I'm a devoted wife, a grateful mother, a little sister to three big brothers, a lucky daughter, and a soulmate to my soul-sister friends. I pray at the temple of nature and open in the presence of poetry. I'm inspired by the challenges and gifts of being in a human body, and I feel most alive when I'm connected to gratitude, to the present moment and, mostly, to love.
I’m deeply passionate about every aspect of transitions – from teething to adolescence, becoming a wife or husband, becoming a parent, moving, changing careers, etc. I’m endlessly fascinated by the cycles of death-liminal-rebirth that transitions follow, from the changing of the seasons to the arc of our lives.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the breaking and renewal points in a human life, the cycles of nature, even the beginning and end of a new day. Through my early research I learned that, while indigenous and traditional cultures have elaborate rituals designed to guide their members through every life change, our culture leaves its members alone and bereft of the simple yet time-honored information that can make the difference between stumbling through transitions blindly and emerging on the other side as a more authentic, compassionate, and wiser person.
Through Conscious Weddings and Conscious Motherhood I’ve attempted to fill the gap around two of the most significant transitions in a woman’s life; with this site I hope to fill the gap around transitions in general, from the more obvious life transitions like moving, changing jobs, ending a marriage, and midlife to the more subtle changes like passing through the seasons and holidays, showing how transformational each of these can be when we approach them with courage and consciousness.
Transitions are one of the primary lenses through which I view and understand the world. Personally and professionally, the context and language of transitions help me make sense of life. Whether it’s my sons’ teething or my clients feeling anxious during their engagement, when I remember to contextualize the event through the archetypal pattern of letting go-liminal-rebirth, the anxiety and challenges are eased and I guide us into a more harmonious alignment with the transition at hand. This is what it means to walk through a transition with grace; we don’t fight it or resist it, but allow for the necessary emotions to move through us until we arrive at the other side stronger and wiser than before.
If you’re unfamiliar with my work, please take a few moments to read the tab entitled, “An Overview of Transitions.” It will give you a basic context for every transition you’re going through as well as a vocabulary for understanding my posts.
I look forward to connecting with you here! And if you’re enduring a specific transition that you’d like me to address, please let me know through the contact page.
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Sheryl Paul, M.A., pioneered the field of bridal counseling in 1998. She has since counseled thousands of people worldwide through her private practice, her bestselling books, “The Conscious Bride” and “The Conscious Bride’s Wedding Planner,” and her websites. She’s regarded as the international expert on the wedding transition and has appeared several times on “The Oprah Winfrey Show”, as well as on “Good Morning America” and other top television, radio, and newspapers around the globe. Phone and Skype sessions available internationally.
My clients and e-course members are some of the wisest, most compassionate, creative, kind, and loving people with whom I’ve ever come into contact. They’re interesting, intelligent, introspective, and curious. Are there any adjectives I’ve left out?! Oh, just one: they’re also the most anxious.
It’s an interesting paradox of life that opposites are often paired together : We cannot have daytime without night or light without darkness. Spring and summer cannot exist without autumn and winter. We cannot feel true joy without opening our hearts to pain, grief, and loss. And the multi-dimensional richness of human beings generally includes straddling the apparent opposites of the positive characteristics I’ve listed above with the darker territories of the human psyche.
And now I’m about the contradict myself: anxiety, instead of being a permanent state of psyche, is a doorway into deeper growth and expanded consciousness. In my younger years I used to believe that the angst-filled artist was an inevitable and unchanging fact; in other words, that true creativity didn’t exist without suffering. I no longer ascribe to this limiting belief but instead see that creativity can be linked to emotional health and the ability to tap into a spiritual wellspring. Has beautiful art emerged from suffering? Yes. But perhaps those pieces of artwork were stepping stones along the route to health, necessary expressions of a stage of that artist’s emotional growth and that as the artist’s inner world evolved, the artwork would evolve as well.
Anxiety is not a fixed state but rather is closely linked to the creative and spiritual realms. Like two sides of the same coin, most anxious types learn, after uncovering self-limiting false beliefs and replacing them with the truth, that they can transpose their anxiety into creativity/spirituality. (I’m including creativity and spirituality as one unit as I believe they exist on a continuum as well.) Living with anxiety is like living in a hell-realm, but when you find the courage to discover the root causes of the anxiety, which are usually linked to false beliefs about self-worth, how safe it is to feel your feelings, and the truth about love, the anxiety’s gifts are revealed.
I’ve never met a highly anxious person that wasn’t also highly sensitive. It’s for this reason that the following quote often comes to mind, not only in working with my clients, but also in parenting my son and understanding myself and my closest loved ones:
“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.”
– Pearl S. Buck
What if, as a child, your intense sensitivity had been honored instead of squashed? What if you had had an emotional guide, someone to say, “It’s okay to feel,” and then taught you simple ways to manage the huge feelings that were coursing through your body? What if you had been taught to express yourself fully, through tears, through art, through woodworking, through whatever passion wanted to be unleashed?
And that’s the work of Inner Bonding®: to becoming the loving mother and father that you never had. (And this isn’t about vilifying your parents; they did the best they could.) It’s about holding that young, exquisitely sensitive child in your arms and saying, “It’s okay to feel anything you need to feel.” It’s about being a loving guide and an emotional mentor to yourself, so that you teach your inner child that feelings are just feelings, they can’t swallow you up or kill you, and that the difficult ones will pass just as the pleasant ones do.
The more I work with my clients the more I’m convinced that the majority of anxiety is a young, terrified child screaming out for attention in the only way she or he knows how. Since she was never offered words to articulate her experience, her painful feelings mutate into a thought like, “What if I’m gay?” or “What if I abuse my child?” or “What if I don’t love my partner enough?” or into addictions to food, alcohol, media, or drugs. It’s often during transitions, when the defensive veils are softened to reveal the vulnerable and emotional places inside, that the latent anxiety rises to the surface. The scared child, feeling out of control, alone, and overwhelmed by the negative running commentary that you’ve been telling her/him for years, screams out through the body and stops eating, sleeping, and functioning.
And that’s when the real work begins. That’s when, in the darkest night you’ve ever known, you reach out for information, support, and guidance. That’s when you learn, for the first time in your life, that real change only happens once you take full responsibility for your emotional well-being, which requires nothing short of a fierce, daily commitment to exploring the false beliefs and negative thoughts that you’re telling yourself from morning until night. That’s when you peel back the layers of fantasy and realize that no one can save you, rescue you, or fix you; it’s up to you and you alone to do the work that must be done to heal and find wholeness, fulfillment, and joy, possibly for the first time in your life.
While Inner Bonding® is the crux of the healing process that I teach, I also incorporate a strong creative element into my work with clients. As I said, most highly anxious types are also highly creative and, given the right tools and encouragement, can utilize their creativity to assist in their healing process as they cross the bridge from anxiety to creativity.
If you’re engaged in a creative project, remind yourself before you go to sleep and when you first wake up in the morning to focus on the project. You have more control over your thoughts than you think! You might not be able to control the first thought that enters you mind upon awakening (again, a time when the veils are lifted and a common time to experience anxiety), but you can control how you respond to the first thought and choose what your second thought will be. If you’re not engaged in a creative project, choose a spiritual mantra or comforting passage to memorize as your anti-anxiety spiritual medication. When you practice this enough, it will become second nature, much like finding that you have a song stuck in your mind.
