Junk Food for the Soul

A client of mine in his early 60s was frustrated with his body. He can't run any longer due to pain in his knee.

When we look at our frustrations, we’ve always got great reasons for them.

Reasons for our frustrations are junk food for the soul. 

We use our reasons to judge parts of ourselves, others, and the world. And what do they give us? More of the same - a stomach ache and a life that hasn’t improved.

My client was attacking his body with his judgment and frustration. He was drinking the poison of judgment and condemnation, and he somehow expected that to help.

Reasons let us feel justified and right, but we end up feeling crappy about it. Reasons are empty calories.

Then when we’re feeling down, we attempt to make ourselves feel better. We complain to friends and family, we scroll on social media, we watch Netflix or read some fantasy, or we indulge in some actual junk food.

More junk food for the soul.

Those behaviors don’t resolve the underlying source of our problems, they just distract us from them.

I aim to bring a compassionate, open listening to everything my clients share with me. And then we explore what’s said and what’s unsaid, and what’s underneath and energizing it all. 

By the end of that brief conversation, my client had fallen in love with his knees. For over 60 years they’ve served him pain-free. They’ve moved him, they’ve supported him, and they did so with just about no acknowledgment or noticing. 

His knee pain had transformed from a source of frustration and sadness to a gateway to gratitude and love.

Our conversation tilled the soil of his mind and heart, and he now feeds his garden with gratitude, compassion, and love.

Now that’s some soul food.

Much Love. ❤️

Marching for Peace, But From a Heart at War?

For a period in college, I was a card-carrying socialist. It began with my frustration with the U.S. response to 9/11 and the politics leading up to the 2003 Iraq war.

I went to a handful of anti-war rallies during that time, and one of them was with the socialist group I was a member of. My membership didn’t last much beyond that rally.

When I met up with the group, I was given a stock sign to hold with a stock message and a socialist organization logo on it. Then, as the march began around the Washington D.C. mall, our chapter leader got quite aggressive in keeping the 30 or so of us in a particular order as a group to communicate discipline, organization, and seriousness. 

And I saw something in him, in myself, and in others that day.

We may have been marching for peace, but many of us were doing it from a Heart at War.

Here was a disagreement of politics, and we thought we were on the moral side, the side of peace, the right side. (So did the “other” side, by the way.)

Yet we weren’t feeling at peace. We weren’t being at peace. We weren’t coming from a heart at peace. 

I hear it today too: pessimism, judgment, venom, and hatred, supposedly in service of peace, well-being, and a world that works for all life.

Peacemakers, be at peace. From there, and only from there, enter the conversation.

Self-righteousness, sarcasm, and insult aren’t the path to a better future for humanity. It's not healthy in the classroom, it's not healthy in the family, and it's not healthy in society.

Let there be Peace on Earth, and let it begin with me - in my heart, in my mind, in my body, in my relationships.

“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.” - Gandhi

Much Love. ❤️

Breaking the Magic Spell of Reactivity

My gosh I was fuming inside! So frustrated. So full of mean energy. So hateful!

Then by Grace, the lesson came to me:

Speak for that frustration, not from it.

This is a practice in a powerful therapeutic process I’ve been mastering called Internal Family Systems. It’s incredible work.

It’s not that I was frustrated and hateful. A part of me was frustrated and hateful. 

So I jotted some notes: here’s what it sounds like to speak from that energy, here’s what that frustrated part of me wants to express. 

Then, I spoke for that part. “A part of me feels… A part of me thinks… A part of me is committed to… A part of me is trying to…”

And the magic spell of reactivity was broken. 

That frustrated part was still there, but it was no longer in charge. I was back in charge.

I gave it room. I gave it a listening ear. And I chose what words would come out of my mouth and what energy would be expressed through my being. 

That’s the source of all healing and transformation for us humans, by the way: we are innately whole, healthy, and capable. We sometimes simply abdicate our sovereignty to these loud parts within us.

Even when this frustrated part was burning hot, another part of me was patient and understanding. Another part of me was loving and appreciative. Another part of me was in perfect peace.

Accessing those other parts of ourselves becomes much easier when we speak for our parts and not from them. This puts the powerful and elemental I, the true self, back into the driver’s seat of our experience. 

No one is worthy of my judgment, and everyone is worthy of my love, including all parts of myself. I have room for all parts of myself, and they’re all welcome - they’re just not allowed to drive.

Much Love. ❤️