A Better Way to Work

Posted on May 15, 2024 by admin

I remember reading a short story many years ago. In the story, a kid decides to make some money by mowing lawns. His neighbor tells him that there are three different types of lawn jobs: $3, $4, and $5. She also tells him that nobody can do a $5 job. This inspires him to prove her wrong. He spends all day mowing, weeding, trimming, and doing other types of work in her lawn, even stopping to take naps and breaks as needed. All his effort pays off as he gets $5 and his neighbor’s respect.

The story seems intended to show the value of hard work. At this point in my life, however, with everything I’ve experienced since reading that story, I can’t help but think about it differently. What stands out to me the most is the opportunity cost of that kid working all day to get $5 from one lawn. If he had been able to do three $3 jobs in the time it took him to do one $5 job, he’d have almost double the money for the same amount of work, and almost triple if he could have done three $4 jobs during that time. That’s a large difference that grows even larger over time.

As for any possible concerns about doing lower quality work in order to get more jobs, there has to be a balance between effectiveness and efficiency. Lots of companies do just fine with poor quality products and services (especially huge companies with big name recognition, many locations, and long track records), so anyone who offers good products and services has an advantage. Nobody has to shoot for perfection in order to succeed. Sometimes it’s better to do a good enough job than to try to get everything perfect.

Additionally, some things can only be learned by trial and error. Lots of folks in business start out slowly and simply, learn as they go, and steadily improve the quality of what they offer as they accumulate more knowledge about running a business. Their business might eventually end up in a very different place than it was when it started, and they will almost certainly be more knowledgeable, efficient, and effective than they were at the outset. If they didn’t start where they were and with the level of knowledge and skill they had at the time, they’d have never improved their business or even started it at all.

With the food delivery gig I started earlier this year, it took me a long time to figure out how much to look for with the orders. Specifically, the amount of driving that comes with any given offer compared to the amount of money in that offer. In the spirit of what I said above about the story of the kid doing yard work, I’d much rather make a few higher-paying deliveries that don’t involve too much driving than make a lot of deliveries that pay way less money each. However, I’ll accept slightly lower-paying offers if they come with far less driving than slightly higher-paying offers. In any event, I always strive to avoid offers whose mileage is higher than the pay (for example, an offer that requires ten miles of driving and pays $5).

Sometimes I’ll even forgo delivery driving altogether if a better deal arises. There was one week in which I made hardly any deliveries because I was busy with another project. Since that project made me much more money over three days than I’d have made doing deliveries during that time period, I knew that it was worth sacrificing several small opportunities in order to accept the one big opportunity. I’ve done similarly at past jobs by taking time off to perform at juggling gigs that paid me much more money than I’d have made working my regular shift (the gigs also were more fun and took less time).

The changes I’ve made in these different projects have all come about gradually through trial and error. Small changes are always easier to make and sustain than huge changes. Easing into delivery driving was much easier than other jobs in which I suddenly went from unemployment straight into working nearly full-time, or in which I went directly from one kind of job into another very different job. The two biggest changes I’ve had with regard to my dog Sawyer were the day he came home and the day he died. In the former, I went from never having had a dog to having a new best friend. In the latter, our friendship of eleven years ended in a matter of minutes. While it was fairly quick and easy to adjust to life with Sawyer, adjusting to life without him has been the longest, hardest, and most painful process of my life. I’m certain it would have been easier if I’d had more notice or if there had been some way to gradually reduce our time together until we had none left.

Finding the balance between efficiency and effectiveness is something that comes with time. I’ve gotten pretty good at doing this with my hobbies, various jobs, and even this blog. On the days in which it’s difficult to do anything, doing just a little bit is enough to keep the ball rolling in a good direction while still giving me time to rest so I can do more another day. That has kept up my skills with juggling, unicycling, swing dancing, writing, and so on. All without making me feel extraordinarily frustrated and wanting to give up on the hard days. This approach still seems to be the exception in general. Whether or not it becomes the norm on a widespread basis, I hope that I can keep developing it in my own life and interact primarily with others who do the same.

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Let the Good Times Roll

Posted on May 8, 2024 by admin

For most of my adult life, I’ve spent much of my waking days reminiscing over good times. This has gotten to the point over the last few years that I often wish I could relive the best moments of my life on an endless loop. If I could only pick one year to relive in that way, it would be 2018, my best year ever. On my worst days when I feel the most depressed, I become convinced that my best days are all behind me, and that my future either has nothing for me to look forward to or will be a pale imitation of my past.

This negative programming has become even more deeply etched within me since my dog Sawyer’s death. Losing him after the unexpected ending of a bad job a few months earlier and the many issues that have arisen in the two years since he died have made it much harder for me to imagine great times ahead. While I’ve healed a lot of the pain around losing him, there is still much work to be done, and life without him still hurts. Sawyer got me through a lot of hard times and was always there for me even when nobody else was, so his absence makes the hard times even harder. I miss his quiet, supportive presence and the gentle comfort he brought me when I needed it the most.

I recently got an idea about how to heal by reflecting fondly on the good times. When I look back on my best days, I usually do so with a huge sense of sadness that they’re gone and aren’t coming back. One day, I decided to focus on enjoying them without dwelling on the painful stuff that happened before and after. I found it to be a wonderfully relaxing experience that made me feel happier and lighter afterward. That’s one of the powerful lessons in Letting Go by David Hawkins: avoiding resisting the positive emotions. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to allow myself to feel happy, peaceful, joyful, and the like, so taking time to welcome those feelings as they arise is wonderful.