When I’m writing a blog post or creating an e-course, I’ll fall asleep and wake up with ideas percolating up from my unconscious. It’s some of the most invigorating and fulfilling times of my life. When I don’t have an article or creative project on hand, I’ll learn a new Hebrew prayer or song and before I know it, I’m waking up with beautiful music and ancient words soothing my soul. When I forget to do my spiritual homework, I’m prone to anxious thoughts just like most of you. But, after years of hard work, I’m able to catch the first thought and change its course fairly quickly.
People who are prone to anxiety often stay busy as a way to distract themselves from the anxious thoughts. My clients will often say, “My anxiety is worse in the morning or on weekends when I don’t have much to do. An idle mind is the Devil’s playground.” Yes, busyness does keep the anxiety at bay, but it doesn’t address the problem by the root. You can only keep yourself busy for so long before the anxiety needs to be pulled out by the roots by noticing the fear-based thoughts and false beliefs that are creating the anxiety, then replacing them with the truth and the good medicine of creativity and spirituality. In other words, it’s not just about filling up your brain and time with trivial distractions but filling your soul with an antidote that will act as a balm to the anxious soul.
What would you be doing with your time and energy if you weren’t a victim to your anxiety? Anxiety is an energy drain and it zaps the soul of life-force, creativity, and a spiritual serenity. And yet (here’s the contradiction again!), when you dive into the dark forest of anxiety you discover that it can be a doorway into creativity and spirituality. The key is in unveiling your sources of a solace – a poem, a mantra, a spiritual text, a song – and remembering that you have the will power to transpose the negative frequency of anxiety into the high frequency of creativity and spirituality.
I’ll end with a poem I wrote in the height of my anxiety many years ago. Poetry, both writing and reading it, has been my solace since I first broke through to the dark layers of my unconscious as a teenager. This poem blew through me during an anxiety attack and helped me find peace each time I recited it in my mind:
Poetry dissolves anxiety–
it sets my mind adrift in formlessness and
reminds my soul of what is it meant to be.
Poetry lulls me in her sea crest and upon her wing,
she opens
this seamless world
this fluid world, where
phrases drop whole as if from
cloud or sky.
I do not ask why–
knowing that when I
slip under the surface of things
the blue scarved language blows away the peril,
like a wind it casts aside uncertainty and brings me
mouth to mouth with angels,
where I find that I can breathe.
What does your anxiety want to say? Imagine there’s a mouth on the tip of your anxiety and invite it to open, speak, pray, move. Let’s hear its song.
“To him… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.”
I don’t have a middle ground, I have to be extremely content or very sad….I don’t have a middle ground. This is something that I continue to work on after the wedding : )
Ashley -January 25, 2012 - 7:30 am
oh Sheryl! this is BEAUTIFUL! your poem in particular. so soothing. so gentle. so accepting. thank you for the work you do and share with others.
sarah -January 25, 2012 - 7:38 pm
this is amazing. i was especially touched by your opening paragraph; it’s nice to be reminded of the light when the darkness can feel so consuming. i know i have so much to offer this world and that anxiety can easily get the best of me. but with your support, i’m learning that I’m not my anxiety. it’s great working with you.
Judy -January 27, 2012 - 8:12 am
Thank-you Sheryl again for a great article & I believe there are no mistakes in the world…many of us “sensitive” people are going through anxiety right now as the world shifts…making us feel even more vulnerable…I have been having this expereince for the past week or so….so your article had perfect timing.
I also agree that at least for me that when I am not creative I am clearly more anxious…nice to read about the correlations…
Thank-you …Namaste
I agree completely with you Sheryl. I realized this summer that my creativity was my link to Source and the spiritual connection I had been seeking all my life. Now when I get up in the morning and go to sleep I feel a calmness I have never known before. Like you said, I often wake up with entire ideas implanted in my brain, or solutions to problems, or just comforting thoughts about setting my intentions for a joyful, productive, creative, and inspiring day.
Rather than stress about everything I NEED to do, I honor my feelings and take time to do what feels right. I do the things that feed my soul, and spark my creativity rather than shut it down….and I think it is making me a better person, parent, wife, friend…etc.
I am about to engage in a 7 week course in Kabbalah 101. I like what they are saying…am hoping it is going to keep me on track and provide me with “like-minded” people as I explore this deeper connection to myself and others.
People find me because in the throes of anxiety, and quite often the anxiety centers around their intimate relationship. They’re taken down by a series of questions that cause them to fear whether or not they’re in the “right” relationship or if they’re making a “mistake.” I’ve said it many times on this site but it’s worth repeating: most people who find me are in loving, solid relationships and the fear that plagues them is purely based in anxiety. There is a small percentage of people – maybe 5% – who realize that their fear is coming from a truthful place and is an indicator that there are serious red-flag issues in the relationship that need to be addressed, but these issues are obvious from my first conversation with them and aren’t associated with the gut-wrenching feelings that accompany relationship anxiety.
For the vast majority, the anxiety hits like a force from the underworld and literally pulls them from their high functioning, day-to-day life with a rush of terror into a hell-realm. Where they were once happily walking forward toward a stable married life, they’re now fraught with so much anxiety that it inhibits their ability to eat, sleep, and properly function, let alone plan a wedding. They fervently wish that the anxiety would vanish, mistakenly assuming that it’s a sign that they’re in the wrong relationship and that the only solution is to leave. That’s when they google “engagement anxiety” or “marriage fear” and find their way here.
The first, and most essential step, in working through the anxiety is reversing the longing for it to disappear and recognizing that there is great wisdom encased inside the shell of misery. This is obviously a challenging mental shift to make; no one wants to live with the demon of anxiety and it’s understandable that you would want it to vanish. But without the willingness to explore its roots and depths, there can be no true healing. For most people, this requires removing a strong mental block of fear that says, “If I explore the anxiety, I’ll discover that I don’t really want to be in this relationship and I’ll have to leave this person that I love.” So the first step is finding the courage to learn whatever it is that is meant to be learned, which corresponds to the first step of the healing process of Inner Bonding® that I teach my clients: the willingness to take 100% responsibility for your well-being, your fear, your pain, your joy.
It’s a strange and counter-intuitive statement, but what all of my clients eventually learn is that there is great wisdom living inside the fear-based thoughts and obsessional questions. In order to access this wisdom, it can be helpful to view yourself as a hero or heroine embarking on what Joseph Campbell called, “The Hero’s Journey.” Then you will find the willingness to descend into the darker regions of your psyche and hold a flashlight of truth on what you find there. And here’s a nugget of reassurance to counteract the fear of looking inside: what you find will have nothing to do with your partner and everything to do with you. You’ll find a storehouse of unshed grief, a soft place of vulnerability like the underbelly of a shy sea-creature, a river of fear, a warehouse of false beliefs about love, marriage, romance, and intimacy. And, as you learn to attend to your difficult feelings and replace the false beliefs with the truth, you’ll find a level of serenity, empowerment and healing that you never knew possible. The anxiety that you’re experiencing about your relationship isn’t new and isn’t the first time you’ve felt anxious in your life. If you’re like most people who find me, you’ve battled with anxiety periodically or consistently your entire life. Now is your chance to heal it.
