Soft Chewy Center

Me at three

  When I was four I asked my mom’s boyfriend what he thought
  about death.  I guess I scared off a few of those guys, because Mom
  didn’t remarry until I was 11! Good thing because I loved my
  stepdad and he could handle the questions. Someone dear to me is
  facing the cancer journey and death is on my mind again. The
  thing about remembering my impermanence is that it keeps me in
  touch with my soft chewy center. We have a tendency to grow hard
  shells of protection, which may serve to get us through the day,
  especially in a culture that does not encourage us to express our
  deeper emotions.  I happen to be lucky, because as a counselor I get
  to be in touch with my soft chewy center all day long. In the heart space connection is welcome. Granted, it’s not always comfortable. Our tendency is to want to fix it - make the feeling or behavior go away. We ask (ourselves and others): “Why did you do that? Why can't I get this right?” But it’s not the “why’s” that help us, but the “what’s.”

“What’s going on right now?” “What are you feeling?” “Tell me what this brings up for you?”

Hwy 93

Part of the reason people avoid emotion is because the first thing that comes up is anger. You’ll see this on the road. There is a sense that if we let our feelings out, we will lose control, or things won't get accomplished. I hear my inner critic that I call Nasty: “Buck up. Pull it together. You should be so much farther along by now. There’s no time for contemplation. It’s time to ACT.” Nothing is really wrong with these statements, but the trouble is that when we power past deeper emotions that hold us trapped and stuck – it’s like we’re a fly pinned to a board at the thorax and flapping our wings.

The fields of Niwot

  Underneath the anger is a frightened
  child asking to be given voice, to be acknowledged in a world that is quick
  to give an answer and shut us down. The sad and scared child gets fed up
  and ends up stuck in a perpetual road rage tantrum. When the child is seen
  and heard and healed, she can focus and charge ahead, accomplishing
  goals in half the time because she is not hauling around a heavy board.

  Asking our emotions to stay put in the corner is like asking a two year old
  to sit still in a toy store; they’re bound to act out – whether it comes out as
  angry driving or body pain. It’s a lot easier to access these feelings in the
  presence of a loving witness – a counselor or coach trained in techniques
  that will help you not only feel, but also to calm down and heal. The more
  issues from the past clear out, the more resourced your body feels, which allows blood flow to the thinking brain and  decreases explosive outbursts.

A soft chewy center invites profound joy and deep connection with others.

I am Not My Body

How many people look in the mirror and think the reflected image is who they are? Do we ever have a perception of ourselves that is true? It is wonderfully ironic that getting in touch with the body is what enables us to see that we are not our bodies. We are so much more. In the practice of grounding and mindfulness, we quiet the mind and feel the spirit that we are. In that space we viscerally understand our connection to every other spirit on the planet.

The physical experience can be delicious whether at a favorite restaurant, playing with a beloved or zipping down a slide at Water World, but it does not define us. Our bodies are what cause us to appear separate from others. They are our containers, our temples, and yet, we are all joined by a higher purpose that is born of Love. In the stillness we experience the Love that is much bigger than anything we have felt with another person. It is not special or unique to one, but it is the great unifier of all. When author of A Course in Miracles says: “I am not a body. I am free” (Foundation of Inner Peace, 1977) she refers to the freedom we can receive from a shifted perception.

Let me back up. When our minds are in control, they organize, plan, judge, divide like rats. Don’t get me wrong – I appreciate rodents, but by only looking down at the rodent, we miss the elephant. Our

Collective Heartbreak - Is Happy Real?

photo by author

Clients occasionally arrive equipped for the journey – with appropriate gear for the long trek – aware that they are not going to get to the pinnacle or goal in a day. However, some sit on the couch with doe-eyes feeling as though they have been traveling on the rocky trail forever without an end in sight. They’ve run out of supplies. They may hope that I have a technique, a pill – something that will just make the pain go away.

In moments like those I wish I were a magician. A few weeks ago, I threw down my notebook and exclaimed: “Being a counselor sucks sometimes!” (I think my client and I were both a little surprised, but she knew I did it because I felt for her. I wanted more than anything to diminish her pain.) The only consolation I can offer clients is that things usually get better if they want it, stick with it and work at it. Change can be scary even when it is positive.

