How Did NaNoWriMo Work for You?

by Heather Doyle Fraser

November was National Novel Writing Month. I hear people start to talk about this in late October, “November is National Novel Writing Month! I’m going to do it this year! I’m going to write my book in November!”

Let’s be clear about something from the outset, here. I think NaNoWriMo is awesome. I think it inspires people to think big and imagine a world where they are writing daily and that vision seems exciting and sexy, and also a little scary. And if you sign up for NaNoWriMo on their website — if you look around a little before November 1 — you will see that the good people who birthed this idea intend a few things:

1. Your planning of the novel needs to begin before November 1. In order to start tracking those words on November 1, you need to have created an outline and backstory for your characters BEFORE then. They have a timeline (and even that appears to be a little aggressive to me) that suggests you begin the process of outlining and character development in September.

2. You will write the first 50,000 words of your novel in November. That doesn’t mean you complete the writing of your book. That means you write the first draft of the first 50,000 words of your novel. This is a first draft of a portion of your novel — not a completed manuscript by the end of the month. (Average length of debut fiction novels is 75,000-90,000 words.) 

Let’s do the math on this. If you are writing the first 50,000 words of your novel in the month of November and you start on November 1, that gives you 30 days. This means you are writing about 1665-1670 words every single day of the month. No days off. No exceptions made for, “I’m feeling uninspired and really quite cranky today.” No exceptions for, “I had a client crisis at the office this week and had to put in a couple of really long days at work.” No exceptions for, “I got a terrible cold and didn’t sleep well for a week.” No exceptions for, “My child is sick and I needed to rearrange my entire schedule to take care of them.”

No exceptions.

Unless you decide to take one or two days off each week at the outset. Then you have shortened your writing time. Let’s imagine that you allow yourself to take 6 days off of writing. That means on your 24 writing days you need to write 2,084 words in each writing session. 

More pressure. That’s awesome for setting the stage for creativity and inspiration!

Let’s assume you started ahead of November 1 and you do have an outline and you have created a little backstory on the character development front. Let’s also assume, though, that you didn’t spend as much time on these parts of the process as you would have liked so you are feeling a little uncertain. And, let’s also assume that this is a new endeavor for you so you have not cultivated a consistent writing practice that has become a habit for you. 

If you do not have a daily writing practice in place when you begin, your goal of writing 50,000 words of your novel in 30 days is going to be VERY difficult to achieve. This kind of writing requires practice, consistency, diligence, and a whole lot of self-compassion. Writing nearly 2000 words a day for 30 days takes high-level training! It requires you to set up your life to support your writing habit. 

What does this mean? 

Most people who want to write a book are not full-time writers. They have jobs, families, partners, and responsibilities that require their attention. So, they need to make space for writing like they make space for any truly important and value-based endeavor. They have to account for the time and plan for it, like you would plan to workout or exercise. 

For example, let’s pretend you decide you should write your 2000 words first thing in the morning before work. if you are writing before work in the morning, you would need to make sure that everything is set the night before -- you have to be able to get to bed at a consistent and reasonable time to get up at a presumably unreasonable time to devote yourself to the writing practice before the rest of your responsibilities take center stage (work, adulting, etc.).

The thing people forget when they declare their intention to write a book in a month is that you need to train in order to be able to write nearly 2000 words a day. In order to write this many words consistently per day, you need to have been working up to that number. Your very first writing sessions shouldn’t even have a word count expectation associated with them in my opinion. At the beginning, time alone is your goal. You may not be able to guarantee a number of words at the beginning but you can control how long you sit in front of your laptop.

Just like exercise, this writing journey is a hard one when you feel alone. Even though writing is a solitary endeavor, though, you don’t need to feel alone. And writing in the same space with someone, having compassionate support, and accountability partners all makes this difficult task of writing easier. Doable. And that’s where NaNoWriMo gets it right – all of these people all over the world are engaged in the same challenging activity.

I would like to set the stage though for a more compassionate approach. First off, whether you are writing a non-fiction book (my specialty) or a novel, you need to spend the time upfront on the WHY, the WHO you need to be to write it and WHO you are writing to, the WHAT (hello book plan!), the HOW (What do you need to clear from your schedule? What decisions do you need to make upfront?) and the WHEN. Then you need to get into training mode – consistency is key!

Daily writing practice (or nearly daily) is not only what will help you finish your book, it will also help you to cultivate a deeper relationship with yourself and your writing. It’s pure gold.

So, if you didn’t finish your book in November, no worries! You didn’t have all the information upfront. You weren’t ready. Let’s take it slow and commit to 20 minutes per day, shall we? And if that sounds like too much for day 1, let’s commit to 15 minutes. In a week, you’ll be able to up the time a little just like you up your reps in the gym. 