I’ve also worked more on releasing fear, especially fear connected to wonderful past occasions that took a huge negative downturn after the other shoe dropped. That happened throughout my upbringing. It usually took the form of me having fun while minding my own business until an adult snapped at me, yelled at me, or even hit me because I wasn’t doing something they wanted me to do or had done something they disliked. Although the violence has long gone away, others have still repeatedly snapped at, yelled at, and punished me in other ways over the past decade, which has programmed me to expect it whenever things go well for more than a little while. This is especially an issue with anyone who has power over me in a large system, whether it’s an employment situation or something that encompasses all of society. Additional ways that I’ve been hurt by things going badly (car trouble, unexpected financial issues, health problems, and other painful experiences that have happened many times this year already) prevent me from ever enjoying the good times for long as I’m always wondering how long they’ll last before the bad times return once again. I hope that continuing to heal past pain will allow me to fully enjoy the good stuff that is here now and whatever other good comes my way later without expecting it to end right away.

My life has contained long stretches in which I felt bad during the hard times and didn’t really enjoy much of the good times due to fear that they’d soon end. On some rare occasions, I’d feel bad during the hard times and fully enjoy the good times without fear of them ending. The highest level, which I haven’t permanently made my home but have stayed there briefly a couple of times, consisted of me feeling at peace regardless of what was happening around me. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to stay permanently at that highest level. If the furthest I ever reach is the level of feeling bad when bad things happen and good when good things happen, and I can stay at that level consistently without falling back down to feeling bad almost all the time, I’ll take it. Since I’ve repeatedly surprised myself by doing things I once thought couldn’t be done, I won’t set a limit on how far I can go. Instead, I’ll keep doing what’s worked wonders for me and see how far it takes me.

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Slow Down, Please!

Posted on May 1, 2024 by admin

During one of Mister Rogers’ interviews with Charlie Rose, he expressed concern over how noisy the world had become, saying, “I’m very concerned that our society is much more interested in information than wonder. In noise rather than silence.” That struck a chord with me. Generally, I prefer calm, quiet, and slow to rambunctious, loud, and fast. This is even more important to me when I have to make a big, important decision. In that case, I need to take it slow and let ideas come to me in quiet stillness. If not, I’ll forget important things and regret them later through rushing.

Unfortunately, what Mister Rogers said back in 1994 has only gotten worse since then. Every major decision I’ve regretted has been one I’ve made in a rush, yet the world seems to be moving faster every day and giving me less time to make important decisions. So much of modern life seems like a high-pressure sales situation or an interrogation: a fast, loud, confusing, intimidating, and scary situation meant to overwhelm the other person and make them do what those creating that situation want them to do. Whenever I can, I seek out calm, quiet, stillness, and peace as the antidote to such sensory overload. It’s sadly getting harder and harder to find any or all of those in regular life.

From what I’ve seen, my approach to conversations is vastly different than normal. I prefer to speak slowly in conversation, pause between the end of what someone says and the start of what I say (as well as between my own sentences), take time to formulate a response before speaking, and keep a relaxed pace throughout the whole exchange. I wish others would do the same, largely because that’s where I feel most comfortable, I need more time to understand what is being said and how someone feels about it, and the slower interactions I’ve had seem to have also been beneficial for the others involved, even if they generally operate faster in conversation. Instead, most humans I meet seem to race through everything they say, leave almost no pause between the end of my speech and the start of theirs, say the first thing that pops into their head (even when it’s cruel, irrelevant, or otherwise makes the interaction worse), and act anxiously the entire time. Unless I’m really in the zone, I tend to get dragged along with them into talking and interacting faster than is comfortable for me, which almost always makes me feel anxious and results in worse interactions. I hope to get better at talking and moving at my own pace regardless of what anyone else around me is doing.

I also have a great deal of trouble responding when someone asks me a question and then repeats the same question many times while I’m trying to think of an answer. When this happens, the person often immediately repeats the question less than a second after asking it. Sometimes they ask it a few times in a few different ways and then stop until I say something. Other times they ask it endlessly, only stopping if I finally interrupt. The endless repetition cases are the worst as they prevent me from having the inner stillness and silence that brings answers to mind. Some things make no sense to me until I get enough quiet space inside for what has been said to sort itself out. That can take anywhere from a few seconds to far, far longer, and it sometimes requires lots of clarification. By repeatedly asking the same question, and usually also pressuring me to answer right away, anyone who does this is actually preventing themselves from getting an answer from me.

This has created many issues for me across multiple areas of life. Outside of normal social interactions with others, being slow to understand made things hard at each of my past jobs. Whether it was taking a long time to learn the systems in place, having trouble understanding what someone was asking of me, carrying out a request outside of the norm, and more, all of those would have been much easier if I could have picked things up much faster. It’s also made misunderstandings much harder to clear up. So many folks, especially those I don’t know, are quick to make negative assumptions and speak about them in unclear ways. By the time I’ve understood that there is an issue and what that issue is, they’ve usually already cemented in their mind the negative assumption and started acting with hostility toward me.

All of this seems to have gotten harder after my head injury in November of 2021. It’s hard to tell for sure what lasting effects, if any, it has had. That was certainly a stressful situation at the time, although I was able to return to my normal life fairly quickly. The fact that it happened in the second of three highly stressful years in a row, not long before I left a job that had become more trouble than it was worth, and just under six months before my dog Sawyer’s death makes it tough to know how much of my current troubles are from the injury and how much are from the other issues. I suspect it’s a combination of all of those.

