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In Culture, Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships

The Key to Personal Freedom

Julianne HarveyNovember 29, 2016Leave a comment

Freedom from other people’s approval is an ongoing struggle for many of us, but when we experience small victories it’s important to step back and take stock of just how far we have come.

I used to crave approval like it was a drug. I was only okay if someone else gave me permission. The entire world looked different when I realized that I could give myself the approval I yearned for instead of searching for it from others.

It’s helpful with all growth to measure it in tiny incremental steps. Something in our human nature wants instant gratification (a condition only worsening with the internet available in our pocket, where any touch of a button yields immediate results) so anything less feels like failure. But the only way to sustain change is to approach it in little ways that don’t completely overwhelm us.

A person was angry with me recently and I didn’t become unhinged like I would have a few years ago. I was able to breathe through my anxiety and halt any developing shame spirals. I said calmly to myself, “I’m allowed to own my feelings and actions and this person is allowed to own theirs. We don’t have to agree. I’m okay.”

This type of positive self talk is huge in recovery from people pleasing. It takes us down off the ledge, turning mild hysteria magically back into tranquility. It felt so good to see how far I have come with my new and healthier skills. The exchange I had with this person knocked me off my stride for ten minutes instead of ten days, months or even decades.

The key to personal freedom is incremental growth. It’s one small alteration at a time, which over years adds up to a big difference in a moment of stress when you really need it. When a person can no longer push your buttons and get the expected reaction from you, you’ll know you have cut the cord and broken free. Now you are fully in charge of your own reactions and emotions, but this wouldn’t have happened for me without all of the hard soul work that came before.

We are all human. We make mistakes. We can become mired in a swamp of other people’s approval and get stuck, spinning our wheels and stewing over what other people are doing. But we can also make different choices, on any given day, and start to build a bridge to our own freedom. We can say, “This is unacceptable. I am worth more than this. I want kindness, honesty and love with no strings attached.”

We can stand up for ourselves and taste how joyful that feeling is. We are not responsible for other people’s happiness. Only our own. And getting to that understanding in our actual experience is what sets us free.

In Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships

Rekindling Hope

Julianne HarveyNovember 1, 2016Leave a comment

When hope rekindles where you once felt empty and bereft, it’s like coming alive again. It’s the first twitch in your fingers, signalling that your coma is ending and you are returning to a state of normalcy again.

These last three months have been a true slog. Unpredictable, scary, lonely, exciting and sad, all boiled up together in a stew of change.

Every day, I tell myself to be kind and gentle in order to survive a series of hurdles to my preferred stable routines, but the relief of finally being in our own space again this past week has loosened something primitive in me. I’ve become unhinged, crying at random intervals and experiencing a near-catatonic internal state as a reaction to rising panic and dread.

I felt certain that my growth work of the last few years had been tragically reversed by this provincial move. I craved the order and calm I fought so hard to establish in Alberta, but it has eluded me at every turn since we’ve arrived in BC.

When will I learn to stop being so fatalistic and permanent with my dire predictions? When I’m under extreme stress, it’s important to recognize this and love myself through it, the way I would assist a friend, my husband or my kids. Instead, I decide that the jig is up and I’ll never be happy or peaceful again.

The type of upheaval we have gone through since the summer is bound to cause disruption. It must be my coping mechanism to forecast disaster in the face of what I cannot control. This is how I made it through childhood with a mentally ill and alcoholic father and an emotionally icy mother.

I learned not to count on anything. I anticipated the worst possible outcome so that anything less felt manageable. I’ve carried this unhealthy skill into adulthood and it hangs me up from time to time.

The solution is to acknowledge what is going on and to work at changing my fearful reactions. I’m the grown-up now, responsible for two children of my own. It’s up to me to model better responses for my kids to follow.

This too shall pass. Stress is not a permanent state. I’m responsible for my own mental health. When I feel unmoored and lost, like I do now, I must slow down and make the effort to reconnect with myself. Jason and I went on a dinner date this weekend and I had serious trouble vulnerably sharing with him. I realized it was because I was so far from myself.

At least I know what the job is now. I have to turn my signs of life back into actual life. It’s time to tend to my own soul; to find my equilibrium and the peace of mind I’ve been missing. Self care is a daily practice. When it’s neglected, nothing feels right or balanced. I have hope that I can return to my previous state of mental health if I give myself some time and effort.

In Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Spiritual Life

Endurance

Julianne HarveySeptember 20, 2016September 19, 2016Leave a comment

Most of us endure because we have to, not because we want to. As humans, we are incredibly resilient beings. We can gut it out when we are under duress and make it through to an easier stage, mostly because there is simply no other choice.

I’m working on not complaining as much these days. Life is hard for everyone. My pain is not different from your pain. It all hurts. When it sucks, it really sucks, but the good news is that we are all in it together.

To endure is to weather hardship in a dignified manner. Moaning and bitching about elements out of our direct control is a waste of energy and it reduces our ability to feel strong and capable. When I think about the people I most admire in the world, those who make it through turbulent periods with grace and poise are among my greatest heroes.

It’s just damn hard to do it myself. But I’m getting there, inch by inch. I can endure the worst circumstances and so can you. So much of what ails us is in our own minds. If we believe we can survive and eventually thrive, we will. If we sink into self pity and compare our suffering to someone else’s, we are moving further from dignity and can benefit from a course correction.

One of the biggest cliches is “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” But it’s so very true. We don’t grow in the easy seasons. Those are for resting and gearing up for the inevitable freight train that’s on its way to disrupt our orderly existence.

The hard shit reveals who we are, for better or for worse. It proves to us our own strength and highlights our weaknesses, not so we feel ashamed but so we become conscious of them and can begin to work on these troublesome areas.