The magic of this deep level of soul work is uncovering what it is that your soul is attempting to communicate. The soul longs for wholeness, aliveness, and serenity, but it doesnt always know how to attain these yearnings. Instead of asking directly for more aliveness, for example, we tend to project the desire onto our partner in the form of the thought: “He’s not interesting enough.” If we become stuck on this thought and believe it’s the truth, we miss the rich opportunity to mine for the diamond inside the anxiety.
I’ve often said that the over-focus on our partners’ negative qualities is a distraction or protection against the difficult feelings that are triggered by transitions: the grief of letting go of being single and the fantasy of the perfect partner, the fear of leaping into the unknown, the vulnerability that accompanies the risk of loving. But I’ve recently realized that, while the thoughts can be a protection against the difficult feelings, they’re also doorways into widening our consciousness and deepening our emotional and spiritual growth.
In order to crack through the anxious barrier and arrive at the diamond hidden inside, it’s helpful to understand which questions are pointing to which diamonds. To facilitate this process, I’ve grouped the most common questions according to their positive function.
The Longing for More Aliveness and Creativity arrives in the form of:
I’m bored.
He’s not intellectual enough.
She’s not funny enough.
He’s not social enough.
All we do is sit around and watch TV; won’t that lead to a boring marriage?
The Need for a Spiritual Connection that Helps you Accept Uncertainty arrives in the form of:
What if I’m making a mistake?
What if our marriage ends?
What if this anxiety is a sign that I’m making a mistake and if we get divorced I’ll regret not listening to myself?
What if there’s someone better out there?
The Longing for a More Integrated Relationship with your Own Inner Loving Adult arrives in the form of:
I’m lonely.
He/she should make me feel whole.
I’m not happy (and therefore it’s his/her fault).
What if I’m not ready to get married?
What if I jumped into this relationship too quickly after my last one ended?
What if I’m only with him because I’m scared to be single?
The Soul’s Need to Develop More Compassion, Tolerance, and Self-Love arrives in the form of:
I’m not attracted to him.
I can’t stand the way he chews.
I can’t stand the way she laughs.
He’s not social enough.
He’s shorter than I am.
He’s not fit enough.
The Need to Develop of a Truthful Understanding of Love and Marriage arrives in the form of:
What if I don’t love him enough?
What if something changes, we grow apart, and our marriage ends?
I don’t feel butterflies every time he walks in the door; that must mean there’s something wrong.
We only have sex __ times a week/month.
I don’t miss him like crazy when he’s away.
I enjoy spending time on my own; shouldn’t I want to spend every second with her?
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I hope you can start to see my point (and feel free to add or question this list in your comments!). When you address the anxiety from this perspective and approach it every day with a curious mind, you will start to break through its shell and arrive at your kernels of wisdom.
The singlemost important factor that determines one’s ability to move through this anxiety is pulling back the projection from your partner and recognizing that the source of the anxiety is in you and the ability to work through it rests in you. No one can save you from your own mind, your false beliefs, and your uncomfortable feelings. The willingness to take full responsibility for your well-being is the foundation for addressing these questions and finding your diamonds that are waiting, shimmering and full of beauty, to be revealed.
Wonderfully written! I’m a big fan of the Hero’s Journey and think that it really fits into your work.
Jennifer -January 16, 2012 - 4:32 pm
Sheryl, another great post! Replaying dreadful, feared scenarios is a great way to keep anxiety going. A counter to that is meditation and breathing. You have shared Pema Chodron’s work, and she is wonderful. Thich Nhat Hahn in the book True Love really gets to the heart of love, and tools on how to deal with whatever emotion is getting in the way of truly being present. It is one of the best books I have read of loving oneself, one’s partner as an antidote to fear.
Jennifer: I’m a huge fan of Thich Nhat Hahn’s work but I haven’t read True Love yet. Thank you for the recommendation; I’ll definitely check it out.
Alysonk -January 16, 2012 - 6:02 pm
Wonderfully written and so very true! I wish I could go back in time and shake my anxious self that was so scared to do the work for fear of what it might unveil. Now that I did I can truly say I’m grateful for the gut-wrenching, earth shattering anxiety that brought me to where I am now-happily married and stronger and more at peace than I’ve ever been. I pray your work reaches so many more anxiously engaged brides in 2012!
Thank you and I’m so glad to hear that you’re doing well!
ScottishBride -January 17, 2012 - 10:41 am
BRILLIANT article Sheryl.
What amazes me is that when I went through it, I thought what I was feeling was so unique to me. And that I was a worst case scenario, and different from all others! Thank God for this website and the e-course!
Anxiety is truly mind altering, and my heart goes out to all the people who are suffering through it now. I know how awful it is.
I am now at a stage where I am starting to feel glad that I went through this experience. I hope all others who can identify with this article come and join us all on the ecourse and start learning how to combat this debilitating illness with friendship and support from the team
Bettina -January 17, 2012 - 4:37 pm
Sheryl!
This article is so great! I just replaced the word “relationship” with the word “studies / job” and it feels SO revealing to see that I don’t need to put any energy in some changes in the outside, but that everything can be solved when I do my inner work.
the second time I replaced the word “relationship” with the work ” home/ house ” and wow- it also works
Thanks you so much for your thoughts!
Hearty, Bettina
Maya -January 17, 2012 - 5:11 pm
This might be my favorite post ever! So true.
Bettina -January 17, 2012 - 5:12 pm
Oh, and I forgot to say, i LOVE the line where you write “longing for a more integratet relationship with you and your LA” : “I am lonely” —> isn’t that so often the case that we think that loneliness gets away the more we are together with another person, a partner? Isn’t it exactly the opposite? I love the moments where I can do something good to myself, I feel much less lonely than when I am in the middle of thousands of poeple….I like this! (and “he should make me feel better”…uah!
Thank you, Maya! I’ve been writing this post for a while and I’m so happy to finally publish it.
Bettina: Yes! Anxiety is anxiety no matter how you slice it of what the specific focus is.
ScottishBride: Thank you for your amazing support here and especially on the e-course forum. You’re a voice of inspiration and wisdom for many, many women and men there.
Yellow -January 18, 2012 - 11:50 pm
I was so blessed by this post, as always. I get such a sense of peace from reading your stuff, Sheryl. One big question I always have, that anxiety always screams at me, is that I am part of that five percent. I have been married for eight years now, and have been grappling with some serious anxiety in connection to my husband for the past two. There is nothing for me to really put my finger on, and I believe I suffer from ROCD, but I often focus on my husband’s bad points to a huge extent, and it robs me of my joy and our closeness. I struggle with thoughts that I settled for someone that was subpar, and that I’m paying for it now. I get embroiled in negativity and anxiety when he does something that sets me off, or when I read something that speaks to this fear: ie, the girl is with a guy who seems to be perfect, but in reality she doesn’t really love him, so nothing is right. You know thatone
Yellow -January 18, 2012 - 11:52 pm
I was so blessed by this post, as always. I get such a sense of peace from reading your stuff, Sheryl. One big question I always have, that anxiety always screams at me, is that I am part of that five percent. I have been married for eight years now, and have been grappling with some serious anxiety in connection to my husband for the past two. There is nothing for me to really put my finger on, and I believe I suffer from ROCD, but I often focus on my husband’s bad points to a huge extent, and it robs me of my joy and our closeness. I struggle with thoughts that I settled for someone that was subpar, and that I’m paying for it now. I get embroiled in negativity and anxiety when he does something that sets me off, or when I read something that speaks to this fear: ie, the girl is with a guy who seems to be perfect, but in reality she doesn’t really love him, so nothing is right. You know that one? It seems to be a common, and very disturbing, theme in chick lit. So my question is, how do you know if your relationship is part of that doomed five percent? Thanks! Sorry this is so long.
