What Lies Beneath

Whenever I start working with a new client, our sessions begin with the problem that initially brought them to see me—a suffocating job or relationship problems that perpetually get worse. 

Sometimes it’s a catastrophe, but most often I’m presented with one or both of these problems. And a lot of the time our sessions in the beginning will hover over the surface of these issues. 

This is when emotional safety is slowly established between us.

Fast forward weeks or even months into our work, and the client feels safe enough to start exploring their internal world. Then, all of a sudden the safety expands, and the client brings in new material…

Oh yeah, my wife and I haven’t had sex for a couple of years. I haven’t slept well most of my adult life. Or, I don’t really have any friends that know the real me. 

This is when the work begins.

The suffocating job is where we start. It might be your boss that you find intolerable and a place where you feel you have no agency. Or a career path that doesn’t align with the internal knowing that you need to be doing something else. 

Or a total existential dread.

We start to pull the thread for you to better understand how you got to where you are at that very moment, so you can move forward in a more intentional way.

The problem is that by the time someone comes to me they have often been unknowingly suffering for many years. 

Somewhere along the way, we held on to the belief that our internal struggles are not that important. And that these internal conflicts we carry are something to be fixed rather than understood. Or pushed away for a later time. 

So we keep our pain in a box and set it aside.

Or we attempt a short-term fix. We get a new job at a different company, with a significant pay increase. Find a new partner. Move cites. Get another tattoo. 

Yet, sooner or later, the nameless dread creeps to the surface again. The discomfort or dis-ease presents itself and maybe we start to panic. 

But it doesn’t have to be this way. If we take notice and prioritize our mental health as much as our careers and physical health, we could save ourselves years of suffering or even a lifetime of pain.

So whether you hate your dead-end job that is sucking your soul, or you feel disconnected from yourself and/or your relationships, know that you are not alone. 

You can get support and start exploring your suffering at any time, and redirect your life in a more meaningful way.  

Asking The Deeper Questions

There is no greater waste in the world than the difference between who we are and who we could be. Ironically, this was my senior quote in my high school yearbook. 

And this idea has always stuck with me-on my own journey, and especially now as someone who is helping people grapple with and move toward their best selves.

My transition from the corporate world to becoming a therapist brought up so much for me around human potential and our need to expand toward our greatest selves in a world that often tries to keep us small and asleep. 

What complicates this even more is that we are wired for comfort and safety. 

As soon as we wake up in the morning, we have our inner critic to remind us that we have the option to hit snooze, sleep in, and stay comfortable. 

Hopefully, we also have another inner voice that whispers get up, show up, and make the choice that our greatest self would make. The wise voice that tells us that the universe needs us to show up-that we need to move our body in a way that connects us to ourselves, do meaningful work, develop skills, tend to our family, and protect our time.

This is the voice that expands us toward the greatest version of ourselves.

But what happens when we have obstacles in our way that require us to work within a system that benefits from keeping us small? Or we deal with people who require us to perform a version of ourselves that feels small, fake, or performative. 

This is when we have to quiet the external noise and start asking ourselves the deeper question of whether or not the system or person is moving us toward expansion or contraction. 

Some questions we might ask ourselves…Do we like the person we are within this system? Do we feel connected to and seen by the people that surround us? 

Once we start asking these deeper questions, we can move toward a life that feels more meaningful and aligned with our values-those we inherit that resonate with us, and those we develop on our own.

We must face the painful truth…

About our experiences and how they’ve shaped the lies we’ve constructed in our heads

About our world, the people around us and how we live

About our mundane lives that lack meaning

About our work that feels like endless suffering by making us sick

About our loveless lives surrounded by people that make us feel empty

About our unwillingness to be alone in silence

About our neurotic behaviors that keep us in an endless cycle of distraction and asleep

About the nameless dread we feel inside once the noise finally clears

About our willingness to do more and inability to doing less

About our underlying motivations and where they come from

About our endless pursuit of happiness that doesn’t ever come

About our inability to live in the present, while constantly reliving the past

About those painful experiences in the past that we unknowingly keep buried

About the horrible things we do to our bodies and the planet

About the long-term effects it has on ourselves and the world

Until we face these painful truths, we will not live the lives we deserve

 And the cost of an unexamined life is simply too high

The Reality Of Shame

We all have dark parts of our past or present. Those secrets we hide from ourselves and the world.

