Carrying The Load With Grace, Kindness, and Strength

Carrying The Load With Grace, Kindness, and Strength

By Lisa Templeton, Ph.D.

     The classic quote by Lena Horne, “It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s how you carry it” is a great line and very helpful for shifting our perspective.  Yet, I can’t help but wonder, what is the best way to carry a load, so it doesn’t break one down?  In my reflections around this, I have come up with four pointers to keep in mind when it feels like life is weighing you down:

1)      Perspective is everything.  Our perspective is created by how we think about the load.  Thoughts such as, “this is unbearable” or “I can’t handle this” or “I won’t be able to get through this” only serve to increase our anxiety and the weight of what we are carrying.  Consider thoughts such as, “this load is heavy and I know I can get through this” or “I can handle this – I’m handling this right now” or “You got this, everything is temporary.”  These thoughts offer a bit of truth, lightness, and inner support to give us more strength to carry a heavy load with grace and resilience.

2)      Believe in yourself!  Remember the game, ‘Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board?  When we collectively believed that the person was light, they became lighter, light enough to lift with our pinky fingers!  When we believe that the load is lighter, it can become lighter.  Believing in ourselves comes from being a good friend to yourself.  Be kind and gentle.  When you stop to speak to yourself gently, light in tone, and loving, you are being a better friend to yourself.  This offers a strength to help us believe we have what it takes to move through.  In this mindset, there is always lightness.

3)      Remember the temporary nature of everything.  What feels like a very heavy load right now will possibly only be a memory in a few days or months.  All that is weighing on you right now is a potential form of teaching and growth.  The struggle in life can be just what we need to move forward in our own evolution.  Always keep in mind that everything is temporary.

4)      Stay in the present moment.  Take one step at a time and don’t think too much about the future steps you will be taking.  With a ‘one step at a time attitude’, we stay conscious of what is right here right now instead of engaging in a future time thinking we will carry this load forever.  We have no idea what the load will feel like even 10 steps from now.  Take it easy, keep breathing, and stay kind with yourself.  This offers the strength needed to carry a heavy load with grace and support.

Befriending Our Anxiety

Befriending Our Anxiety

By Lisa Templeton, Ph.D.

Our emotions have much to offer us in wisdom and direction; we only need to practice listening more deeply when they arise. Anxiety is an emotion that can be very uncomfortable inconvenient. Our initial instinct when anxiety comes up is to fight the tension and try to get rid of it. Many of us push away and/or judge anxiety when it shows up in our experience.

Shifting our perspective on anxiety can be very helpful. Can you work toward more connection with this experience? Why not welcome in the anxiety, listen to it, and observe it? What could happen if we befriended our anxiety? As Rumi writes of emotions in his poem, The Guest House, “Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house of its furniture - still, treat each guest honorably.”

Although we can feel as though certain emotions wipe us out and can be incredibly overwhelming at times. These difficult times will eventually abate and other, lighter, emotions move into the mix. Our entire life is a waxing and waning of emotions. We might as well befriend them, especially the ones we have been conditioned to judge so harshly and quickly.

It is quite possible that our anxiety might have important wisdom to communicate. All we need to do is to stop, look, and listen to what is going on within us – without judgment. With this present moment awareness, we are a bit more open and malleable to shift our own mind. As we shift our mind, our perception transforms to see a broadened truth. Here are 5 tips to aid you in shifting your perspective and working to befriend your anxiety:

1) Recognize that anxiety is not your enemy – there is nothing to fear with anxiety, it’s just uncomfortable. Anxiety cannot harm you or overtake you unless you allow it to. This lies in our perception and choices. Our anxiety may not seem like a friend, possibly because neither of you have ever been very friendly with each other. If you treat someone like your enemy, and push them away, you will create more separation and conflictual energy. Approach anxiety like a friend who wants to support you and offer help, but maybe doesn’t really know how just yet.

2) Use your imagination to personify your anxiety - try imagining your anxiety as a person. How are you relating? How is your anxiety relating to you? Assess this relationship from a neutral place. Perhaps you notice a thought like, “I don’t want this anxiety, get away, I shouldn’t feel this.” Consider how you might feel if someone spoke to you in this way? No one deserves to be pushed away or judged negatively. If you tell it to go away when it shows up, there is more conflictual energy and the whole exchange is even less comfortable. When you change how you relate with your anxiety, your anxiety can then shift how it is relating with you.

3) Be a good friend – consider the qualities of a good friend. Someone who is caring and compassionate. Someone who sees, hears, and acknowledges us while also working to uplift and offer us hope in times of struggle. A good friend will honor us and also set boundaries and be direct as needed to nurture both you and themselves. Consider what you look for in a friend and do your best to be that person in relationship with your anxiety. If you fall back into old ways of relating – mindfully slow down, apologize and offer care.

