It’s Okay For People To Be Wrong About You

I like it when people respect me and admire me.  Most of us do. We spend a lot of our time in social situations managing the way others feel and think about us. If you really believed that it was okay for people to be wrong about you,  how would that change your behavior?  This idea has radically changed my life, improving my relationships and allowing me to focus on what really matters.

People Pleasing is Exhausting

When one of my daughters was a toddler she had some health issues and cried almost constantly.  A lot of the day was spent in tantrums and tears.  We felt so badly for her.  We read lots of parenting books, tried lots of things and worked hard to find her the medical care she needed.

However, caring for a child who was so emotionally volatile was exhausting.  It was also humiliating to bring her out in public because I felt so judged.

People Will Judge

I remember the looks on people’s faces as they watched me with her in a store or when we were at church.  They stared.  They lifted their eyebrows.  They rolled their eyes.  They walked away.  They pretended to ignore me, but their faces told a different story.

Sometimes people made comments like, “Wow, she’s loud,” or “She’s a handful.”  It wasn’t uncommon to receive unsolicited parenting advice, “Have you tried just ignoring it?” or “She really needs some consequences and boundaries.”  Sometimes people we knew a bit better would say things like, “I used to think you just couldn’t handle your daughter, but now that we have a tough one I feel bad for judging you.”

We aren’t perfect parents, but we were trying earnestly and had tried A LOT of things.  I believe most people were just observing what they saw.  Because I felt awkward about the way my daughter was acting and I worried people would judge me, their comments felt a lot like judgement.

Occasionally some good soul would say something like, “I’ve totally been there.”  One time my daughter had a tantrum in the entry way of a large building.  She was large enough that it was difficult to lift her up and take her out.  I remember a woman who stopped and said, “You’re doing great.”  I loved that human being!  I had some wonderful friends and family who were supportive and loving during this difficult period.  I am still so grateful for this.

Feeling Misunderstood

One day though, I confided in a friend how discouraged I was feeling about how my daughter acted in public.  She said, “There is nothing wrong with your daughter—there is only something wrong with you!” I don’t think she meant to hurt my feelings, but it hit at the core of what I worried people were thinking.  “Because your child is acting so difficult, there is something wrong with you!”   I found myself not wanting to go out with my daughter in public.

Every time my daughter had a meltdown, I not only had the very real emotional, mental, and physical work of helping her, I also felt like I had to defend myself, my daughter’s situation, my actions and my parenting.  I didn’t want to be judged. Though MANY people were loving and compassionate, it was hard for most people to understand. I felt a lot of resentment that I was misunderstood.

Ditching Resentment for Confidence

I could see resentment was eating me away. It was eroding my relationships, my happiness and enjoyment socially. So I made a decision: it was okay if people judged me. Of course people didn’t understand!  How could they unless they had been through something similar?  People judge. There isn’t much we can do about it. It’s part of being human.

I decided to believe in myself. I knew I was doing my best, and it was okay if people thought I was a “bad mom.” It was so freeing!  

Once I let go of trying to prevent other people’s judgement, my life changed. I remember going to Michael’s with my daughter screaming the whole time and being able to genuinely return smiles for the rude looks I got. I remember just being able to listen to people’s comments of sympathy or concern and keep an open mind without feeling defensive when friends shared ideas about how to help her.  

With so much mental and emotional space cleared up from worrying about being judged and trying to defend myself, I was able to use the space to be more creative and have more energy to help my daughter and get in a healthier place myself.  Also, because I was less defensive I was able to actually accept some of the good ideas people offered. Some were helpful, others weren’t. But I was able to think of them as offerings of love instead of darts of judgment.

It’s Okay For People to Be Wrong About Me


I learned a powerful lesson through this experience.  The things that I notice in others are often reflections of how I feel about myself.  When I feel confident that I’m doing my best, I was able to be okay with other’s judgement of me because I didn’t believe it.  I realized they could think whatever they wanted and I could still sincerely know I was doing my best.  This was a tremendous relief.

Believe in Yourself

Who do you try to please?

Stop trying to convince them you are right or good, and start believing in yourself enough to let them be wrong about you.

Stop Saying “Should”

The word “should” seems innocent–even motivating but a closer look reveals that it leaves a trail of damage.  It highlights inadequacies, robs us of motivation, and leaves us stuck in anxiety, disappointment and frustration.  Removing the word “should” from your lexicon can make a big impact in how you feel about yourself and others.

“Should” is Everywhere

I used to say the word “should” all the time.  “I should have gotten up earlier this morning.”  “I should have been more patient with my kids.”  “I should have started dinner earlier.”

I even used “should” when I thought about others.  “My kids should listen the first time!”  “People shouldn’t cut me off in traffic.”  “They should make this website easier to navigate.”

Sometimes I used it to describe situation around me.  “This shouldn’t be so hard.”  “This meeting should be shorter.”

I also used to feel discouraged, overwhelmed and anxious a lot of the day.

“Should” Seems Responsible

At first glance, the word “should” seems like a benign or even a helpful word.  It seems like it’s helping us notice how things need to be different.  By recognizing how things should be, it’s almost as if we feel we’ve compensated for the fact that they aren’t that way.  It makes us feel more decent and more responsible.

However, as I’ve become more aware of my internal dialogue.  I’ve realized that the word “should” is quite insidious.  It leaves a trail of devastating damage behind.   Should doesn’t help me do or become more.  It has the opposite effect.

The Problem with “Should”

The word “should” causes me to notice all that I am NOT doing and all that I have NOT become.  It accentuates others’ faults and weaknesses, and highlights the less than ideal in circumstances around me.   Because we feel that we and things around us are inadequate, it can decrease our motivation and leave us feeling anxious and frustrated.  You can’t beat yourself up into being better.  You can’t beat others into being better either–“shoulding” others strains relationships because it feels like criticism.  It doesn’t mean we stop making requests of others or ourselves, it just means we don’t keep flogging ourselves with the expectation that it “should” be different.

What to Say Instead of “Should”

Here are some alternatives to the word “should” when you notice it creeping into your own internal dialogue.

Focus on the Benefit

I feel _____________ when I ___________.

Instead of saying “I should have changed out of my yoga pants before I picked my kids up at the bus stop.”  Say, “I feel so much more confident when I take the time to get ready before my kids get home from school.”   This helps you focus on the end result which motivating instead of on the action you didn’t do, which is discouraging.

State What You Value

It’s important to me to ________________.

It’s easy to say “I should be on time to church.”  Instead say, “It’s important to me to be on time for church.”  It’s much more motivating to be on time when it’s couched in terms of what you value instead of what you “should” do.

Change the “sh” to “w” or “c”

I could _______________.
Just substituting “would” or “could” instead of “should” can make a big difference.  It makes our requests much more pleasant and loving.

“It would make our home so much more pleasant if you could hang your backpack up when you get home.”  Consider the difference between that and this.  “You should hang your backpack up when you get home so our house doesn’t look trashed.”

Get Curious

I wonder why I am/they are  ________________.

Using should takes us out of the present—it makes us think of something that didn’t happen in the past, or something that needs to happen in the future.  Most of these thoughts come with stress and other negative emotions. Bringing our attention back to the present can help us abate some of this negativity.

Instead of thinking, “I shouldn’t have yelled at my kids.”  Think, “I’m feeling really irritated right now.  I wonder why I’m feeling irritated?”

Getting curious about what you’re thinking and feeling has a powerful impact on helping us become more of who we want to be instead of just reacting to things around us.

Stop saying “should”

Getting rid of “should” can be so freeing.  I’ve been working on this for a long time and I’m still working on it.  My shoulds everyday are a lot fewer than they used to be.  As a result I feel a lot more confidence, and I feel a lot less frustration with others.

Shoulds are a fixture in our lexicon.  It takes some practice, and some patience but the payout in personal peace and motivation is big.  Saying less shoulds to ourselves allows us to focus on what we ARE doing, and what we WANT to be doing instead of what we’re not doing.  Removing “should” for others can give space in relationships allows people to feel loved as they are; this enables deeper connections.  Eliminating “should” thoughts about circumstances lets us accept the things we cannot change and move forward instead of staying stuck in wishing things were different.

How many times a day do you say “should?”

Try observing when you use “should” and how it affects you.
Try substituting a different thought when you notice yourself saying “should.”

