I swear we need a twelve step program for overgiving.

Not to mention an overhaul of the culture that has trained us to do it. Barring such improbable changes, you can learn a simple technique to override the habit.

The following discussion provides the cultural context of overgiving in a hetero marriage which is my own point of reference. If this doesn’t apply to you, go ahead and skip to the end for the exercise.

Where’s this coming from, you might be wondering. For me, this issue never strays far from my mind. Honestly, it’s the most likely reason my own family of origin splintered apart. I imagine my mother wanted to be a person again, not just an invisible caretaker of four children while her husband came and went as he pleased. Having lived through this cautionary tale, I’ve been actively trying to unlearn my own conditioning ever since.

The best way to do this, imho, is to understand the context. A favorite coaching partner sent me a podcast yesterday that put it so bluntly I felt compelled to share.

 

In Episode 33 of Bewildered, Martha Beck and Rowan Mangan invite their dear friend, author Elizabeth Gilbert in for a chat. She gives a firsthand account of the hostility our society shows childless, single women who refuse to be free labor for a society that chooses not to take care of its citizens (see American childcare, healthcare, eldercare, education, etc.) 

For one of her books, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, Elizabeth learned the statistics.* She explains what sociologists refer to as the “marriage benefit imbalance” in which married women fare far worse than married men.

According to the studies, married women are more likely to suffer from depression and addiction than married men and even die ten years earlier than single women. Married men live an average of ten years longer than single men (a haunting data point if there ever was one). Married women are more likely to suffer a violent death than single women—usually, at the hands of their own husbands.

Conversely, “there is no better thing a man can do than hitch himself to a woman,” Gilbert says. Married men are healthier, accumulate more wealth, enjoy greater career advancement, and are far less likely to die a violent death than single men. Married men report themselves to be much happier than if they remain single. They suffer less from alcoholism, drug addiction, and depression.

For the married woman, however, every gain a married man makes is her loss. She cares for everyone, providing all the invisible labor in the family. Dentist and doctor’s appointments, parent/teacher conferences, the gatherer of supplies and planner of all. On top of the care, feeding and loving of children and old people, she is also expected to work the same hours as a man who has free domestic labor at home: his wife. 

There are outliers, obviously, which I bet if you are married like me, you prefer to count yourselves among them.

Of course, I sent this podcast to my husband. We talked about it last night while we were both brushing our teeth.

“Is this your way of asking for a divorce?” he said with a smile.

To be clear, this is much less my own personal message and more the hard facts about marital health and satisfaction. If my husband and kids understand our conditioning around the invisible work we expect of women, we can all make healthier choices.**

As for my own marriage, this awareness affords us the opportunity to evolve. These days, grocery shopping, cooking and carpool are shared. With a bit less time on the family caretaking clock, I have more time for my own work. Not as much as I’d like, but it’s a process. We can do better.

The flip side is my husband’s conditioning that his value is based on the money his work brings in for our family, not on his physical and emotional presence in our lives. Also not true.
The reality is, we’d both be more fully actualized humans as equal partners in all of it. And if we both remain bogged down in our separate spheres, sharing the burdens equally will never be possible.

In both of our cases, the conditioning is real. It took me decades to even notice how all the free, invisible labor I provided my family and community actually made me feel. If you are constantly overgiving it could actually be making you sick.

The list of chronic diseases and mystery illnesses my married friends and I have suffered over the years is long. Chronic fatigue, migraines, breast diseases of every variety—who knew there were even this many.

Here is the good news. We can get in front of overgiving by checking in with ourselves FIRST. We can pay more attention to how it feels in our bodies to do certain kinds of work and to put ourselves in the company of certain people. That is a critically important clue to healthier decision-making.

This whole week, I have been inviting clients to use this readily available, always reliable tool. The body is constantly delivering signals which we have been trained to ignore with our intellect. We allow our verbal brains to make all our decisions when it is our nervous system that collects nearly three times the information.

Our bodies house our intuition. When we ignore the body’s signals, the communication lines between mind and body are cut. Without our intuition, we can make all kinds of decisions that aren’t right for us. We can even get ourselves into physical danger.

So how do you access your body’s wisdom? I’ve written about The Body Compass in previous newsletters. If you didn’t take the time to calibrate your compass then, here is your opportunity. This method will guide you on a purely intuitive level towards a life that works better for you. When we ignore our intuition, we stray from our true path.

CALIBRATE YOUR BODY COMPASS

Make yourself comfortable in a quiet space and breathe deeply.

Do a body scan, moving slowly, from body part to body part starting from the tip of your toe all the way up that side of your body and back down to the other, not judging anything, just noticing any sensation.

Now, think of a negative memory—not a trauma— just something you didn’t enjoy. Like an argument, an uncomfortable meal or something of that nature. Imagine the full sensory experience, the sights, sounds, smells, like you are stepping onto a movie set of this memory.

While you hold the memory in your mind, notice the body’s reaction and observe the sensations, scanning the body once again.

Where are the sensations located? How would you describe them? Remember to stick to physical sensations (“achy”) as opposed to concepts (“negative”). Come up with an unusual word to describe this feeling. (Mine is called The Clench.)

Give it a rating on a scale from -10 to +10.

Take a deep breath and let the memory out of your body. Shake it out, stretch, however you choose to release it.

Now here’s the fun part. Bring to mind a time when things were really working for you. As if you are stepping into a movie scene, picture the sights, sounds and colors of that happy memory. Do the body scan again and see what physical sensations are present, remembering to stay away from concepts like “excited.”

What is happening inside your body during this positive memory? Describe the feelings with a unique word or phrase, a “feeling of flying,” for example, specific to the way the body feels.

Name and rate this one too.

When you are done, observe that the negative memory was one of feeling burdened in a way totally specific to your own body. Similarly, the positive one had a feeling of expansiveness unique to your own physiology.

You now have a reference point and a name for when you feel negative or positive about a particular course of action. (The initial body scan will tell you when you are neutral as well.)

You can further calibrate your Body Compass by going through your To Do list and giving each item a rating on your -10 to +10 scale. So much information is available to you simply by asking yourself how a particular decision feels inside your body. It may be the tiniest twinge one way or the other, but you will can recognize it now.

Pro tip: if there is something that rates low on your scale that you must do, ask yourself how you can improve the experience or reward yourself afterwards. All small nudges towards a more joyful life accumulate over time. Before you know it, you are living life on your terms, going where you want to go, with the people you want to be with, doing what you want to do.

No matter what is expected of you by the culture, you have agency over your own life and a tool to figure out what is right for you and what is not.

Now its up to you to point yourself towards more joy, one decision at a time.