The most painful examples of this all involve Sawyer toward the end of his life. I strongly wish I had been given more time and space to talk about whether or not Sawyer was truly ready to die and the emotions I felt before the decision was made. Instead, I was rushed, guilted, pressured, and otherwise manipulated into going along with a decision that had already been made. My feelings, wants, and needs weren’t considered for a moment. As if that weren’t bad enough, in the rush of that decision and what followed, I assumed that when the vet talked about getting paw and nose prints from Sawyer, that at least the paw prints would be done with clay. To my dismay, they were only done in ink on cardstock. It didn’t occur to me until it was too late that clay prints might have required special arrangements at the vet or could have to have been done elsewhere entirely. While I love having the ink paw prints, I deeply regret not arranging to have clay paw prints made. To top it off, I wish I had been given more time with Sawyer’s body after he left it. Unfortunately, as I often do in extremely stressful situations, I followed the lead of others. This meant that Sawyer’s body was taken away only a few minutes after his death, and I didn’t think to ask what was happening next or to say I wanted more time with his body. When his body was taken away, I didn’t know that I wouldn’t get to see, pet, or visit with it again. If I had known that at the time, I would have made sure to get more than a few minutes, even if I were the only one in the room (which would have been my preference, actually). The unpleasant cherry on top was how Sawyer’s beds, towels, food/water bowls, and most of his other items were packed up and put away by nightfall that day. As if they, and, by extension, he, were never here in the first place. Nobody asked me if I was ok with that, if I’d like to have kept them out longer, or anything else about how I felt or what I wanted. I had to make a specific request to keep his pillow by the front window, and that only happened begrudgingly. The guilt, shame, anger, sadness, and regret around all of these have been incredibly heavy and hard to heal.

How I feel about any of this varies greatly from moment to moment. Sometimes I feel angry and depressed about how things are and seem to be going. Other times I feel calm and hopeful, especially when I see steps in the right direction anywhere in the world. Since I’ve worked through a ton of pain around Sawyer’s death over the last two years, it seems that older, deeper pains are now free to come up for healing. These are proving quite difficult to work through, given how many of them occurred during the first few years of my life and all of them before I became an adult. This “original pain,” as John Bradshaw described it in Homecoming, seems to be the most difficult to heal and to also bring the most freedom when finally put to rest. I hope that I can focus enough on those early emotional wounds to finally heal them and then be able to consistently stick to a slower speaking style and calmer conversational approach. The limited experiences I’ve had in emotional states with little to no fear, guilt, shame, or other negativity have been incredible, and I look forward to seeing how much better it gets when all the old pain is gone.

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Two Years Without Sawyer

Posted on April 24, 2024 by admin

This past Friday, April 19th, was the two-year anniversary of my dog Sawyer’s death. In both good and bad ways, that day was quite different than I imagined it would be. Here are some observations about it.

I wasn’t sure how painful that date would be this year. There was still a great deal of pain one year after Sawyer’s death. The fact that I spent much of that day searching for a rehab facility for seven orphaned baby possums and then transporting them once a good place had been found added to the pain and stress. Even without that experience, I’m certain that that day still would have been painful. That was the first day that I could no longer say I had Sawyer less than one year ago.

Just as last year, this year’s anniversary was also painful, especially since it marked the beginning of having to say that I’ve been without Sawyer for multiple years. However, the pain was smaller than last year and the day itself was overall ok. I attribute that to all the healing work I’ve done, regarding both Sawyer’s death and other issues. I spent lots of time by myself on Friday letting go and doing things in memory of Sawyer. Several of them made me cry healing tears. I reread Mister Rogers’s book When A Pet Dies and watched the episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in which he talks about death. Both gave me comfort and the episode freed up more tears.

Although I would have strongly preferred to have stayed home all day, I had an important commitment that evening. While the event itself went fine, I felt a lot of anger on the drive down there due to heavy delays and getting stuck at a lot of red lights on an alternative route. All that stress made me not even want to do the event at all since it took a lot just to get there through all that anger and wasted time. I felt so relieved to be back home after a smooth return drive. The anger and sadness took a lot out of me that day and left me feeling extra tired by the end.

The week leading up to the big day was almost a disaster. On Sunday, April 14th, something extremely scary, infuriating, and deeply painful happened that completely ruined that day for me. I cried a lot and yelled a lot after that happened; the next day featured some more crying and possibly more yelling. I spent the next two days at home doing four hours of letting go per day. That helped me feel immensely better. I kept doing as many extra letting go sessions throughout the week as my schedule allowed. I’m certain that allowed me to welcome all emotions on the anniversary much better than I otherwise could have in addition to preventing the massive pain from that Sunday from making me feel even worse than I did.

Car trouble added some additional stress to this already painful time of year. Fortunately, I was able to have reliable transportation every day it was needed. That was especially important over this past weekend when two close friends of mine got married in St. Augustine. I had the honor of being in the wedding party, which is the first time I’ve been asked to do so. I’m so glad I was able to be part of it despite the car issues and increased emotional pain.