All Things BRAVE and Beautiful: Finding Peace in Difficulty

Hard is normal.  It’s what each of us experience it many times in life;overwhelm, discouragement, losing a job, divorce, financial trouble, stress, moving, loss, depression, anxiety, disappointment, children with struggles, health challenges, and so many more.  How we deal with hard determines our experience.  I was bequeathed a legacy of bravery from my mother and grandmothers.  I always pictured bravery like I saw it in super heroes or in movies.  But through their legacy, I’ve discovered that bravery is something much different.  It is the ability to find peace in difficulty and grace under pressure.

Letting Go and Digging Deep in the American West

Some of my great-grandmothers helped to settle the American West. They took their families to the unknown and made a beautiful life over and over again as they moved.

One of my grandmothers writes of moving over 7 times within a short period.  When she finally settled in her new home in Salt Lake City, she set to work creating beauty.  She planted tulips and writes of her delight at being on one place long enough to watch them bloom.  Before they had fully flowered, she received news that she would be moving again.  At first, she threw herself on the bed, and sobbed.  With tremendous grace, a few days later she left her tulips behind and set her nose to her new home.

That new home was a dug-out in the desert of St. George. Not only were there no tulips, there wasn’t much of anything at all besides dust storms and floods.  If it was anything like most dugouts, when it rained the ceiling dripped and the floor was a mud bath.  Early settlers of the same place wrote that St. George seemed void of any civilization.

She was cooking dinner one night when a Native American of the area came to try to evict her from her dug- out.  After 7 moves, she wasn’t about to give up another home without a struggle!  She took her frying pan and knocked him out cold. She stayed in her dug-out home.  She created beauty where she was and helped to make that desert area bloom.

Letting Go and Digging Deep around the Globe

Like my grandmother, I am blessed with a life of frequent moving though admittedly there is no covered wagon and I’m not taming of the wild west.  My husband and I felt brave starting out in the Foreign Service where we knew we would live in many countries around the world.  Our eyes were big with the idealism of traveling, raising broad-minded children who were citizens of the world and serving others.

As we started out, we enjoyed many wonderful parts of our lifestyle; my husband loved his job and felt he was able to contribute in a meaningful way, and it allowed me to be home with our children.  We were able to offer a wonderful education for our children, meet amazing people, learn new languages, discover history and culture and serve others.
However, our children struggled with the constant moving.

At first, the signs seemed minimal and we didn’t worry too much.  But over time their issues became more pronounced and began to affect their functioning.  A couple of my daughters developed significant anxiety.

They didn’t adjust like I saw other children do. It seemed like once we finally got them settled in a new place, it was time to move and their anxiety flared again.  It was painful to watch and exhausting to manage.

We sought medical care, counseling, and read a lot on the topic.  However, our lifestyle made getting them the care they needed more challenging.  Moving frequently made it hard to find continuity of care with one provider.  Often, I found myself trying to use complicated medical terms in other languages to communicate with doctors in whatever country we were in.  Despite a long list of interventions, my girls continued to struggle.

Mourning The Life We Thought We Wanted

Eventually my sense of adventure began to wane and stress and exhaustion began to wax.  I was getting worn down trying to manage everything; I began to feel resentful about moving frequently and the stress it caused our children.  I didn’t want them to suffer. And, I didn’t want to have to keep trying to manage their issues with so few resources. I felt slighted without access to the medical resources I was accustomed to.  I was easily frustrated with people around me who didn’t seem to understand how hard it was.

The harder things got, the more resentful I became and the more I blamed our frequent moves and living abroad for my children’s suffering, and making my life miserable.  Theoretically, I threw myself on the bed and sobbed over my tulips many times.  This was not the life we had dreamed of.  This was not fun. This was hard.  We thought we would be educating our children’s minds in foreign lands and instead we were wracking our own brains to try to figure out how to help them function.  My husband and I often blamed ourselves when our girls had issues.  Guilt is not an emotion that brings forth the best in us.  It certainly didn’t for me.  I became negative and discouraged.

Looking for Paradise

We began looking for alternative careers or grasping for any solutions we could find.  We moved state-side to Hawaii for a while, hoping we would find some stability and better medical care.  We used to joke, “Everything will be better in Hawaii.”  It WAS an amazing place to live, but I was surprised to discover that my girls continued to struggle even there—in the midst of American medical care, stability, familiar culture and language.  It became evident that their issues were bigger than just our lifestyle.  Frankly I was surprised.  I had spent a lot of time blaming our moves and foreign living for their problems.

After three years, my husband received a new assignment to work in Taiwan.  One of my daughters in particular was really suffering at that time—even with an amazing team of doctors behind her.  I was stewing a bit about another change for our children and how they would respond.  I was gearing up for the worst possible scenario for her in our new place.  I was also praying that God would help guide me in how to help my children.

Around this time, I discovered some amazing tools that began to completely change the way I thought and saw things. I felt like my brain was being turned literally inside out.  I had always known that thoughts were powerful in how we feel, but these tools of how to actually change my thoughts were transformational.

Re-titling my Story

I realized that for years, I had created a story about our life.  It went something like this, “This lifestyle is causing my children and me suffering.”  That thought caused me tremendous resentment and frustration.  Those feelings caused me to stay stuck and to feel sorry for my children and myself.  The result was miserable for all of us.

One day as I was listening to Jody Moore, a life coach, talk to someone with a similar situation to mine. This idea distilled on my mind.  “What if there is a different title to my story?  What if this is the PERFECT lifestyle for your children?  What could be more beneficial to children with anxiety than the opportunity to frequently face hard and new situations?  They get to practice under the watchful guidance of loving parents.  This is the perfect chance for them to gain confidence to overcome anxiety.”

Suddenly my whole perspective shifted.  It was an idea I had never even considered.  The idea brought excitement and relief.  And, I felt God confirming that this was a better way to think about our life.

“Setting My Nose” Toward a New Life

I decided to experiment and try this new thought with our move to Taiwan.  I embraced the idea that “hard is good” for my kids.  Essentially, I “set my nose” to our new home and tried to leave behind my tulips—my idea that some other situation would be my ideal life.  I tried to envision our new life as the PERFECT life for my children.

Indeed, as we moved, my children encountered challenges and anxiety as I had anticipated.  For example, I remember one day my daughter came home and told me she was being bullied because she was one of the only white girls in her class.  My heart hurt for her.  My brain’s first reaction was to doubt our decision and blame myself.  I thought, “This lifestyle is causing them so much suffering.”    But I stopped myself and tried to re-direct my brain to a healthier thought.  “This lifestyle is exactly what my children need to become confident and brave.”  I noticed that when I armed myself with this thought, I started to feel thankful and creative instead of guilty and resentful.  This allowed me to be so much more loving, compassionate and creative in helping her.  I was able to say, “That sounds really hard.  What do you think we could do about it?”

As she began to feel my confidence in her—not just my compassion, she began to rise to the challenge of dealing with the issue. It didn’t resolve immediately.  But small exchange by exchange she did deal with it.  She was able to make good friends as well as stand up for herself.  By the end of the year, she was a thriving student beloved by her peers.  I was fascinated at the difference in her response when empowered.

Knocking Out Negative Thoughts

Just when I thought we were on an up-swing, they would struggle again.  One of my daughters felt so anxious she wasn’t able to go to school.  We tried a number of things with the school and eventually we had to withdraw her.  At times, I worried I was just trying to convince myself this was a good idea and that I might be really hurting my children further.  But I theoretically got out my frying pan and crushed the thoughts that continued to bubble up.   “Even if this lifestyle is causing them suffering,” I reminded myself “there is suffering anywhere. The best thing I can offer my children is love and a healthy mom.  I can’t be healthy if I’m trapped in misery myself.”

My daughter began a homeschool program and really thrived with it!  She had a wonderful year and learned more about American History than I ever did! She was able to enjoy learning instruments she wouldn’t have otherwise and she and I developed an amazing bond last year.  I had to remind myself—she has her own path.  This is the perfect life for her.  And, with a healthier brain, I’ve been able to set up better care for her. We found counseling that she can do from home through skype.  It’s been a huge blessing—better than any of the counseling we did face to face. Sometimes our ways through things look different than we expect.

As our girls sensed our confidence in them, our daughters began to slowly rise to their challenges in a new way.  Of course, their problems didn’t disappear, but I was delighted at how brave were and continue to be.  As they confront their challenges, they have gained confidence and they are thriving.  Life has become fun, and our lives are happy a lot of the time.

Being Brave in A Bold New Way

This experience has meant learning bravery in a whole new way.  It’s not the bravery of doing something painful or fighting through misery as I had previously thought—instead it is the bravery of letting go of old ways of thinking and embracing new ones.  In letting go of my anguish, there has been more space for compassion and creativity.

