Use Your Damn Skills

Do you ever get SUPER tempted to perseverate on social media content that just makes you feel AWFUL? I do. 

You’re not weird. LOTS of us do that. 

We’re drawn to accounts we can’t stand. We click on posts that raise our blood pressure. 

Everybody reading this has probably done that at least once. Okay, maybe twice. All right, possibly a few times. 

We KNOW we should just let go, move on, drop it…but for some reason we find ourselves returning to that social media content that drives us bonkers, again and again. 

It’s important to realize that at least some of that social media content that we find so painfully addicting is actually DESIGNED to draw us in like that. 

There are people, right now, writing posts that are purposefully crafted to get you to hate click on them. 

For as enthusiastic as we humans tend to be about things we like and agree with, it’s well known hat we can be even more passionate about engaging with things we DISlike and DISagree with. 

The thing is: if we’re really interested in living meaningful lives— not to mention, if we’re in the process of recovering from depression, anxiety, addiction, trauma, an eating disorder, or another emotional or behavioral struggle— it’s REALLY important we learn to disentangle ourselves from social media content we hate. 

We just don’t need the burden. The triggers. The stress. 

Managing our recovery is very often about managing our stress and our triggers. 

We can’t control the fact that we’re GOING to experience stress and be exposed to triggers— but we can learn to get a handle on at least SOME of the stressors and triggers that enter our awareness. 

When we become aware of something on social media that ONLY enrages us, it’s time to set a boundary with it. 

If it ONLY distracts us, if it ONLY drags us down, if it ONLY turns us into a version of ourselves we don’t like, there’s no upside to even toying with it. 

Some social media content, we need to treat like an addict treats their substance of addiction. 

We have to go cold turkey. 

We have to use the block button, and mean it. 

We have to have a PLAN for how to deal with ourselves when we WANT to sneak around our own block to look at the content that’s harming us.

That is to say: a relapse prevention plan. 

We might think that we “shouldn’t” have to take such drastic measures to keep ourselves from looking at certain social media content— after all, it’s only Twitter, right? It’s only Facebook, it’s only Instagram, what’s the big deal? 

The big deal is, when we’re trying to manage our feelings and behavior, what we look at, what we let in, what we engage with, matters. It matters big time. 

Ask anybody who is seriously recovering from an eating disorder: Instagram is not a take-it-or-leave-it thing. 

Ask anybody who is struggling with suicidal ideation: certain rabbit holes on Twitter can be literally life threatening. 

Ask anybody who is trying to stay grounded in a flashback: the personalities and words we take in on ANY social media site can keep us present or send us spiraling. 

Take your social media consumption seriously— ESPECIALLY if you’re in recovery. 

Pay attention to how looking at certain accounts and pages impacts how you feel and what you do. 

And be willing, if necessary, to COMPLETELY cut out certain social media presences— and, if you need to, seek support and accountability in cutting them out. 

Life’s too short to let social media put your recovery at risk. 

There is, or could be, something that motivates you. 

You might not have found it yet. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. 

There are lots of people who feel hopeless about EVER being motivated, because they’re not motivated by what the world says they “should” be motivated by. 

If you’re not motivated by what the world says you “should” be motivated by, it doesn’t mean you’re hopeless. 

It means exactly one thing: you’re not motivated by what the world says you “should” be motivated by. 

That’s it. 

There’s no rule that says what works for ANYBODY else, needs to work for you— and there’s no rule that says what works for you, needs to be even UNDERSTANDABLE to anybody else. 

I remember being a kid, and realizing I was different. 

Realizing the I thought about different stuff than the other kids. 

Realizing that I WANTED different stuff than the other kids. 

Realizing that what THEY wanted, what THEY considered important, would never be what I wanted or considered important. 

At first, it was a lonely feeling. I felt weird, isolated, defective. 

Now, I understand that different means exactly one thing: different. 

So what gets you up in the morning may not be what gets anyone else up. 

What keeps you in the game may not be what keeps any one else hanging in there. 

So what? 

What motivates you, motivates you. 

What turns you on, turns you on. 

What keeps you focused and interested and invested, is what keeps YOU focused and interested and invested. 

No need for shame. You’re not hurting anybody else by being different— and as long as you’re not hurting anybody else, there’s NOTHING wrong with BEING different. 

Instead of hiding it, denying it, disowning it, fighting it— use it. 

Use what motivates you, to motivate you. 

Use what turns you on. Use what makes you interested and invested. 

