Life can be uncomfortable.
Life can be imperfect.
Life can be imbalanced, which often leads to feeling off-kilter.
Life can be disorienting.
Life can be messy, dirty, and disorganized.
There are moments or times when brain synapses and the alchemical mysteries align and we feel in flow, harmonious, just right, in love.
Immersing ourselves in a beautiful piece of music can lift us above the messiness of being human and land us in the seamless fabric of the divine.
Surrendering to ecstatic dance can transcend the time-space continuum.
New love – whether with a partner, a baby, a pet, or a friend – can arrange our circuits and hormones into a state of bliss.
The first few years of life, if we’re healthfully attached to our mother and held in close physical contact through life’s challenges, can soften the hard edges and smooth out the ridges, creating an overall feeling of rightness.
Sacred ritual can weave an ancient net that holds us across the treacherous thresholds of transitions, which help eases the disorientation of these times when the ground of our being opens up and we feel as if we could fall into an abyss of nothingness. Ritual offers anchor and direction, which can help us orient ourselves to the past, present, and future, holding us in time with more grace so that we feel less wobbly.
No Escape Hatch from Life
But these are temporary experiences.
Most of the time, we stumble around in the imperfect, uncomfortable, off-kilter reality that defines being human.
Some people are more aware of the imperfect, imbalanced nature of life.
These mystics and priestesses – sometimes called highly sensitive people and other terms that point to neurodivergent brains and psyches – feel every bump in the road, both literally and figuratively. They feel every aberrant texture in their food, every stray seam in their clothes, every blemish on their skin. They feel every ache in the heart, both theirs and others, including the non-human world. They long for a road without bumps, a reality that is seamless. They long to take away pain. They long to slow down the train of time and live in the umblemished land of childhood forever.
As Pearl S Buck wrote:
“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.”
She’s talking about the creative mind, but she’s also talking about the highly sensitive mind, for they are often one and the same. For these humans, whose skin may look typical but is actually translucent like light and absorbs every hurt and blow and sound in this world, without ancestral guidance from a community steeped in tradition and ritual, it’s very difficult to find ground and okay-ness in this world.
From an early age, they’re aware of the fleeting nature of life.
They’re aware that childhood ends.
They’re aware that death exists.
And the awareness is too much. It’s unbearable for a young person to hold this awareness by themselves. Even sharing it with one or two people isn’t enough. Bereft of the broader web of community and spiritual holding, they’re left to the mechanisms of the small mind to try to make sense of this overwhelming awareness of pain, change, loss, and death. With this awareness, life now feels like sand slipping through their fingers, and they do whatever they can to find handholds, footholds, and guardrails amidst the tenuous arrangement of being human on a planet where death exists.
What are These Footholds and Guardrails?
They’re tricks of the mind: thoughts that become obsessive, rituals that become compulsive in an attempt to anesthetize pain, slow down growing up, and ward off death. Like being absorbed in music and surrendering to the flow of dance, when caught in the vortex of obsessions and compulsions time seems to stop and, at least for the moment, there’s a sense of order and rightness in the world. They’ve figured out how to find a moment of control, a temporary foothold amidst the sea of change. The sand slipping through fingers has slowed down, or even stopped altogether. The mystic without a mentor has brilliantly yet misguidedly discovered how to control the laws of the universe.
Footholds and guardrails are also addictions: to alcohol, to marijuana, to cocaine, to spending.
And they’re eating disorders: attempts to hold onto control and strive for perfection.
These aren’t long-term solutions, of course. In the moments that obsessions and compulsions take hold, there’s a temporary reprieve from the pain and imperfection of being human. It doesn’t matter how much you clean, disinfect, organize, wash, or arrange; life will always be dirty and messy. Because it’s not the outer dirt and mess that we’re trying to cleanse and organize. It’s the internal states: the shame, the pain, the sense of being disoriented and off-kilter. The outer is the projection of the inner. Trying to create a state of outer purity is an attempt to create inner purity.
The same is true for the “healthier” ways that we try to transcend pain, time, and space: music, dance, poetry, rituals, love; these are temporary reprieves as well. For there is no permanent escape. We can spend our lives trying to create a perfect, seamless reality, but it will never work.