You can do this… If you want it. If you want to put in the time, day after day, over and over again. Let’s train together. Not for the sprint of one month, but for the long haul. Start now so when November 2022 comes around, you will be in the homestretch rather than behind before you even begin.

If you are looking for a safe place to practice, come join us at The Writing Practice. Learn more at https://mailchi.mp/cmcollab/the-writing-practice.

What Is It That I Am Feeling?

By Erica Sonnabend

Wow.  What a year it’s been.  

I feel like that statement is one we're all hearing now that we've marked a full year since a global pandemic came crashing into our lives, but it really is fitting.  

I certainly do not say these words lightly - quite the opposite, actually. The deep emotions behind that statement and what they represent are what strikes me the most when I hear that statement. There has never been a time in most of our lives that the whole world has experienced loss from the very same root cause.  

As the weeks of uncertainty turned into months, I witnessed a shift in the collective conversation in our society that gave me hope.  Initially, we were talking about the world shutting down, frightening case numbers, and lack of toilet paper, but then something else happened.  While we were still talking about those drastic changes in our daily lives, we also started talking about how those changes made us feel.  

Our conversations became a mix of both intellectual facts and the corresponding emotions that accompany them. Words such as mindfulness, awareness, wellbeing, compassion, and connection started popping up during nightly news reports, on social media, and in zoom calls all over the world.  We as humans were speaking our emotional truth like never before.  That truth was filled with all sorts of feelings - fear, sadness, longing, relief, gratitude, isolation, anger, desperation, love, etc.  People started discussing problems with sleeping, eating, working, feeling stuck, being disoriented, and connecting to joy as a result of the pandemic.   

Guess what all of those feelings are?  Yup...GRIEF.  Our usually “grief avoidant” society was experiencing loss in so many unprecedented ways that many of us started talking about our losses and our feelings instead of relying on the social norm of not really expressing our challenging emotions.  As someone who has discovered the many benefits of dealing with all of my emotions (those most often viewed as either positive or negative), this is such a welcome change.

By July of last year, I had many people (including news media) reaching out to my grief support practice to ask what grief actually is and how someone can tell if they are experiencing it.  To answer that question, I offered the definition of grief that completely changed my perspective on loss. 

"Grief is the conflicting feelings caused by the change in or the end of a familiar pattern of behavior."    - John W. James 

Why is this definition so important?

Personally, I walked around thinking something emotionally was wrong with me after experiencing the death of my father, the end of my marriage, changes in my health, and challenges in my career. I believed that once my dad had been gone for a year, I was supposed to magically feel better, but I did not.  I struggled to cling to what others told me about “being better off” when my marriage ended.  And let us not forget that “everything happens for a reason” platitude. Those sentiments were offered out of love for me which I appreciate; however, I was still stuck and stuffing my feelings down.

The problem was that outside of the death losses I had experienced, I didn’t consider that the other changes in my life were also losses. Consequently, the conflicting feelings I experienced didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t understand why I continued to feel the way I did so I kept those feelings hidden.  I believed that loss was about death and that feelings of grief were reserved solely for that reason. 

Grief is certainly about death, but it is also about so much more.  It's about any change in your life that has deep emotional value to you. Only you can determine what those loss events in your life are and how you will integrate those losses into your future life. It is important that we realize that feelings of grief are not just limited to the date (or the year after) your loss occurred.  Loss and change can cause ripple effects throughout our lives in various ways.  Expressing the varied emotions that come up is absolutely essential.

As we moved through this past year, many of us came to realize that the definition of grief we'd been relating to for so long was too narrow.  So much that was familiar to us came to an abrupt end and the changes are too many to count. Recognizing that feelings of grief and loss are not limited to specific changes helps us to expand our conversations.  The figurative stop signs we used to encounter are replaced with open hearts and listening ears which leads us down a path toward healing.

There is much work ahead for us as we continue to battle this pandemic into year two. We will need to rely on each other and keep pushing to eradicate this public health crisis that has taken far too much.  The losses are many which means the need to connect to our emotional truth is greater than ever.  Let’s continue to shift our conversations about every aspect of our loss experiences by speaking our truth about how we feel when a “familiar pattern of behavior” changes or ends.  

Wow.  What a year indeed. 

Be well, friends.

Avoiding Burnout When the House Is on Fire

By Michelle Schroeder-Lowrey

A few weeks ago, we celebrated Halloween at our school. Halloween is a big holiday at our school - costume parade for our littles in front of myriad parents, middle and upper schoolers and faculty followed by laughter filled parties, treats and games organized by the parent community in each classroom. That is what we would do in a normal year. Of course, 2020 is anything but a normal year. 

I am a teacher of music, movement and drama. I love my job. In a normal year, I would be preparing my students for a rollicking, rambunctious rally for our winter program in December. Normally. Again, this year is anything but normal. This year I am teaching in a beekeeper style helmet with a portable amplifier/headset underneath it. It protects the kids from me and me from them. Not normal. And this year instead of singing uproariously with abandon,  my students hum or sing softly (mezzo-piano) because it is not safe to sing loudly inside together - even in masks.

