A smart and hardworking client who is a full-time student and almost full-time employee shared this thought recently. A cause of her angst? She took a nap after getting more done in a morning than I do some weeks. It got me thinking about this particularly sneaky form of perfectionism and self-criticism. It’s a crazy-making Catch 22: I’m not doing enough, so I better do more, which still won’t be enough, so I can either continue doing more in an increasing frenzy or get stuck and avoid thinking, feeling, and acting because it all seems like just too much – at the same time it’s not enough. Just perfect. (Pardon the expression).

When I think I’m not doing enough, I often do less. When I believe I’m not doing enough volunteering/donating/ paperwork/exercising/de-cluttering/flossing/?, I can become immobilized or unmotivated. Or I do the opposite: way too much. I overhelp from an anxious, pleaser place, which doesn’t feel good. It’s also annoying to most and under-appreciated by the rest…of those whom I am trying to do more for.

Why do we do this? In my case, I think it goes back to basic human fears: I am not safe; I am not enough. The irony is that self-judgment and perfectionism create conditions for the perfect (!) storm of the fight/flight/freeze response. This creates feelings of being even less safe and less adequate. Closely related to its cousins, “I should be doing more,” “I should be doing it better,” and “I’m not doing it right,” it’s also a setup for distraction and procrastination. Nothing happens, except we get to beat ourselves up for not doing enough (or anything.) Those of us who experience mind/body pain, anxiety, emotional eating, and other symptoms courtesy of the stress trifecta also get an excuse to view our disconnection through the same self-critical lens, and the “beat” goes on.

How to free one’s self from this loop? Here’s the thought I am playing with: maybe it’s all true. Rationally, I know that sometimes what I’m doing is enough and I just need to hold that thought. It may also be true that sometimes doing more would be better, and I’m not doing as much as I could be doing and it’s still enough. It might be what my body, energy, time, and sanity have to give right now, so it’s actually perfect. And some days, doing more is taking a nap.

Wishing you sweet days and dreams,
Ann

This week, I thought you might like to have my latest update of the Free Writing Tool.  Even if you haven’t been utilizing the Healthy Mind Toolbox Audio Course, you might find this tool helps you become aware of emotions you may be inadvertently holding inside your body.  Bringing these emotions into your awareness will give you a chance to release them, release tension in your body, and relax into healing.

Download the Free Writing Tool here.

Have you ever felt like your body was filled with lead and actually doing the items on your list was harder than pushing a boulder uphill?

Have you ever forced yourself to do them all anyway, and ended up feeling exhausted, doing less-than-awesome work, and feeling downright horrible?

Nah. That’s probably never happened to you.

It has, however, happened to me! At least a few times each month, I experience this phenomenon we call resistance.

I used to beat myself up and feel guilt for even experiencing it, and then push myself through to the finish line with dogged determination. I used to think that if I forced myself to work through resistance, I’d get over it. I used to completely ignore my body whenever it had the lead-filled feeling.

It’s REALLY hard to ignore your body when your hoo-ha is on fire, your bladder is spasming, you have terrible gas all the time, and your knees throb.

Which is, of course, the point.

My body got seriously tired of me ignoring it. And after several years of learning how to listen to it, I now have a different reaction to the lead-filled feeling. I realize it means I need to stop. Now. Check-in. Breathe. Ask my body what it needs. Listen. Obey.

Resistance tells us to stop. If we honor that, we learn something important.

Like: It’s time to rest. I need more singing in my life. My body wants to sleep more this week. I feel like taking up dancing. I never did write that book I meant to write. I need to connect with a friend. This project is big, and I need help. I need to learn to delegate. That idea isn’t right for this project/moment/year. I need a date with my spouse. I need to play in the park with my kids. Time to shift my priorities. Today is not a creative day. Today is not a working day. I need to breathe deeply more often. Etc.