Something many don’t seem to understand, and which took me a long time to realize, is that Sawyer’s death and life without him have both been painful for other reasons than my love for him. Since Sawyer first came home toward the end of my junior year in high school, we experienced a lot in our eleven years together. My high school graduation, first job, entering adulthood, first romantic relationship, start of my career as a professional juggler, and beginning of my self-improvement journey are a few of the things Sawyer was there to witness. He also got me through a lot of painful times, such as the end of that romantic relationship, several deaths of those close to me, scary confrontations, and tons of my own emotional struggles. The fact that he’s not here anymore not only means that we won’t get to make any new Earthly memories together but also that his role as a living link to many major milestones and wonderful times in my life is now broken. That is painful enough on my good days and even more painful on my bad days when I miss him, the comfort he gave me, and the connection he provided to the good times of the past.

I’m glad the day went as well as it did. Each day without Sawyer is difficult, and, thus far, each anniversary since his death has been more painful than the average day. Despite several humans telling me “The pain never goes away,” I have noticed a gradual decrease in the pain since I started working through it right after Sawyer’s death. While I don’t know how long it will take for all of the pain to go away, I feel confident that that will happen at some point with continued healing work. In addition to feeling curious as to how the third anniversary of Sawyer’s death affects me next year, I look forward to feeling increasing peace about what happened, what will happen, and what is happening around me.

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The Healing Power of Presence and Listening

Posted on April 17, 2024 by admin

I usually prefer to be by myself when I feel upset. On the rare occasions in which I’d like some company, I prefer that company keep the focus on me and my pain, just as I strive to keep the focus on those close to me and their pain when they turn to me for support during their painful times. I don’t want to feel lonely, and I feel most lonely when others use my pain as an opportunity to talk about themselves. (regardless of their intentions in doing so). In fact, I feel lonelier when surrounded by folks doing that than I ever do when I’m focusing on healing with nobody else around.

Ultimately, I want those close to me to simply be present with me and where I’m at instead of directing me or rejecting me if I feel anything other than happy, peaceful, joyful, etc. That is the central lesson in Cori Doerrfeld’s beautiful book The Rabbit Listened. When someone else listens to and is present with me, or when I do it for myself, the feeling of relief is incredible. It makes the pain smaller, easier to understand, and possible to work through without feeling so overwhelmed. Additionally, if enough humans did this, I believe it would solve most of the problems regarding gossip, interruptions, misunderstandings, fighting, strained relationships, etc. More peace and more solid relationships. Sounds wonderful.

Although I had known of it for quite some time, I finally took some time last week to watch the sweet video Steve Burns (the original host of Blue’s Clues) uploaded earlier this year. In case the link won’t work, Steve asked viewers how they were doing and then gave almost a minute of silence for them to answer while appearing to genuinely listen. Instead of staying quiet, I started talking about recent experiences. I cried a bit as I got more personal about the pain I’m still dealing with, especially around loneliness and fear of my future. I felt better after that. It’d be so nice to have even one human regularly listen to and be present with me like this. Only a handful of folks I know have ever done this for me, and none of them live nearby or are easy to reach. Although I’ve gotten pretty good at doing this for myself, it’s still hard at times. That’s when the struggles are strongest.

My dog Sawyer was wonderful at this. I felt safe enough around him to show all kinds of emotion and tell him about anything that was bothering me. No matter how good or bad I felt, he wanted to be by my side and show me love. When I felt bad, he often would get more still and quiet than usual while lying down near, against, or on top of me similarly to this. He always made me feel comfortable, loved, and valued, and I’m so thankful to have received that from him for so many years.

I want my friends to keep being my friends even when I feel mad, sad, afraid, or bad. Despite all the healing and self-improvement I’ve experienced for nearly 7 years now, I still fear that those close to me will leave me if I say I feel angry, frustrated, or otherwise upset at something they’ve done. As such, when I feel bad, I rarely say much about how I’m feeling, set strong boundaries, or ask for a change in an interaction. All of that becomes even harder to do when I feel deeply upset; that’s when I fear even more than usual how someone might react to my requests and revelations, so I say as little as possible and usually end up either going totally silent or getting dragged around by whoever is talking to me while they are seemingly totally oblivious to how I feel. A possible remedy for this is working on boundaries and expressions of feelings with close friends who have shown that they will stick with me even when I feel upset and don’t always know how to put it into words effectively. I’ve considered this before but have never done much of anything with it outside of a few instances during some life coaching back in 2021. I’d like to try more of it.

Until then, I’ll keep doing what I can on my own to release pain and feel more at peace. I’m thankful for having more opportunities than usual to do that this week. They have been crucial for overcoming a hugely painful experience on Sunday and preparing me for the two-year anniversary of Sawyer’s death on Friday. Even if it’s still painful, I hope it’s at least less painful than the day of his death and the one-year anniversary. If the progress I’ve made since April of 2022 is any indication, I’m sure it will be.

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Responsibility in Emotional Regulation

Posted on April 10, 2024 by admin

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, which I first talked about in this past post. It’s hard to tell whether more humans are living through their parasympathetic nervous systems or if that’s just what appears to be happening as I’m getting deeply in touch with mine once more. Here are some of my recent thoughts on this.

From my own experience, I can organize this into different levels. The lowest levels involve almost constant activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which results in feeling bad all the time or most of the time, regardless how many good things are happening. Significantly higher up is feeling good unless things happen that one dislikes. Still higher is feeling good unless majorly bad things happen. The highest level is feeling good all the time. That is when the parasympathetic nervous system is nearly always active. During my best times, I’ve been able to stay feeling good even when those around me were being loud, expressing anger, or even turning to violence. Unfortunately, thus far, I’ve only been able to stay at that highest level for about a month at the longest before slipping back to a level that remains fairly high up yet still has the possibility of feeling bad at times.