Love,

Elizabeth

If you would like guidance to calibrate your Body Compass, I offer one on one coaching using the Wayfinder Coaching model designed by Martha Beck. If you want to find out if this work is right for you, email me to schedule a Discovery Session at elizabeth@elizabethheise.com. And if you are family or a friend, I have a wonderful coaching community ready to partner with you.

Do my weekly stories come to your inbox? If not, you are invited to sign up. Click on elizabethheise.comand subscribe today. And if you like, come find me on the socials: @elizabethheise.writer on Instagram and @heiseelizabeth1 on Twitter. Happy reading!

*based on studies of heterosexual marriages

**Did you know that Henry David Thoreau, the supposed isolated woodsman and author of On Walden Pond, actually had his mother and sisters bringing him food and fresh laundry every day? Like it was just expected, a natural part of life, not even worth mentioning. (!!!)

 

As the mother of three teens, I’ve had endless opportunities to be the solid, unshakable force in my children’s sometimes stormy lives. Like any flawed human, I haven’t always been that. Every so often, old triggers sweep me up in the swirl of emotions and I’ve managed only to make it worse.

This time of year ushers in one of my most reliable triggers: leaving the house on time for school. During the last two Covid years, this became even more of a challenge as one of our children doesn’t hold academic performance or punctuality in particularly high regard. Sometimes he refused to attend at all.

His semi-regular opt-outs translated to changes to my schedule, which I haven’t taken well. The sudden loss of control over my life sparks a panic that, as a kid, became automatic. My mom had left and my father took to moving us without warning over and over again. It wasn’t something I simply got used to. I had to grow up and move away to make it stop.

In my own stable home, however, I am safe. And this year, I had every reason to feel optimistic. All things considered, we’d enjoyed a peaceful summer and seemed to be emerging from the emotional effects Covid—that silent despair of feeling all alone in your struggles. No amount of family togetherness held that at bay and the kids felt it acutely.

But here we are, a little roughed up from the experience, but among the very fortunate to come out the other end, still willing to move forward into whatever comes next.

This week, the new school year is upon us. Our previously unenthused student seemed to be on board for a fresh start.

On orientation day, I had clients before and after drop off, so it was up to him to get himself ready, breakfast and all. He was aware that I’d only be stopping by to let him know it was time to go.

Only he was still in bed.

“Why do I even have to go to orientation?” he asked, still under the covers.

“Seriously? How many orientations have you attended in your life. It’s so you know what you are doing and where you are going. What? Oh my God.”

Without warning, panic flooded my body. My heart pounded and my head filled with pressure. I walked away to have these feelings elsewhere.

A couple deep breaths didn’t do much to calm my nervous system but stepping away helped. I busied myself pulling out his lunch and tossing it in the backpack.

When I returned, a slow crawl from the bed had commenced. Not enough to celebrate, but it was something.

Time ticked away and my next appointment began at the top of the hour. After what seemed like the entire Paleolithic Age, he got in the car. I calculated the time to get there. Without shoes on, but he could do that on the fly.

He would be eleven minutes late.

As soon as we pulled out, calm returned. I would be back with enough time to clean up my energy and review my session notes.

After I wished my son good luck and said goodbye, disappointment that I was still dealing with this reaction set in. This pattern of panic and feeling like a victim had to go. Flooding my chest with stress hormones was terrible for my health, especially considering what I had just been through. And I didn’t love how I treated my son who actually needed my help motivating.

Over the next week, I worked on it. I journaled and listened to my favorite teachers. I scheduled coach the coach sessions. Glennon Doyle and Martha Beck filled the cabin of my car as I ran errands. During dinner prep last night I caught the Super Soul podcast with Bishop T.D. Jakes and Oprah.

Martha suggests sitting with the triggered feeling when it comes and allowing yourself to realize nothing bad is happening. She gave the example of a soldier who couldn’t understand why he was having panic attacks in the shower. He finally figured out that the scent of the soap was the same as the one he’d used in combat. He retrained his body to recognize he was safe now.

Bishop T.D. Jakes recommends against ‘anchoring our lives to a moving object.’ In my case, my son’s difficulties don’t have to become mine. Time-wise I was in good shape—there really was no reason to freak out. Being present to this in the moment would do me some good.

I am not defined by what is happening around me

 I am stable by what is happening in me.
-Bishop T.D. Jakes

So what’s the plan for next time?

1. Talk to the panic and fear. Acknowledge it for showing up to help, as it always has. Tell it we are safe now, it doesn’t have to be in charge anymore.
2. Step away to self regulate.
3. Breath work. Long inhale, hold for a couple of seconds. Exhale for longer. As many times as it takes to stop the heart from pounding.
4. Lastly, stay present to what is happening and acknowledge progress. As Glennon Doyle says, become aware of your pain and walk straight into it. First we surrender, then we rise.
5. Speaking of surrender, I must be willing to surrender the outcome. He will do what he is going to do because it is his own path. And it doesn’t have to knock me off mine.

One never knows what is about to happen. Whatever it is, you can be steady in the storm.

 

Peace be the journey everyone!

Love,

Elizabeth

POWERFUL QUESTION: What pattern do you wish to change in your life? How’s it going so far? What is helping?

I offer one on one coaching using the Wayfinder Coaching model designed by Martha Beck. If you would like to find out if this work is right for you, email me to schedule a Discovery Session at elizabeth@elizabethheise.com. And if you are family or a friend, I have a wonderful coaching community who are ready to partner with you.

Do my weekly stories come to your inbox? If not, you are invited to sign up. Click on elizabethheise.com and subscribe today. And if you like, come find me on the socials: @elizabethheise.writer on Instagram and @heiseelizabeth1 on Twitter. Happy reading!

 

 

 

 “Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.” -Eckhart Tolle

 

FIFTEEN weeks to get an answer to the cancer question. After surgical excision and biopsy of three suspicious masses, I’d finally be free of the uncertainty.

On the day results were due, I cleared my schedule. It would be hard to focus so I planned to run errands until my post-op appointment late that afternoon.

As I watched the garage door lift in my rearview mirror, I wondered, why did this happen to me?

My life had unfolded exactly as it was meant to, I trusted that. And I had learned some good lessons from all this along the way. But the big WHY escaped me.

A favorite podcast cued up on my phone for the ride. On episode #92 of The Gathering Pod, Martha Beck referred to the Chinese classic text, Tao te Ching, on the value of empty space.

“It is the space inside that holds what we need. The space in between is what is useful. That is where enlightenment comes from.”

My throat caught and tears slid down my face.

As I eased the car into a lucky front spot at the grocery store, I thought, maybe I needed to create more space inside me. There were some painful things I had been unable to let go. I had a feeling that’s what had to come out. I now walked around free of it.

As I filled the cart and checked items off my list, the idea of being more spacious settled in. I felt lighter. 

At checkout, I asked the bagger to help me to my car as I wasn’t supposed to be lifting anything heavy yet. As he loaded the trunk, my cel buzzed. DR. KARMIN flashed across the screen.