Whatever the message is, it’s something we need to hear. So resistance comes up to make us stop, listen, and learn. Which is why overriding the resistance is not helpful. It’s okay if it doesn’t all get done today. It’s okay if it’s not perfect. It’s just plain okay.

Stop.

About an hour before the call I noticed a stabbing pain in my stomach.  Twenty minutes before the call, my older son’s caregiver told me she wasn’t feeling well and asked to go home.  At the precise time the call was scheduled to begin, my sister rang to ask when she could drop off my younger son.  My thoughts drifted to the tower of projects perched on my desk.  I asked myself, might it be better to reschedule (for the third time?)

The scenario above provides a perfect example of when my mind does it’s very best to distract me from doing my work.  It really “thinks” it’s doing the right thing by throwing in the stomach pain or the phone call from the sister – anything to keep the decoy strategy alive.

The initial purpose for the call was to find the reason for my late night eating when I wasn’t hungry.  I had ten extra pounds of suppressed emotions camping out on my hips and I was ready to find out why.  All the little distractions that led up to the call were my mind’s way of avoiding the examination of some painful thoughts.

So, I climbed into bed, took a deep breath and made the call.  The “Whys” were ready to surface.

I looked myself directly in the mind and answered my coach’s questions honestly, openly and without judgment.  Bottom line, I was in attack and judgment mode and felt crappy.  All the while I rubbed my stomach trying to ease the painful cramping.

Thirty minutes into the call I made a break through.  I took a deep breath and laughed and in that moment noticed the stabbing pain in my stomach was completely gone.  My body knew I was believing a lie and when I let go of the belief that anything had to be different than it was, my body relaxed and said thank you.  When I’m in a state of loving what is, everything around me and in my mind is full of love.

What’s cool is that when I “fall out of love”, I have this reference to return to at any time.  My body is there to gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) get my attention to let me know I’m believing a painful story that’s untrue.

Do you remember a time when you experienced physical pain that seemed to appear with no explanation?  Do you recall what was happening in your life at that moment in time?  What was your emotional state?  Were you stressed, anxious, fearful, or sad?  Can you recall if you wanted something to be different?

When your body starts to hurt in all kinds of interesting ways including pelvic pain, a migraine, back pain, Interstitial Cystitis, or IBS to name a few, it’s doing the very best it can to show you, teach you, let you know there’s a valuable message for you to discover.  Start asking yourself questions to discover the truth.  When you do, you’ll be delighted to find the pain dissipate and crawl back into the recesses of your body and wait to serve as a messenger when you get distracted.  And maybe next time you’ll notice it just a little bit earlier until it only needs to be a whisper instead of loud, chronic pain.

If you’d like help with the questions, I’d love to support you through your discovery.

Cheers to 2011 and to listening to the wisdom of your body.  It never lies.

“Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.” G. K. Chesterton

“Once you accept the fact that you’re not perfect, then you develop some confidence.” Rosalyn Carter

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” Anna Quindlen

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen

“Breathe.” Abigail Steidley

I  love pearls of wisdom and have never met a pun that I didn’t like, so it was natural to be thinking of favorite adages as I looked for inspiration for this week’s blog.  The sayings above, which came immediately to mind, share a common theme: living in self-acceptance, ease, and authenticity.

At the same time, the painful condition of anxiety was popping up in various aspects of my personal life like mushrooms in my yard after a rainy week.

A coincidence?  I think not.  My Inner Wisdom was tapping me on the shoulder, helping me notice that my intention of living in that place of ease, lightness, and love was being undermined by anxiety.  Interestingly, the usual suspects of fear, anger, or shame, which usually disguise themselves as anxiety, were fueled this time by a deeper layer of pain in the form of perfectionism. (Me?! A perfectionist?! The woman with the cozily messy desk, the person who suffers no embarrassment when obviously directionally challenged in exercise classes, the book group member comfortable having literally lost the plot and her words in discussions?)