SB -January 19, 2012 - 9:44 am
Thank you so much Sheryl. Please never stop writing for us.
SB: Thank you for being such a gracious audience to write for! : )
Yellow: I would need to know more about your marriage to assess whether or not it’s in the 5%. You say that your anxiety has been focused on your husband for the past two years but you’ve been married for eight; was there something that precipitated the anxiety? Are there any obvious red-flag issues like addiction, abuse, cheating, lying, misalignment of core values?
Yellow -January 19, 2012 - 11:10 am
Sheryl,
No, none of these red-flag issues. The fear is focused on little personal traits that I am not crazy about and that I cannot seem to let go. I think I know the answers to my own questions, but I continue to seek answers from knowledgable people. Obviously, this post is for me. Thanks for the reply, and please, like the other lady said, keep writing. It’s all very inspiring.
Bre -January 19, 2012 - 11:02 pm
My fiancé is wonderful. One of the truly good people in this world. But I need to know that I love him and don’t just admire him. I think I may need this site.
Loving and admiring usually aren’t very far away from each other. The key is in learning about what real love is instead of the dysfunctional messages about love we receive in this culture. You can learn more about it here: http://conscious-transitions.com/real-love-versus-infatuation/ as well as through several other posts on this site. Welcome!
Sarah -January 20, 2012 - 7:38 am
Thanks for writing this Sheryl! I really like how this article points people away from self protection/projection, and asserts that the anxiety is from something inside our own selves….that’s so helpful. Honestly I think the biggest turning point in my engagement anxiety was the moment I realized I had followed every fear, asked every question (many times), and realized they didn’t hold water. And I think the biggest thing that helped was a conscious shift from asking “am I making a mistake? What if something happens to our love?” to “how can I manage my anxiety today? What are these questions protecting me from feeling, and how can I address them?” And it was still hard…but it’s been so rewarding to realize that I have the capabilities to look deeper and understand myself better, and that really does result in connection with my husband. Anxiety really is a hidden gem. Thanks for the reminder!
Bre -January 20, 2012 - 9:07 am
Sheryl, I looked the article on common questions your clients ask, and about fifty percent of them apply to me. How can I develop my love so that it is real and like his?
Bre: You might consider taking a look at my Conscious Weddings E-Course: From Anxiety to Serenity, as I created it to address exactly this point. You can learn more about it here: http://conscious-transitions.com/conscious-weddings-e-course/. In addition to the seven lessons, when you sign up for the course you gain access to a password-protected forum, where you will find a community of exceptionally kind and compassionate women (and some men) who will help guide you along this path. The support is a key component for learning about real love and how to shift your dysfunctional ideas about relationships.
Louisa -January 21, 2012 - 5:12 am
Sheryl
I came across your website over the Christmas period and never before have I read a selection of articles that seem to speak to me on such a profound level.
My anxiety started in late November, several weeks after my partner’s father passed away unexpectedly. Understandably, this was a very very sad time and turned our once perfect world up-side-down. As soon as the anxiety set in I was devastated at the thought of having to walk away from a man that I truly love…..walking away seemed the only answer to rid myself of the pain, and yet something deep inside of me told me not to run. After reading your article ‘Take care of your anxiety like a scared child’, I realised that I needed try and understand where the anxiety was coming from and what it was based on. The content of your articles have given me the courage to look inside myself and I am fully embracing the idea of not projecting my feelings onto my partner. I know that I have a lot to work through, and initially it seemed daunting, but I am now inspired by your words and have the love and support of a wonderfully grounded man…..and whilst there are still some days that I wish I could hide under my duvet and block the world out, I know that in years to come I will look back and think ‘thank goodness I was brave enough to hang in there!’.
Thank you, thank you, thank you
Most of the people who find their way to my work describe themselves as the following:
Highly sensitive
Introspective
Analytical
Perfectionistic
Difficulty making decisions
Difficulty with transitions (moving, leaving for college, getting married)
Prone to anxiety
It’s the last quality that causes them to do a google search that ultimately lands them here, where they start to learn the context, information, and tools that will effectively, with a lot of hard work, shift them from anxiety to serenity. By reading my articles, signing up for my home study courses, and/or having counseling sessions with me, they learn to identify their fear-based thoughts and false beliefs and, over time, replace them with the truth. It’s not easy work, as it usually requires digging into the past or, at the very least, finding the courage to delve into the darker recesses of the fear-based mind, but the boons are well-worth the effort.
Yet it’s the first bullet-point above that has inspired me to write this post. As I work with clients, I’m increasingly cognizant of the effect that food has on their emotional state. As most of my clients are highly sensitive, their physiological systems are also highly sensitized to toxins that they’re ingesting, whether it’s sugar, caffeine, alcohol, sugar or the common allergens of grains, dairy, and gluten.
As we live in a sugar, dairy, caffeine, alcohol and grain-addicted culture, most people don’t think that these substances or foods could have a strong effect on their emotional life, but I’ve repeatedly seen a dramatic change when one or more of these is removed from the diet. I’ve seen people feel more alive, have more energy, and feel less anxious. Often a client will report that almost immediately after eating sugar, for example, she’ll notice an empty, anxious, overwhelmed feeling inside her body. Making this connection can be life-changing because instead of attributing the anxiety to thoughts like, “There must be something wrong with my relationship,” she can ask, “I wonder if something I ate just made me feel anxious.” The anxiety is attached to its appropriate source instead of misdirected onto their partner.
It requires discipline to remove certain foods from your diet, but it’s part of learning to be a Loving Adult to your Inner Child as you say to yourself, “I know you would like to eat cookies every day, but I can see that they’re causing you to feel anxious or irritable, so we’re going to have to take a break from them.” Everyone has their own tolerance levels of toxins or allergens, so it’s important that you stay connected to your body and notice the effect that different foods have on your emotional state. There are no blanket rules when it comes to food; there’s only your particular relationship to food and your body.
As many people find their way to me during transitions when they’re feeling especially vulnerably, anxious, and sensitive, I’m often asked for my opinion about taking medication. While I do have an opinion, I usually encourage my clients to assess the pros and cons for themselves so they can make a conscious choice. But I also recommend taking a look at their diet and removing certain foods/substances to see what effect it has. You can add something to your system (medication) to try to alleviate anxiety and/or you can remove something from your system. One approach is certainly easier than the other, but again, the gifts of finding the discipline to learn how your body-mind responds to certain foods will serve you for the rest of your life. Food is chemistry, so it makes sense that consuming food would alter one’s chemical make-up and, thus, one’s mood.