I certainly still have my throw-myself-on-the-bed-and-cry moments.  I think feeling the spectrum of emotions is essential to happiness.  There are times that living a more stable lifestyle sounds very attractive.  But I’ve also come to see that there are pros and cons wherever you live. There is suffering and happiness everywhere.

I have learned that letting go—leaving behind the tulips or the ideal I thought I wanted, and committing to what I have now has been transformative.  It requires a lot of courage to let the old go and it requires continually knocking out self-doubt with the frying pan to embrace the new, but it has brought peace and beauty to our lives. This is the kind of bravery my grandmothers have written on my bones.  This kind of bravery is written on yours too…it is the inheritance we receive as humans.

Be Brave

What is something difficult you face?

1.  Allow yourself a cry-on-the-bed moment to mourn the loss of what you had hoped for.
2.  Accept that the difficulty probably won’t go away.  So decide, who do I want to be despite this difficult thing?  Set your nose to it.
3. Knock out the negative self-talk with the frying pan.

The Eclipse of Happiness: My Depression Story

As the stresses and struggles of life accumulated I found that they began to eclipse the joy and happiness I had always enjoyed.  I lived for a long time in a fog of disillusionment, discouragement and disconnection with people I loved.  This is my story about depression and the process of finally finding light again.   My journey is personal and in some ways vulnerable, but I lived in darkness for so long I want to share hope that there is a way to feel happiness again; hang on.  This is my story.  At the end I give some helpful steps that set me on a course for healing.

Sunny Delight

As a young child, my mom used to call me her “sunny-delight.”  I grew up as an all-American girl in the suburbs of Chicago; my mom took me puddle jumping after it rained, and my Dad taught me to ride a two-wheeler without training

wheels. My family had a gaggle of girls and a boy at the end that my mom used to call the cherry on top.  We used to sit on the stairs and brush and style each other’s hair and exchange notes in little “mail boxes” on each other’s bedroom doors.  This was also a time when I began to recognize what God’s love felt like, and developed a deep conviction of his care and involvement in our lives.

My teen and college years in Colorado and Utah were also filled with sunshine and hope.  My mother used to tell me I was like her little hummel on the fireplace: pockets spread wide and filling them with new experiences.   I ran cross country, traveled to Africa to teach hygiene to children, sang in a Pentacostal gospel choir, and graduated with a degree in Fitness and Wellness Management from BYU.

As a young professional, my eyes were wide with idealism.  I helped create a wellness clinic for a sports medicine doctor, worked in the NICU of Primary

Children’s Hospital and ran the statewide wellness program for the American Heart Association.  Best of all, I fell in love and married a bow tie wearing diplomat.  Life was perfect.

 

Sunshine Begins to Dim

Sometimes even the sun goes dark.  The recent eclipse in the United States was a fascinating example of this.  A warm sunny day changed to a dark cold one in just a matter of minutes as the moon eclipsed the sun.  It’s light never never actually changed, but it was  covered up and no one could feel the light and warmth it characteristically gave off.
Over time, despite the abun

dant blessings in our life—the sunshine in my life began to be eclipsed.  We moved frequently for work and graduate school. The frequent moving and isolation from family took a toll.  I began to feel less bright and happy, and more tired and irritable.    Problems seemed bigger and answers seemed more significant and weighty.  I cried a lot.

Sometimes I would create “harry problems”, as my husband called them, that had no good solution and then I’d analyze and over analyze and swirl myself downward into misery. No matter what solution I found—nothing felt right.   I had a difficult time making simple decisions like what to do with my free time.  I ruminated on conversations with friends and worried about things I’d said or didn’t say.  All of this mental drama weighed me down.

It was confusing.  I had wonderful days too, and every time I thought about my life it seemed so amazing; nothing seemed wrong per-se.  Of course I had stresses, but it didn’t seem like more than anyone else had.  I tried harder to count my blessings, and focus on the positive. I kept telling myself I SHOULD be happy. I need to try harder.

Borrowing Light

I remember calling my mother one day and pouring out my heartache; I was sitting on a park bench in Boston sobbing.  She gently mentioned she thought I might have some depression. She had suffered from depression, and she must have recognized it in me.  She was a hero to me.  In a time when depression was hardly well known and certainly not widely understood or normalized, she discovered and identified that she was not coping well.  She sought treatment with medication and counseling, and was able to largely heal through these and through the atonement.

As the realization began to settle in that I might have “depression,” I resisted it. My brain found plenty of evidence to show how I had lots of happy days, I was fine, and how I had lots of normal excuses to account for how I was doing.  However as I began to look at who I had become and how I felt and interacted compared to who I had been and how I had felt and interacted most of my life, it became clear that something was not healthy.

Recognizing that I was at a vulnerable place, my mother took a plane to Boston and spent a week with me.  I will forever be thankful to her for that tremendous gift of her love and nurturing through a critical juncture in my life.  The first thing she did was have me take a depression and anxiety evaluation.  She explained that this would help me determine if I was indeed depressed or anxious or both—and how severe.  While it might not be a perfect measurement, it would give me a decent idea if I should pursue treatment and help in that direction.   My scores were severe in both depression and anxiety.

I was shocked.  I didn’t feel like the embodiment of what I had pictured someone with severe depression like.  Accepting this label took a lot of humility, but it was also freeing to know that there was a reason for my feelings and behavior beyond my own character flaws!  Knowing there was a diagnosis also gave me hope that there could be treatment.  My mother’s example was a huge inspiration to me.

My mother suggested I begin some medication–even temporarily that might help me get to a place I could think more clearly and change some of my patterns.  I wasn’t anxious to put things in my body that I didn’t absolutely need.  I thought counseling would be a better first step.  I had 5-6 visits with one therapist and found that I was more of a mess after going, and there didn’t seem to be much help or hope on the horizon working with him. I tried two other therapists thinking maybe it was just not the right personality match, but ended up feeling a bit disenchanted with counseling in general.

I began reading a book called, The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns. David Burns was a pioneer in the field of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a highly successful therapist and a professor at Stanford.  He wrote the first lay handbook for patients about how to begin to recognize some of our unhealthy thinking patterns—and learn how to untwist them.  I was fascinated as I read with some of the distorted filters and inaccurate thinking patterns I recognized in myself.  Becoming aware of my own distorted thinking was helpful.  I seemed to get to a better coping spot but I certainly wasn’t thriving.  I wasn’t really sure what else to do.  So, I just kept limping along emotionally the best I knew how. All this time, I don’t think most people around me knew anything was wrong.  To people not close to me, I looked like the essence of happiness.

Darkness Growing

Soon we found that we were expecting our first daughter.  We were thrilled!  We prepared a place for her and welcomed her with great excitement.  I had always looked forward to motherhood, but I often found myself stressed about doing things “right.”  I worried about nipple confusion, sleep training, and tummy time.  I tried to read all the books and exhausted myself trying to be the “perfect mom.”

My baby did not sleep well and I was exhausted.  After 9 months of sleep deprivation and with hormones ebbing and flowing, I slipped into a deeper depression.  I remember stomping to the baby’s room, angry she was up again. I would feed her, only to be awakened again a few hours later.  I was a zombie during the day.   My brain kept telling me I should be happy.  But I felt numb, and miserable.  I remember watching friends with their babies.  They seemed to find joy in their little movements and progress.  I felt like day and night were one long exercise in endurance.  I continued to slog through every day and night—what else could I do?   Slowly the sunshine and happiness I had experienced much of my life was largely darkened.

I was a ball of negativity.  I frequently complained about all the “hard” things in my life whenever I was with my husband or friends or family.  I’m sure I was miserable to be with.  Frankly I didn’t even enjoy being with myself.  I remember my husband coming home from work and saying he wished we could enjoy having fun together in the evenings instead of debriefing on all the hard things and slogging through the tasks of life.   I knew he was right.  I wanted to have fun as a family too–honestly I didn’t know how.   l remember one night we made a desperate attempt to “enjoy” family time.  We sat in the family room and rolled a ball around with the baby.  It felt so awkward.

My threshold for frustration or aberration was very low.  I was frustrated with anything that made my life even a little harder—having to change an extra diaper, hitting traffic, picking my husband up from work.    I didn’t feel like myself, and I knew it.  I knew I probably still had some depression, but a also assumed most new mothers felt this way.