Become who YOU want to become. Who YOU really feel like. Become the person who feels right for YOU. 

Life is too short to spend at war with ourselves. 

Life is too short to spend wishing we were motivated by and inserted in the same stuff “they” are. 

We don’t have the right to hurt anyone else— but short of hurting anyone else, we DO have the right to be who we are. 

Yes, it might be complicated, given your social or family situation. I’ll never tell you being radically yourself ISN’T complicated. 

But being radically ourselves is often the only way out of the prison of others’ expectations. 

Don’t lock yourself in to anyone else’s vision of who and what you SHOULD be. 

For all we know, we only get one shot at life. 

It’s never too late to be who you really are. 

It’s never too late to embrace what you really want. 

I’d say you have permission— but you don’t NEED permission. 

Trauma makes it difficult to define who we are and be who we are. 

Healing from trauma is about rediscovering and redefining ourselves— on our own terms. 

When we grow up in the midst of abuse, neglect, or chaos, our resources are often completely consumed by trying to survive. 

It’s hard to develop as a human being when you’re busy trying to anticipate when an abuser will hit you. 

It’s hard to figure out who you really are when your entire day is consumed by anxiety about what will happen when you get home. 

It’s hard to become a well rounded human being when you’re busy trying to figure out who you need to be to minimize the chances that you’ll be hurt. 

In that kind of stressful environment, we don’t become “ourselves”— we become whoever we need to be to survive. 

This is something a lot of people misunderstand about people who grow up in stressful environments. 

When they tell us to “just be ourselves,” two things often occur to us: one, we don’t know who that is. 

Two, “just be yourself” kind of feels like a trap. 

People who grew up in stressful environments don’t have the option of NOT having been affected. It’s not a “choice” anyone is making. 

We don’t just “choose” to be unaffected by what we grew up with. 

People who grew up with trauma or chaos often feel like we’re constantly wearing a mask. 

Often we’re afraid if we take OFF that mask, we’ll be hurt, or rejected, or in trouble. 

Sometimes we don’t even know HOW to take off that mask, even if we WANT to. 

It can be enormously frustrating and lonely to go through life feeling like we’re isolated not only from our fellow human beings— but from ourselves. 

Trauma often has the impact of making us feel like a stranger to ourselves. 

We WANT to find comfort and familiarity— but even when we DO find it, it can feel insecure. 

We’re always kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Healing is about slowly allowing ourselves to discover and be who we are— even as part of us is overwhelmingly anxious about it. 

The part of us that is worried we’ll be hurt or scorned by being ourselves needs us to acknowledge and comfort it. 

Sometimes we have to start this process with really simple questions. 

What do I like? 

What do I want? 

What do I feel? 

These all may SEEM like simple, obvious questions— but when you grew up under enormous stress these questions may seem absolutely loaded. 

It’s okay. Give yourself time. You’re GOING to feel anxiety— and we need to be there for those anxious parts of ourselves. 

Just let those questions simmer. 

Who are you? 

Maybe you don’t know just yet. And maybe that’s okay. 

As you build a life that DOESN’T revolve around fear and chaos, you’ll begin to have bandwidth to discover and create who you are. 

It’ll take a minute. Give it time. Be patient with you. 

You’re worth the wait. 

When we get into recovery from trauma, or depression, or addiction, or from an eating disorder, we start to come to terms with how much we’ve missed. 

Struggling with trauma, depression, addiction, or an eating disorder takes an ENORMOUS amount of energy. 

Many survivors don’t even realize how emotionally AND physically exhausted they’ve become. 

And when we’ve spent YEARS trying to live through those struggles, we miss stuff. 

We miss opportunities to develop who we are. We miss opportunities to BE who we are. 

Emotional and behavioral struggles rob us of the opportunity to really be ourselves, sometimes for years. 

By the time we finally decide to get into recovery, some of us don’t even know who we are anymore. 

Who is this person whose life I’m trying to save by getting into recovery, anyway? 

Why do I care about them? 

Many people reading this have had virtually their entire lives defined by emotional or behavioral pain. 

We literally don’t know what it’s like to be without it. 

I realized as an adult that, while I knew what it was like to feel good, I probably didn’t know what it was like to be NOT depressed in the big picture. 

I wondered, what would “non-depression” even feel like? 

To me, it would feel like non-existence. I had gotten so used to being depressed, that to imagine a world in which I wasn’t depressed was to imagine a world in which I didn’t EXIST. 