Well, yes. My thoughts had started to skew towards unconscious perfectionism. I was laughing less and obsessing more. I realized that I was attacking myself with “shoulds” disguised as “wants”.  Wanting not to worry, to finish a project, to generally “get it”, to be a better coach/student/teacher/family member, to be understood and loved, were actually self-judgments. I was coming up short and it was bringing me down.

This friction between these edicts and my essential self is a setup for anxiety and a ticket into fight or flight. The accompanying freeze results in procrastination and the exhaustion of being revved up with the mental brakes on, particularly unpleasant to someone who is a doer by nature.

It’s not fun and definitely not peaceful, as anyone who experiences this cycle of spinning thoughts and feelings on a regular basis knows. Right now I am consciously embracing my messy learning curve of life as, dare I say,  “perfect”, and questioning what I can learn, why I have to get it right, who I need to be perfect for, and what the heck is perfect and who made that rule, anyhow?

Since anxiety is a common factor in the physical pain of mind/body syndrome, emotional eating, and the straight-up, free-floating , whack-a-mole variety of suppressive suffering, I offer the specifics of the practice that I am playing with as return to living light, with hopes that parts might be useful to you, whether or not perfectionism appears when anxiety rears it’s unpleasant and informative little head:

1) Breathe – mindfully, slowly, often (being present and in fight/flight/freeze are mutually exclusive)

2) Notice the feeling of “anxious” and lovingly, gently, and thoroughly dig beneath it.  Find and greet the underlying emotions and experience them as physical sensations.  Or just choose to notice those feelings instead of focusing on Anxiety. Breathe. If thoughts or other feelings arise, notice them and work them if it feels right. Or just be aware of them as thoughts and feelings – not The Truth or the Essential Me – or You.

3) Practice taking a bird’s eye or long view.  Notice that what is a world of pain to you about your perceived inadequacies or less than perfect (fill in the blank) is just a blip on the radar of others’ awareness – they are busy worrying about how they appear or what is going on in their own worlds. (It’s not about you, even when it seems to be, which is great news unless you are a flaming narcissist.  Which you are not. If you were, you wouldn’t be anxious.)

4) If others do judge, in the grand scheme of things, who cares?!  Why do you?? Seriously.  Who made them emperor?

5) If you still care, go back to 2) and practice taking the long view. Another term that’s a useful reminder for me is “perspective” – like zooming out on Google maps – where did those houses go, anyway?

6) Practice smiling (the action affects your brain in a good way) and laughing gently at the “Wow” aspects of the world, yourself, others, or at a bad pun or funny story. (It’s impossible to sincerely laugh and be in anxious fight/flight/freeze mode simultaneously – see #1.)

7) Decide to lightly jump (or take little steps) back into living your life in the moment for just this moment.

8) And finally, here’s my not totally enlightened but sometimes helpful starter thought to get out of my lizardy and self-critical be-more/better mindset, courtesy of Bette Midler:

“_____ ‘em if they can’t take a joke.”

If your thoughts are a little higher on the food chain of empowerment, “Hug ‘em” might feel good and true, too.

May your heart and flight be light,

Ann

If you’re drowning in emotions and feeling uncomfortable or still not sure how to access emotions at all, then this post is for you.  The answer to either issue is the same.  Whether you’re feeling overwhelmed or underwhelmed by emotions, it’s time to look to your body for answers.

Emotions are PHYSICAL.

The word “emotion” comes from the root phrase  “energy in motion.”  Emotions are energy in our bodies.  For example, when we feel anxious, we can feel that energy.  It feels like something is humming at a high pitch in our bodies.  Depression, on the other hand, feels slower and lower.  I always think of emotions as musical pitches, since I am a musician.  Emotions are vibrational energy, just like musical pitches.  Tuning into the pitch you are currently vibrating means paying attention to your body.

To start, BREATHE.  Take three slow, relaxed breaths, paying attention to the feel of the air as it passes through your nose, into your throat, and down into your lungs.  The breath is the bridge between body and mind.  Cross that bridge by paying attention to how your breath feels as it moves in and out of your body.