She had reviewed the pathology report and spoken to the surgeon.

“I didn’t want you to wait all day to hear that everything is totally benign.”

In the parking lot, I steadied myself on the car’s back bumper and cried.

Later that day, Dr. Mendez detached the velcro of my surgical tube top embroidered with a tiny flower. She carefully unwrapped me from the bandages. On top of my concern over the possible diagnosis, I’d wondered what sort of frankenboob situation I’d be left with.

“Look what a beautiful job I did.” She stepped back with a smile. She had worked meticulously to hide the stitches.  You could hardly tell I’d been through this ordeal. She was truly gifted.

The next day, I followed up with my functional medicine doctor. Chris Estes is a Columbia trained MD who is also a shaman. Until he expanded his practice, he’d worked in women’s reproductive health as a GYN, performing surgeries of the like I had just undergone.

Even though I understood that standard protocol had required removal of the type of masses I’d had, I still had questions. Since he is a total hippie like me, I knew he would understand.

“So why’d I have to do this if everything was benign?” I asked.

“The hospital sent me the 30 pages of notes from the surgery and I read them all. You had something called atypical ductal hyperplasia. While ADH is technically benign, it keeps company with cancer. Somewhere between ten and fifty per cent of these masses can become malignant. They absolutely needed to come out.”

I finally got it. There was a good chance that Dr. Karmin’s insistence on a mammogram* really had saved my life.

“I think I got it. Nothing helps you see your life more clearly than something like this,” I said.

“You might also think about how much you are over-giving, particularly to your kids who are growing up and will be out on their own soon. Men don’t do that.”

I had a solid record of over-sacrificing. But it wasn’t just that. One of my kids had been having a difficult time at home and at school. On far too many occasions, I had taken on the hard emotions of an experience that didn’t belong to me. I know with 100% certainty that this habit is bad for my health. I can’t do that anymore.

“So let me tell you about the new moon this Friday. This is a good time to let go and renew. You might want to do something symbolic to mark the occasion,” he said.

After our appointment, I googled it.

The August 2022 full moon provides an opportunity to set boundaries, make some changes, and create the life for yourself that you’ve always wanted. 

I’m on it. I will write down everything I want to let go, set fire to it and watch it float away.

When we trust that our life is unfolding exactly as it should and we release what does not serve us, we get the sense that it’s all going to be okay.

Love,

Elizabeth

POWERFUL QUESTION: How can you make more space inside yourself to allow something new to emerge?

I offer 1:1 coaching using the Wayfinder Coaching model designed by Martha Beck. If you would like to find out if this work is right for you, email to schedule a Discovery Session at elizabeth@elizabethheise.com. If you are family or a friend, I have a wonderful coaching community who are ready to partner with you.

Do my weekly stories come to your inbox? If not, you are invited to sign up. Click on elizabethheise.com to subscribe. And if you like, come find me on the socials: @elizabethheise.coach on Instagram and @heiseelizabeth1 on Twitter. Happy reading!

*I also asked Estes about thermograms. “I don’t like them. They haven’t kept pace with the technological developments of mammography and MRI because there is no money in it. A mammogram emits a nominal amount of radiation. I recommend MRIs judiciously because gadolinium used in contrast can cause heavy metal toxicity.” Well. That settles it for me. No more thermograms.

Live each day like it was your last.

We hear that a lot. The notion is ridiculous. On that advice, we’d all be running up our credit cards at the Four Seasons, Bora Bora (see above).

But there are moments when you do suddenly realize you don’t have time to lose. For me, that was this week. The long delayed surgery date had finally arrived.

As I studied the hospital forms*, including an exhaustive list of potential adverse reactions, I thought, I could actually die. And it wasn’t me spinning a nightmare scenario. This was just plain old informed consent.

That got me thinking about the weekend—my last before this unnerving event. The awareness that tomorrow is never guaranteed must have been floating around inside me. I had decided to have that conversation.

Sunday happened to be the first glimpse of what it will be like for my husband and me once our three teenagers are off having their lives. Our daughter had just left back to college, our middle son was away at camp and the little one had a sleepover that would extend into the afternoon.

I asked Mark to join me on an early morning walk.

Before the pandemic, weekly date nights had given us regular opportunities to reconnect outside our role as parents. After two plus years without that time, we’d become accustomed to living more as a triage operation. We shared information on a need to know basis without periodic breaks just for the two of us.

 

 

We set out early, the clouds still tinged with sunrise pink. Movement gets the body, the heart and the mind moving. We walked for a few blocks in silence.

Once we crossed the bridge, I asked him what he wanted for himself in our relationship. I wondered if, after all this time, we valued different things.

It was no mystery how we had arrived at this place. At the start of any relationship, especially with no children, it’s all sunshine and bluebirds. When life gets messy, and ours certainly had over twenty-six years, you revert back to your roots communication-wise.

If you saw a snapshot of our two sets of parents, you’d know how we got to be opposites on this front. When Mark invited me to meet his folks for the first time, he asked, “did you ever seen that show, Dynasty? My parents are the Carringtons.” Mine are their opposite: Jewish hippie divorcees. 

With all that had been happening in our home—pandemic teenagers, work interruptions, illnesses— the hushed, polite exchanges Mark preferred just hadn’t been possible. On too many occasions, I’d held in what I had to say. For me, stuffed feelings become flinty. Then one little spark sets the whole thing ablaze. On those occasions, Mark had said less and less.

On our walk, I told him I could do without the tone policing. When I express myself and he doesn’t respond, I feel alone. That is no way to feel in a couple.

He said because of how emotional I get, he holds back when he disagrees with me. We have both had unhelpful thoughts about each other.

She is too volatile for a conversation.

If he cared, he would share openly with me.

I said what I had to say and he didn’t ask me to express myself in a more polite way. He shared that he’d like to feel more connected too.

After letting each other in for the first time in ages, we truly enjoyed the day together. Like we remembered we are each other’s person. Like before our kids were born. If you are a parent, you remember that time. There’s nothing you wouldn’t do for your person. There’s a palpable sweetness in everything.

 

 

We brunched, we beached, we discovered a delicious new taco place and had margaritas, we ended the day in each others arms listening to our favorite Seventies Love Songs. It was the perfect reset.

When you decide what you want in your life, there is no need to put it off. Cheers to creating the life you want.

Love,

Elizabeth

POWERFUL QUESTION: What relationship could benefit from a reset for you? How can you have the courage to ask for what you want? What will help you do that?

Do my weekly stories come to your inbox? If not, you are invited to sign up. Click on elizabethheise.com and subscribe today. And if you like, come find me on the socials: @elizabethheise.coach on Instagram and @heiseelizabeth1 on Twitter. Happy reading!