We get attached to and identified with our struggles after awhile. 

Then, when we get to a point where we know we have to make changes, we feel overwhelmed— because to consistently feel a different way would basically mean to become an entirely different person. 

How on earth are we expected to do that? Reinvent ourselves? Now? As an adult? 

Many people decide there’s just too much water under the dam to do that. 

But there’s not. 

The truth is, we CAN create a life far less entwined with the pain and the struggles we’ve gotten so used to. That IS possible. It happens. It’s real. 

But it’s going to be scary in some ways.

The process is going to be intimidating sometimes. 

There will ABSOLUTELY be times when we question whether it’s worth it, or even possible, to create a life worth living out of what’s come before. 

Consistently feeling good requires a lot of work for some of us, particularly if we were born with certain vulnerabilities, or raised in certain environments, or if we had certain things happen to us. 

Doing that work is worth it, because we DESERVE to feel good. 

But it’s intimidating. 

Let it be intimidating. 

Let yourself be scared. 

Let yourself be trepidatious. 

Let yourself feel the things you feel when you’re looking at this project. 

And then— take the next step. 

Do the next right thing. 

And then the next one. And the next one. 

Maybe you ARE different than “them.”

And maybe that’s the good news. 

I remember, for years, I felt terrible because I knew I was different. 

When I was a kid, I knew I was different insofar as I was carrying around a secret: that I’d been sexually abused. 

I remember looking at the other kids in my class and thinking, no one knows this about me. This is a BIG secret. 

I know now that I can’t have been the only kid at school who had been sexually abused— and I wonder if they felt like their experience was this big secret they were carrying around, too. 

I wonder if they felt as different as I did. 

But that wasn’t the only thing that made me feel different. 

I knew that there was something different in how I experienced feelings— something different in how things impacted me. 

At the time, I didn’t know such a thing as a “highly sensitive person” existed. I didn’t know that my nervous system likely was physically different from a lot of other kids’— and I would have had NO idea that the sexual abuse and attachment difficulties I experienced on top of that likely exacerbated my highly sensitive wiring. 

All I knew was, I was different. 

Maybe I couldn’t have put words to it at the time. I’m not entirely sure I can accurately put words to it now. The writing I do is often my attempt to TRY to verbally get my brain around my life experience, as well as connect with others who might have had a similar experience. 

When we’re kids, we assume that different is bad. 

After all, we’re often mocked an ostracized because we’re different. 

Growing up, we often assume that if we’r being rejected by our family or peers, it must be because we’re somehow defective. We’re not living up to their standards or expectations. 

It must be be because we’re “bad,” and the people around us somehow know it— and that’s why they’re rejecting us. 

Now I know there are lots of reasons why some kids don’t fit with their peer groups growing up. 

And those reasons don’t necessarily have ANYTHING to do with being “bad.” 

Is it all that “bad” to be different from a peer group that bullies and values conformity above kindness? 

Is it all that “bad” to be different from people who WOULD reject someone just for being different? 

I don’t think so.

I know my sensitivity and my social anxiety made me a tough kid to understand and get close to. I don’t envy the adults in my world whose job it was to try to understand me or get me to open up. 

If you’re reading this, you may be aware that you’re different from your family or the people you grew up around— and you might have lots of feelings about that. 

But I need you to know that “different” doesn’t equal “bad”— even if your family or peer group decided it does. 

Your sensitivity may make you different. How you process emotions or information may make you different. How you manage focus or stimulation may make you different. 

I know LOTS of people— myself included— who would’t, couldn’t have the positive impact on other people they do UNLESS they’d grown up feeling different. 

Yes, growing up feeling like an outsider was painful at times. 

Yes, I would have preferred an easier childhood experience— for both you and me. 

But I know now that I don’t want to be like the kids who made me feel “bad” for being different. 

They were right. I WAS different than they were. 

And I’ve come around to being grateful for it. 

People are going to have ALL SORTS of feedback for you about your body. 

People will have feedback about your attractiveness to them. 

People will have feedback about your body’s size and shape.

People will have feedback about your body’s color. 

You’re going to be told you should ignore the things that people say about your body…but you and I both know it’s nowhere NEAR that easy. 

The things people say about your body and appearance tend to get REALLY ingrained in our nervous system. Our brain plays them on a loop. 

Just telling ourselves not to listen to other peoples’ judgments about our body and appearance is an almost impossible ask when our brain is recirculating those comments and looks over and over and over again. 