Next, notice where you most feel the current emotion as a physical sensation.  If you can’t yet name the emotion, that’s okay.  Just pay attention to the physical sensation and begin describing it to yourself.  What does it feel like?  Is it hot, cold, sharp, tingly, tight, loose – what color is it?  What would you tell someone else, to really explain in detail how this emotion feels in your body?

It’s a very simple technique, but it allows your mind to focus on your body throughout the sensation of the emotion.  Don’t be surprised if the emotion leaves or dissipates quickly.  It’s usually our resistance to the emotion or our focus on the thoughts we’re thinking that hold the emotion in our bodies.  Observing it physically allows it to pass, as it is meant to, from our bodies.

As you’re doing this process, remember this:  It’s okay to feel uncomfortable.  It won’t last forever.  In fact, by feeling it this way, you’ll be much LESS uncomfortable than if you suppress it, as it will only return much stronger if you do so.

You might feel like you’re doing an awful lot of feeling.  You might feel like you have a lot of emotional ups and downs.  You might think you’re silly for being so “emotional” or feel different in your own skin.  This is all perfect.  Welcome to the world of being Emotion Smart.  This is the journey, and you’re on it.  Congratulate yourself!

Today’s post is short, because I want you to focus on this homework assignment.  It’s not too tough, but it’s crucial in your mind-body healing process.  I’ll tell you why you need to do this in following posts.  For now – well, you’ll have to trust me! 

Seriously, though, this is something EVERYONE would benefit from doing every single day for a variety of reasons.  I use this tool with my clients who want to lose weight, deal with work issues, solve relationship problems – you name it, this is the place to start.  And, since I’m guessing that your chronic pain issue is probably NOT the only stressor in your life, this might come as good news.  This tool is the basis for everything else you need to work through whatever is currently troubling you.

SO – here’s the assignment.  I’ll leave it a bit loose so that you can structure it to your liking.  The basic concept is this: throughout the day, several times a day (as many times as possible, but don’t make this into yet another stressful to-do), stop and ask yourself the following question.

What am I feeling right now?

As in emotion – NOT physical pain.  Answer the question with a one/two-word answer – are you happy?  Are you sad?  Are you pissed off?  Are you nervous?  If you can’t name the emotion, that’s okay.  Just note how it feels, and if it’s toward the icky side or the happy side.  It might help to think about the four basic categories of emotions: mad, sad, glad, and scared.  Then, from there, see which one yours falls under.  Then, try to give it a name.  Maybe you’re not exactly mad, but you are frustrated.  Or perhaps you’re enraged!  Whatever it is, just notice.

That’s all.  That’s it.  Really!  There you have it.  I KNOW you can do this assignment!  This is a skill you can develop until you find yourself naturally doing this throughout the day, every day.  Why will it change your life?  More to come on that….

For now, just try this out.  Maybe you want to write the answer down every time.  Maybe you want to set a watch alarm to remind yourself to do the assignment.  Whatever feels right to you – DO IT.

Oh, and hey – TELL me about it right here!  I’d love to hear how it’s going, if you’re confused, or what you’ve noticed thus far!

To truly begin to unravel the complicated puzzle of my own physical illness, I had to open my mind to a new way of perceiving my whole being. I liked what I was reading from all these various books, but I had yet to fully grasp the truth of it within my own self. Luckily, experimenting with techniques that come from the mind and result in mental strength is a win-win proposition. I decided it couldn’t hurt to explore the power of my own mind and venture into new areas of understanding – it wasn’t like I was mixing medications. I set out to experiment with my own body and my newly awakened mind.

Needless to say, as you might have surmised from the general message of my blog, the results were astoundingly successful. From where I sit now, on the other side of the process, I can fully see and understand the true power of mind-body healing. I have more than just my excitement, conviction, and hope. Now, I have the final piece of my own learning puzzle: experience. From this perspective, I can share clear and hopefully helpful information with you. Having blazed the trail in front of you, I hope to shorten your journey by sharing the tools and understanding I gleaned from my own experience.