Eventually, we must learn to accept the distressing fact that we cannot run from the distress, and the more we do so the more distressing life becomes. The more we try to create an idealized version of life free from discomfort, the more uncomfortable we become.
The Antidote is Connection
But I will say this: the more connection we create in all directions – with self, others, and the unseen world – the more tolerable the discomfort and imperfections become. The difference between listening to music and doing compulsions is that, while they both temporarily lift us above the discomfort of being human and land us in some other seamless realm, music leads to more connection while compulsions ultimately create more disconnection.
I don’t think the way is only about learning to befriend discomfort and pain. Yes, that’s part of it. But it’s also about filling in the gaps in our personal map of the tree of life so that there’s more connection and less disconnect, thus creating less opportunity for anxiety and depression to enter.
Connection, it seems to me, is a key. We’re not meant to do this alone. It’s too tall an order to ask that humans navigate the rocky, stormy, unpredictable sea of being human without some compasses and guides, without the community of being on the ship and figuring it out together. It’s through the web of connection with self, others, and the invisible that we learn to tolerate the distress, and eventually learn to become friends with it.
We cultivate as much goodness and connection as we can, and we learn how to befriend the harder places. And it’s the goodness of connection that helps us move toward the harder places. We cannot do it in a vacuum.
Not Alone
And this is where the beauty reveals itself: we reach through the hard places and find a hand on the other side. It might be your own hand. It will also be someone else’s. And there will be an invisible hand there as well that catches you through the tumbles and disorientations and help you feel right again. Not right in the sense of perfect. But right in the sense of good enough. And from good enough we learn to orient more toward what’s present than what’s missing. Gratitude begins to trickle in and fill in the gaps.
With other hands holding ours – and not just our parents but friends and mentors out in the world – we learn to trust a little bit more in our goodness, in our capacities, in our gifts. We don’t stop noticing the fear and pain. We don’t stop fumbling through transitions.
But with reliable forms of connection the pain becomes less scary. We realize that we can make some room for the passage of time. Death may still be too scary to look at directly, but we sidle up next to it sideways: naming and knowing the grief that arises at dusk; becoming curious about the fissures in times that make themselves knows between the seasons; allowing ourselves to grieve the end of childhood.
We learn, over time, slowly and gently, with human and non-human angels by our side, that we’re okay. We learn that we can handle life on life’s terms and we don’t have to try to mold it into an idealized version where loss and change don’t exist. And in the okay-ness, through trusting our own capacities, through love in all forms, we breathe a little easier, and life becomes a lot more fun.
This came at just the right time. Thank you so much.
I’m so glad 🙏🏽
Loved this. I haven’t commented in a while but back in 2019 you helped me overcome relationship anxiety that showed up as i prepared to get married. Just celebrated 5 years in a beautiful marriage.
Then through health anxiety I still deal with but helped with the ocd that came with that
Now most recently death anxiety. The reality that me and my loved ones can die at any given time. I’ve struggled for about 5 months so far with a lot of death around me (thankfully no close friends or family but still knew them well) which doesn’t help.
Trying to remind myself how my anxiety can hook onto things and it doesn’t mean that my thoughts are true. Thank you for the reminder that us sensitive humans deal with these anxieties and that it’s normal.
please delete if this isn’t appropriate, but I recently wrote a poem that is somewhat related. Some of your readers might like it:
https://joshuaseigalpoet.blogspot.com/2024/11/to-those-diagnosed.html
Delete one of your poems, Joshua? NEVER! This is beautiful and gave me chills. Thank you so much for sharing it.
Stunning poem, thank you for sharing 🫶
thanks so much Allie, that means a lot
Your writing is always so beautiful and captures my inner experience of ocd/anxiety/sensitivity perfectly. When I read your words I don’t feel alone, I feel held and like someone has paved the way before me which gives me hope.
I hope you know how much your writing helps people, you are so gifted.
Thank you, Katy. I’m so glad you feel held and hopeful. 💕
You said it perfectly. After months upon months of heaviness, this piece just pierced to the core of me and put words to what I’ve been feeling. More importantly, the solution. I feel hope for once more so than I have in possibly years. I feel seen and understood into the most tender part of my core.