I often see this framed in terms of “masculine” and “feminine.” I think this is a big mistake, especially when it’s used alongside an implication or direct statement that it’s solely a man’s responsibility to hold space and help regulate the emotions of his girlfriend, fiancé, or wife, and that it’s either hardly ever or even never her responsibility to do that for him. One reason this confuses me is because the traits commonly ascribed to a man “in his masculine” or a woman “in her feminine” include peace, being grounded, present moment focus, lightness, and a sense of ease for what is and what will be. All of those are signs that the parasympathetic nervous system is active. Signs that the sympathetic nervous system is active include shallow breathing, rapid heartbeat, being lost in thought, jumpiness, and a short temper. Since everyone has both a sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, anyone can learn how to engage either one. That’s why I don’t see this in terms of “masculinity” or “femininity.” It’s about whether the sympathetic or parasympathetic is in control.

If someone is going to hold space for another who is having a hard time, it’s important that this not become that person’s full-time responsibility. This applies equally for romantic relationships, friendships, families, etc. Sometimes one particular person is in a good enough place to support another who is struggling. In other cases, that person may be struggling and need support from somebody else. Taking turns as needed keeps everyone on the same team and prevents any one person from getting burned out by always being the one who attempts to hold space for everyone else’s emotions. If everyone is dependent on one person to always be calm and keep things together, then who helps that person when he feels overwhelmed and can barely hang on for himself, let alone for everyone else? Further, if the one person who always keeps it together is struggling or unavailable, does everyone in that situation just fall apart? There must be a better way.

I much prefer taking turns supporting each other over the above approach, which is the way it was throughout my upbringing and even well into adulthood. At home, at various jobs, and in many close human relationships, I was expected to be the one who’d keep it together for the sake of everyone around me. The worst part was interacting with all kinds of adults who would go crazy if anything they even remotely disliked happened, especially if I as a little kid said or did something they hated. I’m sure that’s where the seed of responsibility for everyone else’s feelings was planted within me, the same seed that eventually grew into a huge, tangled mess that I’m still working every day to remove. That responsibility is exhausting and I’m so glad to finally be making real progress in releasing it.

My dog Sawyer helped ground me and engage my parasympathetic nervous system when I felt upset. Over time, I learned how to do the same for him when he needed it. This could involve giving him more attention when he appeared to feel sad, petting him and speaking in a calm voice to settle him down, and giving him space, especially when he felt tired enough to need extra naps. I loved how much we were there for each other, and my favorite human relationships have similar reciprocity. I wish that reciprocity were more common among humans.

The more I heal and release pain, the easier it is to engage the parasympathetic nervous system, and the less I depend on anyone else speaking or doing anything in particular to make me feel good. Although I’m not yet back to where I was during that wonderful month in which nothing bothered me, I still find myself feeling better in general than I have for much of my life. It takes more to really upset me and, when I do feel super upset, I can release it and feel better again much faster than I thought possible until the past few years when I really started working on this. While this is much easier for those who’ve never been traumatized, those who have been traumatized can still heal enough that they can regularly engage the parasympathetic nervous system themselves instead of being dependent on anyone else to attempt it for them. I’m sure I will feel even more relieved as I continue to heal and become increasingly freer from others being able to influence my emotional state. I hope the same occurs for all the humans I know as well as the ones I don’t know.

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The Value of Kids’ Books

Posted on April 3, 2024 by admin

Emotional work can be difficult at times. Sometimes it’s even exhausting. What makes it more challenging are works that are hard to understand and even harder to practice. Some writers on these subjects seem to think that including lots of challenging concepts and long words that are tough to pronounce (and which require constant looking up in the dictionary) makes their work more meaningful, effective, or valuable. It doesn’t. It makes it ineffective, confusing, and impractical.

There’s an idea about being able to explain something in such a way that a little kid can understand it. As much value as I’ve gotten out of practicing the central technique in David Hawkins’s Letting Go, the book has a lot in there that can be confusing at times. Some other books are much easier to follow. That’s where kids’ books come in. Kids’ books rarely have the problem of being difficult to understand. While many adults have trouble grasping metaphor, subtlety, and lessons hidden within a story, even more kids struggle with this, which is why so much content made for kids uses clear lessons that are spelled out so that almost everyone can understand them. They also almost always include practical steps to help anyone start moving toward where they want to be from wherever they are at the moment. That simplicity is valuable for anyone, whether kid or adult.

When I’m feeling incredibly upset and overwhelmed, I have even more trouble than usual understanding things. I need to keep things simple during those times. I’ve found a few kids’ books to be wonderful in those situations. The one I’ve used the longest is When A Pet Dies by Mister Rogers. I love all of Mister Rogers’s work and this is one of my favorites. It helped me so much with the pain of my dog Sawyer’s death when that pain was still incredibly fresh and it still helps me when I need it at times, such as this morning when it brought out some tears and made me feel a little more peaceful. The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld beautifully illustrates how much listening to someone can do to help them feel better. It’s right in line with my own approach to helping others, how I prefer others to comfort me when I feel upset, and what I’ve gotten good at doing for myself. The most recent finding I’ve used is a box set one of my best friends sent me from Diane Alber called A Little SPOT of Emotion. It contains a book, poster, mirror, and set of eight plus figures representing different emotions. The box set is all about helping kids identify and handle their emotions in healthy ways.

