Archives for 2009

Awaken To Awareness: Tips For Dealing With Life

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Transitioning from the person you were to the person you are becoming is like birth: messy, painful, and unpredictable.  Allowing yourself to awaken to awareness, as the yogis say, can be a real boon to the process.

What does awakening to awareness really mean?  It’s when you let all the material that lies just beneath the surface, in that pre-conscious terrain it’s so easy to avoid, to be front and center where you can deal with it.  Because the more you know yourself the more authentic you can be; and, greater self-awareness helps you make better choices in all aspects of life.

Here are a few techniques to get you started:

WRITE A LIST OF ONE HUNDRED:

It can be a list of 100 Things I love, 100 Things I am Happy I Experienced in Life, 100 Things I Fear; whatever speaks to you.

It’s a great conduit to the unconscious if you scrupulously adhere to the following directions:

1. Count out 100 lines on a piece of paper.

2. Write your title at the top.

3. Set a timer for 20 minutes.

4. Write as fast as you can, without stopping to censor yourself.  That means, write anything that comes to mind, even if it’s the exact same thing you already wrote.

5. Look over your list and notice the number of times certain themes appeared. Since you have a hundred, figuring out percentages should be easy.

DREAM JOURNALING:

I already have a chapter on this, so please scroll down on the right side of the page and check it out.

BRAINSTORMING:

1. Write a word, or a few words, in the middle of a blank page.  Whatever names the issue is that you are trying to understand. It could be as specific as “job” or as global as “Who am I?”

2. Allow your mind to wander. Write the next set of words in a circle around the central word.

3. Focus on each of the other words and write whatever new words they generate. Do one at a time, group by group.

4. If any one of those words trigger something new add another branch of words from that starting point. Exhaust all possibilities before going to the next new branch.

5. At the end of the exercise you will have many different avenues to pursue.  Some will be some will be useless and some will be gems.

ACCESSING THE LITTLE SIX YEAR OLD INSIDE:

1. Find a photo of yourself when you were a little child.

2. If you have a stuffed animal go get it.

3. Have a pad of paper, unlined is preferable, and some crayons or colored pens or pencils.

4. Ask the little child inside: “Honey, what can I do for you? What would you like?”

5. Then draw and/or write the answer using your non-dominant hand (if you’re left handed use your right hand).

6. Act on what you discover. If the little child inside wants more rest, give her rest; if he wants more fun, give him fun; if she wants to feel safer, make a safe haven for her.

MEDITATION:

A wonderful way to let the floodgates loose as all manner of material will float into your consciousness as you sit with yourself.

A classic breath-centered meditation is Vipassana:

Just sit comfortably on the floor with a cushion under you, or on a chair.

Focus on your breath. Notice where you first feel your inhale, or where you can feel the beginning of an exhale. It could be the tip of your nose, the back of your throat, or in your lungs.

When your mind wanders, and it will, re-focus on the breath.

Check out the annotated bibliography on the right (and the links on the bottom right) for more meditation books, CDs, and free podcasts.

MANTRA:

Use the Om Gum Ganapatayei mantra (https://holisticdivorce.wordpress.com/category/mantras-for-emotional-healing/) to remove obstacles, and notice what emerges.

Be especially attentive to what opportunities present themselves.

One more thought.  My constant focus on being your true self is not just based on yogic philosophy, but decades as a holistic psychotherapist. Denying your true nature is like hiding your light under a bushel.  It’s not beneficial to you or the world.  If you are generous, be generous. If you are an introvert, remember to take time for yourself; it’s how you replenish.  If you’re an extravert make social plans to revive your spirits. If you love reading, read. If you love sports, play or watch them. Stifling your natural tendencies will only submerge them where they can morph into something far less pretty.  Revel in your unique self.

Copyright Nicole S. Urdang

The Gift of Disillusion

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I want to talk to you about the gift of disillusion and its ultimate reward: accepting life on life’s terms.