If you think you may have food/alcohol sensitivities, try eliminating the suspected culprit from your diet for three weeks and observing any differences in mood and emotional stability. Also pay attention to mental clarity and an increased capacity to feel joy.
The holidays are often a busy time of year where you can expend a lot of energy in directions that may or may not be fulfilling. You may have attended many parties or socialized with friends and family in smaller gatherings. You may have spent money on gifts and received a nice pile of nifty new toys. You may have over-eaten or over-consumed in a variety of ways. The old year comes to a close with December’s bang and against the blank slate of a new year, heralded by the quiet month of January, we’re often left with an emptiness that causes us to wonder, “What now?”
January is named after the Roman god Janus, the god of the doorway. We walk through the final month of a year and then through the doorway of January, a new year. But as January is a doorway it represents the liminal month of the Gregorian calendar, an in-between time when we’re no longer in the old year but haven’t quite adjusted to the new one. You experience the liminal (limbo) zone when you’re moving and your old house is packed up and empty but the new house is vacant as well. You experience the liminal zone when you’re a few weeks away from your wedding, no longer single but not quite married. You experience the liminal zone during the final weeks of pregnancy and as a new mother when you’ve left the old life behind but haven’t yet grown the new identity of mother. The liminal zone is when “the egg is no longer and the chick is no yet.” (Martin Buber)
Emotionally, the liminal zone is defined by a sense of unreality. How do you manage feeling out of control, ungrounded, and unsettled? If you’re like most of the human race, I would venture to guess that your answer would be, “Not very well.” Humans like stability, certainty, and familiarity. We are creatures of habit and will resist change at all cost. We like solid ground and balk at the prospect of our familiar surroundings being altered in any way. And this is why transitions are so unnerving for most people: they’re emotional earthquakes that force you from your safe, familiar ground and thrust you into the unknown.
Yet there is great power in the liminal zone. It’s during this stage when the veils of our familiar defenses are loosened and we’re offered a clarified window into our true nature and our wounds. In this uprooted, out of control state, we’re caught off balance, and in this softer, less guarded place, we have an opportunity to see ourselves more clearly and, if we seize the opportunity, to transform aspects of ourselves that are no longer serving us.
But in order not to become completely undone by the liminal zone – whether it’s an engagement, new motherhood, or the month of January – we must find our places of solace, ground, and nourishment. The healthy depression that often accompanies the liminal zone only bears the fruit of consciousness if we find the courage not to run from the emptiness, but to view it as a gift and embrace it with curiosity. What does this time have to offer? What windows of awareness are opened when we slow down into ourselves after the flurry of December and walk through this January doorway with an intention to learn and grow? How can we meet the feelings of grief or loneliness, boredom or fear, that may live inside this slowed down month with loving attention instead of fearing them and pushing them away (which only intensifies the uncomfortable feelings)? Where can you sit and be with yourself in silence, even if it’s only a few minutes a day?
For me, water is my solace, my ground, and my place of nourishment. It’s why I spent a lifetime searching for this land that backs to a creek; I knew that if I was going to honor the yearnings of my soul and live a fulfilled life I needed to be close to water. I needed a natural body of water easily accessible – not a short drive away, not down the road, but in my back yard. When life pulls me in a hundred fractured directions, I only need to sit by the creek for ten minutes to feel whole again. When the emptiness threatens to pull me into an unnecessary depression, the fullness of the flowing water reminds of that I can ride the quiet places of my soul back to a place of meaning. When I’m feeling like the energy of my life extends only outward as I give to my children, my work, and my home, the Great Mother who is embodied by water cloaks me in her archetypal nourishment and reminds me that replenishment is only a breath away. When I sit by water, I am restored.
What helps you feel grounded and nourished? What are your places of solitude, where you can make space for the deep rest that the soul longs to experience during this season? What is your doorway? Take a few minutes right now, in this moment, to find out.
This was well needed to read tonight, thank you! I also love water for helping me feel well and balanced. I don’t always have the ability to get to water though, so I set up a small space in my bedroom for meditation.
I’m reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s brilliant little book called Anger. With his signature simple and poetic style, Hahn elucidates the Buddhist views on managing and healing anger which, to my surprise and delight, overlap almost identically with Inner Bonding®. If you’re like most of my clients and people who follow this blog who struggle more with anxiety than anger, simply replace the word “anger” with “anxiety” and you’ll have a prescription for handling your difficult emotions.
For example, in one section called “Caring for Your Baby, Anger” Hanh writes:
“Embrace your anger with a lot of tenderness. Your anger is not your enemy; your anger is your baby.
“You have to be like a mother listening for the cries of her baby. If a mother is working in the kitchen and hears her baby crying, she puts down whatever she is doing and goes to comfort her baby. She may be making a very good soup; the soup is important, but it’s much less important than the suffering of her baby. Her appearance in the room is like sunshine because the mother is full of warmth, concern, and tenderness. The first thing she does is pick up the baby and embrace him tenderly. When the mother embraces her baby, her energy penetrates him and soothes him. This is exactly what you have to do when anger begins to surface. You have to abandon everything that you are doing, because your most important task is to go back to yourself and take care of your baby, your anger. Nothing is more urgent than taking good care of your baby.”
The first step in managing difficult emotions is to find the willingness to take responsibility for whatever you’re feeling (Step 1 of Inner Bonding®). You recognize that no one can save you, rescue you, or fix you; as an adult, you and you alone must find the willingness to care for and attend to your emotional life. You must recognize that it’s only through embracing and exploring the entire range of human emotions that you find the serenity and freedom that you seek.
In the above quote, Hanh is saying that we need to attend to our anger – or anxiety – the way we would attend to a baby crying in the next room. This is an interesting point because many of you were left to cry alone as babies and, later, as young children. Your emotional blueprint says, “I don’t need to attend to my difficult feelings because no one attended to me when I was a baby. It’s not safe to have needs. No one will come anyway. It’s not that important.” Our culture’s dominant parenting philosophy still supports the idea that babies and kids need to be left alone to “cry it out.” Whether we’re discussing sleep or discipline, we still maintain the (in my opinion) damaging belief that if we embrace a crying child we’re teaching that child that crying will “get them what they want.” This belief assumes that babies are trying to manipulate adults into caring for their needs.
Now I understand the difference between not giving in to a toddler who’s crying because he wants another scoop of ice cream, but I still don’t support the notion that a parent should ignore the child or send them to their room for a time out. From my perspective (and I know I’m in the cultural minority here), this communicates to the child that they’re bad or wrong for having a desire and that if they cry they will be punished in some way and banished to solitary confinement. It sends them the message that their form of communication is manipulative and not to be taken seriously. They absorb the belief that says, “My feelings don’t matter.”
So what happens as adults when we’re faced with an anxiety-provoking situation? Most people, following their own historic parenting, banish their scared Inner Child to solitary confinement with a good dose of shame and judgement to accompany them out the door. They’ve simply never learned to do otherwise. They don’t know how important it is to take responsibility for their anger or anxiety as they would take care of a child. They don’t prioritize their emotional experience and recognize that there’s essential information locked inside the feelings, if only they take the time to sit with themselves with compassionate curiosity.