Wondering how to muster the courage to ask for what you want? Mindset coaching may be just the thing. If you are interested in doing this work, you are invited to set up a Discovery Session with me at elizabeth@elizabethheise.com. 

*As a lawyer, those forms always make me smile. Free bit of legal advice: if they do something wrong, you can sue. Don’t ever think you sign your rights away. It’s just a matter of establishing causation and whether the damages are worth the effort bc it takes forever and can be expensive to pay for expert testimony.

A black and white photo of a family of Hungarian Jews at the Jewish Museum in Berlin had haunted me for days. The bewildered look in their eyes, the exhausted slump of their shoulders, makeshift bags full of everything they owned. The light eyes and dark curly hair. They looked like me.

I’ve known the history for a lifetime. But visiting Berlin, being in close proximity to where this horrible plan was conceived and carried out, changed the impact. It felt acutely personal.

Of all the travel I have done on my own and with the family, I hadn’t considered Germany.* As a Jew, albeit not a terribly observant one, that country wasn’t on my list.

My own reservations aside, the idea of this trip came up when my son decided on a German language camp for the summer. His interest stemmed from family heritage on his dad’s side. My late father-in-law had been raised in East Berlin until the end of World War II when Russian Stasi forced his family out of their home at gunpoint. He was just a boy at the time. His family carried the few belongings they could manage and set out on foot to his aunt’s home. Fortunately for them, the new address became West Berlin. His family emigrated to the United States not long afterward. He wrote a book about the experience entitled Das Haus.

My extended family in Hungary had also been forced from their homes, along with 450,000 other Hungarian Jews. The end result was not relocation, however. It was likely Auschwitz. I say likely because when my father attempted to find our living Hungarian relatives, he was instead referred to the Auschwitz Registry. He didn’t have the heart to look. It’s possible to hire someone to conduct the search, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that either.

The reason I am here to tell you this story, however, is that my great grandparents, Emanuel and Berta Lefkowitz, got out before any of that happened. My father had assumed their departure stemmed from being harassed. Any student of world history knows that antisemitism dates all the way back to ancient times.** Hateful myths about Jews have been perpetuated generation after generation and continue to the present day.

But that’s not the reason they left. Emanuel had responded to a US based advertising campaign for workers to help build the subway in New York City. My great grandfather had mining experience. The family he left behind met a fate about which we still know nothing.

Not that we ever talked about any of that growing up. Back then, my mother had converted from Catholicism to marry my father. Dad had been raised by Conservative Jewish parents in very Jewish New York City. My parents wanted to start over somewhere far away from the pressures of their respective families. It didn’t matter to them that we totally stuck out in New Mexico.

Despite leaving her faith, mom kept her Christmas tree, which we kids loved. Raised casually Jewish in very Catholic Albuquerque, not one of my friends knew I was Jewish. I even attended Catholic School. From the knowing glare on Sister Mary Dorothy’s face, I picked up on the fact that it would be better to keep quiet about it.

 

After being in this place where it happened and visiting what is left to remember it all: a restored Jewish cemetery, evocative memorials to the millions who perished, the museums curated with such care, I struggled to figure out what to do with the enormity of it. Under the weight of such overwhelming loss, I didn’t know how to stop carrying the past around with me.

As I have done over and over when I have trouble making sense of things, I spent time in nature. I scheduled a session with one of my favorite Wayfinder Coaches, Hope Cook. As a more cultural, less practicing Jew, how could I be true to my own spirituality and still honor the lives of those lost just for being Jewish? Hope dropped breadcrumbs that lead me back to myself.

 

In that session, I discovered that my silence about being Jewish was my earliest memory of hiding who I really am. I kept quiet for the comfort of others and to save myself from judgment and discrimination. That external silence then became internal. Any feeling that made me uncomfortable or upset, I pushed it down and marched on. Divorce, dishonesty, betrayal, whatever. The habit became so automatic, I began to feel only numbness where emotions used to be. Ignore your own feelings long enough and they bury themselves. Your own intuition becomes dull. It has taken a long time for me to get back in touch with my true feelings. I am still working on it.

To honor those with no voice, I will make better use of my own. I am here to encourage you to raise your own voice too, to the extent you are safe enough to do that. We have all been trained to take the path of least resistance. But I am here to tell you, it is bad for your health.

Need to do your work in a way that makes sense for you? Don’t apologize for it. Feeling discomfort around someone’s bigoted comment? Shine a light on it. Need to have a conversation about money? Take a deep breath and go to it. Don’t wait for the stress to build and detonate. Stay true to you.

That is how I will honor those who have been denied their voice. I will be as loud as necessary.

Love,

Elizabeth

POWERFUL QUESTIONS: In what situations do you silence yourself for the comfort of others? Where would it help you to live more authentically? What does staying true to yourself look like? 

______

I offer one on one coaching using the Wayfinder Coaching model developed by Martha Beck. If you would like to find out if this work is right for you, email me to schedule a Discovery Session at elizabeth@elizabethheise.com. And if you are family or a friend, I have a wonderful coaching community who are ready to partner with you. Coach Hope Cook at coachhopecook.com is outstanding.

Do my weekly stories come to your inbox? If not, you are invited to sign up. Click on elizabethheise.com to subscribe. Got a friend who might be interested? I invite you to forward. And if you like, come find me on the socials: @elizabethheise.coach on Instagram and @heiseelizabeth1 on Twitter. Thank you for reading.

*When I spoke to my father about this, he observed that Germany has done a better job than any country educating their citizens, taking care not to normalize what happened. From what I noticed, I completely agree. Everywhere we went, tours of historical sites were being conducted in German for Germans. Throughout the country, it is against the law to call someone a Nazi, even in jest.

**https://www.ushmm.org/antisemitism/what-is-antisemitism/why-the-jews-history-of-antisemitism

 

Most of us are afraid to break the rules. We do what is expected of us because we imagine what others might think if we don’t. We conform to overt social pressure and to subtler, unconscious influences alike.

In our family, we have my husband who was raised to respect the rules. And then we have me, raised half by hippies, half by myself. I am a jay walker, a fence jumper, a user of men’s bathrooms when they have no line. I am not necessarily advocating this way of life 100% of the time. I once hopped a flimsy barricade put up after hurricane damage and snapped a fibula. With a few exceptions, if rules seem pointless or discriminatory, I treat them as gentle suggestions.

Whether or not you were raised to defer to authority, we all want to feel a sense of belonging. Most of us try to mold ourselves into the most acceptable version with the right clothes, the right hair, the right body. We do our best to avoid the judgment of others for falling out of line.

And we believe everyone is judging us.

According to sociologists, we each have a “generalized other,” whose judgment we fear the most. In fact, without being conscious of it, we have actual individuals we imagine doing the judging. According to Martha Beck, we each have approximately three such folks in mind.