Clinging to illusions starts early. We all want to believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and magic.  They soothe and bolster our spirits. Of course, we are loath to relinquish them. Even as adults, choosing fantasy, or what we want to think is true, is far more alluring than reality. Unless something is hitting us upside the head, it’s unlikely we will jump at the chance to add extra upheaval, stress, and angst to an already full life by rushing out to embrace it.

Facing how things are often means riding an emotional roller coaster, but that’s because we aren’t prepared for it.  We are fed a romanticized diet and when reality rears its head we want to escape.  The escape might be into addiction, another person, depression, anger, or anxiety.

I have an old New Yorker cartoon on my waiting room bulletin board that shows a woman sitting on the couch with her husband hanging from a noose. The balloon above her head says: “Happy darling?”  The title of the cartoon is: “We see what we want to see.”  The problem is, sooner or later, our illusions get pulverized by reality.  Most of us respond with disbelief, anger, depression, and anxiety in the face of these revelations, but there’s goodness hidden in all that pain.

How could disillusion be so great when it feels so earth-shattering?  If you believe the truth will set you free (assuming it doesn’t kill you first), you will prefer embracing reality, because illusion ultimately leads to false expectations and misery.  With practice and experience, recognizing illusions becomes easier, and choosing to face things head-on less daunting.  You can even welcome challenges as opportunities to develop tolerance, patience, and self-acceptance.  That doesn’t mean you will gracefully navigate every boulder in your path.  You may kick it, scream at its blocking your way, or try to walk in the opposite direction.  The only thing that matters is using everything as a catalyst for self-compassion. Paradoxically, that’s the way towards greater resilience.  Avoidance, or its opposite: being strong, which often involves denying your true feelings, lead to feeling overwhelmed and self-downing.

Of course, clinging to illusions is addictive.  It’s fantasy land, but like drug addiction, short-term gain ends up causing long-term pain. Unlike addiction, however, I don’t think people consciously choose illusion. We are wired to want what we want when we want it, and when we think we’ve found it why search for evidence that it is a mirage?

There probably isn’t much you can do to prevent some illusions, especially in new situations and with new people; but, you can face disillusionment when it first appears rather than pushing it under the rug and having it come back to take a bigger bite out of you later on. That’s easy to say and hard to do, as facing reality is daunting. However, it can become a practice, like yoga, prayer, or eating breakfast.  You can seek out opportunities to love reality.  Start small.  The bus is late, but you decide it’s OK. Your boss is in a bad mood and you let it roll off your back. The puppy pees on your new rug, you calmly clean it up.  Busses will be late, bosses have their own issues, and puppies aren’t 100% well trained. Don’t you think you would enjoy life more if you could embrace what is rather than rail against it?

It’s one thing with a puppy, and quite another if you find out your spouse has been lying to you, hiding money, or having an affair.  Those are far bigger issues.  Just for a minute, try to imagine you are over the betrayal.  You accept that someone you trusted deeply disappointed you. Doesn’t that require a certain amount of newfound comfort with disillusion?  Isn’t it accepting reality?  Don’t you feel some measure of peace?

Loving what is affords you the benefit of fewer unrealistic expectations, as well as the ability to see with greater clarity.  That doesn’t mean you can never fall in love, but you will understand the lack of perspective is temporary.  The ability to ignore things you don’t like about someone, even a mate, is time limited.  Knowing reality will rear its head and intrude on your fantasy enables you to take disillusion in stride when it appears, rather than be rocked to your core.

How is this all so wonderful?  For one thing, it might decrease the divorce rate.  We are fed a steady diet of romance and “happily ever after” from the time we read Beauty and The Beast, through adulthood.  This sets us up for a slew of unrealistic expectations. While there are plenty of reality based books and movies that could engender more realistic expectations, most of us like to think we’re the exception to the rule.  Our marriage will be better, more loving, more honest, faithful, etc.  What a crock.  We may achieve a more loving liaison, but humans, being the fallible blobs of protoplasm we are, make mistakes.  Some make more, some fewer.  The trick is to know yourself (what you can live with, what you want to avoid), and expect imperfection.

