“Hey, something’s wrong. I have this tricky problem I can’t quite figure out. I could use your advice.”

I responded in the same way I imagine most of us would:

“Oh man, I’m sorry to hear that. Let’s talk about it.”

We got together for coffee a few days later. After some catching up, I began to ask questions about the problem my friend was facing. We went back and forth a bit, and once I felt like I truly understood the situation, I offered some advice, which we discussed. This interaction felt straightforward enough. My friend appreciated the advice; I was happy to provide it and glad they asked.

I’m confident in my ability to meet this kind of request when it comes from others. So why do I struggle so hard when the person saying, “Hey, something’s wrong.” is me?

To start with, I don’t do anything nearly as direct as sending myself a text message asking for help. I tend not to involve words at all. Instead, I’m notified via a spike in anxiety, a craving for junk food, an unsettled feeling, an inability to focus, or an endless Netflix binge. All ways my body lets me know that something’s amiss.

When a friend comes to me with something, I try to learn more, lean in, ask for details, and work to truly understand the root of the problem. But with myself, I might completely ignore it, try to just push through it, tell myself I need to get over it, or just let the warning message play over and over until I become numb to it.

If the first step with a struggling close friend or loved one who comes to us for help is to dive in and understand what’s going on, how can we do that with ourselves?

My preferred starting point is to journal about it. Through writing, I bring sustained curiosity and focus to my experience, and as a result I can often gain much more insight about what’s going on in my head and my body than I ever can by purely thinking about it. The process of writing allows me to have a back and forth, to explore ideas, to come to conclusions – just as I would when in dialogue with a friend.

I would absolutely love it if I just knew, in great detail, what was going on in my head at any given point.

“Oh that heavy pit of anxiety you’re feeling right now? That’s because you’re a little burnt out from that conference last week, nervous about that phone call tomorrow morning, and feeling a little shame about not returning your friend’s phone call, and wondering if you should quit your job.”

With that level of detail, I could take specific actions instead of just wallowing in the anxiety. Unfortunately, I almost never have that degree of immediate insight, but I have figured out how to get myself there. By sitting down with my laptop, and diving into that sense of wrongness I’m feeling, I almost always arrive at a detailed picture of what’s actually going on.

How I do it

I open a google doc, add the date, and ask myself, “What’s going on for me right now?” Sometimes the words come easy, sometimes I encounter substantial resistance to getting out even a couple sentences. I might ask questions, ponder ideas, remind myself of the current details of my life, or make plans. There’s no consistent format, no minimum entry length. I’ve found that the simpler my approach is, the more likely I am to consistently do it.

Here’s an example:

January 4th, 2025

It’s morning, I just finished breakfast. Feeling a little off. Untethered, maybe? Jittery, stomach is a little funny. Not sure why. Feeling like my year is starting off pretty well, but wondering if by having spent time focusing on what I’m looking for out of 2025, I’ve brought extra attention to just how uncertain my life is at the moment. Could be that? I’m not sure, that doesn’t ring completely true. Also noticing I’ve been hermiting pretty hard since I got home from visiting family. Maybe time to get some hangouts on the calendar. Speaking of which, I have nothing planned for the rest of the day. I know at this point if I just stay at home, I’m probably gonna go into a Netflix spiral. Maybe a (cold) hike would help? Or at least get into town? Need to grab some groceries at least.

More mundane than profound, certainly. But going from “feeling a little off”, which I can do nothing about, to having a couple ideas as to what may be going on and some actions I might take can be a valuable shift. It may even mean the difference between a day lost to avoidance and depression and a day in which I felt pretty good.

What I get out of it

Primarily, increased self-awareness. By taking my amorphous feelings and spending time with them, I’ve gradually learned to better understand myself, my motivations, and my fears. Instead of feeling out of control, like a pinball bouncing through life, I’m able to bring some understanding and compassion to where I struggle, while gaining some agency over my existence.

Journaling often feels to me like a more deliberate form of mindfulness. Through bringing sustained attention to my current inner state, I’m able to perceive some structure in my chaos. Crucially, it helps me to discern when I’m having a reaction that I need to take action on (I’m feeling anxious because I’ve been avoiding my friend who I need to have a hard conversation with) from one that I don’t (I’m feeling anxious because I somehow scheduled appointments with both the dentist and doctor this week.)

Just as going to the gym slowly builds my strength, journaling slowly builds my ability to recognize what is going on in me at any given moment, and why that might be happening.

Journaling Tips

• Use whatever medium works best for you. I tend to always have my laptop with me and I prefer typing to writing by hand, but plenty of people prefer pen and paper.

• Not sure how to start? Answer the question “What’s going on for me right now?” or “What’s here?” or “What’s it like to be me right now?”

• A few sentences is fine. A few pages is too.

• Throw your rules for writing out the window. If writing digitally, turn off any sort of grammar checking, even spell checking. The point is not to create something carefully edited. Long run-on sentences, super long paragraphs, and stream of consciousness are all welcome. Try not to write as if anyone else will ever read it.

• While at times recounting your day or week may have benefits, this is by no means required. What’s here for you now, and making sense of that, tends to be far more valuable than just writing out the events of the past day or week.

• Try to write even if you think there’s nothing going on with you that requires it. Getting in the habit makes it much easier to journal when something challenging does inevitably come up, and helps you to start noticing more subtle parts of your current experience.

• Still struggling? Grab your pen and paper (or laptop), set a 10 minute timer on your phone, and just write about what’s coming up for you, even if it starts with, “I’m not so sure about this whole journaling thing.”

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For pretty much my entire life I’ve been aware of a collective bemoaning of the social greeting norm of “How are you?”: “Fine” or “How’s it going?”: “Good.” A question that isn’t what it portends to be; an automatic answer that even if true is painfully superficial. But for all the complaints, I hadn’t come across an alternative that actually does the job, that truly promotes a deeper sense of connection, until this past year.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say you’re meeting up with a couple of friends for coffee. You sit down with your drinks and instead of launching into whatever topic comes up, you suggest, “Let’s start with check-ins.” You go around the group, with each person having 2-3 minutes to share what’s going on for them at the moment. Crucially, when each person is sharing, they get the undivided attention of everyone else. No advice giving, commiseration, or interruptions of any type until that person is finished. Once they’re done, there can be a sentence or two from others around what they said, then it immediately moves on to the next person. It’s a simple practice, but I continue to find it incredibly beneficial in my relationships.

Why it works so well:

• Everyone gets an equal opportunity to share from the start. I find it much easier to reveal where I’m at in the moment if I know everyone else will do the same, and it helps set the tone of the entire conversation.

• Reduced likelihood of being blindsided by a big reveal late in a conversation. Ever had someone bring up something massive happening in their lives right before you need to wrap up? Or have you ever wanted to mention something, but never felt like you had the chance? Check-ins can provide an opportunity to bring up the big stuff at the beginning, instead of waiting for the right moment, which may never arrive.

• The focus of the entire conversation tends to end up where it belongs. I’ve found when everyone shares where they’re at up front, the right area(s) to focus on next becomes immediately obvious. You don’t end up wasting an hour on one person’s recounting of getting their car fixed, when another person has been really struggling in their marriage lately and needs advice.

• We’re less likely to mask when we start with an explicit invitation to reveal our current experiences. If I start by letting everyone know I’m super distracted by the exam I have coming up, I’m less likely to pretend that I’m completely present, and others may be less frustrated when they see me struggling to focus.

• The explicit structure helps to balance out groups (or pairs) where some tend to monopolize the time and others tend to be a bit more reserved and quiet.

• Setting an immediate context of “When one person is speaking, the rest of us listen intently and don’t interrupt,” often carries beyond the check-ins into the entire gathering.

Keys to successful check-ins:

• When speaking, focus on what’s on your mind at this moment: Where your attention keeps wandering to, what big thing is taking up your thoughts, your current mood.

• Equal time and focus for all participants.

• When starting out or in bigger groups, have a timekeeper and an agreed upon way to indicate non-verbally when 30 seconds are remaining and when time is up.

• I generally find check-ins most beneficial in groups of two to five. Beyond that, it can be hard for the participants to stay focused and engaged. For larger groups, a quick check-in of a sentence or two can still provide some benefit without taking up too much time.

How check-ins can go off the rails:

• One person monopolizes the time, resulting in one extra long share and several short ones, or in there not being enough time for others to share at all.

• Participants just recite what’s been happening in their lives, instead of focusing on what’s alive for them in the current moment.

• Not having a stated expectation around how much total time the check-ins should take. Suddenly what could’ve been a quick chance to connect ends up consuming the entire gathering.

• Any sort of interruption or movement from a check-in to a conversation. Often a quick “let’s continue on this topic once all the check-ins are complete” is enough to keep things moving. There can be a strong pull towards ending the check-ins early when one person shares something big, but I’ve found it’s better to acknowledge this and return to it once everyone has shared.

Just this morning I was getting coffee with a close friend. An hour into our conversation, we were both feeling disconnected and at odds. Stepping back, we discovered neither of us had shared where we were actually at when we arrived, and thus ended up on a topic that I didn’t have the mental bandwidth for. A quick couple minutes each up front would’ve set a much more appropriate context for our conversation, and helped us end up at a point of connection instead of frustration. Next time, we’re starting with a check-in.

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I hesitate to write about this, or even admit to it. I do, after all, have family to go home to. I am genuinely looking forward to Christmas morning – the great food, the pure joy brought by my niece and nephew as they open their stockings. The comfort of a set of traditions I’ve been loving my entire life. Yet it also remains a hard time of year for me. Mentally, I have a nicely decorated Christmas tree all set up in my mind. Unfortunately, I also have a herd of cats tearing around in my head, intent on breaking every single ornament on their way to knocking the tree over (and setting the house on fire, if possible.)

So, for today’s post, here’s a very incomplete list of reasons why this time of year can be a slog. Some of these apply to me, some don’t. Whether you absolutely love December or can’t wait for January to arrive, I hope this helps you to either feel a little bit seen or better see and understand others.

Twelve Reasons for the Season

1. What do you have going on for the holidays?

The societal expectation of having plans for the season is real. I’ve straight up lied about having people to see and places to go just to avoid the awkwardness of saying I’m staying home by myself.

2. Where’s home for you?

This is when we go see family, when we go home! Want to admit you don’t have a home to go back to? Be prepared to be personally blamed (directly or passive-aggressively) for ruining the holiday spirit.

3. Regression is Real.

If you do have a home to return to and family to see, be ready to experience some feelings and reactions that you were pretty sure you left in highschool. Returning to that childhood bedroom brings back the good, bad, and a whole lot in between.

4. It’s Dark.

Literally the darkest time of the year. Literally. Never has it been easier to spend more hours on your phone in a day than the sun will spend in the sky.

5. It’s Cold.

I grew up in Southern California. The first time it got cold enough to freeze water in the winter I was 6 years old. Mom took me and my sisters outside to show us the birdbath turned to ice. Now I live in Colorado where it rains ice and I have to scrape it off my car windows just to leave the house. I do not relish this.

6. Let’s draw things out just long enough to break every good habit I’ve developed this year.

Maybe, in an attempt to maintain some semblance of mental equilibrium, I’ve been surprisingly good at getting to the gym, going outside, eating healthily, journaling, and meditating this year. Now watch me do none of those things for the entire second half of December. What could possibly go wrong?