Nobody who is anxious or obsessive about their body size, shape, or appearance, WANTS to be obsessive about it. 

Nobody WANTS to be anxious every time they look in a mirror. Nobody WANTS to be anxious whenever the very idea of eating comes up. 

It’s exhausting and embarrassing. MANY people go to great lengths to hide it. 

There are people reading this who struggle with their body image and their eating habits, who have NEVER acknowledged the intensity of that internal war to somebody else. 

Many people DON’T understand. 

Many people DO think that managing our eating habits and our thoughts about our weight and appearance are straightforward. 

After all, they figure, what could be so hard about eating? Just eat what you’re “supposed” to eat, when you’re “supposed” to eat it. 

What could be so triggering about one’s appearance, they wonder? You look the way you look. 

When certain thoughts get into our head and under our skin— for example, thoughts about our body’s shape and size, or thoughts about what we “should” or “shouldn’t” eat— we tend to lose objectivity about them. 

It’s almost impossible to be “objective” about our thoughts when we’re jumping out of our skin with anxiety. 

Many people TRY to manage that anxiety by minimizing the thoughts or their impact. 

“This is silly.” “This is stupid.” “This shouldn’t be this hard.” 

Strangely, minimizing our thoughts or their impact doesn’t seem to tamp down our anxiety. It often only makes it worse. 

In our culture, both appearance and eating habits tend to be closely tied in our collective imaginations to self-discipline. 

We assume that people who possess self-discipline look a certain way and eat a certain way. 

Which is such a load of BS (belief systems). 

If you struggle with obsessive thoughts about your body, you are not alone. 

If you struggle with your eating, you are not alone. 

You might FEEL alone, and it might FEEL embarrassing. You might BELIEVE you deserve to feel shame about the things you’re struggling with. 

You’re struggling with what your’e struggling with. It’s okay. You’re not gonna shame your way out of this. 

Maybe “they” don’t understand, and maybe “they” never will. 

It’s okay. “They” don’t need to. 

YOU just focus on taking the next step on YOUR recovery journey— even if it’s a teeny, tiny, “stupid” baby step. 

The world is going to give you all sorts of reasons why it’s “your fault” that you’re depressed. 

People will tell you your depression is the result of choices you’ve made. Thoughts you choose to think. Beliefs you choose to have. Behaviors you do or don’t do. 

Depression is not your fault. 

Just reading that, you might have a reaction. You might be tempted to list all the reasons why depression IS the fault of someone who is depressed. 

That’s how entrenched and reflexive our victim blaming mindset is around depression. 

No one asks for depression. No one likes being depressed. 

There are lots of factors that impact our vulnerability to depression. There are LOTS of things we don’t fully understand about depression. 

But one thing we know about depression is that blaming a depressed person for how they feel and function is never helpful. 

When I say “depression is not your fault,” I am NOT saying that we are powerless over depression. 

There ARE things we can do to lessen our vulnerability to depression, and to feel and function better when we are depressed. 

But that DOESN’T mean depression is your “fault.” 

Some people seem to have a fantasy that if they “prove” that depression is the “fault” of the depressed person, then we don’t have to think any more comprehensively about what depression is, and why it happens to humans. 

There are people reading this who didn’t have much of a chance to NOT be depressed, considering what they grew up with. 

There are people reading this who are very genetically or biologically vulnerable to depression. 

There are people reading this whose depression stems from abuse or neglect. 

The fantasy that someone is always at “fault” for their depression is inaccurate and counterproductive. 

The fantasy that we can “fix” depression by making a few simple shifts in our perspective or our attitude is corrosive. 

How we feel and function depends on a LOT of things. What YOU need to feel and function better is unique to YOU.

Instead of blaming ourselves for being depressed and insisting that we “get over it,” we need to get really curious and really compassionate about our depression. 

There ARE usually things we can do to feel and function better…but we DON’T discover those things by harshly judging and dismissing what we’re experiencing. 

The skills we need to cope with and reduce our depression are developed over time. 

We need to work WITH our nervous system— not just insist that it play ball and do what we want it to. 

The work of coping with and reducing our depression is made harder and more complex by a culture that insists upon laying blame on the person who is struggling. 

Depression is not caused by a “bad attitude.” It’s not caused by a lack of “character.” And depression is not fixed by “sucking it up.” 

I’m incredibly sorry if you’ve gotten the message, either from the world or from mental health professionals, that depression is something you’re “choosing.” 