Some days a client might cover 10 miles on the trail and the next day it may start snowing and she may only travel a mile before setting up camp, but inevitably, she will arrive at her destination... or a destination. So we can’t always see the ground we’ve covered or how we’ve changed, but a year out or two we look back and feel like a different person.

People are occasionally suspicious of happiness, assuming that the happy person is faking it or just born

You Be the Judge

"Sunset Orchid" by Alixandra Mullins

My favorite high school teacher, Mr. Tom Barton, once said: “You are prejudiced if you are prejudiced of prejudice.” I recall thinking: of course it’s not right to be prejudiced, and if we don’t have any sense of judgment we’d all be lost. Still, I trusted him, and so I never forgot much of what he taught me. Last week at a network meeting, as I judged a stranger for his judgment, I finally understood what the good Teach was talking about. As this man went on and on becoming more superior by the second I felt my ire rising. Had my filters been down I probably would have started hacking like my cat when he has a hairball caught in his throat or I may have poked myself in the eye repeatedly. But since neither were socially appropriate I did some self talk.

I felt behind what the other person was expressing. I took my perspective to the bigger picture. Fueling his judgment was the longing to connect, an illusion of separation from the other, and a deep sadness related to being misunderstood. These are universal feelings we all wrestle with at one time or another. As I stepped back my mind, my heart stepped forward and I relaxed. I was able to hear his frustration, and the judgment didn’t seem as important.

Even though the Buddha is often mistakenly credited with this quote, it actually appears in a

Embracing Conscience and Eschewing Nasty

Fritz Perls

   It’s surprising how many people do not distinguish an inner critic from
   their spirit voice or soul aspect. I remember asking a client to participate in
   Fritz Perls’ “empty chair exercise.” This is a Gestalt technique in which
   the client engages with an aspect of themselves, an emotion or another
   imagined person. The client takes turns to play both herself and the other
   aspect. In this case I asked my client to engage with her inner critic,
   playing the critic first. She sat up straight in the chair positioned across
   from the couch where she had been sitting and chided: “You are going
   nowhere! You’re a loser, and you’re wasting your time.” After the critic
   lambasted her for a while, I asked her to move back to the couch and
   respond to the nasty critic. I was floored when she said, “You’re right.”
   Before I could interject in her defense, she continued: “But I’m making a huge effort to makes strides and I’ve come a long way.” Engaging in this manner helps clients to hear just how hard it is to rise above an inner voice that is pulling the rug at every step. They begin to feel how they are walking around as their own worst enemies.

It’s pretty tough to hear the voice of the spirit or soul self with another part of the self firing condemning insults. How harshly we judge ourselves sometimes is in direct correlation to how egregiously we judge others. Referring to a friend of hers, a client said to me: “Come on. You have to admit anyone who treats a goat like a pet is ridiculous. It's a farm animal. It's meant to be milked, not pampered.” As I glanced at the goat hairs poking from my jacket hanging on the back of a chair, I purred: “Tell me about what that means to you.” Clients sometimes defend the inner critic, assuring me that without that voice they would get nothing done. They would become lazy, good for nothings. They would repeat their mistakes and never rise to their potential.

I’m not recommending giving up our consciences for Lent, becoming hussies and addicted to gambling.

Kissing The Bull

My client hesitated at the door before leaving. “So, this is feeling stuff is supposed to make me feel better?” she asked.

I put a hand on her shoulder and sighed. “Yes. It will.”

Image: CarleMuseum.org

The trials of meeting our inner monsters: I couldn’t bear to tell her that it would be like riding a rank bull and getting thrown a few times. Or staying on only to have your face meet the bull's head, termed "kissing the bull." I wanted to tell her it would hurt like Hell, but it would be worth it. Down the road her heart would expand, and she would feel more keenly connected to the whole human race. She would forgive more quickly, love more deeply and experience radiant joy. (Disclaimer: I don't know if this is true for bull riders.)