This year? I am not loving my job - as much. I am grieving. I am grieving the traditional programs that won’t happen, teaching music without singing (imagine teaching math without the numbers) and the loss of my classroom to covid standards that say my space is too small to hold so many students throughout the day. Grief, stress and the looming possibility of another possible shutdown. 

What’s a music teacher to do? How do I not “burnout”? 

In her recent podcast, Unlocking Us, Brene Brown interviewed Emily and Amelia Nagoski, authors of Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. The stress cycle is what our bodies experience when our brain detects a threat and floods our body with chemicals designed to send us into what is commonly known as fight, flight or freeze. However, what we don’t always know is that fight/flight or freeze are just the beginning of the cycle. Without completing the cycle - giving our bodies the signal that we are safe and danger has passed - those chemicals stay in our bodies, degrading slowly over time, but not flushing out completely. When the next stress cycle happens, the neurochemicals pile on top of the slowly degrading ones we’ve held onto and over time that collection of stress chemicals becomes gastrointestinal issues like IBS, auto immune issues, headaches - you name it. How do we complete the cycle? How do we let our bodies and minds know that even in this time of continuous piling on of stressors we are “safe?”

The Nagoskis list 7 ways to complete the cycle. Some easier than others and a few that surprised me at first:

Physical activity - ultimately 30 minutes/6 days a week (we’ve all heard this one)

Breathing - box breathing or 4-7-8 breathing 

Social Connection - so, so difficult when you are social distancing, but not impossible

Laughter - real, deep laughter - even remembering a time when you laughed yourself to exhaustion

Affection - a 20 second hug, a 6 second kiss

A “big ol’ cry” - we all know what this means and how good it can feel

Creative Expression - creating/doing something through dance, song, art, acting

It’s a good list. It’s a short list. However -  It’s a list that at first glance I thought - when will I have time to do any of these things in between pandemic lesson planning (which feels like reinventing the wheel on some days), teaching, sanitizing, and continuing to do all the mom and wife and daughter and friend duties? During the initial Spring shutdown I got into a good routine of exercise at home, walking my dogs in between recording asynchronous lessons and keeping up with our online grocery, Target and amazon orders. (The online groceries definitely became my source of feeling “in control”).  But in the Fall, when we went back to teaching in person - that routine was quickly disrupted. I had no idea how emotionally uncomfortable it would be to return to teaching. The constant reminders of the virus are everywhere - hand sanitizer stations everywhere, everyone in a mask with no way to read facial social cues, signs reminding us of social distancing and faculty meetings attended on campus from your office on zoom. We are in our normal environment in an abnormal year. And what I didn’t know then and am aware of now - my stress cycles were piling up more quickly than ever before. And if they are building this rapidly for me, how are my students and colleagues feeling? 

And then it dawned on me: I can use my job to incorporate the Nagoski list into my daily routine by making it my lesson plan - to help us all feel safe, gear down from our stress cycles and show each other some compassion and empathy.

First - I created solid routines that include a physical warm up of 2-5 minutes before we take attendance, longer “movement lessons” - explorations of beat and rhythm that feel like elongated dance parties, more playing time with classroom instruments, and more drama games offering time for creative expression. I am less focused on all the things I “need to teach” and more focused on what the students need from me in the moment to feel psychologically safe. If we need to breathe, we breathe. If we need to cry, we cry - I’ve even spent time talking about empathy as a superpower to connect to our friends. And as for laughter? Silly songs and videos I wouldn’t have considered for curriculum in the past are now at the top of my playlists. Every class ends with the same chant: We are kind, we are brave, we are incredibly curious. 

This closing chant is more than just a sentence for me, it’s a mantra. And it’s getting me through. Kindness to myself and others because we all share this common humanity of fears and worries and they are on high alert right now. Bravery looks different every day, but sometimes the seemingly simple acts require the most courage and commitment day after day. And curiosity? Curiosity is an anchor for me now. How can I use what I know and what I do in this wilderness of the “new normal” to create more peace and calm in myself and my students? And in this altered environment, expectations sometimes need to shift. With different expectations, judgement can take a backseat, in fact, it doesn’t even need to ride in the car at all.

In my borrowed office I’ve written this quote on a whiteboard: Since the house is on fire, we may as well warm ourselves. So it is that finding ways to infuse my day with opportunities to stop the cycle of stress - and providing opportunities for my students to feel psychologically safe is just one way to keep burnout at bay - and maybe by the end of the school year I’ll have learned some new jokes and be ready for dance solo or maybe make some s’mores. 

Why I start with WHY

by Heather Doyle Fraser

Your WHY holds your power.

It is your catalyst and

Your sustaining force.

