Category Archives: communication

Holding Fear

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I submitted my ballot today, November 3, 2024.  The US Presidential Election is two days away.

So many people fear not only the outcome, but the process.  Confidence in election integrity flags severely in recent years, for myriad reasons.  People of any political persuasion suspect their fellow humans of nefarious motivations and acts, both in general and individually.  Trust flickers and wanes like a candle in a hailstorm.

We cannot be reasoned out of our fears.  The more someone tries to convince us that our fears are unfounded, the more our fears escalate, and we get frustrated and often angry on top of that, further inflaming the encounter, risking damage to relationship. 

Emotions are, by nature and definition, irrational.  This does not mean they are unjustified, unhelpful, or unimportant.  Emotions are signals that something important to us is at stake—often relating to our survival, at least as far as our limbic brains are concerned.  Fear is a primal instinct and emotion, conserved over millennia of evolution to keep us alive.  As I described yesterday, fear often sublimates itself into anger, without help from outside forces.  This inner rage can then manifest in ugly words or actions, harming others, our relationships, and ultimately ourselves.

When we see someone on ‘the other side’ acting out like this, of course we feel fear and anger.  Of course we rail at them as horrible people and want justice for their abhorrent actions.  And of course, we see them as representative of everybody we grossly identify as their tribe (see image below from the @startswithus Instagram account).  That is the lens that fear places before our eyes, so we may be alert to threats—to our safety, security, and identity, among other things.  We separate from and divide people into groups deemed ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe’.  But this is an oversimplification that can lead to destructive patterns of perception and interaction. 

Fear is a vitally important emotion, necessary for safety and survival.  And we must manage it, for our own well-being and that of our social integrity.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, teaches simple and accessible (though not necessarily easy) skills to help us do just this.  The goal is not to discredit or eliminate our fear.  Rather, DBT skills help us gain and maintain perspective, so we may hold our fear more stably, then think more clearly and make decisions with balanced emotional and rational input, in accordance with our values, goals, and integrity.  The four pillars of DBT are Mindfulness, Emotional Regulation, Distress Tolerance, and Interpersonal Effectiveness (communication).  The method is founded on the concept of the Wise Mind: the effective integration and balance of the emotional and the rational.  I won’t describe the individual skills here, but I have studied them at length and recommend them to patients every week.  In essence they teach us to monitor our emotions, identify them, accept and validate them, and query their consequences.  We are challenged to be honest about what’s objectively true versus a story we make up.  In the case of fear, DBT skills help us make and maintain the distinction between real potential risk (even if high) and imagined foregone catastrophic inevitability.  The latter belief makes us act impulsively; holding the former reality helps us slow down, set strategy, and execute with intention.  Unbridled fear separates us; appropriately restrained fear helps us form coalitions and act more effectively. 

Fear well managed allows agency to emerge and effect positive change.

People fear on all sides of politics right now.  It’s not going away—I think ever.  And it’s natural.  We just don’t have to let it drive all our thoughts, words, and interactions.

In the coming days, I Hold Fear for Us this way: 

May we see one another as whole human beings, each and all with both unique and shared experiences, hopes, loves, and fears. 
May we recognize that all our fears are valid simply because all emotions are valid, regardless of their origin.  We feel how we feel and ignoring, dismissing, denying, or comparing one another’s fears gets us nowhere. 
May we sit and be with each other’s fears in empathy and compassion, and solidarity if we can muster it even (especially) if we do not share the same fears or even understand them.
May we vote according to not just our fears but our values, our goals, and our hopes.
May we meet one another with our fears leashed, and our love in front.
May we speak and act in ways that give nobody reason to fear us.

Deep breaths, friends.  We’ got this. Hang in there. I’m right there with you.

https://www.instagram.com/startswithus/?hl=en

Holding Regret

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What are your best and worst regrets? What is the difference?

If we pay attention, regret is inevitable. Living life with ‘no regrets’ is unrealistic at best, oblivious at worst. I’ve thought and written about this a lot, as evidenced by my birthday post in 2022 and the 12 (now 13) times I have tagged it subsequently.
How does regret feel? In my body it feels tight at the neck, shallow in breath. My head hangs, my lips purse. I avoid eye contact–don’t want to be seen–that’s shame, right?

“I would rather regret being too kind than not kind enough.”

I have said this for some years and now, in this moment of writing, I know why. As I realized and wrote in 2022, my worst regrets are relational–times when I have caused a rupture, especially when repair was incomplete or impossible. I could easily substitute honest, empathetic, compassionate, generous, humble, and forthright for ‘kind’. These memories still sting, and I will carry them forever. Thankfully, I pack them better now. They occupy a smaller, more condensed compartment of my life baggage, less damaging when they leak.

