What do you do when it all falls apart?
What helps, what doesn't, and how to find our way back to love.
CARE.CHECK*: When you need yourself the most, are you your best friend or your worst enemy?
Do you lean in or do you zoom out?
Do you love yourself even more or do you judge yourself for everything that happens?
Do you have your back or do you put a knife in your own heart?
Those are not easy questions to answer but they have the power to change everything for us. And as usual, for some context and perspective, keep reading :)
[In case this letter gets cut in the email, you can click HERE to read the full post now :)]
IF YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO THIS INSTEAD, Rick discovered Speechify, an app through which this Care.Check letter can be read to you by AI Gwyneth Paltrow :)
Hi Care.Friend!
It’s raining in New York and I traded my usual Oat latte for a hot chocolate at the Flower Cafe. As I sip it slowly and watch the gorgeous display of flowers that surrounds me, I try to find places in my body to anchor in, so that I can find enough safety to connect to my heart, who will then lead my fingers onto this page… and then to you.
But it’s hard today. It’s so hard. I weathered a rainfall of troubling news over the weekend and I can’t seem to find a way to warm myself up.
How good are you at supporting yourself?
How willing are you to forgive yourself when you made a mistake?
How fast do you label a decision or any unfortunate event a mistake?
How kind are you with your own body, your own mind, and your own heart?
I struggle with each and every one of those... I forget that I struggle sometimes because I’m doing so much better than before on all fronts! But I still struggle.
** ABOUT SUPPORTING OURSELVES
Fact is I am kind to myself now when I make the so-called right decision. When my choice paid up. When my hunch saved the day. OR when absolutely nothing that I can judge myself for happened. (Because, yes, labeling our decisions or choices as good is just as much a judgment as labeling them as bad).
So I guess my self-love comes with conditions… which means it’s not love. It’s conditional self-approval. Which matters too, right? It’s a beginning. A step forward. Actually, it’s a LEAP forward from self-hate! So yes, when everything feels right, I now approve of myself. Genuinely.
However, I have no idea how to support myself when things go awry, not as planned, not in a way that serves. I have no idea how to give myself grace, compassion or support.
I used to know how to numb in those instances—with work, with alcohol, with food, with drama. But I’ve learned it’s not a solution and that it only makes everything worse in the long run. So I don’t...
I’m learning how to stay with the discomfort. But I haven’t learned how to support myself through it. How to offer myself some comfort, how to anchor in compassion and kindness, when there is nothing that can be done to fix what was broken or retrieve what was lost. Or when I have to witness my powerlessness over what happens around me or not.
I’m acutely aware of that today, and I am committed to learning a new way of tending to my own despair, shame attacks and hateful inner dialogue.
** ABOUT THE WHY
Because we all make mistakes sometimes—and the more we have on our plate, the more we risk dropping something on the floor. (Gravity has a way of turning on us sometimes.)
Extenuating circumstances do not take away our responsibility and yet they matter. Because we’re all doing the best we can, and we’re ALL good inside.
Denying that helps no one and slowly destroys us. There’s no amount of self-blame or self-shaming that can change what was done or what was not done. Self-compassion and self-kindness, however, can help us weather the storm and show up to own the consequences and do what we can to make amends (if amends need to be made) or to move on if there is nothing to apologize for.
But it’s ridiculous and harmful to pretend that our self-talk is something we’re truly in control of in those moments.
Compassion, curiosity, creativity (which includes the ability to find creative solutions), calm, courage, clarity, confidence and connectedness are what Dick Schwartz, the creator of IFS, calls the 8Cs of Self. Self in the IFS model is what is often referred to as Soul, Higher Self, Spirit or our essence. And we can only connect to who we truly are when anchored in a body, with a somewhat regulated nervous system.
Indeed, we need to be in a state of ventral regulation to be able to fully process what’s happening around us—to respond and not re-ACT.