When it comes to writing a book, I have noticed for myself and my clients, once the decision has been made to write a book we just want to get to the writing. And, that makes sense. It’s a huge undertaking and a decision that isn’t made on the flip of a coin — heads I write a book and tails I eat some ice cream. 

So much thought goes into the mere decision to write a book before any writing even begins. The idea comes first as a whisper, “maybe I could write a book...” and then sits in the back of the mind and in your heart for years without any apparent action taken. It comes up again and again a little louder, and a little louder until the idea of the book is louder than the resistance to the idea of writing it. And once that decision is made to finally take action, people want to sprint.

Writing a book isn’t a sprint, though. It’s a process that deserves care, thoughtfulness, and thoroughness.

When we are basking in the glow of that monumental decision to pour ourselves into writing a book, we may forget that our WHY holds power. Our WHY is both our catalyst and our sustaining force. Fully exploring this WHY leads to an emotional connection and a commitment to the book and the process of writing it. And it provides an anchor and touchstone for us, should we lose our way in the process.

So what does it mean to fully explore your WHY when writing a book? After all, when I first start talking to writers about the importance of WHY, I often receive a shrug, an eye roll, or a look that says, “Oh — I know what my why is. We don’t need to spend time on that.”

But we do.

We need to spend significant time on it, until you can think it, feel it, and speak it with ease and with a level of comfort that only comes from examining all of the folds in the fabric of the cozy blanket that cuddles you on a winter day. And when you become that comfortable, you are also creating a powerful connection -- an emotional connection that can’t be broken or ignored easily. That’s the secret right there.

When I dive in with my clients on WHY this book on their heart is so important, WHY their voice needs to be shared at this particular moment, with this particular message, we are creating clarity and also the opportunity for success for the future. I ask the writers with whom I work to reflect on their WHY and explore it fully and thoughtfully. We talk about it at length, and then I ask them to write about it. I take this three-fold approach because with each new imagining and uttering, more clarity and connection comes. 

When they finally write about their WHY they are clear and vulnerable, logical and emotional. They are whole and complete with the idea of their WHY, and then when they push save on that document, something akin to magic happens. They secure a message for their future-selves that is full of hope and understanding and fierce compassion and power. This is the gift for that future-self that will eventually struggle with some part of the writing process. So when I talk about layering self-compassion into the writing process, this is how we start. This is what one aspect of self-compassion looks like in the beginning stages of the book writing process. Giving your future self a lovely gift, said in exactly right words to meet your needs should you lose your way and doubt your resolve.

When you see in your own words WHY you are doing something, you remember not only the WHY, but you remember the emotion and connection you have to the project — even if you aren’t feeling it in that moment. You realize that at one point you were so incredibly clear and strong in your idea and your vision -- you wrote and believed all of those words, no one else. So, if you wrote and believed them once, you can believe as you once did. You can connect with yourself and your voice. You can feel the connection waiting to be nurtured. You can start — not over, but again. 

You can use the love, power, and surety within that document of WHY to propel you forward into the unknown.

And let’s be honest: The way forward is unknown — even with the most brilliant plan, it is still unknown. But… there are some things that ARE known and felt deeply and in this case those two things are your WHY and your voice. Your voice is particularly poised and ready to communicate your WHY because you know it so well. With that knowledge, you can rest in the power of your pen. 

If the idea of starting with WHY as you begin on your book writing journey appeals to  you, if you are ready to dispel the myth of the tortured writer as I am, join me for my six-week course starting on October 6, Writing Your Book: A Step-by-step Compassionate Approach that Starts and Ends with Your Voice.

When Grief Resurfaces in Uncertain Times

By Erica Sonnabend

Like so many of you, I have been thrust almost instantly into a new way of living, working, and communicating with my family and friends.  Although I’ve always considered myself to be a very adaptable and flexible person, changing nearly everything all at once due to the pandemic has made me question that.

Within a matter of days, all of my normal routines ceased to exist and my days of welcoming visitors to my home and gathering with loved ones stopped.  My world seemed to shrink and I was left feeling fearful, uneasy, disconnected, and vulnerable in ways that I never had before.  I was weepy, quick to snap at others, manically keeping busy with home projects and not sleeping well.  In my mind, I determined this was expected behavior given all that our world and our communities were going through.  I just needed to ride it out.

Not only was I experiencing the loss of my sense of normalcy and safety, my heart was hurting for those around me who had died, were sick, or had lost their jobs or businesses.  I wasn’t feeling all of this on the “usual” level that I would expect to feel about such terribly sad things, these feelings were ENORMOUS.

What I later came to realize is that through all of the news reports, zoom calls, sanitizing, and home quarantining, an uninvited guest had shown up.  There it was…GRIEF…amplifying my emotions and my actions. Grief for my new losses during quarantine and resurfaced grief from previous loss events.  