Life kept happening.  Over the next 10 years, we moved many times—sometimes internationally.  While this was exciting, it was challenging to be away from family and adjust to new cultures.  See Mental Gardening.  We had 4 daughters; each of which was such a blessing.  However, with hormone fluctuations, lack of sleep and some colicky babies I ended up with some post-partum depression after each of them. Some of my children struggled with anxiety and other health issues. See  All Things Brave and Beautiful: Finding Peace in Difficulty.  My mother struggled with Ovarian Cancer and passed away.  See Hope Is The Thing: Getting Through  Grief.  My Dad remarried and we got a new step-family.   we were glad my Dad could have a new companion, but it took time to adjust to a new “normal.”  Meanwhile there was dinner, diapers, kid’s homework, church responsibilities, exercising

and additionally, the stresses of living internationally—bleaching all our produce, foreign languages and culture, living far from family, and constant change.  Many of these things were wonderful but most were challenging too.  During this time I ebbed and flowed in my emotional health, was never really healthy.

Eclipse of Light

As the stress piled up, I got lower and lower emotionally.  My burdens felt too heavy– I began to feel like a victim of life.   There were good moments, there were good days.   However, those became much fewer and farther between.  In the midst of my pain, I blamed my circumstances, I blamed the people around me, I blamed myself.  The blame began to sabotage my relationships, my self-respect, and snuffed out any last sparks of joy I felt.  Slowly I felt the last rays of sun in my life go dark.  For me it was just about a total eclipse.

One of the worst parts was that in the midst of my emotional heaviness, it was much more difficult to feel God’s love.  I couldn’t feel the spirit directing me very well, and without the nourishing help of God, I often felt particularly alone and in darkness.

As my life went dark,  I felt trapped.  I felt like I would always feel this way.  It felt hopeless.  I felt like nothing I did really helped much.  Everything felt heavy and hardI felt numb.  I felt resentful and angry a lot of the time. I endured because I had to, but didn’t feel much joy.  And, to add insult to injury I was discouraged because I wasn’t showing up as the mother, wife, friend, daughter and sister I wanted to be.  That added more layers of sadness and depression.

Even simple tasks felt overwhelming.  Opening the curtains in the morning felt too hard.  I remember taking my kids to ride bicycles in the back yard felt so monumental.  We lived in an apartment building, and getting in and out of the elevator and going through 2 sets of glass doors felt too hard.  I would dread and avoid anything that might be hard or add more load to my already heavy one.  Decisions were difficult.  I couldn’t think clearly.  My head was clouded with worry about what others thought.  I replayed conversations over and over in my mind worrying about what I should have said or not said.

Night after night my husband listened to the awfulness of the day and all the hard things.  He was a saint.  Looking back, I realize I wanted someone to understand how much pain I felt and how heavy it was to carry.  He listened and validated and tried to help.  But even he had his limits.  I remember him gently saying one night—I’d love to talk about something besides just how hard everything is sometimes.  I constantly felt resentful that no one seemed to understand.  It was beginning to affect every aspect of my life—my health, my sleep, my marriage, my mothering, my friendships, my extended family relationships and my day to day functioning.  Even with all this, I think most people just thought I was sort of a negative person.  I don’t think most people outside my close circle of friends and family would have known the suffering I was experiencing every day.  I knew I needed to do something.

Dumping the Darkness

Finally, out of desperation I tried the only thing I knew to do—I called a therapist again.  This time I found an amazing therapist.  For almost a year I talked to her every week and word vomited everything that was “hard” and that made me feel anxious and discouraged.  She listened, and helped me identify the things causing the most pain.  She empathized and helped me extract so many emotions that had been shoved inside for such a long time.  Verbalizing and recognizing my pain allowed me to externalize them…to get them to a place that I could look at them, evaluate them, and even let go, change or mourn them instead of being controlled by them.  This was essential.  I couldn’t deal with them when they were inside floating around under my consciousness.

As I began to unload all of this darkness I been shrouded with—I began to feel lighter.  I began to have more space in my life for light.  The more darkness I extracted, the more space there was available for light.  It was almost as if I needed a space to place all my pain.  This therapist was that place for me.

Burgeoning of Light

After several months, my therapist recommended that I begin taking medication for depression.  She said she felt it would help me get to a healthier place where I could begin to feel and think differently.  I resisted at first.  I was feeling a bit better after getting out so much pain.   I thought I could heal without meds.

One day, I was talking to my friend.  She had experienced depression and anxiety and was telling me about someone she knew who was depressed but refused to take meds.  She said something that resonated so deeply with me at the time that I will never forget.  She said, “It is really irresponsible to herself and everyone around her NOT to take meds.” I had never thought of it that way before.  I decided I wanted to try medication.  My therapist reminded me it could be a temporary thing—and that often people who get on meds make progress more quickly.

A few weeks on meds and I was amazed.  I started feeling brighter and happier.  I noticed I didn’t snap at my children quite as quickly.  I wasn’t quite as irritated by things.  I remember being able to sit on the couch and not feel stressed that I should get up and do something “productive.”  I also started feeling the spirit again.  I remember thinking, “This is the old me!”   I had thought the old me–the one who had filled her pockets with every experience and loved the wind blowing on my face riding my banana seat bike was gone.  I wasn’t really gone.  I had just been so weighed down and sad that that I could not feel or be who I had always been.

(Medication is not the only means of healing and is not the correct route for everyone with depression.  For me it was a critical element of my healing for a time.  Looking back I regret waiting 10 years to finally try it.)

I felt like the sun peeked out again from behind the moon and shed a little light in my soul.  Hope felt so glorious—maybe I wouldn’t have to feel depressed forever!

Becoming Brighter

As the sunshine began to filter in slowly, I was able to see a little more clearly.  I didn’t feel quite so wound up inside and decisions didn’t seem to be so painful.  I wasn’t as irritated and I didn’t see things in such a negative light.  As I saw things differently, I felt happier and more calm and I showed up more positive and more loving to the people around me. Small successes built on each other and while I often fell back in the ditch, I was able to pick myself up and keep going.
I had been doing therapy for about a year and felt a lot better.  I had gotten out lots of the darkness, and there was room for more light.  However, I felt I still had a long way to go in changing the way I thought and felt and acted to stay in a better place.  I remember one day asking my counselor, “I feel like I’ve gotten a lot of the junk out, now what? What do a I do with it?  How do I change the way I think so that I don’t keep putting more junk in?  How I can stay emotionally healthy?”  I was ready and excited to move forward.  I was stunned when she said, “Well, I don’t know.  I’ve used all the tools I have to offer—I don’t really have anything else to offer you.”  I was so disappointed.

Therapy had certainly served an important purpose for me.  It helped me identify and verbalize all the junk that caused me pain, but hadn’t really helped me know what to do with it all.  Many studies actually show that patients who do extended therapy can get worse simply by ruminating over and over on their difficulties when therapists don’t have the skills or the courage to help clients move beyond them after they have sufficiently processed them.

Coasting

I wasn’t sure where to turn next.  I was feeling good-enough to function and frankly I was exhausted from a year of emotional heavy lifting.  For the next few years, I coasted emotionally.  I didn’t do much digging or healing—I just ambled along and tried to enjoy the better state of being.  On my meds, and with some of the junk out, I established some better patterns with my children and my husband—even with friends and extended family.  I enjoyed things more and could laugh and joke and find joy in life.  I began to put my own self-respect back together. Since I felt less overwhelmed, I was able to exercise, eat healthier, enjoy better friendships and contribute in my church responsibilities.  Perhaps best of all was my ability to feel God’s spirit and power in my life returned. The divine flow helped guide and craft my healing.

 

I tried a few times to get off meds, thinking I was doing better.  But every time my dose was decreased, the depression returned full force.  This told me that I hadn’t really addressed the cause of my depression yet.  In fact, I could feel my meds becoming slowly less effective.  My doctor gradually increased the meds, but I noticed side effects at the higher dosages. I gained weight.  I felt numb and not compassionate sometimes. Some of my old patterns of unhealthy thinking even started to emerge.

Choosing Light

I remember one significant moment during this time.  I was out shopping and was chatting on my cell with someone.  I was sharing all the hard things about a particular situation. As I was going on and on, the spirit brought a very specific phrase to my mind.  “Choose happiness.”  I was confused.  Who wouldn’t choose happiness?  If I could feel happy, I would—of course.  So, why would we need to choose it.  After all, it wasn’t like there was a pallet of emotions around me and I purposely selected “frustrated,” or “overwhelmed.”  Or did I?