* It’s ridiculous and harmful to pretend
that our self-talk is something
we’re always in control of .*
When in fight or flight, we’re highly reactive. We feel an immense pressure to react right now. We’re in survival mode, we feel under attack, and our point of view is hyper-focused. We CANNOT find perspective in those moments. Our nervous system won’t let us. If there’s a lion about to eat us, the lion is all we’re going to be able to see and think about. Of course it is. That makes sense.
And when in dorsal shutdown, we disengage… Not by choice! Reactively. Our system is taking us away from what’s happening to protect us. If there’s a lion about to eat us and there’s nothing we can do about it, the body is at least going to protect us from the sensation of this unfortunate ordeal.
What we CAN do is build awareness around our capacity and learn how to TEND to it. We can then learn how to EXPAND it, so that we can always be the caretakers of our nervous system—instead of being overruled by a nervous system that believes us helpless. We can learn how to notice in real time (aka in the now) or at least earlier and earlier when we’re falling off the ladder regulation (I described that ladder HERE last week).
What we CAN’T control is, in any given moment and with the capacity we have, if we’re going to be able to cope or not. Once again: this is not a decision.
If something overwhelms us, our nervous system might take over and we might shut down—and once shut down, we’re not in control anymore.
And the state of our nervous system dictates our internal self-talk.
In fight or flight, we obsess and we blame. We look for solutions, we attack, we defend, we resist, we’re very outcome focused and we convince ourselves that self-blame is a fuel.
In shutdown, we loathe ourselves. We feel hopeless, isolated, outcasted, unsupported and worthless.
Of course, I’m describing it here without nuance and those are the extremes of each state, not the rule. But still, it matters to realize that self-kindness and self-compassion are next to impossible to access for someone in dorsal shutdown.
* We can always be the caretakers of our nervous system.*
** ABOUT THE HOW
So what to do when we’re stuck in what Brene Brown calls a Shame Attack? When we don’t only believe we did something wrong but that we ARE something wrong? When we’ve convinced ourselves that our mistakes are unforgivable—or that twists of fate we couldn’t foresee are mistakes…
What we can do is remind ourselves that we cannot trust our thoughts at the moment.
That’s it.
We cannot stop thinking, thoughts are automatic processes. We cannot change our thinking in those moments, because our thinking is coming from highly reactive patterns. We cannot decide either not to be in survival mode anymore, because being in survival mode is not a choice. The body will not move back into safety just because we want it to. Our system needs time to discharge the Fight and flight energy or start its engines again after a shutdown. Our body needs to EXPERIENCE the absence of threat: It needs to be a felt experience, not just a thought.
And our bodies need time and care to do so, especially if our self-talk is keeping us under constant attack. Because it’s important to remember that danger, as registered by the nervous system, can simply be our perception of ourselves in those moments!
When something happens (whether “something” is something we had no control over or if we made a mistake), and if we make it mean that there’s something wrong with us, that we should have been able to prevent this, that it’s our FAULT (and not only our responsibility)—and even if all of this self-badgering is happening at a subconscious level—we disconnect from ourselves. And that, in itself, is enough to throw our body into survival mode.
Survival mode stems from fear and when we abandon our bodies, our bodies register it as a threat (which makes sense).
So all we can do is notice.
* We cannot stop thinking, thoughts are automatic processes.*
We can tune in and assess what is happening beneath our skin, without judgment or without trying to fix anything:
We can listen to the thoughts the way we would listen to a stranger we have no reason to trust. We can look at them with curiosity or simply write them down. The goal is not to make them right or wrong. The goal is not to understand why we’re thinking this way yet. The goal is to witness WHAT we are thinking (and probably believing) at the moment.
We can tune in to our emotions without trying to understand which meaning they hold. We can simply let them be. Let them vibrate through us. We might notice that the only sensation available is numbness! And numbness feels neutral but it’s anything but. So thinking of numbness as an emotion allows us to realize that numbness—just like joy, sadness, anger, anxiety or all the others—is a messenger with an important message to deliver. But right now, the goal is not to understand the message: the goal is to let the message arrive and move through us.