When you picture your three, who are they? Your parents? Members of your religious community? Neighbors?

When I thought about my everyone, i.e., the ones I imagine scrutinizing my every move, I think of two particular family members and a mean lady on the PTA. I would name them all but then, like fly paper, they’d read this story and I’d be forced into an awkward convo.

Unwittingly, we make major life choices to satisfy our judges. In retrospect, it may have been why I became a lawyer. The old men at the firm hated all my awesome suggestions. I hadn’t been properly trained to keep quiet. I tried to fit that mold but it just wasn’t me.

While most of us spend a lifetime trying to fit in, it’s ironic that we also deeply admire those who stay true to themselves no matter the consequences.

This week, while traveling with my family to Berlin, I witnessed the most striking example of this paradox. Not a contemporary case, but a historical one that drove the point home like no other.

After Jewish-owned businesses were boycotted in Nazi Germany, a Jewish shop owner hung this sign:

 

I think we can all agree that demonstrating such courage to be unapologetically who you are in the face of the highest possible stakes is profoundly inspiring. Why? Because in the truest part of ourselves, we all wish we could be that brave. To be oneself no matter what. To live free of the opinions of others, even if they could kill you. Or in the case of this remarkable person, even WHEN they definitely would.

But the reality is, that after a lifetime of being conditioned to fit a particular mold, so many of us don’t even know ourselves well enough to stand up for who we are. We have been so busy trying to do what is expected of us that we live by committee.

How can you tell if you do this? When you have decisions to make, big or small, do you ask the advice of other people?

If you think about it, why would you ask someone else to tell you what you want? They are not you. We are all so profoundly different. If this strikes a cord, it’s time to get to know yourself better.

If this is disconcerting, you are not alone. Society was designed to make you afraid to be exactly who you are. From the moment we are born, we are socialized to please. At times it was a matter of survival. But trying to be good in the eyes of others has caused us to doubt ourselves. Most of us have unwittingly aligned with our imagined judges. We are now our own harshest critics.

But we can stop to look around and recognize that we have choices. We do not live in a fascist regime. We are free to live how we wish. That is not to say that we don’t stand to lose anything. We do. But it could just be the life we never needed in the first place.

In the five days since we have been in this place where millions of innocent people were stripped of their agency to live their own truth, it is clearer than ever to me that our freedom is a priceless gift. We don’t have to live in a prison with the door wide open.

So. In the words of the great poet Mary Oliver, what are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?

Sending love and courage to be yourself,

Elizabeth

Need help figuring out what you really want? I offer one on one coaching using the Wayfinder Coaching model designed by Martha Beck. If you would like to find out if this work is right for you, email me at elizabeth@elizabethheise.com to schedule a Discovery Session. And if you are family or a friend, I have a wonderful coaching community who are ready to partner with you.

Do my weekly stories come to your inbox? If not, you are invited to sign up. Click on elizabethheise.comand subscribe today. And if you like, come find me on the socials: @elizabethheise.coach on Instagram and @heiseelizabeth1 on Twitter. Happy reading!

 

*

We are often confused about what we really want in life. This happens because of cultural conditioning that convinces us we should want a whole other set of things that will actually never bring us happiness.

It’s critical to have this information about yourself. Why? Because our brains are constantly sorting information. When you know your desired path, you are pulled in that direction. It’s a neuroscientific fact.

But first, you must know what you really really want. There is a method to find that out and a way to get it right now.

I’ll explain.

An unexpected trip out to Albuquerque, New Mexico last summer left me thinking I might like to live there again one day. My Dad’s health issue resolved and the trip turned out to be just an opportunity for me to visit him and reacquaint myself with the picturesque Southwestern setting of my youth.

When I arrived home to Miami, I stalked the real estate market. Daily alerts from realtor.com left me longing for the mountains etched on the edge of town, cool mornings in the high desert climate, and the slower pace of life. My husband, who’d envisioned retiring near a ski mountain, remained unconvinced. With retirement a way’s off, we could debate it later.

Then, as part of Wayfinder coaching, I learned an exercise called The Ideal Day.* It’s a way to determine what you truly want your life to look and feel like, even the precise location you prefer to live. The questions are designed to engage the right brain, i.e., your intuitive, creative side—not the left side which will only tell you what you should do and none of what brings you true peace and contentment.

To my surprise, Albuquerque was not my dream destination.

 

This news came as a shock. I didn’t want to move back to Albuquerque? When I think of home, that’s it. It’s the only address I remember from childhood: 1833 Quiet Lane and the only phone number 877-8280. I even had my first kiss behind the spruce tree at Immaculate Conception Church. My very first best friend still lives there along with lots of people who are so special to me.

And then, just last week, on another impromptu trip to New Mexico, came clear confirmation that our creative, connected side really does hold all the answers.

 

 

 

The need for a break from my own unexplained health event brought me back to the place I feel most at home. I indulged in all my favorite things: endless trail runs, sunrise mountain views, old friends, huevos rancheros with extra green chile.

On the third day in Albuquerque, an anxious flutter crept into my body. (It wasn’t all the chile.) With deep breaths and meditation, it stopped for a little while but I couldn’t get rid of it.

And then something interesting happened. On Friday, I drove up to Santa Fe for my last few days. About fifteen minutes out of Albuquerque, the anxiety fluttered away and didn’t return.  The familiar but new mountain range ahead gave me a feeling of freedom and expansion.

Because I had trusted my creative brain enough to follow its lead, I had already asked around for a real estate agent up there. I received several recommendations but Lori Montoya was the perfect one out of the 2000 agents in tiny Santa Fe. My Ideal Day exercise had revealed that I really want a mountain home outside Santa Fe with a little casita in which to practice. Running trails to the national forest accessible from the back yard. A home a bit out of town is exactly where I want to be.

The very first home we walked into was IT. Tons of natural light, sweeping views of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, gorgeous finishes. Aside from being just the right balance of Santa Fe and contemporary style, they’d also gone to great expense to take care of the environment. Down the mountain, the owners had built a cistern room for rainwater collection tanks to irrigate their vegetable garden and landscaping. The whole place had been built on top of an enormous rose quartz crystal that filled it with good energy. Seriously.

For the rest of the weekend, I exchanged emails with the realtor for further details and shared them with my husband Mark. As my and I gallery hopped down Canyon Road, toured the Matteucci sculpture garden and took in the majestic mountains from her deck, I fantasized about having a life there.

“Did you put an offer in??” Mark asked, figuring I’d soon be sending for my things.

 

On my last night, a glorious rainbow lit up the sky. I looked up the sign: new beginnings, impermanence, good luck, equality and peace. I’ll take it!