I’ve come to understand that a large portion of anxiety is an Inner Child left out to dry with no Loving Adult present. It’s the young, scared, emotional, uncertain part of you that doesn’t know how to manage life and doesn’t have anyone to put a loving arm around your shoulder and say, “I’m here. I’ve got you. It’s normal to feel scared when you’re about to do something brand new. Oh, you think you can’t do it? You think you don’t deserve this new job (or marriage or baby)? Of course you deserve it! You’re a shining, loving, smart, delightful person and I won’t ever let you forget that!”
Anxiety is the Inner Child screaming out for attention, guidance, reassurance, and nurturing from your own Loving Adult. It’s a terrified child left alone with her scary thoughts or, even more harmful, she has a scary thought and the adult says, “Yes, you’re right to have that fear. That’s what’s going to happen.” Imagine if you had a child who was experiencing bedtime fears. She says to you, “I’m scared a T-Rex is going to eat me” and you said, “Yes, you’re right, a T-Rex is going to eat you. It’s coming through the door right now.” Not only would your little girl feel terrified, you would also be lying to her. This is what you do to yourself when you let your anxious thoughts run away with you.
If you’re experiencing anxiety, it’s because you’ve let your Inner Child drown in the currents of a river without a lifeline. You tell your Inner Child a lie and do nothing to replace it with the truth. You watch as she drowns in her anxiety without realizing that you are, in fact, causing it. A Loving Adult would say, “Of course a T-Rex isn’t going to eat you. Come here, sweetie. I’ll hold you until your fear goes away,” but instead you corroborate with the fear and the two of your drown together in the river. This is anxiety.
Since many of you here are struggling with relationship anxiety, I’ll give you a concrete example from this area:
You feel anxious. You make up in the morning with a knot in your stomach. You didn’t sleep well the night before and you haven’t been able to eat much lately. Anxiety is consuming your daily and nightly existence. You’re miserable, and because the anxiety has come on the heels of moving closer to committing to your partner, you form the thought, “I’m anxious because I’m with the wrong person.” The anxiety intensifies because you’re telling yourself a lie. (I’m assuming that you’re with a loving, kind, open partner who fulfills most of your non-negotiable relationship needs.) You’ve misinterpreted your anxiety and are now convinced that if you left the relationship, your anxiety would disappear.
But if you sat down with yourself and embraced your anxiety like the scared child that it is, you would ask, “What’s underneath this anxiety? Let me hold myself with compassion and curiosity and explore what’s underneath this fear. Am I scared of growing too close to someone? Why does that scare me? Am I scared of feeling engulfed by my partner, or feeling responsibility for his or her feelings? Am I scared of being abandoned, of losing my partner in some way? Am I grieving an old relationship or a fantasy of “perfect love”?” Once you can contact the underlying fear and sadness, the anxiety will start to dissipate. You can then explore the false beliefs that are informing many of the fears and sit with the grief that’s inherent to any life transition. Then the real work begins.
It’s not easy work. As anyone experiencing anxiety well knows, it’s terrifying, exhausting, and will shake you to your core. You will wish with every prayer that something or someone would reach down a hand and save you from you misery. And then one day, after falling to your knees in despair, you realize that the hand you’re wishing for is attached to your own body, that you, in fact, can lay your own loving hands around your own heart and take the necessary steps that will break open the encasement of anxiety to reveal the scared, sad, alone child that lives inside. You learn to hold the child the way no one ever held you. You make room for the difficult feelings. You embrace your sadness, your fear, your vulnerability, your helplessness, your loneliness. You explore the false beliefs that are creating your anxiety. You learn that you can handle what you thought was unmanageable. You learn to rely on a source of spiritual guidance. You learn that your negative feelings have nothing to do with your partner, your job, your city, or your family. Finally, you’re free.
Sheryl,
What a fantastic post. Most of us are so ashamed of having doubts, fears or anxieties that we try and push them down, or punish ourselves for our feelings, instead of embracing them and working through them. Acknolwedging my anxiety and attending to it through a mixture of inner bonding, the e-course and journaling has resulted in me finally being able to break the cycle and work through my engagement anxiety. I would encourage all others with anxiety about their relationship to do the same.
brooklynbride -December 15, 2011 - 9:15 am
oh how i love this post! There is so much comfort from sitting with your Inner Child… As a child I never was sent to the time out chair, too “senstive” and “good” for that… but my sister was. And it was heartbreaking for me to watch her cry. Sometimes I would go in there and just sit with her because I knew she needed to be comforted… and as I think of this memory I cry. For both of us. And for the relief knowing that I can be a good inner parent to myself as an adult… and share this wisdom with my sister today.
Thank you, both. And you’re both a big inspiration for others to make the leap into committing to the process of attending to their feelings. BrooklynBride, your story brought tears to my eyes, too. It’s heartbreaking to think about kids sitting alone with their grief, heartbreak, and shame.
Sheryl, great post and great timing for the holidays! One of the most difficult things for me was to learn how to self soothe, but what a huge difference it makes! Thanks again
StephyN -December 15, 2011 - 5:13 pm
Sheryl, I love this post. I was one of those kids that was left to cry herself to sleep because that was the only way I’d learn to sleep without a parent in my room. I was that girl that was forced to go to sleep away camp for 8 weeks against my will because all the other girls my age were going and I needed to learn how to “act my age.” I know my parents always thought they were doing the best for their children, but I’ve learned to feel numb since my feelings as a child were ignored (to make me stronger, or so they thought). I’m trying to do the inner bonding, but I just don’t feel any emotion whatsoever. I discuss stories from my past like I’m talking about someone else. Thank you for your very well written post.
When you’re doing Inner Bonding, start to move toward the feeling of numbness. You shut down at an early age because it was too painful to feel your feelings and it was the only way you could cope, but once you start to approach your numb self with compassion, the pain will break through. And yes, our dominant parenting model encourages parents to push their kids past their comfort zone so that they find their strength. This may work for some kids, but for the more sensitive among us, it creates the opposite result. Have you read the Highly Sensitive Child? It sounds like you were and are a highly sensitive person and reading the book would help you develop compassion for yourself, which would help break through the numbness.
Valentina -December 17, 2011 - 3:31 pm
Sheryl, such a great post, such great truth. And just a perfect reminder for my day, thank you for sharing your wisdom and your spiritual guidance with us. It is so easy to forget and to abandon ourselves. As Ghandi says, we cannot hurt anyone without hurting ourselves.
A beautiful and inspiring video that one of my dearest friends sent me last night. A genuine expression of gratitude is one of the most powerful antidotes to anxiety:
A member of the Conscious Weddings E-Course linked to this post on the forum, so I thought I would offer it here as well as a source of context and comfort during this holiday season.
***
Since life isn’t a Hallmark card or a Hollywood movie, the holidays are often a time when fantasies and expectations for how things “should” be jut up against how things actually are. And since the winter holidays also coincide with the shift in the Earth’s tilt as evidenced by the Winter Solstice, it’s also a time of transition. We’re transitioning from darkness to light and simultaneously celebrating – or not celebrating – Hannukah, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. The intersection of these events often creates an emotionally challenging time.