Sheryl, you truly are a gift – with your wisdom to your writing to the love you radiate. Forever grateful.
Sheryl, this is as beautiful as always. Your work is a a gift to all of us, highly sensitive souls. And I know, that all of us who are reading this are thankful for your precious words.
You helped me recognize what is love and how to give it and nurture it. Forever grateful.
Sending you love from Serbia. <3
Thank you, Marija. Love back to you. ❤️
Thank you, Sheryl. I’m out of words.
XOXOXO
Thank for writing this Sheryl. It’s what I need right now, navigating my second pregnancy in the first trimester and I feel so off kilter. I feel my anxiety and OCD is so loud lately. Even just writing this now is bringing tears to my eyes, so maybe their if grief there to my old life with just one child.
I would venture a guess that it’s grief that underlies anxiety 90% of the time, and the other 10% is the fear that we can’t handle the grief.
I can vouch for that as true for me.
Hi Julia, we just had our 2nd son 2 weeks ago and I have been feeling the grief you’ve named so much. Holding the grief in this time of beauty and love has been a lot but it has really helped me work through my anxiety, especially when I share it with my husband, friends and even our older son as appropriate. Sending you love and connection in this major liminal time.
It feels like you knew what I needed to hear and wrote it. Thank you so much for this. I’m still a teen and I often feel like my perception of life is too much. But I want to see it as an opportunity to grow and learn. Thanks <3
Young Sofia,
Hi from a mid-lifer. At 45, I can share I felt this fragility of life in my teens too. Life felt like too much. Too much pain, uncertainty, and hardness. While I haven’t been lately, connection to others has been so important. I had some good friends in my younger years. Now in my mid-forties with a husband and two young children, I’ve managed to lose those connections – most connections. I’m having to be intentional at creating connections again.
You are beyond your age my friend to recognize your gift of feeling it all and seeing how important connection is for you – for us. Celebrate your awareness of life’s ups and downs! You now have a key to life in your teens. Good for you!
Much love and connection from this 45yo on your journey.
Thank you for our beautifully supportive response, Cristy. I could feel you reaching across time and space to connect with Sofia and offer her some comfort and encouragement.
Sofia, I think you’re lucky to be making these discoveries at such a relatively young age. Had I found this website as a teen, I think I would have found that very helpful.
Thank you for sharing. I AM making space for connection and allowing Light and Love of God to hold me… reminding myself I am never alone. Even in the midst of discomfort and in between— the unknown and uncertain feeling of empty nest.🙏🏼
Beautiful, Lori.
I am speechless. This is EXACTLY where my struggle has been for a while now. Couldn’t put words to the pain, deep feelings and emotions but you, gifted Sheryl, did. I feel as if you had a device that just decided my inner most being and spoke to her. This is a treasure to me. I will print and keep a copy of this for myself, my young daughter who I know is “one of us” and will share this with friends.
I am beyond grateful to have been guided to you and your work. Much love and acceptance to you.
I’m so glad it spoke to your soul, Christy. 🙏🏽
Thank you Sheryl. As a mom of 3 young kids I have felt more and more alone recently in the burdens of parenthood. It all feels so hard, and as you said like something we are not meant to do alone. When my oldest was a baby, I found it easier to connect with other mothers in mommy and me classes etc. Now with 3 kids with 3 different schedules, personalities, homework etc, it feels like I am in an island of my own nuclear family. I wish our society made it easier to feel connected in parenthood through these not-baby ages. My siblings all live nearby and we used to be incredibly close, but in recent years it feels that everyone has somewhat retreated to their own corners. I wish I could slow it all down, enjoy my children’s childhood, and not feel so much pressure.
Your words have gotten me thinking about ways to lighten the load through connection. We don’t just need it when we are new mothers, but throughout all of the ups and downs of parenthood.
YES to every word: it’s a tragedy that we’re so isolated AND it’s worth putting effort into creating more connection wherever and however we can.
Oh my goodness this has been an absolute cannonball in my stomach, in a good way! You just know how I/we feel as super sensitive people? As if you really know how I think and feel and how my day is? I cannot thank you enough and will save this for future help when I feel so disconnected and alone. 🥰
I’m so glad it was helpful and spoke to you, Rachel.