I am determined to stop focusing on petty garbage that doesn’t add any value to my life. I’m trying to move in the direction of peace and joy by veering away from stress and drama. I proved to myself this summer that I can do unimaginably hard and scary things. And I can do more than just make it through them, but I can in fact endure with a certain element of dignity.

I used to waste so much time seeking approval from others for my choices, my words, my imagined legacy. It feels fantastic to pull that back from society in general and sit on it myself, like a hen keeping her vulnerable baby chicks warm when the air turns cold.

Now is the time to endure with as much grace as we can muster. If the sun is shining and the birds are singing for you, enjoy this day. Soak up the warmth for one day soon it will rain or snow and you will need to summon resources of strength from deep inside of you to make it through.

And if you are enduring something awful or scary now, remember that this too shall pass. You always have a choice. You can complain about how unfair all of it is, or you can endure with a smile nailed on your face. Think ahead to when the crisis is finished. How will you want to remember this time? How did you react when that was the only part of the situation that you could control?

In Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships

Stay the Course

Julianne HarveyJuly 12, 2016July 11, 2016Leave a comment

How we handle stress reveals us on a primal level. We have nowhere to hide when the pressure builds. Do we blow up, retreat, soothe with food, shopping, alcohol or sex, or do we face it head on with grace and calm?

Very few of us do the latter, but it’s a new goal for me. I know that the time to prepare for stress is when the seas are still, not wild with uncertainty. We prepare for hardship in the peaceful times, by developing skills that will see us through the bumps that are sure to come in the future.

Confidence is always an inside game. We are sunk if we hinge our self esteem on any outward achievement or praise, for these are fickle and will certainly fade. Our surest hedge against internal or external disaster is to stoke the fires of our belief in ourselves on a regular basis. Waiting until the stress arrives means we are too late.

I’ve been living this out lately, after a turbulent period of suffering. Those old demons that hunch on my shoulder and plague me with taunts of being less-than, not good enough and worthless have finally quieted down. I simply waited them out and in time they got bored and went on to irritate someone else.

Half of this life is just outlasting what tries to defeat us. It’s important to stay busy with other pursuits to minimize the dark forces working to pull us under.

I’m loving this season of internal calm. It’s that dewy, clean feeling after a hard rain. It’s less a triumph than a relief that this particular storm has ended and patches of blue sky are visible once again.

All I know is that it helps to do our internal work each and every day, especially when we see no obvious evidence of it. If we stay faithful to our soul, when the tough times mysteriously end we will see the benefits of this devoted attention.

If you are hurting right now, with no clear answers or insights, simply stay the course. Nourish yourself with the gentle sustaining routines. Wash your face, apply sunscreen, listen to happy music, drink water, eat your vegetables (and also chocolate). Pain doesn’t last forever. Neither does self-doubt, fear and worry. One day, you’ll wake up and feel contented, hopeful, a little bit more secure in your own brave identity.

You are likely doing better than you think you are. I say this to myself as a mantra when all seems lost. Life can be rough with many mountains to climb, but we can do it if we pack the right gear and we train for the trail so we are prepared.

Gentleness and courage are suitable bedfellows for the calm times and the terrifying ones. One day, in the very near future, you will experience a personal breakthrough. You’ll feel different, you’ll see the world in a new way, and all of that constancy in the darkness will get you to that unforeseen moment of light.

In Personal Growth, Relationships

Safe in the Moment

Julianne HarveyFebruary 9, 2016February 8, 2016Leave a comment

When I’m afraid, it helps to follow the advice I regularly give to my son William when he begins a panic attack: breathe slowly, bring yourself back to your body, stay in the present moment, repeat to yourself, “I am safe.”

Most of what worries us lives either in the future or the past. It’s fear over a potential outcome that might never materialize or regret over something already done. If we make an effort to exist in the present moment, with all of its attendant feelings, sensations and realities, we have a better chance of staying calm and collected.

The question I’m trying to ask myself is: what is under my actual control? We all know that our response to any situation is completely up to us, but practicing this while under stress is still challenging. Our minds nose way down the road, anticipating poverty, relationship conflict, uncertainty, loneliness. It’s easy to become overwhelmed.

The key is to bring my focus back to the present moment. To breathe. To imagine myself as safe, cared for, loved…as I can provide these things for myself. Prepping for doomsday scenarios only increases the chaotic sense of panic. Whatever comes, each one of us will have no choice but to deal with it.

Imagining stress is optional, facing reality is not. We are better off working to remain calm and stable, so we are in a more secure mental space to handle misfortune if it should arrive. And it helps to remember that most of what we worry about never actually happens.

Good things are just as likely to occur as horrible ones. Most of our problems originate in our minds, because we long for a specific outcome and anything other than that brings us grave disappointment and loss, even if it was only a vague possibility instead of an actual reality. Damn this internal pessimism of mine, this infernal waiting for the other shoe to drop which ruins even the happiest of days.

I should know by now that the doom and gloom I forecast usually disappears with time. If I allow a little light and air on it, I’ll watch it vaporize. Old habits like shame, depression and fear roar back into life if we let them, for they’ve worn a deep, familiar groove in our subconscious. I have healthier skills available to me, such as trust in myself and others, a newly-kindled optimism, the ability to set a long-term goal and work patiently at reaching it.

Where it all falls apart is the intersection with other people, for I cannot control what others do and say. But I am not responsible for the actions of other people. I must simply observe what they do (or fail to do) and then respond in the healthiest way I can. The stress of others does not have to become my reality. Only if I let it. I can come up with a happier strategy. The critical thing is to be clear on what’s mine and what isn’t – a lifelong struggle for me but one I have to keep working on.