It’s so, so much more complex than that. 

Please don’t get discouraged. 

Please don’t give up. 

Please don’t buy in to the myth that depression is your “fault.” 

People DO cope with and reduce their depression. 

But that journey dos NOT start with self-blame and shame. 

Your boundaries are about you. Not them. 

They exist to keep YOU safer. They are chosen by YOU, for YOUR reasons. 

Don’t let anyone try to make your boundaries about them. 

There are totally people who will TRY to make your boundaries about them. 

They’ll act insulted that you feel the need to set a certain boundary with them. 

They’ll try to convince you that they are the exception to your boundaries— that you’re being unreasonable to expect THEM to adhere to this boundary that you’d expect anyone else to adhere to. 

When somebody else tries to make your boundary about them, what they’re actually trying to do is construct a loophole for themselves. 

The fact is, we don’t have boundaries in place just to piss off or inconvenience anybody else. 

We have boundaries because we need our relationships to have a certain amount of predictability and relative safety in them. 

When our relationships DON’T have that predictability and relative safety, it become hard to function within them, because we are always on our guard. 

You wouldn’t know it from the way some people respond to setting boundaries or having boundaries set with them, but most boundaries are actually pretty straightforward. 

If someone wants to be in a relationship with us, either casually or intimately, it’s normal to expect there to be some boundaries involved. 

Boundaries can range from “don’t talk to me like that,” to “I prefer not to reveal that information to you,” to “don’t touch me like that,” to “I’m not available during this time frame.” 

We adhere to boundaries all the time in almost every one of our human relationships. Most of them are NOT hard. Many boundaries are implicit in our everyday interactions with many people. 

All of which is to say, you are NOT “high maintenance,” mean, or otherwise unreasonable for needing and expecting boundaries in all types of relationships. 

It’s a bummer that some people think boundaries are an insult. Because actually they are kind of the opposite: if I’m setting a boundary with you, it means I have at least some hope you’ll adhere to it, which is really a sign of respect. 

Some people will try to emotionally blackmail you into letting them violate your boundaries. I wish that didn’t happen, but it does. 

Don’t bite. 

It’s difficult to watch someone be upset by a boundary we’ve set. 

It can trigger old stuff in us, often which revolves around the idea that our basic needs and preferences  are somehow harmful to someone else, thus we don’t have a right to those needs and preferences. 

How someone else reacts or responds to a boundary isn’t up to us. 

How someone feels about having to adhere to a boundary of ours is a “them” issue. It’s not a “you” issue. 

Sometimes someone will be straightforward about the fact that if they’re not allowed to violate this boundary of yours, then they don’t want to be in this relationship with you. 

It’s a bummer if someone feels that way, but, again: that’s a decision THEY are making. 

Don’t let someone else’s bad behavior dictate what you are and aren’t willing to do to keep yourself emotionally or physically safe. 

This WILL get easier with practice. 

Just remember: you are NOT responsible for someone else’s maturity— or lack thereof. 

It’s not like we ASK depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction, or eating disorders to camp out in our brain and make life miserable. We don’t INVITE them

It’s not a matter of us being stubborn or difficult, and it’s definitely not a matter of us opting in. 

Everybody who struggles with depression, anxiety, addiction, trauma, or an eating disorder wishes they didn’t. Nobody’s finding it fun. Nobody’s getting off on the kind of attention ANY of these generates. 

It drives me up a wall when someone suggests that people who are suffering, are somehow getting off on the “secondary gains” associated with emotional or behavioral struggles. 

We, as a culture, really don’t like the idea that emotional or behavioral struggles can hit ANYBODY. 

(We don’t like the idea that illnesses or struggles of ANY kind can hit ANYBODY, really.)

Some people in our culture perpetuate this myth that emotional or behavioral struggles result from a lack of “character” or “willpower.” 

They perpetuate this myth largely to manage their own anxiety that they, too, might be at risk. 

They really, really want to think of emotional or behavioral struggles as something that they can “immunize” themselves from. 

If only that were the case. 

If you struggle with depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction, or an eating disorder, it’s NOT because you lack “character” or “willpower.” It’s NOT because you crave “attention.” It’s NOT because you’ve failed at life or you’re uniquely “bad.” 

Victim blaming mythology dies hard in our culture. 

The changes many of us have to make to manage our risk and reduce our symptoms are rarely easy. Often they involve challenging patterns of thought, belief, and behavior that stretch back years. 