At the same time, the spirit brought my evening conversations with my husband to mind.  Whenever I told him about the day, I focused on all the negative things that had happened. I told him how hard the kids were or how frustrating the traffic was or how awkward a conversation was with someone that day.  There were plenty of wonderful things that happened too, but because the negative things bothered me, those were what I tended to share.  The spirit gently suggested that I try focusing on the positive things that had happened during the day—and only sharing those.  Choosing happy.  It took a lot of courage and self-restraint at first to share the happy and omit the negative.  However, I began to notice that I saw my life differently when I described and focused on the positive.

I began to feel stirrings that there was more healing to be done; more changes I needed to make.

Seeking Divine Light

Along my journey I came across a talk entitled, “Christ Centered Healing From Depression,” given by Carrie Wrigley.     She is a therapist who spoke at an Education Week at BYU regarding healing from Depression and Low Self Worth.

I confess at first, I was a bit skeptical. While I have deep faith, I had suffered with depression for over 10 years, and I knew first hand that praying more and serving more and painting on a smile didn’t do much to lift the shroud of darkness that covered me.

However, I also knew that God was ultimately the source of light and healing.  I recognized that God had sent many tender mercies to me in form of friends, books, ideas and help.  I suppose I thought that WAS the way he healed us.  However, there was part of me that believed his healing could do more.  I just wasn’t sure how to access his healing power.

Carrie Wrigley discusses research surrounding the effectiveness of many therapeutic methods, use of medication and her experience as a practitioner seeing patients and not seeing many change long-term and how to compelled her to search for how to really help her patients heal and change.

As she searched and studied, she discovered how to help patients access the atonement in their healing.  The atonement makes us into a new creature.  She explained that one way God helps us become a new creature is by changing the way we think.  Our thoughts create how we feel, how we feel drives how we act and how we act creates the result in our lives.  So one of the ways God helps form us into who he wants us to be is by helping us change the way we think, and the way we see things.  I was fascinated by this idea.  I began praying that God would help me learn how to change my thinking.

One day as I was on Face Book I came across an ad that said, “What if you could feel happy most of the time and overwhelmed sometimes instead of the other way around?”  I was intrigued.  I clicked on the link and discovered a life coach named, Jody Moore.  I began listening to her podcasts and finding my mind was challenged and opened in new ways

Over the course of the next year, I began to learn how to re-set my mind to think differently—and much more healthfully.  I enrolled in a life coaching program.  I learned several tools and did a lot of personal emotional work that did a complete emotional makeover on my brain.  I learned how to identify the thoughts that were driving my depression and change them.  I learned how to recognize and process difficult emotions instead of acting out on them, or suppressing them.  I learned that I spent a lot of effort avoiding emotions by eating, shopping, listening to audiobooks or watching Netflix.  I began to feel a positive momentum building.  I was feeling better, my relationships were totally different and more positive.  I was able to hand overwhelm and difficulty better.  I could be more of who I wanted to be.

God guided me through an amazing process has helped and continues to help me become a “new creature.”   I have changed so much inside I am unrecognizable to myself.  The spirit began to help put new thoughts in my mind.  I think and interact in a whole new way.  I am an up-leveled version of myself—even better than the original “old me.”  I feel joy! My life feels full of light.

Living in Sunlight

As my brain has changed, I have been able to work off my meds slowly.  This has been an important indication that finally the source of my depression is being addressed.  I don’t dwell on conversations, I don’t take forever to make decisions, I don’t feel constantly overwhelmed and wallow in self-pity.  I don’t constantly worry about being “productive.”  My relationships are deepening, my brain fog has cleared, and I feel like I show up more often like the kind of person I want to be. Instead of having a head full of overwhelm and stress, it is full of more compassion, desire to help others and mostly full of joy!

One of the things I discovered was how essential darkness is.  God made the light and the dark.  There is darkness almost 50 percent of the time on earth.  Without darkness, it would be difficult to sleep, it would get hot, there would be no natural separation of days, and  it would be tempting to keep working, or playing instead of taking a break.  We wouldn’t appreciate the light.  We must have both to understand the other.

I realized the same was true for my emotions.  God created opposition in all things;  we are meant to experience difficult emotions a large portion of the  time. The tension of opposites is what gives joy and happiness it’s meaning and it’s value.

Knowing darkness or difficult emotions are important made me less afraid of them.  Knowing how to process them and how to move past them has given me confidence that I don’t have to be controlled by difficult emotion.  Now I can accept them and let them go more often. This allows me to let go of them instead of storing the emotion and being controlled by them.  I know there is more light ahead.

Sharing My Light

Having lived in darkness for so many years and not knowing how to climb out, I feel deep compassion for people who live in the dark night of the soul—even partial darkness.  I know it is painful and heavy.  I heard someone say once that each of us bears the mark of the pain we’ve felt.  It becomes like a secret code that binds us to others who bear the same mark.  I am so deeply grateful for all of the people who have helped to uncover my light and I want to share the joy of light with anyone who may be suffering.  That is part of the reason I am writing this blog.

Over the years, many people have asked me where to even start when they feel depressed.  Each person’s journey is unique.  I would never begin to think that I could tell someone else how to heal or recover from their own individual difficulties.  I have listed the steps that have helped me in my journey; I hope they will be helpful to others in some way.  There is so much happiness where light is–and it’s possible.  If you are in a dark place, hang on.  There is light ahead.

Uncover the Light Again

1.  Trust yourself
If you notice that you don’t feel yourself, believe yourself.  Don’t just keep pushing through.  Slow down and observe yourself.  Just because you have good days doesn’t mean you aren’t depressed or anxious.

2. Take a Depression/Anxiety Test
If you have become someone you don’t recognize, and don’t like, consider taking a depression scale test.  This can give you an idea if it’s something you need to address, and how severe you may be.  Here is a Depression Test that could serve as a good starting point.

3. Dump the dark  
(Counseling and medication may be helpful tools to consider)
An important part of healing is getting the dark out in a place you can see it, address it and change it if needed. Shedding light on things often takes away the power of difficult things.  Counseling is an excellent way to do this as therapists can help to draw out pain points.

Sometimes meds can be helpful in getting you to a place that you can see more clearly and function better.  It’s sometimes difficult to change patterns of thinking and acting when they are deeply ingrained and the feelings causing the behavior are so raw and difficult.  They are not the right course of action for everyone however.  Remember meds can be temporary.

Both counseling and medication can be particularly helpful in high moderate to severe depression.  More mild depression may be able to be addressed differently.  Methods such as journaling or talking with a confidant can be helpful in unloading pain as well.

4. Choose to Let in the Light
Once the brain knows the pathways that lead to depression, it’s easy to fall back into old patterns.  It requires a deliberate decision to “choose happy.” The minute we  allow ourselves to take even a step into the quicksand of self pity and wo, we get sucked down. Sometimes we  unknowingly feel that there are benefits to feeling depressed or anxious and it’s hard to fully heal when we still “want” in some ways to feel this way. It may sound  strange, as no one would “choose” to feel this way, but sometimes making a list of advantages and disadvantages of depression or anxiety can help us discover our own resistance. This was helpful for me.

5.  Get Help Changing Your Brain
Once you are in a stable emotional place, it is time to begin a brain remodel.  If we continue thinking and acting the way we always have, it is likely we will relapse into depression or anxiety again.  There are many ways to learn to think differently.

Life Coaching is one fantastic source of this type of brain work.  A therapist who does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy can also be helpful.  Sometimes hospitals or colleges offer groups that discuss important principles.  Bibliotherapy can be highly effective as well.  No matter how you choose, the change will come from actually observing yourself, writing down what you observe and making changes to your thoughts.

A great book to get started with is, The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns

One of my favorite podcasts that has helped me make these types of changes is:

The Life Coach School, Brooke Castillo

6.  Share Your Light
Sharing your new found tools and hope is often the ray of hope someone else needs to know they won’t be in a dark place forever. As we reach out to share and help our own light grows.

God Loves Broken Things: Accepting Our Brokenness

Most of us feel broken in some way–we feel unworthy or unappealing or less lovable because we less than our own ideal in some way.  For some it is being overweight, or not having the financial means to have the home or clothes they’d love.  For some it might be feeling like they just can’t stay on top of their home, they yell at their children, they can’t perform to the extent they’d like at work, or are doubting their faith.  More substantial struggles like losing someone we love, divorce, infertility, abuse, trauma, or having a significant health challenge can all be things that can cause us to question our own wholeness.  Ironically it is our brokenness that allows us to come to true wholeness.  God loves broken things–it is what allows him to heal us.