Grief is normal and natural, but it doesn’t always look and feel the way you think it will.  It’s sneaky. It disguises itself as many things – exhaustion, irritability, excessive behaviors, keeping super busy, forgetfulness, and many more.  With a little stepping back, I have realized that our various losses and our history with grief will show up unannounced and affect our current lives if left unresolved.

Around week five of my ten week quarantine, I discovered the root of my intense feelings. This happened when I opened my kitchen cabinet to start making lunch for my two school-aged children.  Yes, you read that correctly.  I connected to my grief when I opened my kitchen cabinet. Looking at the well stocked canned goods brought me back to a time in my life that I hadn’t thought of in decades.  

When I was in middle school, my father moved about two and a half hours away from me.  That distance felt like I was on another planet. It was a long, monotonous bus ride and then a thirty minute car ride away from the beauty and comforts of my home on Cape Cod.  At home, I was surrounded by extended family and connected to close friends in an awesome neighborhood.  While visiting my dad, who I adored, I was sleeping in a space that wasn’t mine and spent most Saturdays at his house alone because he’d have to work. He lived in a second floor apartment in what used to be a single family home.  It was always very clean, but it had a makeshift kitchen with bookshelves used as a pantry…filled with canned goods.  I had so many questions about why my parents divorced, but I couldn’t get them to come out of my mouth.  I felt an incredible loss of normalcy, routine, companionship, and familiarity.  Among other things, I was anxious and bored on those Saturdays and I missed my friends.  

As I stood in my kitchen, decades later in the midst of a pandemic, staring at the aluminum cans in my cabinet, my grief from long ago became obvious to me. Just like that. After weeks of pacing in circles to pass the time, full of anxiety about the unknown, grief had resurfaced. This time of great change and uncertainty connected me to the losses I experienced when I was about the same age as my one of my kids that I was making lunch for.  Coincidence?  I don’t believe so.

When I allowed my heart to go back to that time, a whole range of unexpressed emotions came to light. These were thoughts and feelings that I had back then plus some new ones from my adult perspective. Those buried feelings and undelivered communications were my unresolved grief. This discovery showed me exactly how unexpressed grief can evolve and resurface in different ways in our lives – especially during a pandemic.

It’s important to remember that loss is not solely connected to the death of someone we care about.

Loss occurs in all kinds of situations.  You can feel it when relationships end, when changes in health or financial stability occur, or when any event that brings physical or emotional impact happens.  Loss can be tangible (people or things) or intangible (sense of safety, relationships with money, loss of health).  After finding my own unresolved grief hiding in my kitchen cabinet, I knew I had some work to do to free myself from the pain of my past losses.  Taking action through grief work and participating in my own emotional healing has led me to better understand my current losses.  What a difference that has made in my daily life!

As you continue on your own path, weathering the ups and downs of losses in your life, I encourage you to pause and allow yourself to truly connect to the changes you’re experiencing.  Let your emotions come up and out.  Be mindful of what unresolved grief looks and feels like in your heart.  And always show love and compassion to yourself when grief resurfaces during these very uncertain times. 

Take care, friends.

The Other 99,999

by Harry Pickens

I woke up in the morning worried.

I worried all through the day.

I worried when I went to bed. 

Every single day, my entire day was lived in anticipation of the 10 to 12 times my heartbeat would skip. It started just a few months before, with that first incident of an irregular heartbeat, when the doctor assigned to my case came to my hospital bedside and made his pronouncement:

You have atrial fibrillation. You have a high risk of stroke. If we can’t control it with medication, we will have to use the defibrillator to give you a shock. 

I was 35 years old. This was not supposed to be happening. 

I was in the band room downstairs at the University of Louisville when it first happened.

Suddenly, I felt something strange in my chest. At first it felt like my heart skipped a beat, but the strange feeling didn’t stop. It actually felt as through my heart was thrashing around in my chest like the Tasmanian devil in those old Bugs Bunny cartoons. 

Was I having a heart attack? I didn’t feel any pain, just this weird sensation. Almost as quickly as it began, the feeling went away. I was a bit freaked out, but since everything felt okay now, I didn’t say or do anything. 

Six weeks later, sitting in the hospital bed. I realized, this had been a precursor of what would occur that Labor day weekend in 1996. That Friday morning, I was preparing to register for my second year of graduate school. I felt zero desire to be in grad school, was totally uninspired by the curriculum, and no longer felt any relevance at all between the degree I was pursuing and my career trajectory. 

I had enrolled in grad school primarily out of a sense of fear and desperation that I needed more structure in my life. I was only a few years past a stressful divorce, had lived in four different cities in four years, and was more confused about my next steps than at any prior time in my life. I was afraid I might just drift aimlessly through the rest of my 30’s — or forever.

I had to find structure somewhere. 