Paradoxically, people who grow up in toxic or dysfunctional families are at greater risk for creating unrealistic expectations because the perennial six year old inside wants to believe in fairy tale endings.  Not to mention the desire to have a perfect life where people treat each other with kindness, patience, and understanding.  I am all for that, but to expect it 100% of the time only sets one up for disillusionment.

The best thing we could do for our relationships is to tell someone, early on, all about our foibles, worst traits, quirks, idiosyncrasies, and weaknesses.  That way, there would be far less room for disappointment and disillusion.   It’s a paradigm shift worth imagining.  Try it on a first date, you’ll be surprised how much more believable your good qualities suddenly become.

In the meantime, welcoming, embracing, and even loving reality strengthens our ability to roll with life’s punches.  At the end of the day, we may not like what is true for us now, but we can handle it without illusions, delusions, and unrealistic expectations.  How empowering is that?

Copyright Nicole S. Urdang

Embracing Failure

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A few weeks ago, our minister was welcoming a new baby into the congregation.  He asked us all to help this child fail safely.  What a great concept.

This fit so perfectly with one of my pet issues: the importance of nurturing compassion for oneself.  It reminded me of a sermon I heard about a dozen years ago on how we should all take a couple of weeks off from self-improvement.  How healing and kind; so different from the usual self-flagellation we humans practice.

I began to wonder what would happen if we were re-wired to think that failure was healthy, useful, and a welcome part of life?  What if we actually thought there’s no such thing as failure?  Of course, we can fail to stop at a red light, fail to remember someone’s birthday, or fail an exam; but, I am referring to all those other experiences we deem failures that are opportunities to learn and grow.

How could there be no real failure?  If we decide to view every mistake as contributing to our highest good.  If we embrace each as an opportunity to expand our consciousness, and our awareness of our impact on the world.

I can’t tell you how many times people in the throes of a break-up tell me they failed at keeping their marriage afloat.  First of all, it’s not a one-person deal.  Whatever the issues, it takes two to have them.  Of course, there are certain situations: lying, addictions, and criminal behavior, to name a few, that tip the scales; but, I can’t think of relationship in which there isn’t some measure of shared responsibility.  It may be 90-10 and not 50-50, but each of us contributes to the demise of a partnership. Second, maybe ending a marriage whose time has come is really a success? (How one ends it is a different story, as most marriages bite the dust amid ugly sparring matches between people who once claimed to love each other.

In our culture, where the notion of failure is tantamount to worthlessness, welcoming our mistakes is a radical concept.  But, if we see our failures as gifts we can move into greater self-awareness, self-acceptance, and behavioral change. Here’s a thought: if it’s generally believed that we grow through our failures and not our successes; perhaps, our failures should more aptly be called our successes, and vice-versa?  Aren’t what we now call failures the building blocks of wisdom and perspective?

Our language powerfully shapes our sense of who we are and how we fit into the grand scheme of things.  The word failure is so fraught with negative connotations.  I propose we shun it altogether. While we’re at it, let’s get rid of the word mistake. How many failures are secret chances to see the world, especially our own little corner of it, differently? And, how many mistakes are times we were less thoughtful or considerate of others?  Of course, we may mistakenly forget to turn off the oven, but those aren’t the mistakes to which I am referring. What would it be like if we limited our use of the word to times when we erroneously added two and two and came up with five? That’s a mistake.

As we deepen our compassion for ourselves we accept our human fallibility as a present from the universe. It helps us develop more patience and compassion for others, as well as some humility. Never a bad thing.

We are faced with a choice: do we want to conceptualize life in negative terms, like failures and mistakes, or positively, by thinking everything is an opportunity for personal development?  I am pretty confident the world would be a very different place if we re-framed our failures and mistakes as little bits of grace.