As transitions are, by definition, times of change, with each transition the loss and memories from the past filter up to consciousness. Loss triggers old losses and transitions trigger past transitions. You might be wrapping Christmas presents and feel a pang of loss about a Christmas past spent with an ex-girlfriend or with friends in another city. The natural response to these pangs is to think, “Oh, I wonder if I really want to move back to that other city or get back together with the ex.” Loss doesn’t require any action other than breathing into its presence. The emptiness of loss is filled with inhales and the allowance of grief. Embedded in the loss might be another layer of tears that need to come out. Let them out. Remind yourself not to fear the grief and attach false meaning to it. Like a crying child, it doesn’t need judgements or justifications; it only needs the comfort of your arms.
One of the mental blocks that prevents the natural emotions triggered around holidays and solstices from coming through is the injunction against feeling anything less than joy during this time. Like getting married and becoming a parent, our culture spreads the belief that you’re supposed to plaster a smile across your face right now and squeeze your emotional body to match the tenor of a greeting card. When you’re suffering under the overlay of “shoulds” and “supposed tos” it’s almost impossible to allow yourself to feel whatever you need to feel. For many, the pressure to be happy is so extreme that it creates the opposite experience: misery.
What’s interesting is that while many people rationally understand the pressure and ensuing misery of the holidays, it’s still extremely difficult to extricate yourself from the cultural expectation of joy. Again, as with every other life transition, we tell people to feel happy at the exact time when they’re naturally feeling grief, loss, loneliness, vulnerability, and depression. It’s crazy-making, to say the least. And it’s the reason why I’m so committed to doing this work and continuing my attempt to raise consciousness about life’s transitions, from holidays to birthdays, from birth to death and every transition in between.
Here’s my offering to you: if at all possible, lift the expectation and allow yourself to BE however you need to be and feel however you need to feel. If you’re lonely, breathe into the loneliness. If a memory of your deceased father appears, acknowledge the memory, and instead of seeing it as something to avoid, view it as a gift in that it brings you into closer contact with a departed loved one. Let yourself cry if you need to cry and crawl under the covers if that’s what’s asked. There are no should or supposed tos; there’s only what is.
thank you Sheryl for this! i visited your blog today in hopes to read something to help me move into a deeper space that i can feel my body resisting, and sure enough, these words remind me that, yes, it is okay to breath into grief that lately has been masquerading as anger. the days leading up to and through the transition of the holidays are such a gift. as you said… darkness into light
Yes, Ashley, breathe into the grief! Expect it, allow for it, remind yourself that there’s nothing to be scared of and everything to be learned. Feelings are just feelings and you have all of the tools and resources that will allow you to be with the feelings and guide yourself through the darkness and into the light – just as you have done this year and I have no doubt you will do with each transition in your life, whether it’s moving, having a baby, changing careers, or winter.
Ashley -December 15, 2011 - 8:55 am
thank you a million times over. i know the moment i start to resist, is the moment when the feelings get scary. but when i can remind myself that they are just feelings, as you suggest, softness enters and the grief doesn’t look so scary, rather historic and old that needs to be released so i can move into the new year. also, without grief there cannot be joy, as you have shared with me… so, i’m just going to try and let it flow!
My mother was in town last weekend to celebrate an early Thanksgiving. We had a lovely time and it filled my heart to see the way she delights in my boys and affirms our out-of-the-box parenting choices. Being of like mind and similar temperament, she and Everest have always had a special connection, but something seemed to cross over to a new level this trip. As he shared his passion for technology and she reveled in the workings of his mind, I could see Everest opening his heart to her fully. He taught her how to make a Bucky Ball cube, showed her his Perplexus 3D marble maze, and listened together to Jack and Annie traveling to Italy to apprentice under Leonardo da Vinci for a day in a Magic Treehouse audiobook. Grandma scratched his back as they lounged on the couch together and he relaxed completely into their bond. It was beautiful to watch.
The day before she had to leave he started to ask, “Why does Grandma have to leave? Grandma, can’t you stay a little longer?” We explained all of the understandable reasons why she had to leave, none of which mean anything to the heart of a seven year old boy. I could see him battling with his desire to fold himself into her comforting embrace and alienate her with his hyper antics. Everest has been struggling with the concept of keeping his heart open even though he knows people can hurt him and possibly leave him. He’s been able to articulate his fears and doubts about loving in ways that have truly astonished me lately. So it wasn’t a complete surprise when, a few hours before my mom had to leave, he said to me, “Mommy, I’m scared to love Grandma because I’m scared she’s going to die.”
If I could crystallize my work with clients who are scared to take the next step in their relationships, it would be this sentence: “I’m scared to love because I’m scared I’m going to lose him/her.” Of course, the fear doesn’t present as the fear of loss; that would be much too vulnerable for the fear-based self to admit. The fear presents as any or all of the following statements:
• I don’t really love him/her.
• I’ve never loved him/her.
• I don’t love him/her in the right way (i.e. I love him as a friend but not as a marriage partner)
• I’m not attracted enough.
• I’m settling.
• I’m only with him/her because I’m scared to be alone.
• Love shouldn’t have to be this hard. If I was with the right person, I would just know.
• Etc.
Are there times when these statements are accurate and coming from a truthful place inside? Yes. But for the vast majority of my clients and e-course participants, there’s plenty of love, connection, shared values, honesty, and goodness to sustain a lifetime of a great marriage. The only problem is that fear, once it rears its forceful head, shuts down the heart and eclipses any knowledge of the truth. Fear’s entire mission in life is to keep you safe from the risks of loving. Fear will go to great lengths and concoct elaborate stories about why you need to leave your partner. After all, didn’t you always imagine that you would marry someone with a great sense of humor, who’s taller than you, and is socially at ease? How is it that your partner doesn’t always laugh at your jokes, is shorter than you, and is awkward around others? And so the fear-self spins you into a tizzy of anxiety that can take months, if not years, to unravel. And at the very core of it is the fear of loss, the fear that just when you open your heart to loving this person completely, something tragic will occur that will take him away.
Does it hurt to lose someone you love? I don’t think there is any greater pain. When you lose a loved one, your heart breaks into a million pieces. You scream and wail and curl up in a ball of heartbreak. And then, if you’ve loved well and grieved to completion, your heart grows back together again stronger than before. I often remember a story a client once told me about a professor of hers who had a fantastic marriage. She and her husband loved each other deeply and my client would often visit to find them dancing together in their kitchen. I recently asked if she would be willing to share the story and this is what she wrote:
Sue and Tim had been married I think about 16 years and they loved each other so fully and completely that you could actually feel this vortex of love around them. It was lovely to be around them. Tim ended up dying of cancer and Sue was in such a deep state of grief over the loss of Tim. She allowed herself to feel this grief fully and completely and did not avoid it. Some people around her were uncomfortable with the intensity of her grief–probably because they had never witnessed anyone really grieving to the depth she did. It felt like the depth of her grief was the depth of the loss and because they had taken the risk to love each other so openly and deeply, the grieving and loss were reflecting this. When I went to visit herI was wondering if she would ever be open to loving again after experiencing the loss of her dear love. What surprised me is she said that after allowing herself to feel her grief so completely she was now—2 years later—ready to “love again”. She said she had such a great experience with Tim that she had more love to share and wanted to “dance in the kitchen” again with a partner!