Holding regret well, I have learned, requires both accountability and self-compassion. Accountability makes me reflect, learn, and commit to doing better in the future. Self-compassion helps me step out of shame (I’m such a bad mom/friend/doctor/person), and stand instead in guilt (I did a bad thing). The difference: Shame seizes; guilt activates.

Brené Brown wrote yesterday on Instagram:

My research and my life have taught me that regret is one of our most powerful emotional reminders that reflection, change, and growth are necessary. In our research, regret emerged as a function of empathy. And, when used constructively, it’s a call to courage and a path toward wisdom.

The idea that regret is a fair but tough teacher can really piss people off. “No regrets” has become synonymous with daring and adventure, but I disagree. The idea of “no regrets” doesn’t mean living with courage, it means living without reflection. To live without regret is to believe we have nothing to learn, no amends to make, and no opportunity to be braver with our lives.

In our work, we find that what we regret most are our failures of courage, whether it’s the courage to be kinder, to show up, to say how we feel, to set boundaries, to be good to ourselves, to say yes to something scary. Regret has taught me that living outside my values is not tenable for me.

Regrets about not taking chances have made me braver. Regrets about shaming or blaming people I care about have made me more thoughtful.

Sometimes the most uncomfortable learning is the most powerful.

Discomfort: What actions do we take to avoid it? When does this lead to regret down the road, and which of these discomforts would we choose, if we had it to do over? Vulnerability is extremely uncomfortable–a risk of variable magnitude, depending on context. The reward, however, can be transformative. I regret causing others discomfort with my vulnerability; I’m better at attuning to that risk as I age. I regret when my vulnerability is met with dismissal, invalidation, or minimization. Still, deep human connection cannot occur without real vulnerability, risks and all. Since I live for connection, I have a very high tolerance for the discomfort of vulnerability. Expressed alongside kindness, honesty, and humility, likelihood of connection rises and regret declines. How lovely.

What regrets would you rather carry forever?

I Hold Regret for Us that shows us our core values, that keeps us honest and accountable. I also hold love, compassion, and deep connection that lightens regret’s perpetual load on us all. We walk on, my friends, all on the path, all doing our best.

NaBloPoMo 2024: What I Hold for Us

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“What can I hold for you?”

Friend asked me at the end of lunch, after I had shared some hard things about life at the time. I have rarely felt quite so loved and cared for, so seen and utterly held, just in the asking.

This is my tenth consecutive annual 30 day blogging challenge. By now I have confidence that I can complete the task. The theme emerges easily and intuitively each year, always a pleasant and knowing surprise. The real challenge is to create thirty pieces that I’m proud to save and share, to not overthink, and not sacrifice sleep. Let’s go.

I had initially named this year’s theme “What I Wish for You.” That’s too passive. I do a lot more than wish things, especially the relationally meaningful and important things I intend to write about. I work for these things. So I turned onto “What I Hold for You; What I Do for Us.” But that was a bridge too far, somehow separating (elevating?) myself from people, which is not my MO.
I’m about connection in all circumstances.

Thus “What I Hold for Us.” That feels right. Holding is a gentle action, yet powerful and strong; active yet unobtrusive. It attunes and attends; it persists. It has depth and carries intention. Holding, like standing and planting, implies perseverance and resilience. This is what I want for us all, now and for the foreseeable future–we need it.

Doing this challenge in 2024 feels different from and higher stakes than in 2016 and 2020, the last two presidential election Novembers. Anxiety and tension have intensified; even the most equanimatous people I know are agitated. Conflict escalation feels inevitable; desperation and hopelessness lurk everywhere. I have ceased political activities for some years, and consume political news in the smallest possible bites. I have held that we are all humans, here doing our best every day, getting along close up even as we denigrate one another in groups from afar. We are tragically and heroically paradoxical, we humans, and I embrace it, love us for and despite it. Yet now, the week before voting closes, even I cannot escape the dread.

“‘What can I do, I am only one person?’ said seven billion people.” I can write.

This month, this year, in this season of society, we must resist the pull of toxic politics. I intend to hold this line: The line between connection and separation, between shared humanity and dehumanization. My political and policy leanings may show, and I will let them. They will always take a back seat, however, to my commitment to relationship and connection.

Six days now until who knows what. Deep breaths. We are all in this together, folks. Whoever you perceive as your enemy will not be vanquished. And it’s not about that anyway. We suffer from serious and significant differences, yes. It feels life- and liberty-threatening to people on both/all sides–existentially terrifying. Still, if we breathe deeply for a moment and look all around, the unassailable truth of collective human resilience and the potential for cooperation still shines through the cracks of rhetorical rubble. I will write from this emphatic perspective the whole month, rooted here with my entire being.

I Hold Us–All of Us.