At the same time, graduate school was not working out. Every day felt like I was wasting my time — and my life. But I was planning to stay the course — even though no part of me was really committed to it. Obviously, there was a huge integrity gap between the life I was living on the outside and who I was on the inside, but I was unwilling or unable to face it. 

Until that Friday morning.

I picked up the phone to register for my fall semester classes, and my heart spoke to me loud and clear. The instant I picked up the phone, I felt it. This was familiar; the same exact sensation I felt in the band room two months prior. Only this time it didn’t go away. 

My heart felt like it was sputtering. I put my hand on the side of my neck to check my pulse and it sounded like a drunken morse code, with no discernible pattern of regularity or consistency. Then I felt light headed, and fear totally took over. Shit. I was going to have a heart attack right here and die. 

What to do? I took a bus the 9 blocks to campus and practically stumbled into the student health center. I have an emergency. My heart has been beating really erratically. Can you help me? 

The nurse on duty saw me immediately, and confirmed my fluttering heartbeat. We’re going to take you over to the hospital emergency room right now. You are in atrial fibrillation, and it would be best to see what they might be able to do to help you get back into a normal sinus rhythm. 

Three days later, I was released from the hospital, my heart beating normally, but my mind’s pulse and beat was still wildly out of synch.  The attending physician told me I would have to take medication for the rest of my life. I thought this a ridiculous assumption.  I could not see how a single incident of irregular heartbeat would require that an otherwise healthy 35 year old succumb to a lifetime of pharmaceutical intervention. 

I didn’t like the way I felt in the moments after I took the pills. I have always been hypersensitive to any substance placed in my body, and this was no exception. I felt less alert, more spacey, strangely off-kilter. Plus, every so often, even though my heart was back in a normal rhythm, it would start racing uncontrollably. Then I would really freak out. I realized later these were panic attacks, triggered by my fear of going back into atrial fib. 

So for the next several months, although complying with doctor’s orders, I lived in a state of constant and fearful anticipation of the next time my heart would skip a beat. My intuition continued to scream that staying on this medication for life was not in my body’s best interest.

I decided to go back to San Diego and see another doctor who I had known when I lived there. 

Dr. Mimi Guarneri was not only a board-certified cardiologist, she was also a pioneer in complementary medicine and in mind-body approaches to healing and wellness. Perhaps she would have another opinion and could help me treat this condition more holistically. She astutely asked me some questions that the doctors in Louisville didn’t think to ask:

Do you drink coffee? No. 

Do you eat chocolate? Why, yes. In fact, I have a major Hershey’s habit. Pretty much every day on my way home from school I would eat one or two Hershey Bars. I love the mint ones, and the ones with peanuts. 

Did you realize that chocolate is high in caffeine? No. 

Not only that, caffeine alone can trigger a rapid heart rate, and sometimes atrial fibrillation, especially when combined with emotional stress.

Bingo.  That explained it. 

In fact, the night before my Friday morning debacle, I feasted on dessert after dinner, a devastating knock-out-punch combining chocolate cake, a fudge brownie, coffee ice cream and hot chocolate sauce with the moniker Death by Chocolate. 

Oops. 

A few months later, I moved back to San Diego after giving up on grad school. 

I was feeling much better. Except for one thing: every day, I still mentally and emotionally waited for the “shoe to drop.” 

I waited for my heart to go out of rhythm again. I waited for one of those now several-times a day moments when my heart would seem to burp, skipping a beat or two, one right after the other. Then would come the fear, panic, worry plus the now familiar cascade of compulsive thoughts.

What if it happens again? What if the rhythm never goes back to normal? What if I have to go back to the hospital? What if I have to get back on medication for the rest of my life? What if I die? What if? What if? 

I was doing everything I knew to stay healthy. 

I cleaned my diet up, took supplemental magnesium and Vitamin C and did everything else that Dr. Guarneri recommended, I meditated. I exercised. At this point, she had helped me slowly wean off of the meditation.  I felt much closer to normal, but nothing could crack this worry habit. 

One day I was researching the heart. I discovered that this miraculous organ beats approximately one hundred thousand times every 24 hours. Then I finally got it. 

My heart is beating 100,000 times every 24 hours. Out of those 100,000 beats, perhaps 8 or 10 times a day I would feel a skipped or racing heartbeat. That’s less than one in every 10,000 beats. 

But I am not focusing at all on the 99,990 times every day that my heart is doing it’s job perfectly.  Nope. I am fixating on the 8 or 10 times when things are off. Something is wrong with this picture. My heart had been working perfectly over 99.98% of the time, yet I was practically ignoring this total miracle to focus only on the skipped beats. 

Wow. 

What if I start appreciating my amazing heart for what’s it’s doing right? What if I actually affirm my gratitude and love for its steady and unfailing devotion to continuing to do its job even in the face of my mental neglect and constant worry? 