4) Teach your anxiety how you want to be treated – Consider what you might like to hear from a friend and how you would speak to them. Work to create that kind of dialogue in your own mind. Try saying something nice when you are feeling anxious or perhaps speak some truth around reasons why anxiety might be there to offer understanding and compassion. What might anxiety be communicating? What are you communicating back? How we talk to each other either creates or dissolves a friendship. How do you react internally to your anxiety when you notice this feeling? Is there compassion and understanding, or judgment and criticism? The more aware we are of our inner dialogue, the more we can listen and set boundaries on how we want and don’t want to be treated.

5) Spend time with your friend. We can often live only in our minds, thinking a lot about everything. Emotions live in our bodies, so if you want to visit with anxiety, you need to feel into where anxiety lives in your body. We must stop and feel in order to deeply listen. In this moment, take a nice deep breath and listen to locate where anxiety shows up in your physical body. For some, anxiety shows up in the stomach area; for others, it is in the heart or throat. It may even change where it lives each time you listen in. Perhaps you don’t notice it at all right now. Set an intention to notice more. No matter what you notice, make attempts to spend good quality time with anxiety, offering it deep breaths, compassion, understanding, and unconditional love.

Coping with Seasonal Stress and the Holiday Blues: 10 tips to surviving struggles during this festive time

The holidays can bring up a mixed bag of experiences and emotions for many of us. Many feel the joyfulness of giving during the season, excitement at gatherings of friends and families, as well as the beauty of the lights and festivities. At the same time, there is the stress of seeing the high credit card bill after buying presents, the sadness of missing loved ones who have passed, the anxiety of the crowds, and pressure of getting things accomplished by a deadline.

It’s natural that stress will occur when so many emotions are swirling around for all of us. Here is a list of tips to guide you in mindfully surviving the season:

1) Stay in the present moment – In a high stress time (or anytime for that matter), it is grounding and healthy to work on awareness of each moment and the sensations we feel. Sure we must plan ahead, but we must also bring ourselves back to each moment as it is happening and not allow our minds to wonder for long periods in the past or the future. Keep breathing and use your senses to ground you in each moment.

2) Don’t take things personally – Given most of us are feeling more stress during this time of year, it’s easy to feel more sensitive and thus assume that others’ indifferent or cold behavior is about us. When we take things personally, we create doubt about ourselves. Stay clear on what is yours and what is another person’s issue.

3) Live in gratitude – Take note of all of your blessings, from small ones to big ones. When we focus on abundance rather than lack, we generally feel better. Notice when things are going well and how smooth they went.

4) Take one step at a time – Try not to do too many things at once. Choose one task and complete it. Try not to think of the next task as you are completing another. Also try not to jump back and forth from one task to another too often. It’s complicating and overstimulating for our already overstimulated brains!

5) Watch for negative/ineffective thought patterns – As you are living in the present moment, take note of the way you are thinking about your circumstances. How are you imagining the family dinner? Are you building scenarios of what might happen given past events? Notice how you feel when you are thinking negatively about the future. If you start to feel intense emotion, take note of what you were just thinking about and challenge it to be more present-focused, realistic, uplifting, and positive. Try to speak to yourself as you would a friend.

6) Know your audience at gatherings – Be conscious and mindful of who is around when engaging in conversations, particularly around politics, religion, and past experiences. Stay mindful of not engaging in triggering topics that activate the room with conflict. If someone brings up a triggering comment, set your boundary by asking to talk about something else or simply excuse yourself and don’t engage.

7) Bring in the good – We are all so used to focusing on what could go wrong (which is a basic process of evolution and staying alive), we tend to forget about what is going right. Take time to notice as many moments of joy, beauty, love, and lightness as you can. Positive emotions are useful to offset stressful times. Appreciate what these experiences feel like in your body. When we bring in the good, it offsets the blues.

8) Take time for yourself – During the holidays, there is an increase in parties and gatherings that can lead to burn out. Most of us need time to ourselves to process and reflect on social events and stay in balance within. Give yourself a bit of time to relax daily. If you are at a holiday gathering and you are feeling overwhelmed, take a brief walk or find a quiet space for a few minutes and breathe deeply.

9) Take good care of yourself – With all of the yummy food and drink during the holiday season, it’s easy to take a “screw it” attitude with self-care. This is actually the most important time to create moderation and to work on yourself. Be mindful of your choices and try to create balance with exercise, relaxation, deep diaphragmatic breathing, and proper amount of sleep for your body. For those who struggle with addictions, work to increase your support and focus on taking it one day at a time.

10) Try not to resist; practice allowing – It’s easy to resist this time of year, especially if it has negative connotations for you with stress, family quarrels, grief, and/or overwhelm. People talk about “getting through the holidays” or state, “When the holidays are over, I’ll feel better.” Try to go with the flow and allow each moment, each day to pass with a practice of care for yourself, dropping the resistance of the holidays. They are going to come every single year, whether you like it or not, so why not welcome them?

Have questions? Contact Dr. Lisa at 303-514-4058 or email her at drlisatempleton@yahoo.com