Broken

I saw my husband’s elbow brush the edge of my favorite Talavera plate hanging on our bedroom wall, but it crashed to the floor before a warning escaped my throat.  The bright ceramic colors were strewn across the floor—some large, others tiny fragments. There were too many pieces—it seemed impossible to put back together. The plate was gone.  My husband felt terrible. We scooped it up and the pile of shards sat on my desk for several days. I kept looking at it. I considered tossing it. I noticed the empty plate holder; the room seemed a little duller without it.  And the days went on. One day, I pulled out the ceramic glue and tried to piece back together some of the larger pieces but there were cracks and chipped fragments. I left it for a while to think about if I even wanted it anymore, it just wasn’t the same.

There is something about us that doesn’t like broken things, we resist them.  Things that are broken seem less useful, unworthy and less appealing. Why is that?  Breaking is a powerful metaphor. People break, relationships break. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.  When we feel broken, the natural response is to ignore it, to fix it, or to hide it.

Resisting Brokenness

When my mother called me to tell me she had been diagnosed with stage four Ovarian Cancer, her first words to me were, “We’re not cancer people.”  She refused to be broken. She underwent surgery, chemo, remission, lots of natural healing methods and chemo again. In the in-between she undulated between gut wrenching sickness, longing to live to finish raising her family.

Of course, she did what any of us would do—fight to stay alive.  With her characteristic optimism and quest for knowledge, she was constantly on the lookout for new healing protocols.  We loved her for it, and cheered her on.  Her work and discipline was inspiring, I believe trying new things gave her hope too. She would often tell us her tremendous hope that a particular method would be successful.

We rode the waves of hope and disappointment as she tried various methods.  While I unfairly depended on her for her reassurance, there was always an underlying anxiety.  I was never quite sure how she really felt or what would happen “if” the new idea or protocol didn’t pan out.

As her health declined, her search for healing became all consuming.  This was understandable and certainly what any of us might be inclined to do.  It took most of the day each day to scan the internet for new alternative healing methods, to make all fresh foods and do a variety of protocols with exercise, heat etc. It was a time of grasping at anything to try to get more time.  

We wanted her around for more time–but I confess that selfishly at times I longed for her to stop trying to get more time, and admit she might not have much time left.  I wished she would use the little time she had left to focus more on spending time with me and with her family and friends. That was the time we knew we DID have.  I remember changing our flight plans to be with her at Thanksgiving right after her diagnosis and she insisted we not come—saying “This is a marathon, not a sprint.”  When I tried to record some of her stories about her life, she resisted. It felt to her like admitting defeat.  This was absolutely understandable, and I would probably do the same thing in her shoes.  However it was interesting to be on the opposite side.  As much as we wanted her to keep trying things to keep living, sometimes resisting the cancer meant separating herself from spending time with her loved ones and writing down her experiences.

There were times she did accept her cancer and let us be part of her world.  A few of my favorite were when she took us wig shopping with her and we all tried on ridiculous wigs and giggled at how silly we looked.  One time she got wigs for every member of our family and we all did a photo shoot together.  She let me come with her to get a hair cut when she knew her hair was about to fall out, and let me cry with her as she had to cut off the hair cut she had recently grown out.  She let me make her mashed up sweet potatoes to help her nausea during chemo–there was something sweet about getting to serve my mother who had always served me.  Another thing I loved was to hear her insights from the amazing things she was learning.  She read a stack of cancer books taller than she was.  She was overflowing with interesting perspectives on faith, healing, nutrition, health and so many other things.

Certainly learning how to deal with a terminal illness was a learning experience for all of us.   Perhaps the most difficult was when she wouldn’t tell us what was happening with her health.  I believe she did this to protect us–so that we would not feel the depth of worry and heartbreak she had to feel.  I love her for this.  However, ironically the more it was unspoken, the more anxiety I felt.  When I would call on a bad day, she usually wouldn’t answer the phone. It was often several days of silence until she’d come to a better place and then she’d tell me how low she was and how much better she was now.  In the interum I worried, and wondered what was happening. I hated not being able to love her and listen to her when she felt most broken. She seemed to only be able to be broken in hindsight—it was too vulnerable to be broken in the moment.  Having never been through this but having watched her, I can imagine there were days she simply couldn’t talk.  She felt too sick or was too emotionally low to share.  This was a new and terrifying journey.  She was doing the best she could and the best she knew how.   Still, I wonder how it could have been sometimes if I could have accompanied her more on the difficult paths of her journey–particularly in the earlier phases of her cancer.

Breaking

She did break.  Not all at once, but slowly.   

The summer before she passed away, she had a paradigm shift.  She had asked a fellow cancer survivor for her book list on cancer cures at a yoga class one day.  Her friend refused; she lovingly put her arm around my mother and spoke words that echoed through her heart. “You are in a frantic frenzy. You need to stand still and let God.”

Accepting Brokenness

My mother did.  She had a profound realization of her anxiety or resistance against being broken.  With tremendous courage, she made a deliberate decision to stop “fixing” and stop “hiding.”  She stopped scanning the internet for solutions. She stopped following every undulation of her blood tests. She accepted that she was sick but decided to stop panicking about healing and instead feel peace in the time she had left. She did do a few things to keep up her health, but it did not consume her.  As she relaxed and accepted her “brokenness,” she began to feel tremendous personal peace. She knew Christ was the ultimate healer.

Peace began to permeate our family as well.  Her own peace was contagious.  Knowing she was at peace, allowed me and my siblings to relax and connect with her in a new and deeper way. When we visited she cleared the calendar and chatted, laughed, shared, and sat.   She had tea parties with my daughters in the backyard, she ate more chocolate, and we laughed while we watched “I Love Lucy” re-runs together.  She called all of her children more often and took all of us and her grandchildren on a family history tour of St. George, UT that summer. She wove into our stories our grandparents’ stories. She even compiled all our family recipes for each of us–a way of acknowledging she may not be here to give them to us in the future.  These actions were so different than a year or two before. These are some of my most cherished memories of her.  After this paradigm shift, she seemed willing to share more of her difficult times as well. This allowed us to be part of her journey.  Though it was difficult sometimes to hear of her struggles, there was much less anxiety and so much love as we got to accompany her.

Just a few months later, the cancer returned and spread throughout her body.  This time she surrendered; she knew she was broken. This time it was not “fixable.”  But interestingly she continued to feel hope. It was not hope in a new protocol, a new diet, or vitamin.  It was a deeper hope—a hope in Christ. As she deliberately chose to set aside the anxiety and stop resisting, God was able to heal her spirit.   I distinctly remember a phone conversation we had in which I asked her if she thought it was her time to die.  She said she thought it may be.  She told me that while she wanted to stay and be part of my life and each of my sibling’s lives, she felt at peace that it was her time and that she was at peace with God.

Peace

I was living in China at the time, and I received an emergency call one Saturday morning that she may only have a few days to live.  I frantically boarded a plane and sobbed all the way to Colorado hoping to be able to hug her one last time and tell her I loved her.  I was privileged to get to hold her hand and be with her the last few days before she passed away.  She was in tremendous pain.    She didn’t try to resist it–she accepted it.  It was almost as if she had to labor to get out of this world, just as mother’s labor to bring children into the world.

One day my Aunt Nanny and I laid by her and asked her how she was feeling.  Her response was, “I am feeling great peace.” In her willingness to let her body break, God could finally heal her heart and give her true hope.   Her acceptance gave us all the peace and courage we would need to deal with her passing.

When she did finally pass away, we all knelt around her bed and watched her as her breathing slowed and finally stopped.  It was a sacred and beautiful experience largely because she had accepted her own brokenness.  Having her gone, meant that I felt “broken”.  For a long time I felt that it defined me in some ways, to have lost my mother.  I have had to learn how to be “broken” and beautiful in my own way.  See Hope is The Thing: Getting Through Grief.  After all, God loves broken things.  It is what allows him to heal us.

Broken and Beautiful

Brokenness isn’t something to fear, we are all broken in some way.  We have broken hearts, broken dreams, broken bodies, these are the raw material of hope. When we resist our brokenness…try to hide it, fight against it, and try to prove we are not broken–it gives our brokenness power over us.  God loves broken things. As we surrender our brokenness to him and accept our brokenness ourselves, He gives us hope and peace through his grace. He mends us. Sometimes the mending looks different than we expected. But it is always more beautiful than we anticipated.  Our brokenness is a gift.

I think I will keep my cracked Talavera plate.  It reminds me that brokenness is beautiful—it’s what spurs us to change and grow.  It is what allows God to heal us. The new wholeness is stronger and more powerful than it was in the first place, because now there is a story of pain and picking up the pieces and creating something new…something even stronger and even more beautiful.