Recovery from emotional or behavioral struggles often asks us to reinvent who we are— which can seem like an overwhelming task. 

Nobody who actually knows anything about emotional or behavioral struggles thinks recovery is easy or simple. 

Emotional and behavioral struggles knock many of us off our life plans. 

My depression, addiction, and trauma issues knocked me off my life plan. I was supposed to be either a professional musician or a lawyer and politician by now. 

(Ask anybody who I went to junior high with— 2020 was SUPPOSED to be the year I was elected president.)

But life had other plans. 

I didn’t wake up one morning and decide that I wanted to steer my life into a dark, painful place. 

I woke up one morning, and found that I was in a place so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my place. 

I didn’t wake up one morning and decide that I wanted to make myself psychologically and physiologically dependent on a substance in much the same way male members of my family had been for generations. 

I woke up one morning and realized that if I didn’t take this substance, withdrawal symptoms would make my life unlivable that day. 

We don’t actively choose these struggles. 

We are dealt the hand we are dealt. 

We DON’T choose the cards we are dealt. 

We CAN learn how to play our hand in such a way that we stay in the game— but we need to be realistic about the fact that nobody “chose” to get dealt this difficult, painful hand. 

All of which is to say: it’s not your fault. 

And but also: it’s not your destiny. 

It’s easy for us to get over focused on whether we have a “right” to feel what we feel. Whether our feelings are “fair.”

Our nervous system does not care about “right” or “fair.” 

We feel what we feel. “Rational” or not. “Proportional” or not. “Fair” or not. 

We often— not always, but often— have choices about what to DO in response to what we feel, or how to EXPRESS how we feel. But we don’t choose our feelings. 

Our feelings choose us. 

Our feelings represent gut-level associations and survival instincts. They don’t exist to inconvenience or frustrate us. 

Feelings exist to tell us things we need to know— often things we’re not equipped to think or reason our way through yet. 

It’s not that our feelings are somehow “infallible.” Feelings, like thoughts and instincts, can be manipulated and are malleable in response to experience, especially trauma. 

Sometimes our feelings MIGHT be misplaced or disproportionate to what’s happening here and now. 

Sometime our feelings MIGHT be entwined with people and situations both past AND present. 

 The question isn’t whether our feelings are “right” or “wrong,” “true” or “false,” “fair” or “unfair.” 

The question is, “what is this feeling trying to tell me?” 

All feelings are trying to communicate something to us about what we’ve experienced and what we need. 

One of the reasons why it can feel good fo “vent” feelings, even if there’s nothing that can be “done” about them, is that by putting words to what we feel we are affirming that our experiences and needs are real and important. 

When we tell ourselves that we don’t have any “right” to feel what we feel— especially “negative” feelings like anger or disgust— we’re essentially telling part of ourselves that what it experiences or needs “doesn’t count.” 

Even if we don’t like what we’re feeling, it’s really important we validate the FACT that we’re feeling it.

Sadness “counts.” Anger “counts.” Jealousy “counts.” 

They “count”— they are important and meaningful— because they express something that part of us is REALLY going through. 

To deny our feelings is to abandon part of who we are. 

We can’t be denying, disowning, or abandoning ourselves. Not if we want to build and reinforce a stable, authentic Self to go out and function in the world. 

We don’t need to tell ourselves everything we feel is “right.” 

We don’t need to act on everything we feel. 

Sometimes we’re even  going to feel things that seem contradictory or nonsensical. There’s a reason for that time honored trope of the head doing battle with the heart. 

What we need to do, every day, is treat our feelings life with curiosity, respect, and compassion. 

We need to be clear that we cannot value ourselves and dismiss or belittle our feelings at the same time. Just won’t work. 

We need to be real about the fact that trying to push away our feelings indefinitely creates many more problems than it solves. 

So much of real life recovery is about refusing fo go to war with ourselves. So many of us are so used to instinctively attacking ourselves when we feel (or think, or remember, or perceive) something we don’t like. 

Refuse to attack yourself for what you feel. 

Be there for yourself, no matter WHAT you feel. 

It’s absolutely true that coexisting with painful feelings is a tall order for many of us, especially if we were punished or mocked for being “dramatic” or “emotional” when we were kids. 

It’s real important we don’t pick up where our bullies and abusers left off by shaming and attacking ourselves for our feelings. 

You can do this. You can break the cycle. 

If all begins with the commitment to self-compassion— no matter what.