Even though I’ve only had that box set for a few days at this point, it’s already helping me recover a level of emotional acceptance that has been missing for years. It reminds me of the huge breakthrough I had in early 2021. That was around the time I was going through some powerful life coaching, doing a lot of work from John Bradshaw’s book Homecoming, and still benefiting from all the pain I released in the second half of 2020. I was feeling pretty good at the time and realized while listening to this song on YouTube that it was peace and friendship with myself that I had been missing for so long. The combination of all those things gave me this incredible sense of peace and oneness with myself. That has been a rare sensation over the past several years. Seeing those little emotion plush figures as my friends and loving all of them (including anger, sadness, and the other ones typically thought of as negative) has given me back that sensation. I feel a lot more at peace with myself now and a lot more hopeful. I’m so thankful to have that back.

The easier something is to do, the more likely I am to do it, especially when I feel overwhelmed. Many kids’ books and shows contain powerful lessons despite their simple appearances, and that makes those lessons far easier to put into practice than most works aimed at adults. There’s only so much that can be gained from learning and endlessly intellectualizing about certain concepts. The healing and growth come from finding what works and using it. I’m so thankful for all the great resources I’ve found, whether they guided me during my formative years as a kid or are currently helping me heal my inner little kid. I hope they help you as well.

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Boundaries vs Nonviolent Communication

Posted on March 27, 2024 by admin

I’ve thought a lot about boundaries lately. My interest in this started in 2019 after I read the book Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. Despite seeming to understand it at the time, I struggled to apply what I’d learned, and later realized that I had misunderstood some key aspects. Mainly, I didn’t understand that setting and maintaining boundaries is about deciding what I will do, not trying to control what others do. This appears to be a common misunderstanding around boundaries. For example, if someone often gossips to me about others and I don’t want to be around gossip, I could either try to make them stop or I could leave whenever they start gossiping. The latter option is a boundary. Now that I finally understand this, I’ve been able to apply it successfully in a variety of situations.

However, as I’ve written about before, I wonder if I’m setting too many boundaries and depriving myself of meaningful interactions. In general, it takes much less than it used to for me to stop interacting with someone, whether temporarily or permanently. On my most difficult days, even the slightest bit of negativity from somebody else can make me disengage. Despite the fact that the more I heal, the easier it gets to avoid taking things personally, I still find it extremely difficult at times. It’s almost impossible for me to do this when I’m feeling exhausted, sad, afraid, angry, or otherwise overwhelmed.

This has got me thinking a lot about Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. I first read it years ago and have listened to many hours of Marshall talking about it this year. That renewed interest has made it easier for me to listen empathically and connect with the concerns, feelings, needs, and pains of others. It still amazes me how well Marshall could do this, even in some of the most intense confrontations around extremely painful issues.

When I hear audio of people saying things I disagree with, it’s fairly easy to listen for the emotions and pain underneath the words, which increases my understanding of their needs and reduces my chances of feeling upset over what they are saying. I still find it enormously difficult to do this in my interactions with others, though. Fear of how they’ll respond, the time it can take me to figure out how they’re feeling, pressure to respond quickly, and the fact that this isn’t yet a habit for me all prevent me from doing this more often than not.

I especially hate the lack of reciprocity that continues to plague most of my interactions. While there are some folks who will show interest in what I’m feeling, wanting, and needing after I’ve done that for them, many others never do. That makes me feel frustrated and sad and results in me severely limiting my exposure to anyone who takes but never gives. It’s incredibly hard, frustrating, and draining being one of the few humans I know who strives for effective communication. Since almost everyone else I know reacts instantly instead of pausing before responding mindfully, makes negative assumptions rather than asking for clarification, uses snark and sarcasm instead of civility, and focuses more on the words than the emotions, it’s hard for me to avoid feeling disappointed and lonely.

Having seen since 2020 how cruel humans can be toward each other, and having seen since my dog Sawyer’s death how bad even caring humans tend to be at comforting those who are hurting, I’ve quadrupled my boundaries efforts. All the negativity that’s happened over the last four years and all the humans who have hurt me, misled me, or used me for their own purposes without showing any concern for me have got me feeling scared of humans in general. I won’t let any of that happen again, and boundaries are my primary defense against it. This applies to those close to me, complete strangers, and everyone in between. Most of the pain I’ve experienced has come from former friends and close acquaintances, so I don’t feel fully comfortable around those presently close to me since I never know who is going to turn on me and when. There has been enough pain from strangers to make me distrust those I don’t know, which makes it take longer for me to fully warm up to new folks. As such, I find the most peace when I’m alone or around friendly animals, especially dogs and cats.

Much of my life has alternated between being a doormat and a bulldozer. Even now, I still wonder at times if I feel bad after certain interactions because I went too far or if that’s just lingering guilt and shame that haven’t yet been released. Sometimes it helps to remember that even Marshall Rosenberg had limits. When he felt sufficiently overwhelmed, he would use a “nonviolent scream” to let those around him know he couldn’t interact anymore until he settled down and felt better. It’s comforting to know that those I admire and who have had a profoundly positive impact on my life are still human and sometimes need time to themselves.

All this has got me thinking that the ideas behind nonviolent communication comprise the highest level of communication and boundaries are the second-highest level. Much as I’d like to be able to use the nonviolent communication ideas more often, I take some comfort in the notion that consistently setting and maintaining proper boundaries in a loving way is still pretty high on the list and a far better approach than the most common approaches to difficult human interactions. If I’m in too much pain to hear the wants, feelings, and needs beneath someone’s cruel words, I’d rather remove myself from the situation than respond with cruelty. I hope that continuing to heal old emotional wounds and practicing both nonviolent communication and boundaries (ideally with my more patient friends) will dramatically reduce all these issues and make life better for everyone.