Finding beauty in brokenness

When have you felt broken?

What if you owned your brokenness instead of resisting it?  Have you allowed others to see it?  Have you asked others for help? If you could rebuild, what would you do?

I love this new song by Calee Reed called “Broken and Beautiful.”   It expresses a similar idea.

Make Friends With Stress: How Our Beliefs About Stress Affect Us

Most people belief stress is a villain.  After all, it can increase your risk of a heart attack, it can decrease your effectiveness in a meeting or difficult conversation, and it can reduce our enjoyment of things.  However, new research suggests that it is not stress it’s self that is the villain, but how we think about stress that causes the problem.  In fact, in many cases stress could actually be beneficial.

Our Biological Stress Response

A few weeks ago, I had to teach a group of about 50 women.  Normally I really enjoy teaching, but it had been a busy week, and I had struggled with how to present the material.   As the time got closer, my heart began to pound, sweat collected on my palms and forehead, and my mind started racing. If felt stressed!

Biologically a lot happens to the body when we feel stress.  The brain (the hypothalamus) sounds the alarm system! It says, “Help, there’s emotional danger—gather the troops!” The body releases the hormones of cortisol, adrenaline and oxytocin.  When cortisol increases the blood glucose levels it stops non-essential emergency processes like digestion, growth, and the immune response. Adrenaline is also released; it increases the heart rate, blood pressure and energy.  Our bodies are incredible the way they are able to instantly gear up to meet a threat.

These responses won’t hurt us if they only occur occasionally, but if they are felt ongoing they create a host of problems.  This is why for years health professionals have told us that stress is bad for us. However, recent research has put that theory into question.

Is Stress Really Bad For Us?

Kelly McGonigal, a Stanford Professor and Health Psychologist, reveals some fascinating new research about stress in recent study that tracked over 30,000 Americans for 8 years.  The study tracked the amount of stress they had, their belief about stress and how many of them died. For people who had a lot of stress, the study showed that there was a 43% increased risk of dying. Think about it…if you’re stressed, your risk goes up by almost half!  BUT that was only true for people who believed that stress was bad for their health. Those who didn’t believe stress was harmful for their health had no higher risk of dying!

What You Believe About Stress Matters

So, put simply you decrease your risk of death from stress by 43% just by changing your thought about stress.  Did you catch that? That is powerful. You can reduce your body’s risk of dying from stress by changing a sentence in your brain! Wow.

In her book “The Upside of Stress,” Kelly McGonigal explains why this change in our perception about stress can be so powerful.  One of the hormones released during stress is called Oxytocin. This hormone has several stress reducing properties. First it reduces cortisol–which we mentioned earlier stops digestion, immune response and growth.  Oxytocin also relaxes your blood vessels which lowers your blood pressure and it can decrease physical pain due to it’s anti-inflammatory properties.

Isn’t it incredible how the body compensates for its own self-causing damage?  When people believe that stress is NOT harmful, more oxytocin is released. 

Benefits of Stress

In a study done at Harvard, study participants were taught several benefits of stress.  Then, the patients were purposely stressed while under observation. When patients thought about their stress positively, their heart still beat fast, but their blood vessels stayed open.   Kelly McGonigal explains that this biological profile looks like what our bodies do when they feel joy or courage. She says, “When you choose to view your stress response as helpful, you create the biology of courage.”

When we stress out about stress, it IS bad for our health.  However, when we choose to make friends with stress, it actually doesn’t harm us.  The best way to make friends with stress, is just by changing our thoughts about it.   

Stress Hard Wires Us For Connection

If you need more convincing, here’s one way McGonigal says stress can actually HELP us.   Again we can thank the hormone oxytocin. In addition to the other physical responses it creates, it also has emotional benefits.  Oxytocin increases your trust, empathy and your desire to connect with others. McGonigal states, “When you choose to connect with others under stress, you can create resilience.”   Connection is one of the most significant determinants of happiness. Stress actually gives us a biological nudge to connect.

Another study that tracked 1000 adults in the US, showed an increased 30% risk of death for each stressful event that occurred.  BUT it also showed that those who spent time serving friends, neighbors and people in their community had 0% increased chance of death from their stressful events.   Our biology is literally changed when we reach out under pressure.

Connecting During Stress

This week as I stood in front the group of women, I confessed that I was feeling really nervous.  Immediately I received kind looks of affirmation and smiles. Their smiles gave me the courage to calm my nerves enough to present the way I had hoped.

Stress is only harmful if we believe it is.  I love Kelly Gonigal’s summation of stress, “Stress gives us access to our hearts.  The compassionate heart finds joy and meaning in connecting with others.”

Make Friends With Stress

What are you stressed about right now?

  1. Remind yourself that stress is good.  It is your body’s way of gearing up to deal with something challenging.  Just by believing this, you will create biological courage to handle the situation with more grace and wisdom.  
  2. Use that courage to reach out and make a connection. Ask your neighbor how they’re doing. Give your husband a hug.  Smile at someone. You’ll do yourself and them a favor by creating more oxytocin.

Here’s a TED talk by Kelly McGonigal discussing this idea more in depth.  How to Make Stress Your Friend.

 

Define It: Find More Peace in Your Role as a Mom

Undefined expectations for ourselves and the roles we operate in always lead to disappointment. There is a simple solution for increasing success and satisfaction; defining exactly what it means to be a “good mom,” or a “good person,” or a good wife” etc. allows us to know what we’re shooting for.

When Dorthy set off along the yellow brick road in her sparkling red shoes and eyes wide with hope, she didn’t know much about Oz.  She just knew it was where she wanted to go because she had heard the Wizard of Oz could help.  When she arrived, it was disappointing to find he was just a man behind a curtain.  It’s easy to put up false Oz’s for ourselves without  even realizing it.

My False Oz

About 2 months after we moved into our new neighborhood in Taiwan, rumblings and mumblings started about Halloween.  We live in an old military neighborhood on a mountain overlooking the city of Taipei.  Because Halloween isn’t a “thing” in Asia—those who do know about it are curious.  Over the years our neighborhood has drawn crowds from all over the city.  Many are local Taiwanese who want an American cultural experience.

My neighbors told me, “Halloween is a BIG deal here.”  “No matter how much candy you have, “you’ll run out.”  “Everyone in the neighborhood decorates.  You should have seen what the people who lived in your house before you did!  Everyone really goes over the top.”

I was new and trying to fit in, so I started scheming and ordering on Amazon.  Our family decided to do a Wizard of Oz theme.  We all dressed up as different characters and we built a set with the Emerald City and Dorthy’s house with the legs of the wicked witch underneath.  My husband figured out how to broadcast the Wizard of Oz movies on the outside wall of the house.  It was pretty awesome.  I thought I had rocked the “Go Big!”

The day of Halloween arrived and I thought it was strange that none of the neighbors had many decorations up.  But, I figured they must be last minute people like I was.  Around 5 I started setting things up.  Still no neighbors setting up…eventually I saw a neighbor set out a table with a cloth and a pumpkin and I saw another neighbor hang an orange pennant banner that said happy Halloween.  One neighbor had a few skeletons sitting around, and another had hung out some lights, but nothing too big yet.

By the time the masses started coming around we were the only spectacle around.  The kids loved it and we had a ball, but I had to laugh at myself.  Apparently my idea of “a BIG deal” was slightly different than theirs!

Definitions Prevent Needless Discouragement

Definitions are so crucial.  I could have saved myself a lot of headache (and money) if I would have simply asked a few more questions to define exactly what “BIG deal” meant to most people.  Apparently to them it meant dressing up as an adult and sitting outside with several bags of candy and a cute Halloween tablecloth.

I find that defining things—even if it’s just for myself can reduce tons of headache and extra work.  Steven Covey says, “Disappointment is the gap between expectation and reality.”  If our expectation isn’t even realistic, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment.

How to Define Your Roles

One area that seems to have a big expectation-reality gap is our roles as mothers.   I know it is for me at, at times.  I think most of us have amorphous sort of ideas about these pieced together from what we saw our mothers do, what we think others are doing or things we’ve read in parenting books.  My old definition of a good mom was a conglomerate of the compassion of Mother Theresa, the influence of Oprah, a home like Martha Stewart and hair like Jennifer Anniston.  I often measured my success by how my children acted and performed.  It’s no wonder I often felt like I was falling short.  My expectations were completely  unrealistic!