7. No matter what I get you, it’s going to be wrong.

Do I get you the thing that I’m pretty sure you’ll sort of like, or do I hold out, hoping I find the perfect gift? Or do I collapse into paralyzing indecision, get you nothing, and convince myself I’ve ruined our friendship due to my lack of foresight and care? Now repeat this for every single relationship in my life.

8. Ready, Set, Dissociate!

Time for the grand finale of the masking performance I’ve been practicing for all year. Just how convincingly can I say “I’m good, how about you?” while suppressing the eye twitch and hundred-yard stare?

9. One holiday not enough? How about another?

So you’ve managed to navigate the family (or lack thereof) gauntlet. How’re those NYE plans shaping up? Are you sure you’re going to be in the right place with the right person having the time of your life? Absolutely sure? Maybe a little second guessing and rumination could come in handy here?

10. Let’s take a look back at those resolutions!

Did you get them all done? Do you even remember what they were? Whatever the case, make sure you spend some extra time focusing on what you didn’t accomplish. Those internalized expectations aren’t going to live up to themselves.

11. Your life isn’t going quite right? Let’s poke that wound.

This one hits hardest. I’m 42, single, and as cliche as it sounds, nothing brings your lack of a relationship into stark relief more than being single on the holidays. Being repeatedly asked about it (even good naturedly) doesn't seem to help matters. Being asked for updates on that ex I haven’t spoken to in five years is a particularly inventive twist of the knife.

12. Not the easiest time to be sober.

For all the reasons listed above, the pull towards a substance to help quiet things down and give my brain a little break is extra strong this time of year. Add being surrounded by booze at pretty much any remotely holiday adjacent event for a nice increase in difficulty level. Just one more added bit of stress to throw on the pile.

Here’s where I would give some well thought out advice on how to get over these, to nicely wrap up this article like a well considered present. That’s not happening. If I had that advice, maybe I’d be in a better spot mentally right now, and be writing about something else. All I’ll say is please lean into compassion this time of year. For yourself, if you’re struggling. Or for others, if they’re having a hard time accessing the joy you’re feeling.

Happy holidays. Really.

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“Keep your beat-up leaky bucket mostly filled up because it’s got a somewhat substantial hole in the bottom. But don’t let it get too full and definitely don’t let it overflow or you’ll get completely overwhelmed. Oh and beware of life’s curveballs smacking into your bucket and causing some major spillage.”

Much better.

The Bucket

Mine is quite worn. It’s got some dents and seen some stuff. It’s not some porcelain cup that might shatter if dropped. It’s sturdy, durable, and worse for wear.

When my bucket is comfortably full, things are good. I’m feeling like myself, living the life I want. I’m happy, looking forward to whatever might be next for me. I profoundly wish my bucket spent most of its time full. It doesn’t. I’m working on it.

I spend a lot more time with a half-empty bucket. Here, things are a struggle. I move through life, but what I do easily in a day with a full bucket may take a week in this state. I sleep more than I want to, socialize less, and feel friction everywhere. There’s a viscosity to my life; every action takes additional effort.

An empty bucket is bad. I’ve lost all momentum. I have a constant desire to curl up in a ball as far away from everyone as I can manage. I stop showing up to commitments. I don’t respond to texts. I spend days on end consuming whatever gets me out of my head: video games, Netflix, books. Up until I quit, an empty bucket meant heavy, sustained drinking.

My bucket can also be too full, to the point of overflowing. Not as good as it sounds, unfortunately. When it’s overflowing, I’m overwhelmed. Too much is going on; I can’t keep up, I can’t stay grounded. It never stays overflowing for long, but then it never stays full, either.

The Hole

My bucket has a hole in it, down at the very bottom. It drains to empty if I do nothing to replenish it.

I’m not sure the hole can be completely fixed. But I’ve managed some small repairs to mine, reducing how fast it leaks. My main tools have been therapy, close friendships, books, EMDR, and endless podcasts. This is hard, time-consuming, and often expensive work. The work of a lifetime. But so very worth it – as I’m reminded every time I manage to keep my bucket full for multiple days in a row.

Unfortunately, the hole can also be made larger. My leak got worse during my time working with Doctors Without Borders. I came home in a constant low-level state of fear, making it that much harder to appreciate all the good things in my life.

Keeping it Upright

My bucket isn’t sitting on the flattest patch of ground. Something unexpectedly hard happens in my life, and my bucket gets jostled. Nearly full goes to half empty in a heartbeat.

Something really bad hits me – the loss of someone I’m close to, or some unexpected life-altering event – and my bucket is knocked over. I can’t even start filling it until I figure out how to get it back upright.

Filling it Up

So, my bucket leaks, and ideally stays full (but not overflowing.) But what fills it? What’s the magic substance that at just the right dose gives me access to the happiest version of myself?

The most effective bucket-filler I’ve found yet is human connection. Ideally deep and authentic connection, but even just being around strangers at a coffee shop can slow the leak for a while.

Exercise helps. An hour at the gym helps a little. Getting outside helps more. Going on a long hike on a gorgeous day at the top of the Rockies can bring me from near empty to almost full. If I bring a good friend along, I’m nearly guaranteed to come home feeling great.

Smaller things also help, and often they’re the only things I’m able to do when I’m running on low or empty. Getting enough (but not too much) sleep, eating well, journaling, ten minutes of mindfulness. It’s all the things I need to tend my houseplant (to start mixing metaphors.)

Keeping it Full

Finding equilibrium – keeping my bucket that right amount of full – is a constant focus of mine now. Coming to terms with the reality of having unpluggable leaks hasn’t been easy. I wish there were an option to buy a brand new bucket, free of holes and overflow proof.

At least the things I do to fill my bucket are also things that bring me joy. It’ll be nice, having learned how to fill my life with them.

This is where I could claim that you clicking the ♥ button helps fill my bucket. Through trial and error, I’ve discovered that positive feedback on social media in fact does very little beyond the briefest dopamine hit. However, those ♥'s do help others find my writing, and hearing that something I wrote helped someone learn a little more about themselves absolutely does fill my bucket.

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My most frequent lie? When asked “What’re you up to this weekend?” I’d reply, “Hanging out with some friends on Friday, hiking on Saturday, probably a BBQ on Sunday.”

The honest response would’ve been, “Swinging by the liquor store on my way home then playing video games and drinking until Monday rolls around.”

I couldn’t face the shame and potential judgment of admitting that I wasn’t living the life I thought I was supposed to live, so I made one up. I convinced others I was happy, even convinced myself at times. But in doing that I was completely abandoning myself, spending my energy deceiving and avoiding instead of admitting where I was struggling and figuring out how to move forward.

I was certain the only way to maintain my tenuous place in society was through convincing others I was doing great. 

Only when I finally began telling the truth – that my life was a bit of dumpster fire – did things start getting better.

In July of this year I started publicly sharing my writing about my life on the internet. The dark, messy, complicated stuff. The stuff that eight years ago I was not even admitting to myself, let alone sharing with those close to me. Writing for my friends, family, and a growing number of strangers makes me feel like I’ve won a life-long battle. I finally know that I’m worthy, that I belong, that my messy reality and history can be welcomed instead of hidden behind a wall of shame.

All of that is excellent, and would be more than enough reason to keep writing. But four months and fourteen posts in, I’ve stumbled into a completely unexpected benefit. Sharing who I truly am – my struggles, strengths, hard-won knowledge and weaknesses – has made me, in the eyes of others, more approachable, more human, and perhaps even more safe.

I have a hard time conveying how pleasantly baffled and delighted I am by this discovery. I spent nearly my entire life convinced I was an alien living amongst humans, and doing all I could to disguise myself and hide my true nature. Now I’ve finally started sharing my messy, flawed, relentlessly true reality, and not only have I not been outcast, but I feel more connected, more human, more like I belong than ever.

My posts have become the kindling for the kind of deep conversations and even reconciliations that have been years in the making. With friends I’ve fallen out of touch with, family I’ve had a hard time connecting with, or just a deepening of connection with those I’m already close to. We might start talking about my struggle with addiction, which leads to a reveal about a close friend or even a personal struggle with something similar. A curiosity about my experiences with EMDR becomes a wider discussion around the pros and cons of therapy, and how to best go about finding the right therapist. I have dozens of examples like this, all of which have brought me into a deeper connection with those in my life.

Why does this work? A few conjectures:

• Every single one of us has parts that we hide away from the world, due to shame or fright or just not knowing how they might be received. In exposing all the ways I worry I’m unfit for the world, I make others feel safe to bring their own parts forth.

• My writing is focused on my experiences. I’m revealing my truths and putting them out there, along with the lessons I’ve learned and tools I’ve found handy. I’m not placing blame, telling you why you’re wrong, or doing anything aside from recounting my own stories.

• I’m casting a wide net. Not everyone who reads it feels resonance with me, or a desire to reach out and connect. Those who do, do it on their own timeline. There is no pressure. I’m not sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table monopolizing the conversation with my stories and demanding everyone connect with me.

• I’m lucky. I have the privilege of being at a point in my life where I have a lot of existing friends and family who are interested in deeper connections. Unlike many people, I am risking very little by revealing my truths. I would not recommend this approach to say a kid in middle school, where any shred of difference often means potential bullying.

So I’ll continue to write vulnerable, messy, and deeply true stories about myself and share them with the world. It’s scary, hard, and undeniably, delightfully, worth it.

Resources

In August, I wrote a different take on the power of sharing my true self with the world.

Thanks for reading! Writing these pieces often feels like I’m pulling teeth, with the teeth being little vulnerable parts of me that really rather stay hidden. It’s worth it, but if you want to help, I quite enjoy that little dopamine hit I get every time someone clicks the ♥ button or subscribes. Much appreciated.

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I was so overwhelmed by visiting my family for the holidays that I only gave single word responses to my niece as she tried to show me her toys and get me to play with her. I had wanted to connect with her, but ended up hurting her instead.

I was so distracted and confused by the unexpected bill from my insurance company that I acted distant and annoyed during lunch with a friend, and he left thinking I was angry with him.

I desperately wish humanity were more connected and capable of empathy right now. Instead, so many of us are bulls in the china shop, causing damage with every move we make, often unaware of the impact we’re having on those closest to us – and on society at large. Something hard happens to us, something anger inducing, and we let it ripple out through our lives and community, leaving destruction in our wake. 

For a long time I was constantly guilty of this. I hurt those closest to me, pushed away those who wanted to care for me, and generally was at the mercy of whatever was driving my mood for the day. But I slowly learned how to recognize those emotions in real time, and then how to stop myself from passing them onward.

It all started with sitting quietly with my thoughts.

I first toyed with mindfulness twenty years ago, as a lonely and lost Peace Corps volunteer. A friend had sent me a short book on meditation. With no internet and very little reading material available, I devoured it and tried out the practices described within. I remember them feeling surprisingly helpful, slowing my racing mind, giving me a bit of peace in the midst of an experience I was finding deeply challenging.

I only began to practice regularly about five years ago, in an attempt to stem mounting panic attacks. I tried various approaches over the years, but kept finding a preference for simplicity.

These days I set a ten minute timer, sit down, and close my eyes. I focus on noticing my breath. If anything causes me to lose focus, I notice that, then come back to my breath. When I’m finished, I consistently end up with a slightly better sense of what’s going on in my head. And as with any consistent practice, the more I do it, the better I get.

But what’s the point? Why do it at all? Because mindfulness breeds self-awareness, and self-awareness allows us to choose how we’re going to show up in the world.

If I’m practiced in turning my attention inward and noticing what I’m experiencing, then I can influence how I react in the moment.

The more I practice Spanish, the better I get at recognizing a conversation from across the room, and the easier it gets for me to join in and be understood. Similarly, the more I practice mindfulness, the better I get at recognizing what’s going on in my head at any given moment, and the easier it gets for me to make choices based on that information and take action accordingly.

If I’m stressed out, and that stress is making me cranky, I can recognize that in the moment, and be much less likely to erupt at my coworker when they ask me an innocuous question.

If I’m feeling insecure about how little in savings I have, I can be aware of that insecurity, and any time the topic of money comes up, I'm much less likely to get defensive or change the subject.

If I’m furious that I almost got hit by a car on my way home, I can recognize that anger instead of just projecting it onto my roommate, and choose to tell him what happened instead of just getting irritated by anything he says.

This is not the same thing as emotional repression. I’m recognizing what I’m feeling in the moment, bringing awareness to it, and choosing what to do with it. I’m not taking whatever I might be feeling and immediately suppressing it. (Never a good idea.)

Being able to know what’s influencing me in a given moment and decide how I will respond is a super power — a massively under-appreciated one.

Instead of experiencing anger and then bringing that toxicity with me to every other interaction I have that day – from the barista to my colleagues to my friends and family – I now have the ability to feel that anger, recognize it, perhaps vent about it with someone, but choose to not inflict it on everyone else around me.

When I get upset by something, I no longer feel like a passenger in a car with no brakes. I used to careen through life, unwittingly dealing out damage, at the complete mercy of my overwhelmed emotions. Now I’m behind the steering wheel, in control, and the brakes even work on most days. 

So, where does empathy fit into all of this?

As I learned to be more aware of my own experiences, I learned to question instead of judge the actions of those around me. I stopped assuming that a friend being distant was angry with me, and I began to get curious about what he might be going through. I no longer acted snarky back to my snippy coworker, and instead tried to find a way to connect and have a conversation.

I began to understand that how we act on the surface tends to be hinting at a deeper hidden reality, and learned to get curious about that, instead of reactive. 

All from a regular practice of sitting in silence for ten minutes, a few times a week.

Resources

The internet is packed with many excellent mindfulness guides and apps. I’ve personally found Jeff Warren’s meditations to be very accessible. My only guidance here is that mindfulness can take just a few minutes a day, not cost any money, and still be extremely impactful.

Thanks as always for reading. If you haven’t already subscribed, please do. And if you already have a mindfulness or meditation practice of some sort and have a favorite resource or method, please leave a comment.

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“You have to listen to your gut. If something feels off, you’ve gotta listen to what your body is telling you and get out. If you don’t, you’ll end up regretting it.”

Neither of these pieces of advice has ever felt quite right to me. I don’t think either one is completely wrong, but I find them too simplistic.

Pushing through has merit. I have yet to regret putting in occasional twelve hour days to get a tricky house project done or meet a deadline. But, as I’ve written about, I wish I had stopped to ask for help while working in Sudan, instead of just pretending everything was fine for months on end.

My gut has been right in the past. But it has also constantly urged me to stay at home instead of going to that friend’s party, or told me I shouldn’t post my writing on the internet. My body may contain some wisdom, but it’s also constantly trying to protect me from being eaten by lions – not my biggest concern these days.

A few years ago I was introduced to the concept of my edge. This idea has provided me with a profoundly helpful middle path between pushing through and listening to my gut. It’s allowed me to push myself, but not to the extent of causing more harm than good.

My edge is the zone in which I feel like I’m challenging myself, where I’m outside of my comfort zone, but not so far outside of it that I risk doing myself harm. It’s a point of balance between hard and achievable.

There’s a hike near where I live that I can complete in an hour if I’m really hustling. If I were to stay in my comfort zone, I’d try and complete it within 70 minutes. If I were to risk hurting myself, I’d try for 45 minutes. Leaning into my edge would be aiming to finish in just under an hour, perhaps at the 57 minute mark. A stretch goal, but within the realm of possibility. However, if I was recovering from an injury, or feeling a bit sick, my edge might just be completing the hike at all. That part is crucial – your edge is not a constant, but a constantly shifting zone of what feels like a challenge in the moment.

Say I’m at a new friend’s dinner party, feeling anxious and uncertain. Leaning into my edge may be just making the effort to introduce myself to everyone, instead of just staying in the kitchen with my friend. But if I’m hosting a dinner party with a couple people I’m close to, my edge is probably much further away, as I’m feeling quite a bit more comfortable. Maybe I try to both have a real moment of connection with everyone there, and make sure I don’t burn any of the food, and make sure I stay aware of everyone in the room at any given time. As my edge is extremely context dependent, the more connected and safe I feel the more I have to stretch myself to reach that point of feeling like I’m being challenged.

I find the edge concept especially valuable when any kind of vulnerability is involved. Ever been in that situation where you’re getting coffee with a new acquaintance or coworker and they ask you about something you’re feeling a bit tender about? I often find myself wanting to give an honest answer, but I find this to be a perfect time to check in on my edge. Does sharing this personal information with this stranger feel a little risky, but generally ok? Or am I not yet in a place of feeling safe enough with them to go there? Perhaps I’m feeling really connected or just generally having a really positive day, so sharing feels doable. Or perhaps I’m exhausted, or just not feeling like I know enough about this person yet, or I had an emotionally taxing conversion the day before and am not yet ready for a new one. All of this can factor into where my edge is at any given moment.

One of my favorite parts of tracking my edge is that it helps me recognize my own growing ability to be vulnerable. Talking about my addiction to alcohol used to be a topic I always had to interrogate my edge around. Was this a person I might feel shamed by, or who might not understand, or care to understand, my story around drinking? These days, I find myself willing to engage with pretty much anyone. When I check in with myself, I find my edge around this topic so far out – barely visible on the horizon – that I know I can safely talk about it and express my opinions with minimal risk of feeling regret later.

Practicing tracking your edge allows you to engage in rubber-banding – stretching yourself while still being able to snap back. Without keeping your edge in mind, you may stretch yourself to the point of breaking. Or you may stretch yourself so little that you never grow.

Toolbox

Next time you’re feeling some discomfort in a situation, slow down and take a deep breath. 

Check in with yourself. Where is your edge? What level of discomfort feels challenging but not overwhelming right now? Can you lean in and try something difficult? Or have you already leaned in too far and need to back off a little? Act accordingly. As the situation progresses, keep checking in with yourself.

Once it’s over, check in again – how did that go? Finally, give yourself some credit, and be aware of the potential for a vulnerability hangover.

Resources

I was originally introduced to the concepts of the edge and rubber-banding through the practice of Authentic Relating. To learn more, take a course or read this book.

Finally, an edge for me is asking, in each and every article, for you to hit that little heart button if you enjoyed the piece. I imagine it feels a little desperate or unnecessary, but I keep leaning into that edge, knowing it’s a necessary part of getting more eyes on Depths of Repair. So, once again, I’ll be vulnerable and ask: Please click the ♥️!

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1. The Bully

Having an angry, disdainful, mocking inner voice – spewing venom at the least provocation – felt perfectly normal. The worst bully from middle school was in my head, endlessly ripping into me, always searching for the slightest flaw. He was a mole on my neck, the ache in my right shoulder - an old, unremarkable part of me I’d long ago grown used to.

Being someone regularly described as kind, empathetic, and caring made this extra ridiculous. I was a great teammate, a pleasure to work with, and a good friend. How was I simultaneously laying into myself with a stream of profanity any time I spilled a few drops of coffee?

I was an absolute master at avoiding any hint of introspection. I may have hated myself, but the moment I started to realize that, or just looked in that general direction, I’d find a way to avoid thinking about it. I’d honed this through the years, first with binge reading, then video games, finally advancing to alcohol, spurred on by PTSD acquired in my twenties. I needed things that would numb me and turn off my brain - anything to keep me from having to listen to the bully.

I was miserable, deeply unhealthy, unable to maintain a relationship - and had a great system for avoiding admitting any of this to myself, let alone others.

2. The Question

I’m still in awe, and a tad annoyed, by the simplicity of the mental subterfuge employed by my therapist to finally get me to see my internalized hatred for what it was.

I had two very separate, but very active realities playing out in my head. I aimed to treat those around me with kindness and compassion - core values of mine. I treated myself with disdain and disgust - traits I couldn’t stand in others.

To combat this, my therapist introduced me to a tool to use after hearing the bully in my head - a question that every time I asked it would force those two realities to merge, and make me confront the extreme dissonance within me:

“What would you say to a close friend?”

For example, after knocking over a glass:

• To myself: Groaning, with a disgusted shake of my head. “You idiot, what were you thinking? What is wrong with you?”

• To a close friend: With a concerned face, and compassionate look. “Oh no! Let me grab some paper towels. Seriously, don’t worry about it, it’s not a big deal at all.”

Or after realizing I forgot to buy something at the grocery store:

• To myself: With a disdainful look and grunt of annoyance, “Are you kidding me? Again?? What is going on with you? You can’t even do something that simple? Were you even thinking at all?”

• To a close friend: With a smile and brief touch on the shoulder, “Hey no problem at all, we can just run down to the corner and grab it. This happens to everyone, no need to beat yourself up about it.”

The difference in tone, words, facial expressions, and how I felt in my body was extreme, even in these simple examples. I couldn’t help but immediately see how radically differently I was treating myself from others. For the first time in my life, I viscerally understood what self-hatred was.

As I became more aware of this inner bully, I found examples of this dismissive tone several times a day. Every time I was able to stop the internal lambasting felt like a win, and the growth was multidimensional. I was both being kinder to myself, and becoming far more self-aware and introspective. Just by noticing my inner bully, and asking that one question, I was able to make gradual improvement.

This tool was unequivocally helping. I was learning about myself, and for the first time in my life, not stoking the fires of self-hatred. I was creating a small but sturdy foundation of compassion for myself, each act of kindness a vote towards believing I was worthy of existing in this world, and not just a failure and waste of space. But being kind to yourself when you drop and break a plate is one thing - finding kindness when you’ve legitimately messed up is a whole different beast.

3. Accountability

At this point in my life I had started to fall into a dangerous trap. I despised myself to a point where it became an excuse for behavior not in line with my values. 

Break up with someone out of nowhere, after letting them think everything is great? Oh I’m just broken and undateable, and I’m doing them a favor by not dragging things out.

Ignore a friend’s repeated requests to hang out, and then finally make up an excuse for why you can’t see them? I’d be boring to hang out with anyway, as all I want to do is stay home and read, so they wouldn’t want to see me.

Agree to finally see a friend, then drink 3 beers in the first hour and spend the rest of the night talking about myself? We were just drinking, it was fine! That’s what people do when they hang out! I had a good time, so they must’ve also.

This last example I was having particular trouble with. At this point, I had a life full of memories of doing dumb, hurtful, annoying things to people I cared about while drinking. I had an immense amount of shame and self-hatred bottled up around this behavior, and in all honesty there were valid reasons for it.

I was in a self-perpetuating cycle of shame and escapism. 

I drank to escape feeling terrible about how I treated people when I drank.

I desperately needed to stop, to break the cycle, but how? It felt like my house of cards would come tumbling down if I upset this careful balance of chemically induced ignorance.

I already possessed the tool I needed, I just hadn’t learned how to turn it up to the required intensity. I don’t recall exactly what triggered it, but I remember waking up one morning feeling hungover and deeply ashamed. I had let someone down, or made someone uncomfortable, or been annoying, or likely a combination of all three. At this point I knew that endlessly berating myself wasn’t the solution. I’d end up feeling so terrible that more drinking would be inevitable. So I tried using my new tool. I asked myself, what would I say to a close friend who was in this situation?

I immediately felt my body rebel. How dare I try to escape from my shame? I needed to atone for my actions, I needed to deeply feel like the absolute scum I was. Who was I to try and avoid the consequences of my drinking?

I took a few deep breaths and went on a walk around the block. Then I asked myself again - what would I say to a close friend? But it still didn’t land. I realized the question needed some more substance in this scenario. I needed to properly visualize a situation in which this conversation might happen. So I asked myself - If I was getting coffee right now with a close friend, and they confided in me that they were feeling really ashamed around how they had acted last night, what would I say to them?

This time, the answer wasn’t obvious. It was emphatically not, “Oh don’t worry about it! These things happen. Everyone does it.” I did need to worry about it. I wasn’t acting how I wanted. But the answer was also not, “Well, you need to just sit here all day and feel completely horrible about it. I know you well, and you’re a genuinely repulsive person, and this is exactly the type of behavior I expect out of you. Honestly, I have no idea why we’re getting coffee right now. In fact, I’m going to leave, please never talk to me again.” As much as I felt like I might deserve that response, I knew that wouldn’t be what I would say to someone I cared for.

So, I dug deeper. It took several tries, and my inner hater attempted to hijack the conversation more than once. But eventually I was able to come up with a genuine response:

“Oh man. First, thanks for sharing that with me. I appreciate you trusting me enough to bring this up. I care about you, and this is a tough situation you’re in. I’m not going to tell you that I think what you did last night is ok, but I also know that you’re so capable of doing better than that, and it doesn’t represent who you are as a person. I’ve known you for a long time, and have seen you at your best and worst, and your best is pretty amazing. I know that the person you were last night is not who you want to be, so let’s talk about what caused that, and what you can do from today on to make amends, move forward, and do better.”

This kind of thoughtful, caring yet honest response landed, and was what I needed to hear.

Over time, I came to realize that I was learning more than how to not hate myself. I was learning how to hold myself accountable, as that’s what I’d do with someone I truly cared for. I wouldn’t let them off the hook, I wouldn’t tell them their behavior was fine. But I would be kind, caring, and ultimately honest. Telling a friend that their bad behavior is justifiable is not an act of friendship, but one of appeasement and enablement. I needed accountability and reassurance, and over time I taught myself how to provide it.

I had the tool I needed, but this was not an instant transformation. Month after month I gradually built up my self-compassion and accountability, while draining the pool of shame I’d been submersed in. I built up the habit of taking a breath, placing a hand on my chest, and finding myself some compassion. At times I failed, but more often I succeeded.

4. The Present

As the shame and self-hate receded, I found it easier to drink a bit less. If I bought a six pack after a rough day and had a few drinks, I was able to give myself some compassion the next morning and break the cycle, making it a one-off instead of a multi-day (or multi-week) descent into heavy drinking and self-loathing.

I even began to see myself as that close friend, worthy and deserving of my love. Someone I could champion in his good moments, comfort in hard times, and hold accountable because I knew he could make mistakes but had a good core and was always capable of being better.

As I’m writing this, I haven’t had a drink in over a year and a half, and even the idea of having one rarely crosses my mind. I am proud of myself, but I don’t see my success as some triumph of will and determination over weakness. When filled with shame and self-hatred, I had no chance of giving up the one thing that allowed me to briefly feel good about myself. Instead, I’ve learned to treat myself with kindness, to the point where it feels intrinsic. As a result, the addiction has lost its purpose, and thus its stranglehold.

The bully still arises in me from time to time, six years after I first started confronting him. I find he lurks in old memories and situations, old neural pathways that I haven’t yet had the chance to re-train. The default instinct of disdain remains, and I expect to spend years yet stamping it out. Fortunately, reaching inward and finding some internal kindness has become second nature. Even better, finding such compassion for myself unlocks a wealth of genuine, deep compassion for those around me.

I spent the majority of my life drowning in self-hatred. I wish I could reach back in time to a younger me and let him know how wonderful life will be once he learns to show himself some kindness. He deserved to be aware of that bully in his head and the massive impact it was having on him. We all deserve that awareness of the demons lurking within us, and we deserve the tools needed to battle them and find a better way to live.

Resources

Think you might be a self-hater? Here are some practices for treating yourself more kindly:

First, notice how you react when you make a mistake. This can include your inner voice, but also consider facial expressions, emotions, and physical reactions. Even if you don’t hear an inner bully speaking, do you feel judgment, disgust, or shame welling up?

Next, ask yourself the question “What would I say to a close friend, someone I deeply care about?” 

Does your answer line up with how you’re treating yourself? If not, tell yourself what you’d tell that close friend in this situation. You can say it internally, out loud, or write it out.

• If you can’t immediately access the perspective of a close friend, consider returning to the exercise later. Finding that compassion for yourself, even much later, can still be extremely healing, and help you build up the mental muscles needed to access it more easily.

• I personally find writing the conversation out (by hand or typed) extremely helpful here, especially for more complex scenarios. It helps keep me focused, slows me down, and if I’m feeling a lot of resistance I can come back later to pick up where I left off.

If having a conversation with yourself isn’t working out, another option is writing yourself a letter. The prompt would be nearly the same - “What letter would I write to a close friend, someone I deeply care about, to help them through this situation?” I’ve found the change in format to be quite helpful in some circumstances, as it allows me to explore my motivations and struggles more deeply than an imagined conversation might.

Good luck, and please remember - this can be hard. It may not come naturally at first, and your bully will likely fight back. But doing this work is how you heal. Keep it up, you’re worth it.

Thank you for reading. If you’ve made it this far but haven’t yet subscribed, please do! More subscribers means more visibility on Substack. And as always, please take a few seconds to click that ♥️ button.

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I spent the vast majority my first month back home hiding away in my childhood bedroom. I emerged to eat, buy books, buy beer, and exchange a few sentences with my parents. My main focus was video games and sleeping. Every morning for the first two weeks I immediately jolted awake. For the first six months I was hyper aware of any sound remotely resembling a gunshot. All unpleasant symptoms, but as they faded I assumed I was getting back to normal. I thought I had recovered from my ten months in South Sudan, working at a hospital for Doctors Without Borders. Instead, I’d end up living in a state of fear for the next fifteen years.

The exact details of what happened in South Sudan aren’t particularly relevant. I was near and exposed to a lot of violence and I witnessed death of all sorts. I spent many months feeling deeply unsafe, paired with a deep lack of trust in those responsible for my safety. I was never directly attacked, and absolutely did not have as bad of an experience as many of my colleagues had, let alone many South Sudanese. But I was also twenty-six, in way over my head, and had none of the tools I needed to process the incredible range of emotions I was experiencing.

I told myself it hadn’t been that bad, that I had gotten through it, that it could’ve been way worse, that it was behind me. Nevermind that when asked about it my default response was, “Ask me again after I’ve had a couple beers.” And if you happened to ask me once I’d had those drinks, the response became, “I’m not drunk enough,” or my eyes would lose focus and I’d go quiet until someone changed the subject.

My twenties were full of adventure. Over four years living outside of the country, long road trips, random jobs in between. I was introverted, and often preferred books over people, but I wasn’t living a life dictated by fear. My thirties were a completely different story. My life was myopic. I focused intently on the next ten minutes, looking to stay as distracted and safe as possible. Thinking beyond a day in the future was rare, thinking beyond a month in the future was non-existent. I spent a total of a month outside the country, all on trips initiated and organized by others. I worked, drank, and spent endless evenings and weekends avoiding any sort of interaction with other humans. I had become a wildly different person.

In January of this year, I was sitting in my therapist’s office, hunched inward. At this point, I’d be working on my self-awareness for years, and I could tap into the visceral sense of fear I was experiencing. That day, I didn’t want to engage with the world, it just felt too scary to me. I wanted to turn away from everything, to curl into a ball and hide. 

“Where in your life is that fear coming from?” My therapist asked. “Why don’t you look backwards from now through your life, and see if you can pinpoint it?” So I sat there, closed my eyes, and moved backwards through my memories. The moment I reached Sudan, I jerked in my chair, grimaced, turned my head away, grunted with resistance. That was the source, and I didn’t want to go anywhere near it.

Enter EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy.

Imagine dredging up a deeply painful memory from your past. Focusing on the worst snapshot of that memory, the single image that defines it. Working deliberately to bring that memory into your body, into your current moment, to feel as much as you can of it – and when it’s feeling as viscerally terrible as possible, opening your eyes, and following a light moving back and forth, as you attempt to keep that memory as present for you as you possibly can. That’s EMDR. It is unpleasant, deeply weird, and incredibly fascinating. I have never been so bluntly reminded that my brain is a precarious concoction of biological complexity, very susceptible to manipulation and general trickery.

I found myself gritting my teeth and almost growling as I attempted to keep the terrible memories alive. One would vanish, and another – seemingly unrelated – would take its place, then another. It felt like nightmare whack-a-mole, free associating around some of the worst moments of my life. It was exhausting, invigorating, bizarre, depressing – and incredibly effective.

Events from fifteen years ago – 4K videos blasting at full volume in my head, complete with surround sound, smell, and complete emotional immersion – suddenly faded into fuzzy black and white pictures. The events finally became memories. Unpleasant ones, but just old memories.

As part of the EMDR protocol, I was asked how vivid and intense a given memory felt in my head both before and after. On a ten point scale, eights and nines would drop down to ones and twos over the course of a few hours of therapy. It was such a jarring change that I repeatedly second guessed myself. I couldn’t believe that such an intense memory could fade so quickly. But even as I write this, I’m probing back to some of the worst moments and only feeling a little lingering sadness and heaviness around them. I can talk about those times now while completely sober, and no longer experience that visceral need to turn away.

The best outcome of all of this, the reason I’m writing about EMDR in the first place, is how my day to day life has changed. Finally processing those events, and allowing them to fade into long term memory, has finally let me return to living in a state of relative peace. I find attending events full of strangers so much easier. Restaurant hosts don’t terrify me as much as they used to. Initiating a hard conversation is no longer impossible for me. I don’t have to spend minutes hyping myself up to get out of my car, go into a store, go into the gym, walk into a holiday party, or so many other things that I used to struggle with daily. I’ve even finally found the courage to start sharing the vulnerable, hard parts of my life with strangers on the internet.

I’ve come to understand that my experiences in Sudan have given me a glimpse into what being in a war zone must be like. Just a small hint of the full reality of that experience. A peek into the dread, confusion, anger, brutality, and overwhelm of being surrounded by inescapable pain and death. Just that taste, and it’s taken me a decade and half to find myself again.

Resources

I am a deeply skeptical person. When presented with the option of diving into some of my most traumatic memories while moving my eyes back and forth, I was at best reluctant. But I found myself swayed by reading Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s deeply compelling description of EMDR in The Body Keeps the Score and discovering the reliance on it for treating veterans with PTSD.

Finally, while I’ve found the courage to write publicly, posting about vulnerable topics on a weekly basis has proven to be a bit intense, so I’ll be posting every other week going forward. And as always, if you enjoyed this please click that ♥️ button and subscribe.

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I spent the last ten minutes staring at a draft of this week’s post. The words weren’t resolving. I read the first few paragraphs four times, and still couldn’t make sense of them. Not because it’s a bad piece of writing or contains invalid ideas. But because today I’m having a very hard time accessing the creative, ideating part of my brain.

I still desperately want to write. I have spent so much of my life in isolation, never finishing projects, not feeling like I’m accomplishing anything of worth. Countless hours spent reading fiction, playing video games, binging TV. Anything that could take me out of my head and into a place of escape. I’m so tired of that life, but it is deeply tempting at the moment.

I don’t have it within me to put on my “I have something worthwhile to share” hat. I can’t access – let alone write about – the latest insights I’ve had. I want to hide away on my couch and pretend I never committed to a weekly post. I can’t begin to find within me that calm confidence I rely on to reflect on how I’ve grown – and how that story of growth might help others.

But while I may be struggling, I can still make out one key piece of self-awareness through the haze of frustration: I’m pretty low on my ladder.

The top of the ladder is characterized by safety, warmth, social engagement – where I want to live.

The middle is fight or flight, engagement but a sense of danger, uncertainty – defenses are up.

The bottom is a freeze state, being shut down, dissociated – feeling despairing or numb.

Deb Dana came up with the ladder concept, as a way to make polyvagal theory more readily accessible. I’ve found this approach to be immensely helpful in getting my overly logical self to understand how and why my body and brain interact. From the lens of this theory, I’m probably somewhere between the sympathetic and dorsal vagal pathways. I want to run away, to flee, but also to not engage, to go to sleep, to completely numb out. I’m having a very hard time accessing my safe, calm, reliable, creative brain – the ventral vagal pathway. I could get way more into this theory, but I’ll save that for when I have more access to my ventral vagal paths.

I love living at the top of the ladder. When I’m there, I have so much creativity, curiosity, joy, and such a desire to be (and find) my best self. I’ve spent more time up there in the last year than I had in the ten years prior. But as I’m acutely, frustratingly aware of this week, I can still get knocked back down to my default rung on the middle of the ladder. Without some basic nourishment and maintenance, I slip into the warm, sterile, isolating comfort of my old patterns.

Most frustrating about all of this is that I’m struggling because I’m doing what I want to be doing. Not what feels most safe, but what, in my core, feels like a really solid way to be living my life. Last week’s post about my struggles with drinking was exactly what I wanted to write, and sharing that publicly was hard. Every week, I’m baring my soft underbelly to friends, family, and strangers, knowing I probably won’t get attacked while being so vulnerable, but a scared little part of me keeps asking “Why are we doing this? Why can’t we just go back to keeping our head down and fitting in?” I used to go months at a time without exposing a shred of vulnerability. Now I find myself leaning into that vulnerable side multiple times a day. It’s exactly what I want to be doing, but I’m paying a price.

So this week I’m compromising. I’m still writing. I’m still being vulnerable and authentic. But I’m also finding a bit of self-compassion for my current reality. I could’ve tried to push through with the original article. Maybe I would’ve ended up with something I was reluctantly fine with. Or maybe I would’ve crashed all the way to the bottom of the ladder and already started a days-long Netflix binge. Instead I’m recognizing what I’m capable of at the moment, and leaning into that.

Resources

For a quick introduction to polyvagal theory, I’d recommend Deb Dana’s Beginner’s Guide

I appreciate y’all for reading. As always, if you have any thoughts please leave a comment or reach out directly.

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It was winter of 2022, and in a few days I was going to head out to Minnesota to spend Christmas with my family. None of them were fully aware of the extent of my drinking, and the holidays were traditionally a time for some pretty serious consumption of alcohol. 2022 had mostly been a good year for me in my long journey towards sobriety. I had cut back quite a bit, and had stopped entirely for a few months. But between a bad breakup and my fortieth birthday, the end of the year had been a struggle, and I needed a reset. So I wrote my family a simple email, saying I wasn’t going to drink while visiting, and got just the response I needed. No questioning of my decision, no telling me why I was actually fine, just friendly acceptance and accommodation. That ended up being my first sober Christmas.

This story wasn’t the crucial turning point in my journey with alcohol. This wasn’t the moment when everything became clear to me and I finally saw the error of my ways. This wasn’t even the moment I stopped drinking for good. But it was the last major hurdle I needed to clear to prove to myself I was capable of sobriety. One of dozens of hurdles I had been overcoming over the last four years, from the time I first said out loud that I wasn’t happy with my relationship with alcohol.

We tell a story that alcoholics will hit rock bottom, see the light, and choose to never drink again. This is a true story for many, but is by no means the only story1. I never had a rock bottom moment. I never had a moment of suddenly seeing the light. I spent years learning how to stay sober, and the moment I finally really quit, eighteen months ago, felt like the natural cumulation of a lot of sustained, hard work.

I worry that by mythologizing the rock bottom to instant sobriety story, we don’t leave room for supporting those taking a different route. I needed help, accountability, education, reassurance, mentorship and generally to be seen in my struggle. But I was so afraid that if I said publicly that I was struggling, but didn’t also immediately quit drinking, I’d be branded as a failure who should be ashamed of himself. (Hardly a feeling I needed more of in my life at that point.)

Foundation Building

I had an entire personality, an entire life, built around alcohol. I had no clue how to live without it, and was terrified at what a sober life might look like. To quit, I first needed a foundation on which I could rebuild myself.

I needed to learn to:

• See alcohol not as a helpful companion but as insidious and manipulative.

• Talk to myself in a kind, compassionate, accountable way.

• Reveal to my closest friends that I was struggling, and learn to accept their help and reassurance.

• Recognize the deep impact my drinking was having on the relationships in my life.

• Understand that stopping drinking would not mean a total end of my social and dating life.

• Fully accept what my life might look like in twenty years if I continued down this path.

• Become comfortable with telling others, from strangers to family, that I was not going to consume alcohol at their event, and be able to discuss why.

• Find other, more healthy, methods of stabilizing my mood.

Many of these took years to learn, and most are still a work in progress. Some required what felt like an entire grieving process for my prior life, as I had to come to terms with how things would be different going forward.

Most of this foundation I built alone, or with help of a therapist or one close friend. I wish I had asked for more help, instead of stumbling through it, making mistake after mistake. I wonder if I could’ve shrunk that five year process down to something much shorter, and gained the immense benefits of sobriety that much sooner.

I wish that admitting I had a problem hadn’t felt akin to setting my entire life on fire while yelling, “Hey I know you think I’m strong and reliable, but I’m actually a terrified little kid who’s lost control and doesn’t know what to do and could really use some help.”

External Support

Imagine you’re an adult who never learned how to cook. You’re ashamed that you’ve managed to get this far in life without this skill, and even the thought of attempting it causes a spike of anxiety. But you decide to finally give it a try, starting with frying some eggs. You crack the first one into the pan successfully. On the second egg, it makes it into the pan ok but a big piece of shell falls in there with it. Imagine a group of onlookers in the kitchen with you, silently staring as you attempt to salvage the meal. You can hear their whispers, the mixture of disappointment, pity, and derision in their voices.

I got a lot of shell in my eggs as I was learning how to quit. Most often I was in the kitchen alone, afraid of letting anyone in to help. I was so afraid of the potential for pity or disappointment that I shut myself off from desperately needed encouragement, validation, and support.

If you’re in the kitchen with someone struggling with addiction, or you know they’re in the kitchen alone, trying to figure things out, here are a few ways in which you may be able to help:

• Know someone who tried to break an addiction, made it a few months, and then started up again? Engage them in a conversation about it. Tell them how awesome it is that they made it through two months. Ask them, kindly, what triggered the addiction to resume. Ask how you might support them next time they give it a try.

• Have a friend who did something really annoying or dangerous while drinking? Have an honest conversation with them about it, being kind but also holding them accountable for their actions. Aim to strike a tone of “I’m being honest with you about this because I deeply care about you.”

• Or just bring up the potential for addiction and any concerns and thoughts you have about it with the circles you interact with. Normalizing this as a topic of discussion can make it so much easier for someone struggling to actually start talking about it. Somehow as a society we’ve normalized drinking more than we’ve normalized talking about the potential costs of it.

And a few things to avoid:

• The silent treatment. You’re frustrated with someone’s addiction, especially now that they’re back at it after managing to quit for a few months. They’re not acknowledging it, and so you’re avoiding engaging with them. I completely understand the inclination to do this, and have been guilty of it myself at times. But this person is already filled with shame about their relapse, and piling on additional shame is not going to help the situation.

• Treating the person working through their addiction as a delicate glass sculpture, extremely fragile and needing to be treated exceedingly carefully. While understandable, I always found this approach extremely frustrating. I needed people to talk to, people I could be honest with, people who weren’t scared of having a discussion about what was and wasn’t working for me. I needed to be treated like an adult going through a rough patch and in need of some support and guidance, not like a little kid incapable of tying his own shoes.

There’s a recurring theme in all of this: honest, vulnerable, kind, and accountable conversations have an immense power. For most of my life I wasn’t able to even have these conversations with myself, let alone others. I felt isolated, misunderstood, deeply lonely, and that fueled my drinking. Only as I was able to open up to myself and others could I begin feeling welcome and accepted, and see a world in which sobriety felt possible. 

Resources

If you’re either struggling with addiction (especially drinking) or just looking to learn more about it, I found the book This Naked Mind to be incredibly valuable. I’ve read it several times, and I credit it with rewiring the way my brain thinks about alcohol.

Thanks as always for reading, we really appreciate all the feedback we’ve been receiving (both through the comment section and directly). Every ♥️ and share helps expand our audience, so please keep those coming. I’ve found the encouragement especially helpful as I tackle these more vulnerable topics and dive back into some harder parts of my history.

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So I have a houseplant.

I remember the day I brought it home. I inspected it adoringly, admiring its little green shoots poking up – so clearly striving to grow and flourish into something pretty incredible and full of life. I wondered at how a sprout this small would turn into a complex, flowering, nuanced life. A little nervous at holding something so precious and fragile, I found space for it in the back of the closet. Next to those shoes I only wear to weddings, behind the container of litter my cats have proclaimed they’re too good for. 

It would be safe there.

This was no ordinary plant, after all. This plant would dictate my happiness, provide me motivation, and kindle my curiosity and creativity.

Time passed, and I began to struggle. I was self isolating, drinking too much, not getting outside, ignoring my friends. On a particularly bad day, I dusted the crumbs off my stained shirt, got up off the couch, opened the closet, and stared accusingly at my plant. “What the hell dude? You’re responsible for my happiness. Do your job.”

It sat there, brown and wilted, soil bone dry and nutrient free. I slammed the closet door with an annoyed grunt, grabbed a fresh beer out of the fridge, and returned to scrolling on my phone while half watching Netflix. Worthless plant. It had one job.

I brush my teeth, floss, shower regularly, buy groceries, mow my lawn, vacuum the carpet, clean the litter boxes, pay my bills, and take my car to the shop. I don’t much enjoy any of these things. But I do them, as they’re a known consequence of the life I live. From as early as I can remember, I saw these chores being demonstrated – and complained about – but completed nonetheless.

So why do I have such a stubbornly hard time accepting that the same costs apply when it comes to my literal sanity? I throw my happiness in a closet, ignore it, and somehow expect it to thrive all on its own?

Why can’t my houseplant be one of those tacky artificial ones you can buy at Target in the “garden” section? Constructed of plastic, never changing or growing, never craving sunlight. It would do just fine in the closet, no matter how many years I left it there.

I have yet to yell at my dishes for not washing themselves. I can’t remember ever erupting in anger at my car for not getting its oil changed while I was at the movies. But after spending a weekend seeing no one, playing twenty hours of video games, subsiding on mostly junk food, and not leaving the house – I feel miserable, full of self-hate, completely lacking motivation – yet deeply frustrated with myself for not being a happier person.

I could go on a half-hour run in the morning, and easily feel happier and more motivated for at least the following twenty-four hours. Or I could scroll on Instagram for thirty minutes and watch my happiness actively deteriorate. Instagram wins nearly every time.

Fortunately, I’m at least able to slowly learn how to properly tend my houseplant. I find it far more frustrating and slow going than I’d prefer, but I can’t argue with the results. The hardest part has been accepting that I need to incorporate these things into my life. Getting angry at myself for not being happy by default has not been a successful strategy, as much as I’ve tried.

So here’s a little of what has worked for me. (If you’ll allow me to squeeze what little life is left out of this metaphor.)

When I’m really struggling, I just try to aim for the basics – sunlight. Getting outside. Texting a friend. Thinking of something that made me smile recently.

When I have some more energy, I look to keep my plant watered. Exercise. Coffee with a friend. Journaling.

When I’m in a good place, fertilizer1. A long hike in the mountains. Hosting a brunch.

And from time to time, as it grows, a transplant to a bigger pot may be necessary, whether that’s a new therapist with new methodologies or expanding a friend group.

How fantastic would it be if we lived in a world where we put as much emphasis on taking care of ourselves mentally as we do physically? Perhaps M.E. class in middle school in addition to P.E.? Then I would’ve known I needed to put my plant out in the sunlight, water it regularly, protect it from pests, and in general give it all the constant care and attention it needs to thrive. Instead here I am at forty-one, learning in fits and spurts, still resenting my plant for not making me happier. Yet I keep forgetting to water it.

Resources

• Atomic Habits remains one of the best resources I’ve found for adding – and maintaining – new behaviors in my life.

Some fun news – we hit 100 subscribers over the weekend! I’m thrilled by how many people are finding this useful. Thank you so much to everyone who has shared and liked these posts, every little bit helps new people find this.

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I wish we had the same ingrained societal understanding of what I’m calling the resentment spiral. These spirals are everywhere, and I promise you enter one regularly or at a minimum are entangled in a few. Yet I so rarely hear them being acknowledged and discussed, despite the massive negative impact they have on our everyday lives.

The Resentment Spiral

Your friend shows up twenty minutes late for your lunch date, muttering a brief apology. You’re pissed off and feel like they don’t respect you, but they said sorry, so you bury that feeling – yet it sticks with you, and over time drives a wedge between the two of you.

You ask a question in a work meeting, but the presenter blows you off. Five minutes later, someone else asks the same question and gets a detailed response. You feel annoyed and ignored, and nurse a grudge against the presenter for months. She can tell you have it out for her, but has no idea why.

Your partner has never – not once – cleaned the shower since you started living together. Every time you step into it you feel a surge of anger at their inability to show you some basic kindness and respect. You didn’t mention it at first as it seemed trivial, but at this point you’re convinced you’ll erupt in rage the moment you bring it up.

Something happens that makes you feel unseen, or disrespected, or like you don’t matter or aren’t important. You want to keep the peace, or you don’t feel like it’s a big enough deal to say something, so you stay silent. But by staying silent, resentment builds up within you. That resentment makes you feel less connected to the perpetrator, which makes it even harder for you to speak up the next time something happens.

Sometimes the resentment builds to the point where it explodes and the relationship fractures, but often it just festers, acting as a barrier to deeper connection. We want relationships in which we feel understood, welcome, like we belong – and resentment acts as a corrosive toxin, eating away at the positive regard we feel and safety we crave.

These spirals are natural and understandable. We’re taught to keep the peace, to be agreeable, to fit in, to keep things copacetic. Staying quiet is easy. Staying quiet means avoiding potential conflict, potential anger. Resentment, however, is insidious and sneaks up on you over time. Speaking up means doing the hard, scary thing now to avoid a worse thing down the road. No wonder we default to avoiding it.

Stepping out of the Spiral

Several years ago, while on a hike with a friend, I was on the receiving end of the breaking of a resentment spiral.

My friend reminded me that the last time we had hung out, she’d started telling me about struggles she was having with her dad. I hadn’t asked any followup questions – I just responded with “huh” and changed the subject. She told me how disconnected and alone that had made her feel, and that she really didn’t want that as part of our friendship, and imagined I didn’t either. She didn’t attack me, or even blame me – just stated what had happened, and the impact it had on her. I could’ve very easily gotten defensive, or tried to make excuses – but instead I felt a surprising surge of gratitude. Here was a friend making a vulnerable effort to deepen our friendship, and giving me a concrete thing I could do differently to make her feel more seen, and us more connected.

This was an ideal situation. I was in a position of being very open to feedback, and she approached the subject deftly and kindly. I don’t want to trivialize how complex and tricky resolving a conflict with another person can be. Entire books have been written on the subject. But I’ll offer a basic set of steps I follow when attempting to prevent a resentment spiral from starting in the first place.

1. Notice - Recognize you’re either in a resentment spiral or at risk of entering one.

2. Name - Tell your partner in this spiral what you’re noticing, and set up a time to discuss it. “Hey, I’m noticing some frustration coming up in me around how you load the dishwasher, would you be up to chat about that for a bit after lunch?”

3. Repair - Talk about what happened, and how it made you feel. The goal here is not to place blame, but for both sides to feel heard and understood – to avoid resentment from building.

While these steps can be easy with the right person and situation, there are plenty of people who may react defensively the moment you bring something frustrating up. But in my experience, for every one person unable to sit down and have a difficult conversation, there are twenty people completely capable and willing, if asked. I’d even hazard to say that most people find this approach refreshing and appreciate the honesty. And in the situation where it blows up – where I approach someone with a kindly-worded request to discuss a frustration and they explode at me or shut down – that’s also important information for me to have, information I can use to adjust my boundaries and relationships accordingly.

I wish resentment spirals were a completely normal thing to talk about. I want to be able to say to anyone, “Hey, looks like you might be falling into a resentment spiral with your partner,” or “Could we talk about what just happened? I’d hate for either of us to get into a resentment spiral around this.” We’re not quite there yet. Then again, talking about anxiety and mental health isn’t nearly the taboo it was even ten years ago. We’re making progress.

Resources

The Being Well podcast has two excellent episodes related to this topic, one on reducing existing resentment, and another on handling conflict in relationships.

Thank you so much to everyone who has subscribed. We’ve been immensely encouraged by the positive feedback we’ve been receiving over the last several weeks. Please help us to continue reaching new readers by sending this article to a friend or clicking that ♥️ button.

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Today, I’m hungover. My concentration is nowhere to be found and I had a hard time getting out of bed. I wasn’t able to even consider writing until after lunch. But I can’t blame alcohol – I haven’t had a drink in eighteen months.

I’m hungover from the anxiety and stress brought on by inviting others into my home. From bringing together people I’ve all had multiple extremely honest and deep conversations with, and hoping they’ll feel safe and seen and cared for in a group setting. From sharing with the group a raw and emotionally laden story about how I came close to losing a pet in a fire a few years ago.

It turned out very well, but I put myself out there, I opened myself (and my home) up to the potential for failure, for criticism, for awkwardness, and today I’m feeling the consequences of that.

I’m suffering from what is known as a vulnerability hangover1 – a sensation of shame, overwhelm, or regret brought on by sharing a normally hidden part of ourselves with others.

The critical importance of sharing our true, real experiences of life with others, even when we have resistance to it, has been a recurring theme in my prior posts. I have found huge personal value in this approach, as I finally feel like I belong and don’t have to hide away behind some facade of who I think the world expects me to be.

But I don’t want to give you the impression that this kind of sharing is easy, or comes without risks. One of the road bumps you’re almost guaranteed to encounter is this vulnerability-induced sense of being hungover.

The Cause

As I’ve written about previously, we’re taught throughout our lives that certain behaviors are acceptable, and others aren’t. We learn that being vulnerable and open is a recipe for getting mocked and shamed.

I don’t remember much of what I learned from my teachers in middle school, but I remember clearly the pain of being relentlessly made fun of for doing anything at all outside the norm.

Thirty years later, I don’t surround myself with vicious pre-teens who will tear me down at every opportunity. But my body still gets very upset when I do something that would’ve invoked a lot of pain in the past.

The Symptoms

I often first notice a physical reaction – lethargy, a headache, a strong desire to stay in bed or take a nap, an upset stomach. I have trouble concentrating, and often retreat to my preferred behaviors for numbing myself (Netflix, reading, video games, mindless chores). The comparison to an alcohol induced hangover is surprisingly accurate. 

It can be disconcerting, like a flipped switch. I went from wrapping up a great dinner with some of my best friends to suddenly feeling like I’m getting sick and that I’ve done something terribly wrong.

At times the hangover will start the very moment I’m alone. I get in my car, leaving an intense yet enjoyable hangout, and immediately feel an overwhelming sense of having shared too much.

And just like a normal hangover, these also will eventually go away on their own. Sometimes after a few hours, sometimes after a full day.

Why Do We Care?

Vulnerability hangovers run the risk of us building a negative association between vulnerability and the rough reaction we feel later.

If we’re not aware of the potential for vulnerability hangovers, we can take the wrong message from them, and easily convince ourselves that we’ve been too open, exposed too much of ourselves, even without any evidence. We’re then prone to closing back up and don’t allow ourselves the huge benefits of building deep and open relationships where we can finally feel seen and understood.

By expecting vulnerability hangovers, understanding the reasons behind them, and not allowing them to stop us from opening up, we can start a self-perpetuating cycle. The more we open up, the more we connect to others, and the more we feel the benefits of vulnerability, the more we’ll want to keep living this way.

The Cure

I haven’t found a way to eliminate vulnerability hangovers from my life. But I’ve learned to live with them and how to help out others going through them.

1. Go easy on yourself. These hangovers are a very understandable reaction to a lifetime of connecting the sharing of raw experiences with difficult outcomes. You’re doing the hard work of rewiring your neural pathways, so give yourself some credit.

2. Build up a tolerance. The more vulnerable I am, the more I get used to the sensation of being hungover, and even learn to expect it. As I internalize the benefits of vulnerability, I find myself more willing to tolerate the hangovers.

3. Be vulnerable about your vulnerability hangover. Acknowledge to others that you’re experiencing one. It feels counterintuitive that being more vulnerable would help in this situation, but getting compassion and understanding from others can be just what’s needed.

4. Introduce the concept to others. I’ve gotten in the habit of saying things like “Bet I’ll have a vulnerability hangover after this,” and if I’m met with a blank stare, introducing the concept. I’ve found this especially helpful in groups, as it’s almost guaranteed someone will either not know the concept or welcome the reminder of it.

5. Reinforce how much you appreciate vulnerability. and I learned this one together. When we first started becoming friends, we often would have hours long chats about very personal stuff, and be both hit with vicious feelings of overwhelm later in the day. But even a text as simple as, “Hey I really enjoyed hanging out today and getting to know you better, it means a lot that you were willing to share so much with me.” made a huge difference.

I didn’t feel great today. I had a hard time getting things done. But I know with all my heart it was worth it. I wouldn’t trade anything for finally having so many people in my life I can truly be myself around. It’s a worthwhile price to pay.

Resources

I enjoyed ’ take on this subject in the New York Times.

I aim to write what I needed to hear earlier in my life (and hopefully what others need to hear now) so I would love for this to reach as wide of an audience as possible. If you know someone who you think might find this of use, please share it. And as always, please click that ♥️ button.

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I’ve ended numerous relationships out of nowhere in cruel, deeply hurtful ways.

I’ve been a shoulder to cry on again and again, as someone who can just listen and provide a judgment-free space.

I’ve been the annoying drunk guy at the bar hitting on your friend despite her giving clear indications that she’s not interested.

From the time I took my first standardized test, I’ve been told how smart I am.

Only in the last few years have I finally developed some actual emotional intelligence.

I’m a complex person. I have a history of doing admirable and inspiring things. I have a history of callousness, substance abuse, and complete disregard for the feelings of others. I look back at my life thus far and feel tremendous amounts of both pride and shame.

Why am I sharing this? Especially sharing things I still feel ashamed of?

Because I need to acknowledge and accept the full messiness of my reality and my past actions if I want to do better in the future. Here’s why:

Only the Good, Please

Let’s start with a breakdown of a healthy way to respond after doing something positive or negative:

Negative actions result in acceptance and accountability, and a reduced chance of repeating that action in the future. Positive actions generate positive reactions, and are generally reinforced.

This is very much not the process I’ve spent most of my life following.

After a childhood full of being told I was a good kid – a smart and well-behaved student, kind and caring – being good became my identity. Not just something I aspired to, not something I was on most days, but my entire identity. So when I made a mistake, when I did something negative or outside of my values, I didn’t take a step back, I didn’t apologize and ask myself how I could avoid doing that thing again. I either made up stories for why it wasn’t my fault or ignored it completely. I built up a wall preventing me from getting to the recognition phase, let alone to acceptance or accountability.

I did not see myself as a decent person who was capable of making mistakes that I needed to learn from. I saw myself as a good person, and admitting to mistakes was to admit that my entire precarious self-image might be flawed. I excelled at creating justifications, and was terrible at taking accountability.

So I leaned – hard – into what I was good at. Family asking me how I was doing over the holidays? I could talk for hours about how well I was doing at work, the latest promotion, the fascinating project I was working on. No mention of my rapidly escalating issues with alcohol, my ongoing tendency of getting drunk and playing video games by myself every night of the week. I was the good guy, only doing good things in life, and I wasn’t going to admit otherwise to myself, let alone anyone else.

For me, the process looked more like this:

When I was at the height of my drinking, I fought desperately to keep seeing myself as not straying outside of the good category. If I couldn’t fully remember the previous night’s events, I might preemptively text, “Hey sorry if I was a little crazy last night, those beers were strong!”, when I really should’ve been asking for an honest reality check on just how frustrating I had been to be around. I needed to understand the full extent of the impact my actions had on others, but I couldn’t bear the rupture of identity that might’ve entailed.

I needed to understand myself as a complex and messy human – capable of a full range of actions, both good and bad – in order to take accountability for myself, instead of living in a world of justifications and forced ignorance.

Naughty & Nice Bucket List

Similarly to how I can short-circuit my reaction to doing something negative, we often do the same when interacting with others.

Back in highschool, a girlfriend attempted to share with me how abusive her dad was. My immediate reaction was “Oh it can’t be that bad, he means well.” I cringe thinking about that now, but back then I had met her dad, and he was friendly, funny. I couldn’t envision him having a dark side. I had labeled him as a good person, so I (very incorrectly) assumed my girlfriend must have been overreacting.

Earlier this year I found myself extremely quick to apply a negative label to a new colleague who showed up late to his first big meeting. We had rules and he wasn’t following them, so I slapped on an immediate judgment.

I was following this very common process:

See someone do something you disagree with? That must be a bad person! See someone do something kind? They must be a saint!

I built cholera treatment centers in Haiti amidst an outbreak. I didn’t once make the twenty minute drive to go to see my grandma when she was dying. If I can be complicated, capable of doing a wide range of both good and bad things, perhaps others can as well. 

Can the person who just monopolized a group conversation be capable of careful listening, when they’re not so worried about fitting in?

Can the driver who just cut me off in traffic be an incredibly kind neighbor, when they’re not worried about being late to work?

Can the annoying guy at the bar be a great and caring friend, when he’s not letting alcohol strip away all his empathy?

Perhaps instead of immediately slapping a label on someone, we consider an alternative:

We’re all complex. We’ve done kind and cruel things. Simplistic labels prevent us from getting into our messy, complicated, contradictory realities – where our lives are actually lived.

I walk towards the door, my pace slowing as my hands start getting clammy. My mouth draws in and my chest tightens. Potential excuses for turning around fly through my head. 

Am I heading to the boss’s office for an unexpected meeting? About to take a high stakes exam? Entering the hospital room of an injured friend?

Nope. I’m walking into a restaurant and about to ask for a table. And I am filled with anxiety.

I am a grown man. I’m forty-one, six-foot-two, 200 pounds, bearded, probably wearing my favorite Carhartt hat. I look exceedingly normal. And oh man do I not want to interact with the person who just wants to find me a table and give me a menu.

I have never, not once in my life, had a restaurant host be anything but kind and helpful to me. Only good experiences, and yet I dread interacting with them. If I’m with a group, I’ll sneak in front and hold open the door for everyone, all but guaranteeing someone else will answer the very answerable question of, “How many in your group?”

I’ll be on a date, and this is what will make me most nervous. First date, never met the person before, and entering the restaurant is the thing making my stomach queasy.

Why on earth am I telling you this? Why am I telling the internet this?

Because for a long time I felt ashamed of this anxiety, and the best antidote to shame is revealing that it exists.

So back to the revealing.

Why the Dread?

Fair question. I don’t have an exact answer. But I have a few ideas:

• I have a deep-rooted fear of any sort of conflict (yup, severe people pleaser here) and dread the possibility of the host being upset with me for having to put them in the position of telling me there is not, in fact, a table available at the moment.

• Restaurant hosts are legitimately terrifying and y’all are just pretending they’re not.

• I have a deep-rooted fear of being judged and I just wait for the moment when I’ll be told there’s a ninety minute wait while watching new arrivals immediately bein seated, one after another, as I look on.

• I’ve been taught that getting a table at a busy restaurant is a matter of throwing your masculinity around in a confident and arrogant way. As someone who feels deeply uncomfortable doing that, I hate entering situations where that might be expected of me.

• I inherently don’t feel good enough, and getting seated is a way of being measured up. Despite having always gotten a table (or being told very politely how incredibly long the wait is), I’m still assuming the next time will be when I’m informed that I don’t belong and I need to leave.

Notice a trend? An overarching fear of what other people think of me? A general wariness of not being inside the Box of Acceptable in a public place?

Maybe you can deeply relate to some of these reasons. Maybe they don’t ring a bell for you at all. Either is completely fine. The important part is knowing that someone has these experiences. You’ll either feel less alone or gain a better sense of the lived experiences of those different from you.

But back to the revealing.

There’s MORE?

It’s definitely not only the restaurant host situation. I’ve got some momentum going, so here are a few more circumstances I have a visceral dislike of:

• Calling a stranger on the phone - especially someone I’m attempting to hire, say an electrician or other contractor.

• Having a friendly chat with a neighbor while taking out the trash (and no, not just the annoying neighbor who will talk for a half hour straight about their second cousin’s latest medical issues.)

• Using any sort of car for hire service (Lyft, Uber, a taxi) – unless it’s a driverless car. (So yes, it’s 100% about interacting with a stranger.)

Sharing these publicly even five years ago would’ve been incredibly difficult for me. I would’ve gone into a panic, absolutely sure I’d be ostracized for admitting to these “defects”.

But since then I’ve gradually opened up. I’ve shared what I dread and discovered I am not the only person who feels this way.

I can take a lot of comfort in knowing I’m not the only one with restauranthostphobia and related ailments. I can notice that feeling of dread, recognize the absurdity of it, and chuckle to myself as I confront my fears. I can continue to tell myself that I do belong here, I am worthy of a table at a restaurant, that I don’t need to feel ashamed about this. I can both be not content with where I’m at, and be proud of the progress I’m making and self-compassion I’m finding.

Not feeling alone dissolves shame like nothing else can.

And if I have some understanding of my own quirks, I can turn that outward. I can have a bit more compassion for those struggling with everyday things that I in turn find simple. By reducing the shame and judgment I inflict on myself, I project less of that shame and judgment onto others. One more step towards showing up as the person I want to be in this world.

This entire approach is often called revealing your experience – and is a key way of reducing shame and developing better connections with those around you. I’ll be referencing it a lot going forward.

Meanwhile, time for me to decide if I should just stay home and make a PB&J, or put on a brave face, venture out, and utter the terrifying words, “Table for two, please!”

Resources

I was introduced to the concept of revealing your experience through the Authentic Relating movement, specifically ART. For a much deeper dive, I highly recommend their training offerings and book.

For an engaging story on exclusion and seeking belonging, check out this two-part series from the Search Engine podcast.

If you’re enjoying what we’re offering, please forward this to someone and/or click that ♥️ button. We’d really love to reach as many people as we can.

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Advice on how to get to a better place has often felt simplistic and unhelpful to me. How do I “make new friends” when I’m mostly convinced the few I have are barely putting up with me? How am I supposed to “join a club” when I’m having a hard time leaving the house?

When I was at a very low point in my life, I was introduced to a tool that I was immediately able to make use of for once. By slightly changing the way I spoke, I was able to make some incremental yet desperately needed and satisfying forward progress.

The Tool

The premise is simple. Don’t use harsh or disparaging language when talking about yourself. A few examples:

“This is probably a stupid thought, but…”

“I can’t believe I left my running shoes at home. I’m such an idiot.”

“Yeah that was a dumb suggestion, never mind.”

Pay special attention to when you make a sudden mistake, such as spilling a drink or breaking a dish.

“You idiot, why are you so clumsy?”

The only goal here is to stop doing this.

“Here’s my probably bad idea,” can just be “Here’s what I’m thinking.”

Instead of “Wow, that was an incredibly stupid thing for me to say,” try “Actually, let me give that another shot.”

Replace “How could I have been such an absolute idiot,” with “I can do better than that next time.”

Notice this is not letting yourself off the hook – you’re just stripping out the belittling, bullying language.

The Why

Some benefits to changing how you speak about yourself:

• You’re gradually introducing little boosts of self worth through treating yourself with understanding instead of derision.

• You’re building up your introspection muscle by noticing how you talk about yourself. This ability to recognize your own mental processes is a foundational skill for gaining better self awareness.

So why do many of us speak about ourselves this way?

As children, being teased or ridiculed can be extremely painful. In an attempt to avoid this pain, we learn to pre-empt the ridicule by inflicting it on ourselves first. By developing an internal voice that informs us of everything we’re potentially doing wrong, and berates us before anyone else can, we protect ourselves from the worst of the pain. So it’s a defense mechanism – but a deeply flawed one.

Inklings

Whether you recognize this behavior in yourself or not, listen for it in others. If you identify someone using self-disparaging language, there’s a distinct possibility that they may be having a hard time under the surface.

Is this someone you could make an effort to spend more time with or get closer to? Even just mentioning what you’re noticing in a kind way can be helpful. 

“Hey, you’re not an idiot, that’s a totally normal mistake to make.” 

“I notice that you call yourself stupid a lot. Just so you know, I definitely don’t consider you stupid.” 

A small gesture, but helping someone struggling to feel even a little bit seen can be remarkably valuable.

What Next?

Adjusting the language you use when talking about yourself is admittedly a small change. It has real, tangible benefits, and can start cracking open some important doors, but it’s no magic bullet.

Consider this language adjustment a new item in your toolkit. It’ll make some jobs easier, and using it regularly will help you build the skills and comfort you’ll need when it comes time to pick up the big power tools and start operating some heavy machinery.

More on the bigger tools to come.

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Did someone in your life immediately jump to mind when you read the examples of self-berating language? Consider sharing this with them, perhaps with a note along the lines of: “Hey, I just finished reading this and found it pretty interesting. Curious to hear what you think. How about we grab coffee soon and chat about it?”

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Resources

If you’re looking for a much deeper dive into this topic, Being Well (one of my favorite podcasts) has an excellent episode focusing on building a better relationship with yourself.

1. The Box

Even as a little kid, I began noticing the signs.

“Hey, boys don’t cry, knock it off and toughen up.”

“That’s your fault for being so sensitive.”

Signs of being different, of not belonging. Of being an alien, accidentally living among humans.

“Why do you always have your nose in a book?”

“We have names for people who don’t know how to talk to others.”

The messages shifted as I aged, but the sense of being from another planet only grew.

“Shouldn’t you be out with your friends?”

“You played video games for sixteen hours straight?! Don’t you have a life?”

I learned there was a Box of Acceptable. If I stayed within that box, I was meeting societal norms. I was fitting in, doing the right things, not surprising anyone, not making anyone uncomfortable. Occasionally I managed to stay in that box. But more often than not I was wildly outside of it.

This could’ve been fine. Could’ve been “Oh there goes Patrick the little box breaker!” But it was an arbitrary box to start with, and I only knew it was there because of the reactions that told me I’d once again stepped outside of it. Every message I got – the raised eyebrows, the scoldings, the unexpected punishments – was a vote for the rising conviction that I did not belong.

But man did I want to belong. I wanted friends that accepted me. I wanted my siblings to play with me. I wanted teachers that welcomed me in the same way they did other students. I wanted my parents to accept and understand me. And every time I did something that kept me on the outside, my sense of being defective – of being alien – grew.

2. Primal Origins

Regrettably, evolutionary psychology was not part of my early primary education. Had it been, I would’ve had some insight into why isolation felt so terrible.

Humans are pack animals. Pre-civilization, we hunted together and found safety in numbers. Separated from the pack, one had a much lower chance of survival, and thus we evolved a fundamental craving to be around others – to be part of a community.

Couldn’t share your cave with others? Eaten by a lion as you slept.

Too annoying to get others to hunt with you? Starved to death.

Couldn’t make friends to go foraging with you? Mauled by a saber tooth as you picked berries alone.

While I may not live in a cave and worry about four legged predators, I sure feel more at ease working at a Starbucks, surrounded by others than I do working at home by myself. Not the most ferocious pack of humans – drinking our frappuccinos while staring at our laptops – but we can glance up at any moment and feel the primal safety that comes with being calmly surrounded by others.

But I didn’t know this as a kid. I wasn’t able to see my desire to fit in as a reasonable, if outdated, biological imperative. I was scared, felt in danger at every instance of isolation. 

Not invited to a birthday party? Won’t have the team I need to go wooly mammoth hunting and get food for the winter.

No one to hang out with at recess? That pack of hyenas is gonna make me their lunch when I’m not looking.

So I did what any smart alien stuck on earth would do. I adapted to fit in.

3. Trash Compacting

To fit into the Box of Acceptable, I took big parts of my personality – what excited me, my strong emotions, my empathy – and tossed them in a trash compactor. It crushed them down into a sad little cube of lost potential. I tucked that cube into a dark corner deep inside myself. 

What remained was what was deemed socially ok for a young boy growing up in the 80’s. Video games, sarcasm, sports, books, being bullied and bullying, anger, stoicism. As I grew, I found being intellectual and smart was generally ok, as long as I didn’t go too far with it. Creativity could be a landmine, mocked as often as it was celebrated. Pretending to be a normal human became a life of constant self-suppression and play acting.

I mostly succeeded. I won the acceptance of teachers through my rule following and intelligence. My parents similarly approved of my deference and neutral, easy nature. I built some friendships based on shared interests. I was making it work, doing my best imitation of being a human.

My facade was intact, but it only functioned if I kept the actual humans at a distance. No way was I going to let anyone in close where they might catch a glimpse of my true nature and run screaming to summon torch and pitchfork wielding villagers. This became painfully real as I began dating and felt both a desperate desire to share my hidden reality with someone else, yet a profound imperative to keep myself hidden lest I be exposed and outcast. Over and over again, I would express a desire for closeness and vulnerability yet run away the moment it was offered.

I entered the workforce, and staying in the Box started to feel easier. I was a good employee, good at keeping my bosses pleased, saying the right things in meetings, being performant but not emotional. Drinking alcohol became not only an excellent way to fit in, but it drowned out the cube and at times allowed me to forget altogether I was from another planet. I still couldn’t maintain a relationship beyond a few months and kept my friends at a distance, but I felt like I was making life work.

I was a success! I was masquerading as a normal human! And it was terrible. Depression, alcohol abuse, self-isolation. Not quite the rewards I had expected for staying inside the Box.

4. Alien Hunting

Let’s try a quick exercise. I call it alien hunting.

This works best in audio format, so if you can listen to the rest of the section, please do. Otherwise, please read through the full exercise once first before trying it out.

Find a spot to sit down. Close your eyes if that helps you relax. Take three deep breaths – slow inhales, slower exhales.

Ask yourself: “What’s a deep-seated truth about me that I’ve never told anyone?”

Continue to sit, breathing deeply, and see what bubbles up. You may get something immediately, or this could take a minute or two.

Pick an answer that brings up some unease in you, or even feels a little scary.

Now imagine sitting down across a table from a stranger and having a conversation in which you share that deep truth with them.

Notice any reactions you may be having in your mind and body. There is absolutely no expected reaction here, but a few things you may be suddenly experiencing could include:

• Muscle or jaw clenching

• Excitement or longing

• A sudden urge to stop reading this

• Chest tightening

• Fear

• Anger or annoyance (at the stranger, or at me for writing this)

Your inner alien is coming to the surface. By imagining revealing something deeply true but withheld, you’re contemplating stepping outside the Box of Acceptable – and bringing up the fear of judgment from others that this could entail.

And if you’re not feeling any reaction to this at all? Perhaps you’re that exceedingly rare individual who has discovered how to live completely as themselves and let go of any fear of judgment from others. Or perhaps give the exercise another try. You may yet find that deep-seated truth hiding within you.

5. Embracing the Alien

I assumed I was a pariah, but I wasn’t. As I was growing up, convincing myself I was an alien and hiding away huge parts of my inner reality – I was surrounded by others silently doing the same.

The Box of Acceptable is so restrictive, so constraining, I would argue no one fully fits into it. We all have parts of us we’re ashamed of and hiding away – and that resulting inner dissonance is a poison. We pretend to be people we’re not, and it eats us up inside.

So what do we do? How can we accept our alien parts, and learn how to show them to the world without being overcome by fear?

Here’s what works for me:

1. Perform the alien hunting exercise described earlier, but look for something minor this time. A small truth that brings up a twinge of fear or uncertainty in you. Something that feels a bit vulnerable to share, but not overwhelming.

2. Choose who you’re going to share this with. Unless you have a very close and caring group, I’d recommend an individual – anyone you feel a spark of kinship or connection with.

3. Decide what kind of communication feels easiest for you. Texting, coffee, a phone call or FaceTime are all potential options. Next time the two of you are chatting, ask if they mind if you share something a little personal. Perhaps mention that it’s something important to you, but feels hard to bring up.

4. Share your truth with them. This can be hard! Remember, that resistance is the alien trying its best to stay hidden. But in all likelihood that person sitting across from you has their own alien inside as well.

I hope whoever you share this with is welcoming and appreciates it. I’ve found most people to be very open to anything that brings a conversation a little deeper, and will often be grateful that you took that first step. By being a little vulnerable, you often give the other person permission to do the same, and over time this can deepen your relationship in some awesome and powerful ways.

But I need to be honest - some people may react in a way you find challenging. They may be so worried about staying inside their own Box of Acceptable that they develop a strong aversion to any sort of vulnerability and ignore or dismiss what you share, or even judge you in some way. This can be extra hard to experience as it can feel like a validation of the dangers of stepping outside of the Box. What helps me most in these situations is reminding myself that this person is really struggling – their rejection of my attempt at connection indicates a primal fright of depth and being seen – something I can have compassion for, and realize has nothing to do with me.

Once I was able to practice these four steps over and over – and began regularly sharing more vulnerable truths – it felt like a dam breaking inside of me. That sad little compacted cube hidden deep within reemerged and my actual, messy, wonderful self began showing up. I spent so much less time and energy worrying about how I might be perceived, and felt so much more confidence in my actual self.

It’s been a hard and at times scary journey of learning how to fully embrace my exiled parts. Yet here I am, at forty-one, finally making some of the best new friends of my life, deepening my existing relationships in all sorts of good ways, and finally truly accepting, deep in my bones, that I belong here.

You may think you’re an alien, but remember – you’re surrounded by people who feel the same way. Try revealing parts of that inner alien to others. I bet you’ll discover you’re not such an outcast after all, but part of society filled with others also craving connection, as long as they won’t be ostracized for asking for it.

Not sure you have a person in your life you can share your inner alien with? We’re planning on writing more on building that kind of connection in the coming months, so please subscribe!

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