From that moment on, I would often during the day take a moment and gratefully acknowledge my heart for its tireless dedication to keeping me alive.  I would place my attention and awareness and appreciation firmly in the direction of what was working, not on what was broken. 

I would focus on what was right, not so much on what was wrong. I wouldn’t be pollyanna-stupid, ignoring real warning signs, but I also wouldn’t obsess on the temporary blips in my heart’s otherwise impeccable track record. 

My heart taught me a life changing lesson during those precarious months.

I still had occasional skipped beats (I later learned that these PVC’s - premature ventricular contractions — were not dangerous, and were likely exacerbated by stress and nutritional imbalances), but my primary focus was not on what didn’t work, but what was working. 

Eventually the PVC’s went away. I had two more incidents of atrial fibrillation within the next five years, both during times of extreme emotional stress. One time required a hospital visit (only for a few hours this time), and the second time, my normal sinus rhythm returned within minutes. 

That was 25 years ago. 

Since then, my heart has rarely skipped a beat.

When it does, I just remember the other 99,999.

To See or Be Seen?

by Dr. Chia-Ying Chou

How often do we show the world what we think it expects to see?

a loyal employee

a smart businesswoman

a friendly customer service agent

a knowledgable teacher

a friendly Uber rider 

a supportive friend

a sweet daughter

a helpful coworker

a dependable spouse 

How often do we spend hours and hours with people and only see what we expect to see?

a loyal employee

a smart businesswoman

a friendly customer service agent

a knowledgable teacher

a friendly Uber rider

a supportive friend

a sweet daughter

a helpful coworker

a dependable spouse

How often do you really see someone? How often do you really let someone see you?

their/our

ever-changing micro facial expressions

spoken and unspoken thoughts

speakable and unspeakable truth

joint pains

weeping hearts in solitude

jealousy and loneliness 

wishes and hopes

faces with no make-ups

words with no intended impression making

How lonely can we be in connections? How connected can we be in loneliness? 

If you look at someone in their eyes 

and REALLY SEE THEM, 

you’ll know

that every moment you share with them

is a beautiful miracle of the universe.

HOW YOU CAN USE YOUR GUILT TO ENGAGE IN ANTIRACISM (and why your self-focused shame isn't helping anyone)

by Racheli Miller, PhD 

"ALLIES: NOW IS THE TIME TO BE IN THE SERVICE OF BLACK LIBERATION. LIMIT YOUR RESPONSE TO WHAT IS OF REAL, TANGIBLE HELP TO US. GIVE MONEY, CALL YOUR REPS, PROTECT BLACK PEOPLE AT PROTESTS, ELEVATE OUR WORK AND VOICES. DON'T MAKE US SWIM THROUGH YOUR TEARS WHILE WE FIGHT." ~IJEOMA OLUO 

I’m a White millennial female psychologist working in New York City. In the wake of the modern-day lynching of Ahmaud Arbery and the police’s public execution of George Floyd and senseless murdering of Breonna Taylor and many other Black Americans, I've noticed something about how my White clients and I are struggling with how to take antiracist action and how to confront our complicity with racism.  I’ve noticed that even very well-intentioned. White people who are dedicated to fighting racial injustice can get caught up in wrestling with their shame, rather than focusing on taking meaningful action. I want to talk about why our shame isn’t helping anyone. 

As I put this out in the world, I feel anxious. I do not want to crowd the space that needs to be open for Black voices.  I want to acknowledge that I may make mistakes here that I will regret in the future. My intention is to be open and learn. I'm mentioning my internal process here because it is my attempt to not let shame keep me from doing my best to contribute to change. I hope that by writing about the psychology of shame and guilt, I might be helpful to other White allies, as we aim to shift from shame reactivity and shut down to effective antiracist work.  

SHAME VS. GUILT 

According to Brené Brown, “shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior. Shame is “I am bad.” Guilt is “I did something bad.” Guilt can be an adaptive emotion. It allows us to notice when our actions have caused harm and can motivate us to make repairs. However, many of us have not developed the capacity to feel guilt about our actions without our experience transforming into shame about who we are. Shame can lead to hiding, denying, and intense self-criticism and attack.  

So why doesn’t shame help? Shouldn’t we feel ashamed? A reasonable person would feel shame for complicity in a centuries-old system of oppression, violence toward Black people, and racial injustice. It also makes sense that since Black people in America have been abused and exploited by a racist system for centuries, many people might feel that White people should feel shame. And while all of this makes sense, unfortunately, shame doesn't motivate humans to do better. 

WHY IS SHAME A PROBLEM? 