Be Realistic

If we take time to actually DEFINE what a reasonable mother would do—it gives us a more attainable goal and cuts out the disappointment gap between expectation and reality. There are many ways to do this.  One is to look around and find someone who has accomplished what you want to do or be as a mother.  Ask them how they define success and how they got there.  Another way to be more realistic about role definitions is to take your big vision goal and break it into smaller step-ladder goals.  Make sure the first step is something you know you can do!  Define success as the first goal, then move to the second one when you are consistent at being or doing the first.  Success helps build momentum a lot faster than failure.

Make Sure Your Definition of Success Doesn’t Depend on Others’ Behavior

In addition to unrealistic ideals, sometimes we set ourselves up for disappointment by including things in our definitions that we can’t control.  For example, we might include the choices our children make, or we might include the way our children treat us as part of our measurement tool for being a good mother.   What our children do cannot be an accurate measure of success, because it is something we cannot control.   (Clearly we may want to change what we’re doing if our children aren’t responding the way we hoped, but it’s important to consider children may not respond no matter what we do.)  Our definitions of success must include only things that WE can control.

Be Specific

One of the great creators of discouragement is generalities.  Words like “always,” “never,” and “everybody.”  While we know intellectually that no one is perfect, we often expect it of ourselves.  We assume that others are able to someone achieve perfection.  Our subconscious definitions of success often include things like “never yell,” and “always take time to listen,”  “everybody else takes their kids on amazing vacations during the summer,”  “always make a healthy dinner.”  While these are excellent ideas to strive for they make it hard to live up to success.  Getting specific and thinking through what we actually can and should do can help. “I will try to make a healthy home cooked dinner 2 times a week.”  Or “When I want to yell, I’m going to snap the rubber band on my wrist.”

Define success in a very specific way.  Here’s my new definition of a “good mom:

Love my children.  Teach them things I feel are important.  Model being a happy and healthy woman most of the time.

The Emerald City wasn’t all that Dorthy had dreamed it up to be; it was something she had built up in her mind as THE ultimate destination and the solution to all problems.  When she actually saw the man behind the curtain it was a bit disappointing, but it turned out it was even better!    Define what you expect of yourself.  Make sure it’s realistic, specific and only YOU control it.

Define it

What is your current definition of a good mom?

Get a piece of paper and define what it means to be a “good mom”  Is your definition realistic, specific?  Are you completely in control of the outcome or are others involved?

This works well for other roles too–define what it means to be  a “good wife” a “good employee” a “good person” a “good daughter-in-law.” etc.

Happy Hour: How To Feel Happier in the Midst of Overwhelm

One of the emotions I find myself avoiding most is overwhelm.  When the demand for our time or energy or money is greater than our capacity we feel overwhelmed.  I used to think this was how every mom felt most of the day–and especially at dinner time. Then I learned some amazing tools that helped me feel calmer and happier in the midst of overwhelm.

Happy Hour

It was “happy hour” at our house, 5:00 pm.  It was a far cry from the happy hour you might be imagining of colleagues gathering for a relaxing time after work.  My baby had a death grip on my leg and was whining “hold you!” while I tried to sauté garlic.  “Ugh, I should have cooked dinner this morning so it wouldn’t be so crazy tonight” I thought as I tripped over some magnetic letters strewn in front of the fridge.  “The house is trashed, my kids never clean-up” I mumbled as I took a deep breath, picked up my baby.  My older daughter looked over from the table and asked if I could help her with her math homework.  I left my cutting board full of veggies and turned off my half-sautéed garlic in the pan.  I sat down thinking, “I’ve got to try to be patient or she’ll have a melt down.”
We had only made it through a couple of problems when the baby pulled the table cloth and spilled the cup of water.  “I hate this time of day.  I don’t know if I can handle one more thing!” I thought as I stood up to get a paper towel.  Comic relief arrived just in time—a pillow case monster just the size of my middle daughter came barreling down the hallway bumping walls and people to be as scary as possible!  I hardly had time to smile before she knocked right into the chair and cut her toe.  Of course, tears and wails followed—and not from the monster.  I set the baby down to get a band aid.  I felt guilty as I thought.  “I know I should be more compassionate but hello, what did you think would happen when you walk around with a pillow case on your head!”

The baby started whining again, my older daughter reminded me she still needed help with math, and there was still the fountain of band aid tears…my overwhelm exploded.  “Everybody just calm down!  I’m just one person, I can’t help everyone at the same time.”  I yelled.    Everyone stopped.  Their eyes were big and then my shame attack hit.

The Reason We Feel Negative Emotion

For many years, this was a familiar scenario for our family—and not just at dinner time.  Overwhelm and irritation were my constant companions.  And of course, discouragement was a close cousin.  I didn’t know there was any other option; I thought everyone felt overwhelmed in demanding situations.  My feelings just seemed like the natural result of the things going on around me.  I felt exhausted and guilty a lot of the time and so frustrated I couldn’t seem to be the mom and person I wanted to be!

In the last few years, I’ve learned something very powerful.  It has changed everything.

Our thoughts create our emotions.  I can choose my thoughts.

This may seem like a simple concept, but it’s been around a long time.  Two thousand years ago Epictedus the Greek philosopher taught, “Humans are disturbed not by things but by the view they take of them.”  The Buddha taught a similar truth.  “Suffering comes from thoughts not what actually happens.”  The bible teaches us, “As a man thinketh, so is he.”

Three of the greatest teachers on earth taught this same principle.  This truth means that we have the remote control to our own feelings. We can choose what we want to feel and create it by how we choose to think.  We aren’t dependent on anything outside of us.

How to Feel Better

Let’s circle back to vignette of “happy hour” at my house as a case study about how this can help us:

  1. Notice your thoughts
    Figure out what you are thinking in a given situation.  Here’s my thought reel during this episode:
  • “Ugh, I should have cooked dinner this morning so it wouldn’t be so crazy tonight”  (Guilt)
  • “The house is trashed, my kids never clean up” (Irritation)
  • “I’ve got to try to be calm and patient during homework or my daughter will melt down.” (Overwhelm)
  • “I hate this time of day.  I don’t know if I can handle one more thing!” (Overwhelm)
  • “I know I should be more patient, but hello, what did you think would happen when you walk around with a pillow case on!”  (Guilt, Irritation)
  1. Notice your feelings  (See parenthesis above)
    Each thought we think creates a feeling.  It is this feeling that drives our actions.  So, it’s crucial to be aware of our thoughts and the feelings they create.
  2. Decide how you WANT to feel.
    We are in charge of how we feel.  So if we want to feel differently, the first step is to deliberately decide what I did want to feel at dinner time.  Clearly these thoughts weren’t serving me!  I decided what I wanted to feel was peaceful and loving and confident at this time of day.
  1. Determine a healthier thought that will create that feeling
    Knowing that events and demands would stay similar most nights (though specifics would change of course), I brainstormed thoughts that were true, but would help me feel better in the same situation.  Here are some thoughts I’ve tried and afterward you’ll see the result of the emotions they created.
  • “Whew!  There’s a lot going on, I got this.”  (Empowered)
  • I’ll do what I can, and that will be enough.” (Peaceful)
  • One of my favorites is, “This would make a hilarious email!”  (Humor)
  • A good default one for me is, “I’m so lucky to have 4 beautiful daughters”  (Grateful)
  • “I love that they are not vegging out in front of a video game or Netflix right now!  They are confidant enough to express themselves.  (Gratitude and Admiration)
  • Sometimes I compare it to a thought of a much more difficult situation.  What if I had to grow all my own food, and harvest it from scratch and sew all my kids clothes?  I’ve got it good.
  1. Write down the new thought somewhere you will see it and redirect your brain to those thoughts where the situation arises.
    Be Patient.  It can take up to 100 times of consciously re-directing your mind to a thought in order to re-create the default pathway to that thought.

Truly Happy Hour

This is powerful stuff.   If you would have told me a few years ago that 5 pm-6 pm could actually be one of the happiest hours of the day, I would not have believed it.  The practice of changing my thoughts about this time of day has changed “happy hour” into an actual “happy hour!”  It’s not rainbows and unicorns every night of course, but it’s certainly a lot more smooth.   When I supervise my brain and deliberately substitute these types of thoughts for the other ones, I feel peaceful, empowered and loving!  And, I don’t have to yell to get things done…which means I don’t feel guilty either.

We have the ability to choose our own feelings by deliberately choosing our thoughts.   In other words, happiness is a skill!  We don’t have to wait for anything around us to change in order to feel different.

Feel Happier

What’s a time you feel overwhelmed?

Stop and notice what thoughts you are having during this time. What feelings do they create?  Replace those thoughts with thoughts that create a more helpful feeling.