I arrived home late Sunday night to reports of teenage friends mouthing off to my neighbors, my kids doctor’s appointments scheduled over my standing coaching session and afternoon webinar. All day to day home operations shifted back to me while my husband returned to his tidy, peaceful office. Hard to believe just hours before I’d been crunching along a trail, breathing in mountain air, enjoying the birdsong.

That night, we talked about the house.

“For the price, it doesn’t even have a/c. Or window treatments.” Mark said.

“But it was so cool during the hottest part of the day,” I said.

“Plus, didn’t you want a casita for work? I really was hoping for more land than that. And to be further out of town. Seems like that’s the way to get more for your money.”

I emailed my lovely realtor and the dream house slowly faded to black.

My attitude began to sour. I realized I had some work to do. That afternoon, I scheduled a coaching session for myself. The only way I can be the untroubled space for someone else is to examine my own thinking first.

I described the situation and my coach suggested The Ideal Day exercise. I settled in, took a few deep breaths and she lead me through the questions.

 

 

I imagined myself waking up in The Dream House. With no window treatments, the tiniest hint of day break gently woke me up. I tiptoed out of bed not to disturb Mark, grabbed a cozy throw, my journal and favorite pen. A mug and peppermint tea sat out on the kitchen island for quick prep. The enormous windows revealed the sunrise moment to moment. As blue came through, the pink and purple clouds stretched across the horizon. I snuggled on a comfy sofa on the deck outside and took in the slow motion fireworks display. When enough light allowed me to write, I sipped from the steaming mug and completed my morning pages.

My ideal day included healthy food and plenty of time to work, read, write, and rest.

At the end of it, my kids and husband showed up to help prepare dinner, enjoy each other’s company and watch the sunset together. Everyone cooked and cleaned equally. At night, Mark and I had time to read together and go to sleep early.

“What meaning does the sunrise and sunset hold for you?” the coach asked.

“To show up for it means that I make myself available for beauty. That every day I get a chance to do that for myself. It also means that no matter what is going on, there are always beautiful moments. Right now, our life has a lot of angsty teenage energy. It is a hard time but there is also so much beauty in finding out who you are. This will pass too, along with all the other stages of childhood. And soon it will be just Mark and me again. This is our family’s sunrise.”

“What can you do right now that will remind you of what it feels like to have already achieved this life?”

Being in that ideal day felt FREE. It didn’t take me long to think about how to be free in my life today. I want the kids to pitch in more. I don’t want to wait on perfectly capable people. We are already moving in that direction but it would help me to clearly articulate it. I planned to talk to them at dinner that night.

Also, I really do want to show up for the sunrise more. I see it briefly once a week on my long run but I can’t run 8 1/2 miles every morning. I could ride my bike but it got destroyed by the elements when I left it outside our rental during the last home renovation. I’d been wanting to get a new bike for a long time. Riding my bike made me feel free.

As I set the table that night, I thought about what to say to the kids about pitching in.

“If you don’t want to make dinner anymore, we can just all do our own thing,” one kid said with a frown.

It must feel weird when your mom says she wants to stop doing things for you.

“That’s not what I mean. Having dinner together is important. And so is learning to be self-sufficient and making a contribution. The way parents teach that is to first do things for you, then do them with you, then you do them on your own.”

I got some pushback, but they heard me. It will be a process. Asking for what you want isn’t really about the outcome. It is about doing the thing and becoming the sort of person who asks for what she needs. I did it and it felt good.

 

The next morning, my coaching session cancelled unexpectedly. I took it as a sign that it was time to find a new bike to get me to that sunrise. At Mack Cycle, Ricardo led me straight to The Bike which will be awesome on the nature trail to Matheson Hammock and the mountains of New Mexico. It fit perfectly in my backseat.

 

Pre-dawn the next day, I was so excited to go see the sunrise on my new bike, that I woke up way too early so I wrote until it was time to go. As I peddled hard down my street in the pre-dawn darkness, the bright light I’d attached to the front lit my way. I felt free. On this bike, I can go anywhere on my own, any day.

The sunrise was glorious.

 

And this is how you manifest your ideal life. You find the feeling you want, then bring it into your everyday life. I want a beautiful sunrise, to ask for what I want and the freedom and expansiveness that comes from that. I found it here on an average day. And one day in the not too distant future, I’ll have it in Santa Fe.

So. The question is, what do you really want? Take it from me, you are already 100% certain of it.

Love,

Elizabeth

POWERFUL QUESTION: In the wee hours, what do you yearn for?

**I offer one on one coaching using the Wayfinder Coaching model designed by Martha Beck. If you would like to find out if this work is right for you, email me to schedule a Discovery Session. And if you are family or a friend, I have a wonderful coaching community who are ready to partner with you.

Do my weekly stories come to your inbox? If not, you are invited to sign up. Click on elizabethheise.com and subscribe today. And if you like, come find me on the socials: @elizabethheise.writer on Instagram and @heiseelizabeth1 on Twitter. Happy reading!

*thanks Kellee!

 

 

For me, a visit to New Mexico always brings out my shadow self. Here in this beautiful place, it’s as if a protective layer has been stripped off and nerve endings are exposed. Like that twelve year girl who left here when her family blew apart, stored up all the hard emotions for me to claim upon my return. All those years ago, she didn’t feel safe enough to bare the full weight of them. The grown up version of her does though. So, here I am, able to feel it all.

If you are unfamiliar with your shadow, we all have one. Psychiatrist Carl Jung believed our unconscious is made up of different layers. We come into this world open and free of judgment for anyone, including ourselves. As we grow up, we receive messages about what is acceptable to our parents, teachers, our religious community, and what is not. We are judged by others and in turn judge ourselves. The “unacceptable” parts are pushed into the hidden part of our psyche. 

Jung believed the shadow holds positive traits that were invalidated or minimized by those around us. We repress those parts in an effort to protect our authentic self. But by doing so, we lose touch with those pieces of who we are.

Everyone longs to feel whole and peaceful. That is why learning to reintegrate all our various selves is so important.

My shadow is the part of me who feels totally mortified by making her needs met. It is the scared, hurt version who was rejected for asking. Growing up, I had no qualms doing so. As one of four kids, I received the message that I was too demanding. I still asked for what I needed but felt bad about myself for doing it. And then my mother left. That combination left me feeling that asking was a spectacularly bad idea.

 

When I come to town, asking for what I need is so difficult I find myself short of breath.  And when I do it with folks who still expect me to deny myself, the rejection is more shocking and awful than I remember. It’s possible I am actually feeling it for the first time.

One way we can recognize our shadow selves is by observing our triggers. Because this place can be a minefield for that, I have watched myself run away from situations that cause me anxiety; extend invitations out of guilt that did not serve me; and feel deep shame over the rejection from stating my needs. I am often surprised by how much work I still have to do. And then I am reminded that we are constantly unfolding and evolving into our truest selves. I am gratified to be doing the work.