The biggest problem with our shame is how we as humans respond to it. When confronting our wrongdoings leads to feelings of worthlessness and even self-hate, we will often do just about anything to run from facing our actions. So we will use two big strategies to help us escape shame: distraction and avoidance. With distraction and avoidance in play, we never need to take authentic inventory of our actions and beliefs in the first place. This is how they play out in typical interactions and situations: If our racism is brought to our attention either through our own noticing or that of others, we will continue to deny it or push it away with excuses and justifications or even anger. We may also try engaging in actions that may look antiracist, but are aimed at helping us avoid looking at our missteps. How often are our social media posts aimed at making us feel like good allies, rather than at having true positive impact on the lives of Black people? Or, we may avoid speaking up or acting because we are afraid of what others’ criticisms  will make us feel about ourselves. 

The denial and mental Olympics that we need to engage in to outrun our shame is unquestionably harmful. Even if we are able to run from our shame temporarily, it will always catch up with us because it lives within us.  At some point, we will hopefully come to the realization that ignoring, staying quiet, or engaging in performative ally-ship cannot truly shield us from our shame. 

At this point, we may start the process of really examining our racism and working toward positive change. However, this process can be easily thwarted by our reaction to our shame. We know this is happening when we find ourselves glued to social media, not able to function. We are overwhelmed by our sorrow to the point that we can no longer examine our particular actions and work toward compassionate correction. We see each of our misdeeds as confirmation of our flawed nature, powerlessness, and hopelessness. We may still want to act, but are too consumed with our own sorrow to figure out how.  

There are many reasons we may fall prey to such a shame-based state. Our minds do not understand that time moves forward and that we can only affect the present and future, not change the past. Our brains believe we are “literally” in the past again when we are thinking about it. Therefore, ruminating on our past misdeeds seems like a way to  erase or undo our past crimes. On a subconscious level, our minds may think our penance is contingent on our suffering. Only if we feel bad enough will we be forgiven and will our shame dissipate. We are letting our shame devour us because we believe that this is the only way to be free of it. Unfortunately, there is no restitution in self-indulgent self-flagellation. When we are busy attacking ourselves, we cannot fight for racial justice. When we are trying to avoid or get rid of the emotions that arise from seeing our misdeeds, we are disconnected from our capacity to take meaningful action. We cannot practice antiracism until we learn to not collapse into shame. Our shame isn’t helping anyone-- not ourselves, and certainly not Black people in the US. 

SHAME IS THE PROBLEM. WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT? 

How can we strengthen our capacity to realize that we have done wrong without torpedoing into shame? The work of Black activists and thought leaders on antiracism provide us with the key for that mindset shift. Ibram X. Kendi discusses that from an antiracist perspective, “we should not be saying this is who a person is....we should be saying this is what a person is doing in the moment.” We can perceive an action we have done or an assumption that we hold as racist without perceiving ourselves as racist. We can think of our racist thoughts as not our own creation, but the product of being raised in a society where we are inundated with White supremacist messaging. This outlook breeds compassion and allows us to shift from self-focused shame and attack to an authentic examination of our racism without defense. In the absence of shame, we can reckon with how our complicity has contributed to racial inequality and brutal violence against black bodies and feel the heartbreak and remorse that ensues with this realization. We can use our guilt to fuel our commitment to action and propel us toward active work on repair, aligning with our chosen anti-racist values. This perspective gives us a way forward. As Ijeoma Oluo writes, "The beauty of anti-racism is that you don't have to pretend to be free of racism to be an anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself. This empowers us to take action in uprooting it.” If we want to confront our own racism, we need to learn to identify racism as the enemy instead of ourselves. Otherwise, our shame will surely get in the way. 

WHAT CAN WE DO WHEN WE ARE EXPERIENCING SHAME? 

What can we do in the moments when we are already experiencing shame? How can we continue to act effectively? Here, I find the skills that I’ve learned from contextual behavioral therapies (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Compassion Focused Therapy) to be helpful.  

Examine the Function of Behavior

I try to get very clear on the function of my behavior when my energy is directed toward shame. Am I enacting meaningful change in the world or am I sitting in my apartment, lost in thought? I try to examine the results of my behavior with honesty and without judgment.  

Move Toward Values 

I then try to connect back to my values.  If I slow down and ask myself what is the thing that I am feeling shame about, the answer is always something I care deeply about. I am feeling these difficult emotions because I care about antiracism. From this shift in perspective I can ask myself what is a true meaningful action I can take toward that value in this moment?   

When I am connected to my values, I can be more allowing and compassionate toward myself and my experiences of shame because I remember it does not serve me to get caught in the struggle with it. With gentleness, I can carry my pain with me, as I continue to move my feet toward what’s important. #BlackLivesMatter  

Helping Children Handle Strong Emotions

Helping Children Find Calm & Handle Anxiety During Difficult Times

Chris Fraser is a mental health therapist with children and families with over 25 years of experience. In this video Chris shares practical tools and useful wisdom that children can use to calm their worries during this time of quarantine and beyond. Once worries are calmed and cared for Chris teaches that the worries can just go along for the ride as children learn to take action on those things they care about or need to do.