Our loveless marriage or traumatic childhood we’d rather forget. That one-night stand we never told anyone about.

Our soul-crushing job with that pretty title so eloquently masking a torturous reality of meaningless work and mind-numbing tasks that belittle our intelligence.

All of these experiences fill us with shame, leaving an imprint and dictating our life choices.

Shame creeps in without us even knowing. It keeps us in the same job and relationship too long. It causes our shoulders to curl and our heads to hang low.

We carry shame all of our lives and continue to make choices that validate its presence.

Shame terrifies us so much that we sit in silence and hide–hoping no one will discover our pain.

It’s the darkness that creeps in, killing our creativity and growth–keeping us feeling small.

Shame has the power to eat us alive because of our fear of being rejected or appearing flawed.

Shame feeds our fear of being seen and silences our deep desire to be seen.

But little do we know; our suffering is all the same–all of those things we’ve done or experienced, have happened to someone else.

Which is why we crave other people’s stories so much. Because it’s these stories that momentarily relieve us of our pain and distract us from our neurotic tendencies.

And those people whose judgment we fear­—they are too caught up in the misery of their own shame to pay attention to yours. 

So we must give the pain of our experience a voice and dethrone our shame.

And when we unpack and process it, we soon realize that shame is a story that we’ve constructed in our head.

But we can always rewrite our stories and be set free.

And finally, let the light in.

Band-Aids That Never Heal

Life is full of problems. And we humans love to solve them.

Quite frankly, we do it well. You could safely say that we are professional problem solvers trying to eliminate suffering at all costs.

Yet, little do we know that simultaneously we also create problems. In fact, most of them. Particularly the ugly murky ones that have everything to do with the reality we live in.

The truth is, most human problems are related to that of emotion. And these are the ones we don’t like to deal with because they involve the greatest amount of pain–the unresolved conflict that resides in our internal world.

Our earliest experiences become the stories we carry with us throughout our lives–as our ancestral demands become the fabric of our being. And while we know they’re there, we hide from these painful truths.

The trickiest part about our emotional wounds is that we become blind to them. Yet, slowly they seep into our lives and create madness all around us–effecting how we show up in the world.

Whenever pain rises to the surface, we avoid acknowledging it because the cost is too high–the threat of taboo too great.

So we live in denial, terrified of judgment–keeping ourselves locked in a prison as we continue to live our lives based on other people’s opinions.

To soothe our pain, we treat it the best way we know how–the band-aid approach.

We quickly replace our lover or job. We become slaves to our addictions–work more, eat more, drink more, spend more, chase love–in hopes that someone or something from the outside world will save us from ourselves.

But our gross attempt at hacking our emotional wounds fails and our problems perpetuate.

Completely numbing ourselves–we become hedonists, workaholics or robots.

We surrender. We settle. Our lives prove mundane, predictable and mediocre at best.

And yet still, we rationalize and tell ourselves that nothing is perfect­–and we accept our sad realities. We continue on in survivalist mode, remaining a victim.

We quiet the hopeful romantic inside, let our creative artist sleep–and hide our gifts from ourselves and the world.  

But we can only run for so long until our emotional problems turn our life upside down.

So we must ask ourselves…What if facing the pain of our darkest demons is actually the answer to redemption?

What if instead of seeking a quick-fix, we did the real work­ of resolving our painful emotional wounds? What if this was the path to ultimate freedom–to the everlasting peace that leads us to nirvana?

What if….