 

The part of me who is hyper-vigilant to avoid rejection walks around feeling like she must only be concerned about everyone else. That way of thinking grew up right here in New Mexico. My way of guarding against being abandoned was to people please til the cows come home. Here, the urge to do it is intense and automatic. When I am not doing it well enough or fast enough, I panic and start to lose things. On separate occasions, I have lost my phone, my car keys and my sunglasses. Each time, I stopped to re-center. And luckily I found my stuff.

I realize the only way to make peace in my mind and body is to be gentle with my shadow. I appreciate all her efforts to protect me. She is safe now and welcome to join the rest of who I have become today.

Here is what I am doing to make peace:

1. Becoming a curious observer.  My dear friend Ilana is great at this. When she experiences a trigger or notices a problematic behavior, it is her cue to get curious. “That was interesting!” she exclaims. When we become aware of patterns and themes, we build self-awareness. Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle believes that awareness is all we need to begin to change. The more we learn to witness how our minds work, the more we see how our shadow influences us.

2. Practicing non-judgment. It cannot be overstated how much judgment gets in the way of expressing our true selves and being the space for others to do the same. Judgment is why we repress our healthy parts in the first place. When we chastise ourselves for “doing the wrong thing” we become the problem. We heap more disapproval on our own shoulders because we have been conditioned by our the world around us to do it. I will not judge that little girl in me for trying to make everyone happy. All she wanted was love and she tried so, so hard. Still does.

3. Find support. If you need to uncover trauma and recover from it, therapy is the best option. If you are at the point of discovering what you really want for yourself and would like to develop steps to get there, you can do it in partnership with a coach.* For me, here, I have been fortunate to find comfort in nature and the company of old friends. They know why I came here and have shown up so beautifully. My dear Ilana picked me up at the airport with a chilled bottle of alkaline water and gluten-free snacks. She drove us all over Santa Fe and willingly submitted to a steady diet of green chile of which she has already had her fill after living here a lifetime. She even set me up with a borrowed car, sparing me my dad’s ancient Volvo. My friend Jenny devoted her entire day off to me and assembled a gorgeous care package, including a journal, the first page in her tidy cursive of a Navajo poem I heard once and never forgot. (!!!) And a lumbar pillow hand-stitched by her loving mother Sally who recently passed. Decades ago, Sally took me in when I had nowhere, despite family living in town. My very first best friend Natalie and elementary school pal Alberta both made time to reconnect, share and listen. My friend Jill welcomed me to her home without hesitation. We will spend this weekend hiking, gallery hopping down Canyon Road and enjoying the last bits of Santa Fe before I head home.

4. Journal. I am living proof of the physical and mental health benefits of getting your thoughts and feelings out of your body and onto the page. I have lived this over and over and the results are well worth it. Naming the emotions you are expressing and the situations in which they are triggered helps. The how and why are important to notice the patterns. You will figure yourself out this way, I promise. If you share it with a compassionate witness, so much the better. Thank you for being that for me.

Your shadow self just needs love and understanding, not more judgment. I hope you find your own way of embracing that hidden little person inside of you.

Love,

Elizabeth

POWERFUL QUESTIONS: In what situations do you find your shadow self making an appearance? Can you get curious about where that behavior came from? How might you meet the moment with compassion for your shadow?

*I am now trained to offer one on one sessions using the Wayfinder Coaching model designed by Martha Beck. If you would like to find out if this work is right for you, you are invited to schedule a Discovery Session at elizabeth@elizabethheise.com. And if you are family or a friend, I have a wonderful coaching community who are ready to partner with you.

Do my weekly stories come to your inbox? If not, you are invited to sign up. Click on elizabethheise.comand subscribe today. And if you like, come find me on the socials for my daily(ish) essayettes: @elizabethheise.coach on Instagram and @heiseelizabeth1 on Twitter. Happy reading!

 

“The insurance company approved the right breast, but hasn’t approved the left yet,” the surgical planner announced to my husband and me as we sat in the waiting room.

Walking into The Miami Cancer Institute that morning, this was the last thing I had expected. A couple of months of uncertainty had lead me to this point. An excisional biopsy. And an answer.

 

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her mask muffling the words.

“They know I have two, right?” I asked. The young woman looked stricken. This whole thing had turned seriously unfunny.

She offered another surgery date over a month away. There would be no pathology report for ten days after that. More waiting, more uncertainty.

Something about this continued upheaval rang familiar.

When I was a kid, right after my parents divorced, we became nomads. Mom left and my dad uprooted what was left of our family. We moved from our home in Albuquerque across the country and kept right on moving. No sure footing for years. Over and over, I’d ask if this time we’d be staying, desperate to regain a sense of belonging somewhere—like I had in New Mexico. Actually, I didn’t know I had that until it was gone.

The constant uncertainty left me feeling unmoored, not just from my home, but from everything.

My internal compass had started spinning once again.

As I sat there, listening to Mark curse the no good thieves at our insurance company, it dawned on me. Yes it sucks to wait more, it really does suck. But. This was found time. I had planned for my recuperation. Post surgical orders had me wrapped in tight bandages for ten days, no exercise or even a shower. No swimming in the ocean for thirty days after that. This further delay handed me back all that time.

But what to do? I could hardly feel the vinyl bench beneath me, let alone figure out what I needed.

 

 

We drove home. I snipped off my hospital band and went about my work.

It took a couple of days to sink in. Running my favorite route under the trees helped put me back in my body. It became clear that I needed to go off somewhere and take care of myself. I had options but felt overwhelmed with the decision. Coaching is great for this so I reached out to my fellow coaches and swapped sessions.

A compassionate witness asking powerful questions without giving advice brought out the answers that were already inside me. I will share those great questions with you in case you have a big decision to make. At the end of this inquiry, I had a plan:

What do you really need? 

Peace. I had to get away on my own. But deciding where to go was a whole thing. We have a big family trip in two weeks. I have to treat my body with care, especially in the run up to this operation.

What will help you decide? 

Being sure everyone would be okay at home and all would be peaceful in the place I chose to go. I have three teens here on summer break, one of whom I have been stealthily hovering over since the pandemic started. Adult eyes would need to be on him.

What are the options?

A group of friends were headed to a big lake house at the foot of the Alps. On paper, that seemed like the easy answer. Plenty of room, spectacular nature, and I was invited. Travel would be a full day or more. And another option. All these tests had required me to cancelled plans to go to Sedona. A dear family friend had suggested it. She is like a sister but without all the actual family history and lingering complications. On my last trip to New Mexico we decided we would stay in better touch.

What would peace look like for you? 

Mountains, green chile, and my dear friend.