When in shutdown, we can bring some gentle movement into our bodies until suddenly we have some energy to move again. Movement here shall be small and tender. Gently hugging ourselves. Maybe some slow gentle yoga. Putting some cream on our hands. Moving our fingers. Checking in with the breath and letting our body rock side to side or front to back. Taking in the presence of a trusted friend or pet that can help us slowly reconnect to the outside world, until we can feel again. And feeling again might not be pleasant at first because the way out of dorsal shutdown is, as previously mentioned through fight or flight, but that’s the only way back home into regulation.
If we’re in fight or flight, we are flooded with energy, so we need to find an outlet for it. Running. Swimming. Some more intensive forms of yoga. A long walk. Free writing. Anything that gets all the overflow out.
* We can tune in and assess what is happening beneath our skin,
without judgment or without trying to fix anything.*
So to sum it up, what we can—and more importantly NEED to—do is to step in the role of the observer and tend to the body first and foremost.
** ABOUT THE WAY UP
Now, that’s okay if we can’t make it up or even onto the ladder for days. We’re not aiming at perfection here, we’re looking for self-connection. Even when we can’t help ourselves, we can still observe ourselves; and that’s the equivalent of holding the ladder. Which is the first step on our way to the top. We’ll start climbing when we can.
And once on the ladder, we don’t have to climb it all at once. We can take some breaks along the way. For a few hours, a few weeks, a few years. We must ground in the certainty that we’re always doing the best we can. Not the best we can as in “I will never be able to grow, change, expand, learn or deepen”, or not the best we can as in “any other day when I don’t have that much on my plate”, but the best we can in that very moment. And that moment is what needs to be considered when we’re evaluating the answers we think we should or shouldn’t have had. Fairness is paramount for self-trust to arise.
* We need to step in the role of the observer
and tend to the body first and foremost.*
Finally, we can remember that we have no way to change the past nor any way to predict the future, but we can always find solace and shelter in the present moment.
They say that God is not the event but in the aftermath and to me that’s a beautiful way to remember that the solution can only be created now that the problem has occurred.
I can spend all my energy ruminating but that won’t change what is. I can spend all my energy catastrophizing what could come next but that won’t allow me access the better parts of me or the guidance of a power greater than us. So those options don’t help in any way.
So if I want to help myself:
What I can do is connect to the present moment and give myself what I need to find my way back to my heart where all my resilience and wisdom lie.
What I can do is tend to my nervous system so that I can think clearly, breathe deeply and figure out what is the best course of action to get me out of the mess I find myself in.
What I can do is choose to focus on all I can do now instead of what I should or shouldn’t have known or done.
What I can do is choose to focus on all I can do now instead of what I might have to do if the world ends.
What I can do is realize that doing for the sake of doing is never the solution and follow Oprah’s guidance: “when you don’t know what to do, do nothing.” Which doesn’t mean do nothing EVER, but do nothing until you have some new information, some perspective, some new insight. If we can’t see the solution, staring harder will not help. What we need is to stop staring for a moment.
And what I will do right now is follow my own advice and apply everything I just wrote about. As kindly, compassionately, tenderly, trustingly and gently as I can.
I’ll keep you posted next week! And I hope this helped you see, at least, that you’re not alone in overwhelm if that happens to be your experience too.
** ABOUT US
Here’s what I know for sure:
We have options. We have agency. We are more than enough to face any challenge and help can be found in the most unexpected places.
I’ll ground in this deep knowing while I step out of the Flower Cafe and back into what seems insurmountable to my mind, but that my heart KNOWS is figureoutable.
(As per Marie Forleo’s mantra: EVERYTHING IS FIGUREOUTABLE).
Wish me luck and please send some love to my nervous system: because love heals, love wins & nothing can get us up the ladder faster than love.
* We are more than enough to face any challenge
and help can be found in the most unexpected places.*
With kindness, love and light—because I truly believe they’re our most sacred offering to this world.
Always,
leo