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Social Confusion

Posted on March 20, 2024 by admin

I don’t understand most human socializing. I used to get it, or at least was closer to getting it than now, but those days are long gone. To put it simply, I don’t understand what most humans are seeking to get out of their interactions with others. Here are some of the things I’ve noticed.

So many kids spontaneously play and share with each other. They often use different toys, props, board games, playground equipment, and games they make up on the spot. Any talking that occurs is usually related to whatever type of play they’re doing in any given moment. This seems to very quickly break down any walls between any of the kids and bring them all closer to each other, even when one or more of those kids are meeting for the first time.

Adults, in contrast, will often have little to no physical play. Most adult socializing I see involves sitting down and talking, usually with those they already know well. This talking may be done over food, or alcohol, or, often, both. There’s little to no playing games, dancing, or sharing any other kind of physical activity. The talking is often about nothing in particular, involves lots of interruptions, comes with fast changes of subject and not responding to what someone has said, and usually contains lots of forced laughter. It can also easily turn hostile any second. Verbal fights can break out when the conversation turns toward a major disagreement between two or more participants. Discussions seem to grow shallower, faster, and more likely to devolve into fights as the number of participants increases.

Additionally, many humans I meet still engage heavily in direct eye contact when they talk to others. Much of human eye contact is uncomfortable for me, partly because humans always seem to want to take something from me (whether it’s money from my pocket, words from my mouth, thoughts from my head, or simply time from my life) without giving me something of equal value in return. It’s also often uncomfortable for me because of how much a few particular individuals would force me as a little kid to look at them right in the eyes while they yelled at me, put their faces inches away from mine, and hurt me in other ways. As such, when someone stares intently at me, I experience the lingering pain from those traumatic situations.

Whether with new acquaintances or old friends, I often end up saying little. Aside from my interest in mindfulness, this is largely due to fear and lack of interest. The fear is over the hostility I’ve seen and experienced firsthand from many folks over the course of my life who felt angry at something I said and hurt me in response. Since the world seems to be becoming a more hostile and less patient place, the less I say, the safer I’ll be. Lack of interest covers most of what goes on in casual social circles: small talk, inside jokes, endless teasing each other, references to events I didn’t attend, etc. None of that fascinates me or brings anything to my mind to say in response, and it often leaves me feeling confused, so I generally avoid it or say nothing when faced with any of it. I also find it incredibly difficult to keep up and give everyone my best self when interacting with more than a couple of folks at a time; this is why I prefer one-on-one interactions, a preference most I know don’t seem to share. I love when I get a social respite by interacting with someone who also enjoys quiet presence, slow speaking, or deeper discussions (or all of the above) during smaller gatherings. Like an oasis in the desert, these rare folks leave me feeling refreshed and uplifted.

For all of the above reasons, I feel most comfortable interacting with others around some sort of shared activity. Board games, card games, charades, and especially big physical activities such as soccer, ultimate frisbee, swing dancing, and juggling, are where I’m most at home. Focusing on an activity, particularly one that involves handling some kind of equipment, relieves the pressure of finding things to say and looking others in the eye. When I used to regularly play some kind of sport on Saturday mornings with a few folks I knew, I’d often meet new folks in the process. Whether or not the new person was on my team, we’d introduce ourselves and talk after playing for a while. The game served as a great ice breaker and expended lots of energy (leaving us with less energy to feel upset or start fighting if things took a turn), both of which made the later interaction much easier than if we had started talking right away after meeting in a restaurant, bar, or other low-activity situation.

If you’ve read this blog for a while now, you might have guessed that I generally feel much more comfortable around animals than humans. My dog Sawyer felt perfectly content to just hang out with no words, barking, howling, or anything else. While we often played together, it was also ok to just sit or lie down next to each other or look lovingly into each other’s eyes. Unlike with humans, I loved looking deeply into Sawyer’s eyes and always felt better after seeing the love he showed me in that way. He never judged, condemned, or hurt me for what I said, hurled cruel words at me, or made me feel like a stranger when we hung out. I miss him and I wish I knew more humans like him. The few who come close to his example live far away and don’t get to interact with me much. Fortunately, I get to regularly visit with a few different kinds of friendly animals, including dogs. Being around them always makes my day, especially when I get to visit with one or more Pomeranians as I did today (Sawyer was a Pomeranian and that breed holds a special place in my heart).

This would make me feel quite lonely if I hadn’t gotten good at being good company for myself. I’ve made lots of progress at being kind to myself, handling my emotions in healthy ways, and finding and meeting my own needs. Any one of those is a big ask for anybody else, and expecting anyone to be always available for all of them is a recipe for disappointment. I know that from experience as I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve used that recipe to bake a big disappointment cake and frosted it with frustrated icing. Since I’ve learned how to be my own friend, I’ve felt more at peace with others who interact differently than I like. I don’t attempt to change how they interact with each other, and they don’t attempt to change how I interact with them. Sometimes I’ll have a nice interaction with one or two of them at a time while they’re away from a larger group. Even a brief interaction of that sort is always welcome. I’m glad to have gotten to this place with regard to social interactions, and I look forward to interacting with more humans and animals who share my social preferences.