Counseling is an art with diverging theories and myriad techniques. (If only people knew!) And, good news, it works! (At least, most of the time). A lot of what goes on cannot be measured. The aspects that can be measured are occasionally not what make counseling effective, but numbers please the funders and universities.

A universal understanding in the field is that after developing a trusting bond, we ask a client to acknowledge and feel his/her feelings, which ultimately helps the client process them. By feeling and processing, emotions shift and release hold of us. But if someone is accustomed to thinking their way through life, they will be in for a rough ride initially. Often clients assume that in counseling we are going to spread out their life on a table, like puzzle pieces, hold our chins and analyze it. When they are asked to be vulnerable and stay with their heart, it is not easy. And, if I ask my clients to stay with their hearts, I have to do it too. I have to walk the ego’s fire, trusting that my spirit will overrule.

Part of the trouble is, in terms of feelings, we are a constipated culture. We’ll do almost anything to talk ourselves out of them. Here’s what I know about feelings: If you ignore them, they will show up at

Too close for comfort. Too sick to love.

Dedicated to Newton and Sandy Hook

A tragedy like that which occurred on Friday 12/14/12 in Connecticut where 20 children and 7 adults died rivets a nation in its tracks. No one is left untouched or unscathed. Our hearts are broken as we scan the children's photos. We are left to wonder: "Why?!" I grew up spending every other Christmas with Uncle Steve and Aunt Helen (and brood) in Sandy Hook, CT. Before contemplating what happened from a mostly Jungian perspective, I will share that the only postcard on my refrigerator on 9/11/2001 was a picture of the Towers with a blurred seagull in the foreground. I was moving to a new home and had removed everything else from the refrigerator door. My sister had been visiting New York and inside the Towers the week before the living nightmare. I was affected by Colorado incidents as well. When I was living in Florida and anticipating a move to Colorado, my favorite neighborhood was Ken Caryl. Had there been a single home for sale in there, our kids would have attended Columbine. And JonBenet Ramsey was my oldest daughter's age and when we arrived in Boulder, Bella made friends who had known the dear child. Finally Liz was at the midnight Batman premier in Boulder while only 45 minutes away in Aurora people were being murdered at the same event. Too close for comfort.


Ironically I begin my Christmas letter (that I wrote weeks ago) saying that this holiday I am sensing a festive spirit and connectedness – a reaching out – combined with an Angst, a feeling that at any minute everything could come crashing down. And, for some this week, it did. Here’s what I think: We all know that joy will not be found in a perfume, in a new car, a raise, a vacation, a ring, your partner or new shoes. But, on the other hand, how do we connect more deeply with everyone around us? Do we see the cashier at Safeway as sacred? Do we see the person who just cut us off as sacred? (Okay, okay, I use that one repeatedly, because that is a particular challenge for me having grown up in LA where driving is a constant race to win).

Reverend Carlton Pearson

It’s our exclusionary society that is destroying us (and I know I'm judging judgement so I will work on that). It’s why I chose not to join any formally organized college groups and why I left organized religion. Just by its very nature a group with specific rules requires there to be outsiders and insiders. There’s a feeling of “us” vs. “them.” It is tribal thinking and other than Reverend Carlton Pearson (featured this week on This American Life) most groups choose individuals exactly like themselves to be in the group. Reverend Pearson lost his congregation because he realized it's HUMANS who create Hell. He advocates a "doctrine of inclusion." On the same token, I don’t judge people who choose to be a part of a club or church, because they are deriving community and support and often coming together to do a lot of good. What I’m proposing is that there might be no rules to love and loving. If a religious individual comes to my door with the intent to convert me, their judgment is implied. If I can't join a group because I'm white (haha), there is judgment. If a religious person comes to my door asking what kind of support do I need and they are offering it without intent to convert, than that is the love and connection that will save.

How can we love our neighbors, the strangers with whom we engage, our family members more fully? I don’t know the answer, but I do know that these horrific acts are not only serious mental illness manifest (and the mentally ill do not receive enough funding since the Reagan administration) but also an expression of the darkest part of each of us. It is a reflection of the way we turn our head and look the other way; of the way we attach strings and withhold love. We exclude, we lie, we think it’s someone else’s problem. They are the sick ones. Not me. 

