to give-in endlessly. Some of us would have been hurt in the past if we didn’t give-in and defer to someone else, so we’ve learned to do it as a way to keep ourselves safe. Many of us give in because that’s what we’ve been conditioned to do; we don’t really recognize it as giving in.

A good way to check-in with ourselves to find out if we are giving or giving in is to pause and see what our intention is. Do we want to get this conversation over with or avoid a feeling we don’t like? We’re probably giving in. If we pause to take the temperature of our intention and our feeling, we’ll start to see how we feel when we are giving in and how different we feel when we are giving.

If we can, we should try not to judge ourselves (or others) for this. It’s something that happens.  We get tired or overworked and make mistakes. So, every-so-often giving-in is bound to happen. We can keep an eye on it and make sure we’re keeping it in check because the less we give in and the more we give, the more we will serve our relationships.

I know it’s not always easy to change behavioral patterns. Identifying it is the easy part; changing it provides much more challenging work. I’d love to talk with you more about this if you have questions about it. We’ll figure it out together, little by little.

 

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie