Don't fall for the hype, you need a little of both!

"Introversion" is the trendy word right now. Or should I say the non-trendy word? Often, when I am working with a client and we discover that they are truly an introvert (as determined by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator "MBTI" Personality tool), I get some sort of scrunched-up facial expression from them, as if they’ve just smelled something undesirable.

Ah…happiness. The ever-elusive quest we are all on from birth… it is the one thing that drives us to be in a constant search for that “right” person, the “right” job or house or to reach our ideal number on the scale; a static goal line that once we get there, will secure this state of wellness for eternity.
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It is the number one goal most everyone has for their life- even if their more immediate goal is materialistic, it is always driven by some esoteric belief that if they just acquire “enough” of this material item, then they will feel satisfaction or happiness FOREVER. As if somewhere in our minds, we believe that we can just unlock the secret to happiness, we won’t ever have to feel unhappy again.

Ah…what an idea. How wonderful would that be to never wake up again in a bad mood or feel disappointed by a friend or partner, or get rattled and begin to go down the rabbit hole of emotions after a difficult interaction with your child or boss. If we just…have…do…more, then maybe we’ll get there.

Trying to be “happy” and stay there is like trying to catch smoke. Impossible. Just about the time that you think you have a jar full of smoke, and open it up to see how much is in there, it all drifts out and you’re back where you started.

What an impossible idea really: to hinge our enduring well-being on a dynamic state of being that is designed to ebb and flow in its most natural form. Trying to be happy forever would require us to become robots, capable of feeling only what is programmed into you upon design.

As humans, we are wired to feel an enormous range of feelings, which creates the beauty, drama and mystery of life. Feelings, are spontaneous emotional reactions to something happening around us in our outside world. As such, when we have a particular feeling, we are responding in a particular way to a stimulus outside of us.

And in this manner, our feelings can tell us much about how we regard and consider this particular experience, person, thing, but ultimately what we need about the situation. To have our settings get stuck on “happy” all the time, would actually be a disservice to us in that we would never have the benefit of our other filters to tell us about our preferences, needs and desires, and to create the nuances that makes each of us unique, and ultimately “us”.

So, I’m going to share with you a little secret to how you can both be more satisfied, i.e., happy, in your life AND maintain your uniqueness as a human being. Are you ready? Here I go… happiness isn’t determined by how you’re feeling, it is determined by how you FEEL ABOUT how you’re feeling…

There it is folks. The simple truth about how happiness and satisfaction evolve. Or not. Now, the concept is a shockingly simple one, as you can see, but absolutely not easy to achieve. And here’s why.

At some point in your development as a small child, likely in many cases even before you began to have conscious memory, you began to be shaped by others’ judgements and reactions to your feelings. Intentional or not, how others responded to your feelings and needs, began to encourage or discourage repeating those feelings or not.

For example, if when you cried, you were responded to, enough of the time, with gentleness and patience, compassion and understanding, then it is likely that you grew up to become an adult who can easily be vulnerable and open with your sadness. If, however, you notice a hitch at all in your ability to easily be sad and openly stay with your sadness as an adult, then it is likely that you have some internal and unconscious judgment and resistance towards the feeling of sadness.

So, that’s why when you feel sad now, it feels like some kind of predicament or problem when it happens or like something that has to be hidden or stopped. And for those who have a fair amount of body awareness, you might even notice a body response when you start to feel sad: you might notice that you tense up, collapse energetically, get a headache, or even have to leave the room.

Not your fault. You were programmed long before you had the ability to have choice or boundaries against this kind of assault on your feelings and aliveness, when you were met with less than satisfying responses to your sadness. Problem is, it is still an unconscious reaction that happens inside whenever sadness begins to come up, because the earlier experiences around how your sadness were consistently met, were so unpleasant.  

It’s called conditioning, and is much like when we come across a food that once made us physically ill, we have an involuntary body response towards moving away from this food because the experience of getting sick was so unpleasant. It’s involuntary and cannot be overridden by thought alone.

Anger is another perfect example. How many of you were encouraged to be angry as a child, to have a “no” or a protest towards what was happening to you or around you? If you’re anything like most of the rest of us, anger was an experience that was quickly punished or stopped. And so now, there is an unconscious association inside, whenever we begin to feel anger, that it is “bad” or “wrong” or something to be avoided or stopped, and so we often do, along with a physical body response to shut this energy down.

The dilemma around all this is two-fold: even though this shaping and judgement around your feelings when you were a child, was not your choice originally, it is now interfering with your ability to feel your aliveness and satisfaction (happiness) in your adult world. And here’s the kicker: it is also your responsibility, now, as an adult to clean this mess up, if you so choose to have more satisfaction and happiness in your life.

Really. You might have some feelings about this. It would sure make sense if you do. And the tricky part of this all is that most of how we feel about how we are feeling is unconscious. We were not born to judge feelings as good or bad, we were blank slates on which feelings just were experiences, not good or bad.

So, when you find yourself having a feeling that feels “bad” or like something you want to stop, that is a sure sign that you have some healing to do in this area. And this healing is not just a cognitive healing- that only works with your thoughts. The healing also has to encompass the body and spirit too in order to fundamentally change your unconscious response to your feelings. It is time to get out of the box with your healing.

So, happiness isn’t about how we are feeling. It’s about how we feel about how we are feeling. When we can reach a place of unconditional support for ourselves, no matter what it is that we feel, think, choose, want or do, then we begin to have more of an experience of peace and satisfaction no matter what is happening inside or outside of us.
And I cannot think of a better definition for happiness than that. Can you?
 
Kate Schroeder is a therapist and online life coach who utilizes the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ® and the Enneagram, as well as body-mind-spirit healing practices to access one’s inner wisdom in order to create a life filled with satisfaction. Start changing your life today by downloading her guided imagery program, Soul Meditations: Building A Relationship That Lasts, or visit Kate at Transformation Counseling, LLC  for more information on how to connect with your best self. 

Are you just giving up?

Have you ever, in the middle of a fight or particularly painful moment in your relationship, flashed to the idea of “just breaking up” as a way to end the problems? You just want some relief from the conflict that is going on between the two of you, and your instinct is to simply get out. 

There is nothing more painful than to be in conflict with someone you love, especially a romantic partner. Especially when it's an ongoing situation. 

Many couples have conflicts that continually resurface, and despite engaging in these conflicts over and over, the blocks never seem to really go away. There might be a truce for a while as everyone is on their best behavior, or one person in the relationship finds a way to put up with their partner’s questionable antics — but the problems never seem to go away. Instead, the problems change or shape-shift as couples learn more about each other. This is because their deepening understanding of each other allows them to arm themselves with more intricate, unconscious ways of playing out childhood issues in their relationship. But this isn't all bad!

That's because, if this is happening with you, it means your relationship is unfolding in exactly the way that it needs to in order for you to have an opportunity for incredible personal and emotional growth.

Some people believe that we get involved in romantic relationships (unconsciously) in order to heal our wounds from childhood, as this is the stage upon which all of our attachment and relationship issues from childhood are triggered and play out front and center. And doesn’t this make sense? Our romantic relationships are, generally, the closest opportunity to mirror our attachments to our primary caregivers.

Given that our romantic or closest friendships most closely resemble the intimate attachments from childhood, this is where we project all of our unfinished business from childhood.

And it generally is never a “coincidence” that our partners often have some resemblance, emotionally, structurally, or even on an energetic level, to one or both of our parents or caregivers. This is not random at all. That can make it scary to be vulnerable. So, when these ongoing conflicts arise, what they are offering you is an opportunity to learn about your unfinished relationship business from childhood, and how you are also impacting the conflict between you and your partner.

The actual dilemma that you feel, the part of the conflict that you are hung up on, believe it or not, lies within you.

Your responses and your reactions, as well as what you believe that you need from them is based upon your unfinished developmental and relational issues from childhood. Think about the last time you asked your partner to take out the trash and they didn’t do it — or acted like they didn’t hear you. The upset that you feel isn’t fully about the trash sitting in the bin for days on end.

Sure, neglecting to take out the trash might be something that you are not ok with in any circumstance, but the discontent and upset about this that keeps you up at night, or drives you to talk with your friends about it, is really about something much deeper.

Perhaps it's about how you don’t feel heard or important perhaps, or taken seriously in the relationship, and the inability to work through these and resolve them is about some unmet childhood need around this. Because if it was just about the here and now, you’d be able to work through them easily and move on with things.

If something feels complicated or ongoing, it’s because it’s the past getting projected onto the present. It’s never really just about the trash. 

You and your partner actually might be more compatible — or incompatible — than you know, but there is no way to really know this unless you are willing to look inside and examine whatever unfinished places are showing up front and center in your relationship. Both of you. And if your partner is not interested in looking inside at their own part while you look at yours, then this would be a sure sign of incompatibility between the two of you, and a great time to decide whether you are willing to take 100% responsibility for the health, well-being, and outcome of the relationship. But don't let your fear of commitment keep you from doing the hard work. And if not, walk away.

Unless your physical safety is compromised, walking away from a relationship just to stop the pain or end the problems is never going to be the solution that brings you the most satisfaction. 

It may bring you relief, but relief and satisfaction are not the same things. And I can guarantee you that you are just going to be walking into the same problems in another relationship — it is just a matter of time. Hanging in there and growing together is incredibly fulfilling and awonderful way to build intimacy in the relationship. But it takes two for this to happen. 

Kate Schroeder is a therapist and life coach who utilizes the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ® and the Enneagram, as well as body-mind-spirit healing practices to access one’s inner wisdom in order to create a life filled with satisfaction. Start changing your life today by downloading her guided imagery program, Soul Meditations: Building A Relationship That Lasts, or visit Kate at Transformation Counseling, LLC  for more information on how to connect with your best self.

Originally published at YourTango.com

"Don't take it personally!" (Yeah, right!)

How many times have you heard someone say, “just be the bigger person” or even better, “let it go, they didn’t mean it” or, “they’re just having a bad day” when someone has been unkind or as a way to explain away someone's abuse? 
And how many times, after hearing someone say that, did you roll your eyes, want to jump out of your skin, or even scream out loud because of what was done to you?

If any of these descriptions fit you, then you are not alone. Because it's hard not to take it personally when someone is being hurtful or even abusive. 

We hear time and again, "Someone else's behavior is a reflection of them, and how we react is a reflection of ourselves" —  but it is virtually impossible not to have your self-esteem be affected by someone else’s bad behavior.

And in many cases, it's even more impossible to not react. Not getting derailed by others’ behavior begins by discarding the expectation that you can reach a point in your life where you will not be impacted by anyone or anything going on around you. It's not realistic. The only way to stay completely unaffected by others would be to find a way reach inside of yourself and dispose of your most vital organ —  your heart.

As long as you are striving to stay connected to yourself and to live in a meaningful, confident and heartfelt way, you will be affected by all that life has to offer you. That is a given. If you have a heart, let yourself off the hook when it comes to not being bothered by what others do. But that doesn't mean you have to let every thing others do have a huge impact in your life or ruin your happiness. 

To find some balance, here are 4 ways to protect yourself from taking the blame for the abuse of others, while also being kind and compassionate toward your feelings. 

1. Admit that something just happened.
Learning to validate your experience is a key piece to avoiding getting derailed by others’ negativity.
This starts by acknowledging that something has happened, and has had an effect on you. Get real about what just happened and that you feel impacted by what has just been said or done. You can express this either quietly inside or say it out loud to yourself or a trusted friend.

Validating your experience is an important part of staying separate from others’ negativity. So, take a breath — a deep belly breath — and acknowledge that something just happened to you that didn’t feel good for your self-esteem.
A simple thing you can quietly say inside as you breathe is, “Something just happened here”.

2. Trust your gut.
Another important part of protecting yourself is to trust your perception. True or not, you’re making an assumption around what has occurred. If the other person is in a rational place and open to having a conversation so that you can check your assumption out, that is a wonderful thing — and the first thing to do. In many cases, though, they are not and you have to trust that something just happened that did not feel good to you, and recognize that you are drawing conclusions based upon your interpretation of the events.

How you live out your assumption is going to make the difference between getting sucked into their negativity or supporting yourself in a different way. A simple thing you can say quietly inside as you breathe is, “I didn’t like that”.

3. Get validation that what you're feeling is normal.
Validating your feelings about what just happened is another important piece of support to bring in in these kinds of situations. This would be the point in which you identify what you are emotionally feeling, and get validation for those feelings either from yourself or a trusted friend. For those of you who struggle to recognize or experience feelings, you might want to start by learning about the various different feelings that are possible, and how to begin to recognize them when they are happening inside of you.

This might take some help from a friend or even a therapist who can guide you through developing a deeper knowledge about this part of yourself. But take the time to locate what you are feeling and give yourself room to feel that experience through the initial rush of intensity.

Responding from emotion is generally never a good idea, and often it's the point at which we begin to derail. Especially if we are dealing with an irrational person or situation. So again, take a breath. As you breathe, you can say to yourself, “I feel mad [or sad or scared] about what just happened.”

4. Let yourself feel your emotions.
Determine what you need from how you are feeling about what has just happened.  If you are feeling scared, you might need some space or protection, until the rush of emotion slows down. If  you are feeling angry, you might be experiencing a sense of violation and may need a boundary. If you are sad, you may need some comfort and support before beginning to get clear about next steps for you. Whatever you are feeling, let yourself feel it. Because on the other side of that feeling is your road map about what you need in any given situation. And if you need help to get clear on what you need, don’t be afraid to ask for help. 

When someone is treating you badly, it is a direct response to something happening inside of them, emotionally, that feels intolerable. That is why they lash out: it is easier to blame someone else for a negative feeling inside than to breathe down into the experience and contain their reaction. If they have little tolerance for their own feelings, it is always going to come bursting out onto others, and usually in an unhelpful way.

So, let yourself off the hook for being able to do this perfectly.

Our ability to not be derailed by others’ behavior, and to instead stay focused on our own response, starts in childhood and is entrenched very early on in our lives. It takes time to rewire our brains and our bodies into responding responsibly when we have been treated unkindly or abused by another person. Creating a different response to others takes a lot of mindfulness, patience, and guidance as we begin to rewire our responses to the world around us. This is like any other practice: it takes repetitive practice and coaching, as it is much easier to lash out at another person or to engage back in irrational behavior than to breathe into our own experiences inside.
Especially if we have never seen that done before. So be gentle, breathe a lot, and reach out for support when you need it.

Kate Schroeder is a therapist and life coach who utilizes the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ® and the Enneagram, as well as body-mind-spirit healing practices to access one’s inner wisdom. Start changing your life today by downloading her guided imagery program, Soul Meditations: Building A Relationship That Lasts, or visit Kate at Transformation Counseling, LLC  for more information.

Originally published at YourTango.com

As children, we often did not get the type or amount of emotional support that would have felt satisfying for our heart. As a result of this, we also did not receive the support required to develop a solid internal emotional support system of our own, which is the part of us responsible for allowing us to move through the world freely and easily, reaching towards what feels satisfying and moving away from what is dissatisfying. This internal support system is also responsible for allowing us movement towards and away from people/situations/things, according to our own specific and calibrated needs. That is why in the here and now, as adults, we can struggle with “hard” feelings and not always know how to support our self in a way that brings comfort, encourages personal growth and resiliency, and alleviates distress.

Because of the heart wounding and trauma in our childhoods, many people do not yet have a fully developed internal support system to allow us to easily move towards and away from what we need, nor are they able to maintain the degree of realness/power/genuineness or openness that we often attain in our therapy sessions when given adequate support for our needs. As such, we can easily “slip back into the old ways” after our session or find ourselves responding to others or our own distress in the same old dissatisfying ways. Without a solidly developed internal support system, we have to rely on the old childhood supports- that’s all we have access to in the moment.

We also need bonding in every moment of our lives, so if we are in a piece of “the old bonding” from childhood (which is likely the case if we are having an experience that we want to change or feels intolerable inside of us), then the way that we are going to support our need for bonding is going to be based upon our rudimentary and likely dissatisfying childhood supports, and why we cannot seem to alleviate our distress, in the long term, around the experience. So, if a piece of this old bonding is in the way, (i.e., we are getting victimized or in an assault) then this is going to block our ability to fully be in the present moment and adult part of our self, and render us unable to connect to our experience in the present moment or reach out to get our needs met in a satisfying way.

In this case, we have to rely on what is there, the old supports which were never satisfying but are emerging in the moment because that is all that we have access to. All we have to rely on is the support that is there, the old childhood support, that is blocking our path towards present day satisfaction in our adult life. So, when this is happening, combined with our constant need for bonding, then we have to do the work to clear out this next piece of trauma that is blocking our ability to access new supports, which is why therapy is essential: it allows us the opportunity to continue clearing out blocks to satisfaction.

Without a fully developed internal emotional support system that we can easily access whenever we are in distress or need of emotional support, we move back to whatever is available at the moment, and if we are triggered and in another piece of old trauma, what will be available to us is our old childhood supports. And we move back there because the old supports are familiar and our spirit wants us to heal another piece of trauma.
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This is why we need to be in ongoing therapy: to keep working on building our own satisfying internal support system, and this takes time and patience. If we are to truly learn how to support ourselves in a more deeply satisfying way, then we have to commit to ourselves and our healing in a deeply ongoing way. The way that we discontinue using old childhood supports, is when we have a repertoire of new satisfying support to take its place. And this takes time. 

There's more to healing than talk.

Have you ever had the feeling of frustration after leaving your therapy session, wondering (again) why you are spending your hard-earned money and limited energy on something that only leaves you feeling stuck, or in the same place as you were before you started?

You may even feel a bit lost about what to do next to get out of this dead end called “Your Life”.
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This isn’t what you imagined when you were a child or even young adult, and yet despite being in therapy (which is supposed to help with these exact kinds of situations), you’re at the point of wondering if it’s worth continuing, or if it's time to find another treatment. You may even feel discouraged, wondering if this is all there is. Perhaps all your childhood dreams about the kind of life you wanted when you grew up were just fantasy, and this “dead end" called your life is the “real world” that adults used to lecture to you about.

Well, I’m here to tell you that this is not all there is to your life, and that it is possible to reach great satisfaction in your life as an adult. In fact, your dreams and happiness can come true, and non-traditional therapy, which is more experiential and not cognitive or talk-based, is one of the ways that you can find more satisfaction in your life. There are countless “lost souls” who cannot seem to figure out how to obtain personal happiness, and through non-traditional therapies, have found incredible satisfaction in their lives. This happens through a commitment to their heart, and a willingness on their part to deeply dive into their own personal growth process — and their willingness get outside of their usual box, emotionally.

Here are five reasons why you might feel like you’ve reached a dead end in your life, and why the therapy you've tried up until now may not be helping you at this particular time. 

1. You’ve grown emotionally, as much as, or past your therapist.
You might be wondering: “How could this be possible? Aren’t all therapists supposed to be evolved? How can I have grown more, emotionally, than my therapist? They went to training for this, aren’t they supposed to know what to do in these types of situations? Isn’t my therapist supposed to be emotionally stronger than me?” Well, sure, in a perfect world. The reality, though, is that not all therapists are committed to their own personal growth like you might be. No one can guide another person somewhere where they have never been themselves. As such, if your commitment to personal growth and healing is greater than that of your therapist’s, then you will, in fact, reach a point where the process halts, and they cannot take you any further in your process. It might be time for a new therapist.


2. It’s the wrong kind of therapy for you.
Not all types of therapy are made equal. Some approaches, such as talk therapy or cognitive therapy, focus on strategies such as stopping a behavior or changing a response or perhaps adjusting your thoughts about things. In these cases, your growth is going to stay relatively superficial. These types of therapy believe that change begins outside of yourself, and don’t bother much with deeper inside-world kinds of transformation. I tend to believe that deep change first happens inside and once established and supported, begins to radiate into your outside world organically. I have seen this happen time after time for many individuals who have come searching for body-mind-spirit approach therapy. This kind of experiential therapy leads to deeper fundamental changes, which is the only way to experience greater ongoing satisfaction both in one’s inside and outside worlds. If this is what you’re searching for, then it sounds like it might be time for you to find a different kind of therapy.


3. Maybe you need a new definition of being “stuck”.
Not every moment in therapy follows a direct or linear progression towards happiness. In fact, feeling frustrated is a part of the growth process. Frustration is one of the most powerful motivations for growth — without this experience, none of us would seek out therapy or even feel compelled to grow. A tiny seed that gets planted in the ground spends the majority of its energy pushing through the dirt, with no light or air around, until one day it pokes its tiny head up and out of the ground and can feel the sunshine, and all the while we would still say that it was growing. Such is the therapy process. Sometimes “stuck” is a good thing, it motivates us to grow towards our light and make changes for the better. And when we are in that place in our growth process, we need different kind of emotional support than your therapy might be able to give you. Without this specific, tailored support, our growth will halt.


4. It might not be time yet for your next piece of growth.
How can this be, you ask? Well, believe it or not, our brain is not responsible for dictating our emotional growth, rather, our soul and deep wisdom inside of us determines the pace of our personal healing and growth process. As such, this deeper spirit inside of us does not operate on a logical or linear time frame, nor does it quantify or apply logic as to when our next piece of growth needs to unfold. Growth happens when we have enough emotional supports inside to deepen into more of our heart and feel more of the unfelt feelings from our childhood. And it takes time to build those emotional supports, especially when support like this was not modeled or supported in childhood. In these cases, I like to think of stuck as being a place of “actively waiting”. Much like a mountain climber who is spending time at base camp to let their bodies adjust to the altitude, in these places in our therapy process, we are emotionally acclimating to a deeper level of consciousness, and readying ourselves to feel more of what we could not feel when we were younger. We cannot move until our spirit determines we are ready. Doesn’t always make sense to our rational brain.


5. You might not want to be in therapy right now.
Think of it like this: none of us sits down at the dinner table and eats non-stop. There comes a point in time where we our bodies feel full, and we get up from the dinner table and move away to digest what we’ve eaten. When we’re ready to eat more, then we move back towards the table and begin to take in more food until we feel full again. There is a natural moving towards, taking in, and then moving away to digest, and this cycle continues each day throughout our lives. Therapy is similar in this way. For some people, they may need a break from therapy so that they can digest what they’ve learned and how they’ve grown, try some things out on their own, and then they come back to therapy when they are ready for more. So, occasionally, feeling “stuck” isn’t about a dead end in therapy, but actually is a message from our deeper soul wisdom, communicating to us that our next piece of growth actually looks like having our “no” and taking a break from therapy for a while. And this boundary needs incredible support from a therapist, otherwise, our growth is undermined and we fall back into a dead end place in our life. I work from the notion that absolutely everything that happens in life is important and necessary, and always has an excellent reason behind why it is happening, even if our logical and rational minds do not always understand. And this is where the right kind of deeper experiential therapy can help — it helps us decode what is happening in our life from moment-to-moment, and learn how to meet our needs in a more satisfying kind of way. And this is how we feel more satisfaction and happiness, more movement in our life, by learning more about what is really going on deep inside of us. 

You do not have to feel hopeless if traditional talk therapy is not working for you. There are other ways that you can work on getting what you want  in life. Your frustration might be your clue that it is time to get out of your box and begin experimenting with other types of support that feel meaningful to you. This exploration will be the beginning of feeling more satisfaction and creating the life that you have always wanted! 

Kate Schroeder is a therapist and life coach who utilizes the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ® and the Enneagram, as well as body-mind-spirit healing practices to access one’s inner wisdom in order to create a life filled with satisfaction. Start changing your life today by downloading her guided imagery program, Soul Meditations: Building A Relationship That Lasts, or visit Kate at Transformation Counseling, LLC  for more information on how to connect with your best self.

Originally published at YourTango.com