Beautiful
Thank you 💕
Incredible. I read it with tears on my eyes and curiosity in my mind as a psychology student. Thank you for your valuable contributions…
Thank you ❤️
Sheryl, always the wisdom of angel in physical form. Perfect timing. Thank you.
Thank you, Tia. 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽❤️❤️❤️
Sheryl, no word or sentence you write is devoid of light. Thank you enormously.
Thank you, Julia. These are very beautiful words to receive.
Hi Sheryl,
I’ve been following your work for 10 years now after I found you during an intense bout of relationship OCD. I’ve had severe OCD for as long as I can remember, the severity of which ebbs & flows. I also recently discovered I score high for PTSD that seems to stem from developmental trauma (dysfunctional home environment due to alcoholism). I am in therapy both with an OCD therapist & a trauma-informed OCD therapist & will be starting EMDR in the spring. I’m wondering if I could get your perspective on something (I know you are very busy & don’t have the bandwidth to respond to everyone, so I understand if it’s not possible). It’s just something I can’t find much information about. I’ll ask the question first in case you don’t have time to read paragraphs’ worth of information: from your perspective, could a transgender theme be a metaphor for a father wound, much like the gay spike for women can be a metaphor for a mother wound?
This relates to this post as I have been trying my best to grieve childhood emotional neglect lately. It’s just so incredibly painful that I’m wondering if my brain (nearly) constantly perseverating on my gender is a cover-up for not wanting to feel the pain. I first became aware of issues with my family of origin’s dynamic when my daughter was born three years ago. I went through an intense bout of postpartum OCD/psychosis where I was completely convinced I was actually a man. At the same time I was recognizing the parental issues but not diving very deep into them. Eventually the trans “theme” calmed to where it would maybe show up every few days without causing much distress. It returned with a vengeance when I got pregnant this past June & tapered off my antipsychotic. I have been much more diligent about examining my childhood, both on my own & in trauma therapy, & while my physical anxiety has subsided, the persistent thoughts & feelings of being a man have remained. Sometimes I get a brief moment where I might be able to see through it. I am trying my hardest to heal because I don’t want to do to my children what my father (& mother, since she did not remove me from the situation) unwittingly did to me by not processing his own childhood trauma. It’s just so incredibly painful & I feel so alone. My husband is supportive but doesn’t really understand, & due to attachment issues & years of struggling with sexuality OCD (which I can now identify as likely stemming from a mother wound; I need to take your course on that), I have isolated myself from women so have no friends to talk to. I feel betrayed & abandoned by my mother & don’t want to speak with her about the deeper layers of this (she does know about the OCD theme but not my feelings of abandonment). I have no relationship with my father due to his emotional aloofness.
Anyway, I am trying really hard to heal, finally. I have been avoiding this for my entire adult life. I am trying to accept the possibility of any outcome, but I really hope that in the end I will be able to sufficiently grieve this trauma so I can live more presently with the family I made.
I really appreciate you & your work. If you’re able to give an opinion on my father wound metaphor question, I’d appreciate it, but I understand if not. Maybe my posting will help someone else who is struggling as well. I’d also like to mention that I’m in no way trying to come off as transphobic; I’m quite liberal & accepting of others. (My father is quite vocally conservative, so maybe he also has something to do with the forms my themes take.)
Hi Ashley,
I feel sad thinking you won’t ever see this, but I just wanted you to know that someone read and felt your story. From one person feeling alone in this world to another: I’m so sorry for all you’ve been through. I very much admire your courage and attempts to heal. Your self-awareness blows me away.
I don’t know anything about ‘father wound metaphors’, but it is logical to me that if you tend to your father-wound, whatever stems from it will dissipate – there’s no need to ‘know the right answer’ in advance (though that need is completely understandable).
I am currently reading and working through the book “Feeding your demons” by T. Allione, and it has so many stories like yours in terms of traumatic childhoods and how those people successfully addressed those traumas with the technique described in the book. If you were my friend, I would lend you my book.
I’m wishing you calmer waters on your journey. x