When I was mentally ill (at least I have the illusion I am well now ;), I was too absorbed in my inability to crawl out of a hole to look around me, to care what was going on, to help others. There are so many who need our help, but we must begin at home. Killers will always find weapons (although we could make them far less available!), but by healing the projection of our hidden darkness – by looking within and taking responsibility for any anger, any pettiness, any place we are too sick to love – we will be a part of a world that is changing for the better.

Dr. John Sarno: A Medical Pioneer

Dr. John Sarno

Last month an article in Forbes by Edward Siedle, “How America’s Best Pain Doctor Took on the Medical Community – and Won” (see link below) featured my favorite chronic pain mind/body specialist, Dr. John Sarno. Sarno’s innovative treatment could only have been accepted because he put a distinguished career on the line. He possessed the expertise to back up his claims. Essentially, he was disgusted by the way the medical community took advantage of chronic pain clients, or clients with the mysterious fibromyalgia. He asserted that the way peers treated pain was “gross malpractice, generally practiced.” 

It’s not that his theory required clients to spend years in therapy. To the contrary, Siedle explains: “Sarno’s brilliant insight was that by making the conscious mind of the patient aware that his unconscious was creating the pain to serve as a powerful distraction from deeply troubling, emotionally painful issues, the patient’s pain would cease to be an effective distraction and would eventually go away.” He wouldn’t be so popular if his revolutionary approach didn’t work so effectively on people who had been around the globe (or at least their city) seeking answers to their hellish existence.

Image: ABC News

The way I describe it, based on my own experience, is like... a Twinkie (I heard Hostess is going out of business – how is that possible?). Some of us use sadness to shield an angry core, and some of us do the opposite: we become angry more easily to shield a vulnerable and grief-stricken core. If you are willing to get to the cream in the Twinkie and to acknowledge the feelings there, so much gets freed up. It’s like getting your life back - a little messier, but better for it.  However, it’s painful to feel those deeper feelings and we spend a lifetime finding ways to distract and defend against them, as though we’ll die if we go there. What we discover is that we don’t die. We learn to do the Buddhist thing and “sit with the feelings,” and, almost magically, we discover that they release. Feelings don’t fester unless they are repressed or suppressed. Feelings WANT to process out of us. Learning to feel to the depth of our being is a practice, and, as we get good at it, feelings pass through more fluidly.

Go to the place you are afraid to go. Some people are truly suffering with an undiagnosed ailment, but I knew of a woman in wheelchair for months with severe back pain who was out within a week after seeing Dr. Sarno. Another wise soul who offers tools to manage feelings is Dr. Laurel Mellin. I recommend her books: The Pathway: Follow the Road to Health and Happiness or The Solution.

People are too busy to feel, and the body eventually slows them down. Instead of running from doctor to doctor and quitting all of the activity you love to do (which, ironically, will only make the pain worse because you will resent it), what if you were told that all you had to do was to feel? Could you do it?

Image: Betty Matteson Rhodes

While I am deeply grateful to Western medicine for the advances in treating serious illnesses, and I believe that most doctors make their patients’ well being and health top priority, sometimes old ideas are perpetuated. Like teachers, doctors are often expected to do too much in too little time. But some just don't want to lose money or take the time and effort to change tracks. Siedle writes: “The good news: Sarno had developed an alternative approach to treating pain that was immensely more successful (and cheaper) than the radical, costly conventional procedures of the day. The bad news: doctors whom he relied upon for referrals enjoyed the revenues related to conventional treatments they administered and would rarely send their patients to him.” Even well meaning alternative practitioners want to find an answer, and unless they incorporate a psycho-emotional component into their work, they are likely to mistakenly attribute the ailments to physical or structural abnormalities.

Fortunately, Dr. Sarno has succeeded in spite of resistance. And, the people whom he has healed celebrate his name and theories. One day he will receive the credit that is due him.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsiedle/2012/11/28/how-americas-best-pain-doctor-took-on-the-medical-establishment-and-won/