Copyright Nicole S. Urdang

Your Highest Good

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With each passing day, I believe more deeply that everything is happening for our highest good.  The problem is we can feel mighty low in the moments, days, and months before that becomes apparent.

 

It’s quite a challenge to remember this optimistic aphorism when feeling lower than a snake’s wiggle, but you can do it.  One way is to enlist the help of a friend or relative as a coach. By sharing a positive world view (see other helpful ways of conceptualizing life from “ASK AND IT IS GIVEN” by Esther and Jerry Hicks, along with similar books promoting cognitive behavior therapy and positive psychology) he or she can help you climb out of the despair you may feel as you wend your way through the many faces of grief, or other negative emotions.  At first, you may get annoyed when someone even gently suggests that you have felt better and will feel better again, but bear with them. Let them point out how lousy you felt before, maybe even worse than you feel now, and you came out of it.  

 

Everything moves in cycles, including your moods.  One day you feel buoyant and the next you’re down in the dumps. It may take hours, days, or weeks for your spirits to lift, but they will. Having someone remind you can hasten the return to peace.

 

This may sound contradictory, but allowing yourself to feel what you are feeling accelerates its passing.  Acknowledging what triggers unwanted feelings enables you to home in on what you do want. The Hicks’ call negative states of mind and rotten experiences “contrast.”  They contend bad feelings help you become aware of what you don’t want. If you pay attention to what doesn’t work you can focus on what does.  

 

This isn’t new. Thousands of years ago yogis were practicing setting their intention on something. By zeroing in on what they wanted they were more likely to attain it.  In 1969, Dr. Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon-turned-psychiatrist, wrote a best seller called PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS. Essentially, it pointed out how people who were single-minded  in their dedication to a particular goal usually got it. Dr. Maltz’ positive psychology and focus on different ways to cultivate images of success are just as valid today as the yogi’s were millennia ago. (See Affirmations and Litany of Love)

 

As daunting and unbelievable as it sounds when you are feeling depressed, grief-stricken, furious, or any other negative emotion: You get to choose what you want to feel. Perhaps, in the throes of a crankocidal mood you won’t be able to access or own the thought that all this is happening for your highest good; but, with practice, you’ll come to believe it.  You may have to wait until your mood lifts, but each time you acknowledge how resilient you are you reinforce it. By reinforcing your adaptability you come to appreciate your own personal evolution. Eventually, this becomes second nature; so, when faced with a crisis or bad mood, you almost unconsciously turn yourself around.

 

Copyright Nicole S. Urdang

Reflections on Your Relationship

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There may be times after your break-up or divorce when you question why you are not with your ex.  Perhaps, you hear that s/he is with someone else, you have a lonely moment, or, suddenly, you remember a happy time.  It’s normal to wonder whether you made the right decision.  Very often, life-changing choices seem to come from nowhere, so you second guess them.  The truth is they are a heart-gut alliance that is based on years of decoding information and unconsciously amalgamating it. Yes, those decisions appear rash, but they aren’t. When you have moments of self-doubt, try re-balancing that inner emotional gyroscope by asking yourself some simple questions.

 

A little caveat before I share these with you.  You may not be ready do do this exploratory work.  It might be too soon, or too intense.  If it feels uncomfortable, or accesses overwhelming feelings, wait. You will be ready at some point.

 

Did your partner share your values? Does s/he now?

Did you really like him/her? Do you now?

Did you respect him/her? Do you now?

Was s/he trustworthy?

Do you truly want this person in your life today?

Do you remember the things that you didn’t like, love, or respect about him/her?

Can you recall times during the relationship when you had a bad gut feeling about something?

Was s/he truthful, dependable, kind?

Did you feel cherished?

Did you feel respected?

If there were children did you agree on how to raise them?

If your children are adults do you agree on how to relate to them now?

Did you fight fair or dirty?

Did your ex keep you from friends and/or family?

Did s/he encourage and support your interests, work, and leisure choices?

Were you sexually compatible?