As my mom and I sat with Everest this morning at the breakfast table, we said to him, “You know, Everest, no one wants to lose someone they love. But when you protect yourself and don’t open your heart to love someone completely, how do you think you would feel when that person dies?” “Not good,” he responded. “So it’s a funny thing, but the more you love, the more you’ll grieve if you lose that person, but the more fully you’ll be able to say goodbye and love again.”
“It’s why we’re here, Everest,” my mom said.
“Why, Grandma?”
“We’re here to give and receive love. There’s really nothing else that matters.”
And in her simple wisdom, she’s right. Nothing else matters – not the job, the house, the city, the car, the clothes - if we don’t learn to open our hearts to love.
I love this post. You never cease to amaze me, Sheryl.
Just the other night, my man and I were playing the questions game (which really means we take turns asking questions of each other) and he asked me, “what scares you the most about moving forward in our life together?”. Because I was so happy in the moment, and because I love him so much, this question scared me because deep down, I am truly terrified of losing him.
He will be officially become a police officer in a few short months and everyone I tell, looks at me with these sad eyes and asks if I know what I am getting myself into. Of course, this only adds to my stress (and makes me what to SLAP them). I know “its better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” or however it goes, but sometimes, it feels safer to not risk losing him by not trusting in us and our relationship.
Thank you, Shauna. It takes great courage to love no matter what the specific circumstances and yes, the safe route is not to risk loving at all. But life isn’t about being safe, is it? It’s opening learning to open our hearts as wide as they will go and inviting our dear loved ones to dive on in.
Thank you, Sheryl – This is beautiful! I also love knowing your mom, and how much she has been important to my own life, healing, and learning to be a loving adult. Due to getting so hurt by the adults as a tiny developing person (perhaps even starting in the womb), my heart’s been protected for so long — so learning to even recognize it, and to make new choices open my heart is still an ongoing challenge/journey for me, even with 10 years of Inner Bonding therapy under my belt. Forming loving attachments/bonds with adults/peers = new for me. Animals and children = easy
Yellow -December 1, 2011 - 10:38 am
I have enjoyed your posts immensely, Sheryl. I have to tell you that your website and insights have been key for me in figuring out the source of my fears surrounding my husband and marriage, fears which I agonized over since getting serious with him almost 10 years ago. I have spent so much time believing the lies that my fears have fabricated & suffering so much at the hands of those fears, and so seeing you articulate them and “call them out” has helped me very much. I loved the part in this post where you say, “he’s socially awkward, doesn’t have a good sense of humor,” etc…these are things that I have agonized over, personally. I am so blessed to read them and be reminded that other people go through this, and that nothing and nobody is perfect.
It’s always astonishing to me how infrequently we hear the truth in our culture about what people really struggle with in intimate relationships. We know that they can be hard, but we don’t really know why they’re hard and that the majority of it has to do with believing fear’s lies. I’m so glad you’ve found your way here and that the information has been helpful.
Nina -December 3, 2011 - 9:47 am
Shortly after meeting my son’s father, we were discussing a life together and he acted like a little kid “this can really happen to me?” he asked in amazement. Sure, I replied. Literally within hours of being thrilled that maybe, this was possible for him, his fear came up with so many reasons as to why it wouldn’t/couldn’t work. Then he’d go back and forth with maybe…no…yes…maybe…I got sooo sooo tired of trying to overcome them for him and convince him it was real and right, I just gave up and moved on. Sadly, his fear has also led him to not be a father because he refused to give up addictive and mental health issues that I didn’t want my child to be exposed to. Just the other day, after going through my son having surgery and other life changes I was thinking about him, how my son is FOUR and has never met him and thought “he is such a coward”
Its nice that you can be compassionate about it, me, I’m just mad, and disappointed, and find it hard to be understanding. I know about fear, I feel it all the time but really, if I let it dictate my actions I’d never get out of a little ball curled up in the corner…so I just go and do anyway. and amazing things happen.
Nina: I imagine that underneath your anger and resentment there’s a lot of grief, loneliness, and helplessness that he didn’t make a different choice and he allowed fear to dictate his actions. You can’t convince someone else that it’s right; it’s something they need to come to on their own. And the truth is that it’s really his loss as he’s missing out on the greatest gift of being a father, and that’s where the compassion comes in.
chantel -December 15, 2011 - 4:52 pm
i love your post. this gives me great comfort to know im not the only one. after my father leaving me when i was 8, intimate relationships with men has always been a problem for me. i am not with an amazing guy who is the man of my dreams. who treats me so well (after years of dating bad men) and sometimes i still get the feeling where i need to break up with him, or i find any reason under the sun as to why i shouldnt be with him.. but read your post comforts me in knowing that i shouldnt believe the fears lies … thank u
My clients and e-course members are some of the wisest, most compassionate, creative, kind, and loving people with whom I’ve ever come into contact. They’re interesting, intelligent, introspective, and curious. Are there any adjectives I’ve left out?! Oh, just one: they’re also the most anxious.
People find me because in the throes of anxiety, and quite often the anxiety centers around their intimate relationship. They’re taken down by a series of questions that cause them to fear whether or not they’re in the “right” relationship or if they’re making a “mistake.” I’ve said it many times on this site but it’s worth repeating: most people who find me are in loving, solid relationships and the fear that plagues them is purely based in anxiety. There is a small percentage of people – maybe 5% – who realize that their fear is coming from a truthful place and is an indicator that there are serious red-flag issues in the relationship that need to be addressed, but these issues are obvious from my first conversation with them and aren’t associated with the gut-wrenching feelings that accompany relationship anxiety.
The holidays are often a busy time of year where you can expend a lot of energy in directions that may or may not be fulfilling. You may have attended many parties or socialized with friends and family in smaller gatherings. You may have spent money on gifts and received a nice pile of nifty new toys. You may have over-eaten or over-consumed in a variety of ways. The old year comes to a close with December’s bang and against the blank slate of a new year, heralded by the quiet month of January, we’re often left with an emptiness that causes us to wonder, “What now?”
I’m reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s brilliant little book called 
Since life isn’t a Hallmark card or a Hollywood movie, the holidays are often a time when fantasies and expectations for how things “should” be jut up against how things actually are. And since the winter holidays also coincide with the shift in the Earth’s tilt as evidenced by the Winter Solstice, it’s also a time of transition. We’re transitioning from darkness to light and simultaneously celebrating – or not celebrating – Hannukah, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. The intersection of these events often creates an emotionally challenging time.
My mother was in town last weekend to celebrate an early Thanksgiving. We had a lovely time and it filled my heart to see the way she delights in my boys and affirms our out-of-the-box parenting choices. Being of like mind and similar temperament, she and Everest have always had a special connection, but something seemed to cross over to a new level this trip. As he shared his passion for technology and she reveled in the workings of his mind, I could see Everest opening his heart to her fully. He taught her how to make a Bucky Ball cube, showed her his Perplexus 3D marble maze, and listened together to Jack and Annie traveling to Italy to apprentice under Leonardo da Vinci for a day in a Magic Treehouse audiobook. Grandma scratched his back as they lounged on the couch together and he relaxed completely into their bond. It was beautiful to watch.
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