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Being Kind to Myself

Posted on March 13, 2024 by admin

So many humans are cruel to themselves. They might treat others well and be quick to lift the spirits of someone else who is struggling, yet it’s so hard for them to be kind to themselves. A common example is how they often talk about and respond to their own pain. “Others have it much worse than I do,” “I need to grow up and move on,” “There’s no reason for me to feel this way,” “I’ve gotta man up,” “I’m such a baby.” And so many other ways they belittle their own pain, bury their emotions, and try to convince themselves they’re not hurting when they know deep down that they are.

Interestingly, some react defensively if anyone else says anything along those lines to them. They’ll insist that their pain is real and that it’s ok for them to feel upset at something that upsets them. However, when it’s their voice saying those same things, their criticism can be relentless, and they believe every word of it. When someone else recognizes their pain, they might at first try to downplay it or deny it altogether, as if that’s what they’re “supposed” to do. If the other person brings enough understanding, safety, and compassion to the situation, though, the hurting person might eventually admit how much they’re hurting and release lots of pain through crying, yelling, venting, and so on.

I wonder how anyone who denies their own pain would react if they could meet themself as a little kid during a painful moment in their life. Would they say one or more of the above denials to their younger self? That’s essentially what they do now. Since nearly every human on Earth is still walking around with lots of emotional pain from their upbringing that never got healed, almost everyone is basically a hurting little kid cosplaying as an adult. Hearing those denials when they’re in pain presses on old, deep wounds, especially if any of the denials came from a friend, family member, or someone else they trusted at a young age. The pain is even greater if violence was also present at the time the denials were given. Unfortunately, many humans internalize those denials and say them to themselves for the rest of their lives. After all, since little kids depend on trusted individuals to keep them alive and safe, if one of those trusted individuals denies their pain and tells them they are a bad person, the kid tends to believe it and see themselves that way forever after. The resulting negative inner voices can override the positive inner voices and even the positive outer voices from those in their lives who care about them.

I know this from experience as I’ve spent most of my life denying my own pain and speaking cruelly toward myself. There’s almost no limit to how much I can guilt and shame myself over almost anything. It’s only since late 2020 that I started taking that pain seriously and working on being kinder to myself. Additionally, I believe the only reason I’m doing as well as I am almost two years after my dog Sawyer’s death is because I never denied my own pain around losing him, whether to myself or to anyone else. I embraced the pain in all of its many forms, especially sadness and depression. There were so many months after Sawyer died in which I spent almost all day, every day sobbing on the couch. Every one of those tears released a bit of pain, meaning that the total amount of pain gradually went down. At this point, the amount of remaining pain is low enough that I mostly recall the great times Sawyer and I shared, and I can talk about him, look at pictures and videos of him, and spend time with various things that remind me of him (including his paw prints and fur, my Spider-Man blanket he loved, his squeaky moon toy, and the pillow and socks with his face on them that others gave me as gifts) without breaking down, pretending that all the pain is gone, or acting as if the pain is greater than it actually is. So many who’ve lost a loved one find it difficult or even impossible to talk about them without breaking down even decades later, so it does seem like I’ve made unusually fast progress despite the extreme amount of pain I started with.

Thinking about myself as a little kid and giving that younger version of me what he needs whenever he feels upset has been hugely beneficial lately. I learned a lot of ways to do this from John Bradshaw’s wonderful book Homecoming. This way, whenever I notice lots of anger, sadness, fear, or any other strong negative emotion, I can speak to myself (usually silently but sometimes out loud, particularly when the feelings are extra intense) lovingly as a gentle parent would to acknowledge the pain, connect with my younger self, and work together to find and meet the needs underneath the pain. This, combined with my recently renewed interest in Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg and my daily emotional work inspired David Hawkins in Letting Go, has given me much greater peace by allowing me to better identify and heal painful emotions.

I used this approach this morning when reflecting on an experience from a job years ago that still makes me feel upset. That scenario involved the other person interrupting me, making assumptions and accusations, rambling on endlessly about irrelevant things, cursing, acting defensively, and saying I was wrong rather than connecting with me or my concerns. While letting the emotions run their course, I talked out loud through an outcome I would have much preferred. This involved roleplaying both as myself and the other person involved. After I said the same thing I actually said at the beginning of the real interaction, I had the other person use empathic listening, correctly identify the emotions I felt, and speak with a gentle voice to connect with me, acknowledge my concerns, put me at ease, and find out what I needed before agreeing to talk more about it on another occasion when we both had the time to meet in person and find a solution. That gave me a huge sense of relief, in addition to some frustration when thinking about how badly the actual situation went off the rails. I’m interested to see if using that approach with painful experiences from my upbringing brings similar relief and healing. I hope it does.

The more freely others talk about their inner worlds, the clearer it becomes how widespread an issue this is. I have no idea how it will change over time. I hope that, along with self-forgiveness, more folks will learn how to be consistently kind to themselves. Simultaneously, I fear that the general expectation to be “productive” and “disciplined” nearly nonstop to meet increasing demands at work, business, and social interactions will result in more folks pushing themselves well past their limits until they collapse from burnout, and then repeat that cycle endlessly until they die. I would love to be wrong about this. While there’s nothing I can do to change how others relate to themselves, there is a lot I can continue doing to change how I relate to myself. Showing myself more grace, forgiveness, kindness, and love will make things better for me and those who interact with me. As much as I’d love to see how the world would look if everyone did this, if all that happens is a better life for me and those close to me, then that’s ok with me.

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