Was there physical abuse?

Was there emotional battering?

Did you enjoy the same things? Would you now?

 

I didn’t ask if you loved your mate because I believe what Deepak Chopra, M.D. said many years ago about people living together for a long time. His idea was we share so many physically close moments our subatomic particles become intertwined.  It’s an extreme case of how you could be breathing a molecule that Mozart breathed centuries ago, but ramped up exponentially.  According to Deepak, we are connected more deeply every day we spend together.  So, a 20 year relationship is cellularly glued more strongly than one that lasted five years. This subatomic super glue is what feels physically painful when we separate.  It’s practically impossible to distinguish what’s the glue, what’s the love, and what’s the ego.  I believe your ability to love is not in question.  Your compatibility with your ex is.  The ego suffers loss when you divorce and that can be very difficult to separate from love and habit, whatever we may think.

 

What makes this process so confounding is that no one is all bad.  As I’ve said before, even Hitler was nice to his dog.  You will remember good times. If there weren’t any you would never have been with this soul in the first place.  

 

This process requires you to open your head and heart and to entertain some measure of inner contradiction.  It’s that cognitive dissonance that really twists us up inside.  As children we saw the world as black or white; now, in adulthood, we understand almost everything is on a continuum of gray.  But, when faced with our own emotional pain we want a simpler template.  Unfortunately, there isn’t one.  Perhaps, the hardest part of healing from a break-up or divorce is allowing all your truths.  There were good times and bad ones.  There was love, respect, and affection.  Why be so surprised, when you know that everything dies, to have your primary relationship change in ways that make it no longer tenable?  Yet, who isn’t rocked with shock when a relationship seems to suddenly bite the dust?  

 

You may be unable to parse out every detail that led to your break-up, but, gradually, things will come into focus and your decision will make sense.  The good and bad memories, the agreements and disagreements, truths and lies will coalesce into one multi-faceted experience.  It’s yours; own it, with all the raw edges and unknowns.  It has brought you to this point on your journey towards wholeness, your true self, and unconditional self-acceptance.

 

 

Copyright Nicole S. Urdang

From “We” To “I”

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A subtle, but pervasive, aspect of divorce is the way your pronouns change: “we” becomes “I,” “our” becomes “mine,” and “us” becomes “me.” This may sound like a small grammatical dot on the horizon of your life, but it infiltrates many perceptions, like ownership, identity, and your newly single state.

Every time you switch from “we” to “I” you work towards accepting your new solo status. Whatever is yours is yours alone. Our house is now my house, our kids are now my kids, we like that restaurant is now I like that place.  It’s an adjustment and will probably sound awkward at first.  Persevere, in time, you will come to see I, me, and my as empowering.

Like many aspects of divorce, this is part of the grief journey home to yourself. It’s an opportunity to appreciate your own resourcefulness, strength, and creativity in the face of deep disappointment, pain, and loss.  By reorienting yourself linguistically, you are practicing cognitive therapy.  Each time you say my house, for example, you are restructuring your world view.  Your pronoun no longer identifies you as part of a couple, but recasts you as a free soul with myriad choices and possibilities.

Naturally, the change doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a gradual process of noticing your automatic tendency to use words like, we, our, and us and correcting yourself.  As you build your awareness, and the pronouns that correctly reflect your new status become second nature, you surrender what was for what is.

We  are semantic creatures and language is inextricably woven into who we are.  Change the way you think and you change the way you feel. Of course, this doesn’t happen in the early stages of separation or divorce, but once the dust has settled.

The more ways you can lovingly embrace what is true for you now, rather than clinging to what was, the more space you can give yourself to grow and flourish in your new life.

As with all new endeavors, allow yourself time to adjust.  Plenty of time.  There’s a natural process to becoming an “I.”  Healing has many components, not the least of which is our way of conceptualizing ourself.  Watch how you take more ownership of your happiness as your pronouns change to reflect your new life.

Copyright Nicole S. Urdang