The whole equation begins with emotion. Many of us, my past self included, do not deal with negative emotion in a helpful, effective way. I spent most of my life trying to avoid negative emotion as much as possible. I hated hearing about misfortune, tried not to cry or “break down” in public, kept my emotions on a very short leash, and in general ran like hell from facing anything emotionally uncomfortable. Unfortunately, what I did not realize was the impossibility of truly escaping negative emotion. Emotion is part of the human experience, and negative emotion does not leave me just because I don’t want to face it. In fact, by trying with all my might not to feel it, I actually trapped it in my body.

Now before you shake your head and label me crazy, let me promise you this is not just a theory. Many very scientific, smart people are studying this concept and incorporating it into their understanding of healing. One of these is Les Fehmi, PhD, author of the book The Open-Focus Brain. He gives an excellent description of how emotions remain in the body, which I’ll summarize here. To keep from feeling an emotion, to keep from letting it enter your consciousness, there is only one thing you can do. You must tense and tighten a muscle or group of muscles somewhere in your body. Though this works like a charm – you won’t be dwelling on the negative emotion anymore – it has a major drawback. The very muscle where you are holding that tension becomes a holding spot for the emotion. You can think of emotion as having an energy – it is not “nothing.” If processed, that energy flows through your body and leaves. If it is not processed, that energy has nowhere to go. It remains locked within you, usually in the region of the body you have unconsciously chosen to clench.

As you might imagine, after many years of doing this, day in and day out, your body reaches a limit. First of all, holding a muscle in a contracted position for extended periods of time is clearly not healthy. Nerves lose precious blood and oxygen flow, muscles fatigue, skin does not receive the nutrients it needs to remain healthy, and pain settles in to stay. Your body has to work hard to keep up the emotion avoiding pattern because it actually responds to the negative emotion as though it is under attack. If you are afraid to feel a negative emotion, you are signaling your body to move into fight-or-flight mode to escape this perceived predator. So, muscles tense, heart-rate increases, hormone production is altered, and the nervous system remains on high-alert. None of this is conducive to health and healing – in fact, this is your body in breakdown mode. It takes massive amounts of energy to maintain the fight-or-flight state. Every system of the body can be affected from hormones to nerves to skin to muscles to mental acuity.

When I finally understood this connection, I could immediately see evidence of it everywhere in my life. To avoid negative emotions I spent every waking moment of my life in fight-or-flight mode, which, while adversely affecting my health, also led to constant anxiety. The negative emotion did not leave my body but remained trapped, building up to toxic levels. My body was begging me to accept negative emotions, allow them to be a part of my life, and in doing so, let them go. I was already working with Kathleen Barratt (see her website in the blogroll) and learning how to re-train my breathing patterns to allow full, oxygen-rich breaths back into my body. I discovered that breathing these full, complete breaths helped me draw my focus into my body, realize the places where I was holding tension, and release myself from the anxiety and fight-or-flight trap. Breathing also helped me to allow those emotions to surface, move through me, and leave my physical self at long last.

When I reached this level of understanding regarding my mind, body, and emotions, it was literally only a few weeks before my body began to show signs of healing. I knew my experiment was a success – I could feel it in every cell of my being. I could feel the healing in every breath I took, in every anxiety, tension-free moment, in every emotion that came bubbling up and out to be released. Soon, the vulvar pain and burning sensations faded away, the constant itching disappeared, the urinary frequency lifted, the unusual skin problems vanished, and my hormones returned to normal levels (my previous test results showed up as menopausal even though I was only 26). Now, I am equipped with the knowledge that remaining intimately connected with my emotions, my physical body, and my inner sense of self is the perfect formula for long-lasting health. The experiment continues and I constantly fine-tune my ability to be a whole person, not a mind distanced from its body. I can’t imagine living any other way now that I’ve discovered the fulfilling, energizing, and vivid life available to me.