I called her yesterday to float the idea of my coming. In the span of five minutes, she had cancelled her holiday weekend plans to spend it with me. I found an idyllic, seventy-seven acre property in Santa Fe with lovely casitas and hiking trails. One miraculously became available. There would be mountains, green chile and my dear friend. I’d spend the rest of the week down in Albuquerque, popping in on other friends who are like family. One little room at the inn on a lavender field would be mine. At the end of the week, I have no idea what I am doing. It is a welcome uncertainty—one of my own making for a change. With those remaining days, I will do what suits me.

When your compass is spinning, nature, movement and powerful questions will help slow it down. 

“Security lies in adapting to constant change.”*

When you are finally pointed in the direction that is right for you, you get the sense that it’s all going to be okay.

Love,

Elizabeth

POWERFUL QUESTIONS: What do you need to bring peace? What helps you decide what that looks like?

*Martha Beck said this in Finding Your North Star: Claiming the Life You were Meant to Live. I highly recommend it. She is brilliant.

I’ve started a coaching practice. This work leads to uncovering what is holding you back and how to overcome those obstacles. With the right questions, you will figure out what you might tweak to direct yourself toward what you really want. If you are interested, I invite you to email me to schedule a Discovery Session at elizabeth@elizabethheise.com. This work will change your life.

Do my weekly stories come to your inbox? If not, you are invited to sign up. Click on elizabethheise.com and subscribe today. And if you like, come find me on the socials: @elizabethheise.coach on Instagram and @heiseelizabeth1 on Twitter. Happy reading!

A story about a woman who didn’t know why she suffered panic attacks has stuck in my head. Out for a run, she collapsed to the ground, short of breath and full of terror. It had happened over and over.*

Her therapist asked if she’d ever experienced anything traumatic.

“No,” she said.

Sometime later, she blurted out, “Once a man broke in and robbed me at gunpoint.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” the therapist asked.

“I forgot,” she said.

“You didn’t forget,” The therapist said. She explained that the woman had never allowed herself to process the emotions of that night. Instead of feeling them, she had stored them in her body. Now every time she went out for a run, her racing heart and shortness of breath triggered the thought, you are not safe. Her body panicked. And it was getting worse.

The therapist invited her to tell the story and experience the feelings again and again in that supportive environment. Every time you let the memories come and you do not die, you send your brain the message that you are safe. That a very bad thing happened to you once upon a time, but that thing is not happening now. She recommended that the woman openly share her story until her body finally registered the truth: she is safe.

Why am I telling you someone else’s story? Because that story told me mine. And maybe this one will tell you yours.

To fully know ourselves, we must be aware of what we are holding on to, and where in our bodies we are holding it. We all process emotion differently—the important thing is to actually process it. I spent twenty years in therapy, but was never asked where in my body I had felt pain.

During my own runs, I have wondered how someone as healthy as I am finds herself with a high risk breast disease such as this “radial scar.” I have three of them in my chest and they will be removed this Tuesday. The need to know how this happens stopped me in my tracks the other day to google it one more time. Localized inflammatory reaction. Chronic ischemia. Slow infarction. Something terrible had been taking place in there and it had escaped my notice altogether.

And then a friend asked what emotions I have held in my chest. Sometimes we don’t see something right in front of our face because it has always been there. Luckily, I have actually written my entire story. I’d find the trail of breadcrumbs if there was one.

I did a word search of my completed manuscript and it came up over and over.

regret tightening my chest

longing pierced my chest

my chest burned with rage

a weight settled on my chest

an ache filled my chest

As a literary device, I had totally overused it. And, until now, I didn’t realize I’ve been utilizing one spot in my body for grievance storage. In all that time, only one thing has allowed me to stop doing this. A particular technique of inquiring into painful thoughts and asking where do you feel it in your body—describe the sensations. I have always said, I feel it in my chest. That too had escaped my notice.

The Work of Byron Katie seemed absurd to me when I first heard of it. I’ve referred to it so many times you might be getting tired of it, but hang in there. I promise it’s worth it. It’s all about questioning our painful thoughts that create our emotions. If it’s my own thought, why would I question it, you might wonder. I didn’t get it either.

It can be simply explained like this. Our circumstances, of which we usually have little control, create our thoughts, the thoughts cause our emotions, our emotions shape our behavior.

Just because a thought forms, that doesn’t make it true. Unless you have done some work on this, you might assume that because you are a rational person, your thoughts must be true. I did it my whole life until I opened my mind to the idea that there are alternative ways to look at our own thoughts. Byron Katie’s “thought work” has allowed me to let go of lots of the painful ones. I feel infinitely better and I’m grateful I found it when I did. Regret for not finding this method earlier wouldn’t make sense—I just wasn’t ready. You may not be either.

If you don’t believe questioning our thoughts is worthwhile, take a second to reflect on all the nutty ideas to which people become attached. Recent presidential elections bring this to mind. Crazy or not, they are all just thoughts, it’s not who you are. You can detach from them. With the right tools, you can even release them.

Why would you want to detach from your own thoughts? If they are painful, they are harming you. That thought may be rooted in an old belief about yourself that formed from difficult circumstances. Most of mine happened in childhood when kids tend to blame themselves for the bad things that happen. After those painful thoughts take root, we don’t really have a reason to go back and question them.

All the painful thoughts I carried came from circumstances beyond my control. I took these painful thoughts through this inquiry and have found, lo and behold, they aren’t true:

To be loved, I must constantly prove myself.

It’s not okay to speak my truth.

I can’t trust anyone.

You end the work by asking, who would you be without that thought? My answer is always I would feel free. What better feeling is there?

The Work may sound a little culty to those unfamiliar, but it’s valuable work you can do on your own or with a coach.

When you question your painful thoughts and let them go, you get the sense that it’s all going to be okay. And it will be, I am totally sure of it.

Love,

Elizabeth

POWERFUL QUESTION: Where do you feel difficult emotions in your body? Have you told your story? Do you need to let go of any painful thoughts?

*It’s great writing: https://audacity.substack.com/p/over-and-over-again?utm_source=email

** You can do the thought work of Byron Katie on your own at thework.com or with a coach. In coaching, we use additional subquestions, focusing especially on where you feel it in your body:

1. Is it true?

2. Can you absolutely know it’s true?

3. What happens to you when you believe the thought? Where do you feel it in your body?

4. Who would you be if you no longer had access to that thought? What does it feel like now?

____

Have you heard? I’ve started a coaching practice. This work leads to uncovering what is holding you back and how to overcome those obstacles. With the right questions, you will figure out what you might tweak to direct yourself toward what you really want. If you are interested, I invite you to send me an email to schedule a Discovery Session at elizabeth@elizabethheise.com.

Do my weekly stories come to your inbox? If not, you are invited to sign up. Click on elizabethheise.com and subscribe today. And if you like, come find me on the socials: @elizabethheise.coach on Instagram and @heiseelizabeth1 on Twitter. Happy reading!