Why is growth so difficult? How to get through change, even when it's good.

As the year ends, many of us look back with mixed emotions. Regardless of whether you judge your time as "good" or "bad", the fact remains that you changed in some way. Everyone changes from year to year, even if only minutely. The world is constantly in transition and we are all affected by it. If you lost someone or something, you changed; if you gained someone or something, you changed; if someone close to you lost or gained someone, you are affected because they are.

Being that we are constantly in flux, it seems funny that most of us would be afraid of change, even positive adjustments, in some way. But it's a natural fear of the unknown. We're creatures of habit, so when we don't know what's coming next we get excited, and maybe a bit anxious. Adrenalin pops in to say hello and prepare us for whatever dangers might be ahead. This is why transitions, even positive ones, can be hard to handle.

Sometimes growth is really difficult because it involves some type of loss. Ever had to dump a friend, lover, or spouse because they just didn't feel "right" for you anymore? Ever left a job for a new one or moved to a better neighborhood or another state or country for a new opportunity? All sorts of feelings pop up in these instances, and they usually involve excitement, anxiety, and sadness.

Guess what? Every single one of these feelings is PERFECTLY NORMAL. Many of us shit on ourselves about feeling the bad feelings, though. "I SHOULD feel happy. This is a GOOD thing, so WHY do I feel so scared and sad? I SHOULD stop feeling that way." These thoughts are a one-way ticket to feeling worse. The ironic thing is, the more you allow yourself to feel those bad feelings, the easier and faster you will move through them. And I don't mean wallowing in self-pity, staying in your bed all day. I mean giving yourself permission to feel the myriad of emotions that go along with growth and transition.

Here's an awesome excerpt from Melody Beattie's The Language of Letting Go. She uses the metaphor of growing out of things as a child to describe the feelings that go along with personal growth.

Just as when we were children and grew out of our favorite toys and clothes, we sometimes grow out of things as adults - people, jobs, homes. This can be confusing. We may wonder why someone or something that was so special and important to us last year doesn't fit the same way in our life today. We may wonder why our feelings have changed.

When we were children, we may have tried to fit an outgrown article of clothing on to our body. Now, as adults, we may go through a time of trying to force-fit attitudes that we have outgrown. We may need to do this to realize the truth. What worked last year, what was so important and special to us in times past, doesn't work anymore because we've changed. We've grown.

We can accept this as valid and important... We can let ourselves go through experimentation and grief as we struggle to make something fit, trying to figure out if indeed it no longer fits, and why. We can explore our feelings and thoughts around what has happened. Then, we can put last year's toys away and make room for the new.

The key points from this quote are: 1. Growth and change are permanent fixtures in our lives. 2. We can choose to let ourselves be just as we are while we move through the process.

Think of it this way: do you think it's right to tell others how they should feel? No? Does it make you feel any better when someone says "you should be happy!"? Didn't think so. Then why is it alright for you to tell yourself how you should feel? I know we all want to feel happy and great all the time because, well, it feels good! But that's just not how humans are. We experience the whole roller coaster of emotions and unfortunately, some of those feelings are difficult, even scary.

There's a lot of people in media and advertising telling you to "be fearless", usually with some incredible image like someone jumping out of a plane or diving off cliff. I'm willing to bet that the people doing those things are super afraid of doing what they're doing, they're just good at recognizing that fear goes hand-in-hand with excitement. It seems that instead of "be fearless", the mantra should be "don't let fear stop you." Because really, no one is fearless.

So I'm here to tell you: it's alright to feel tentative about any type of change. Everyone feels anxious at some point in their lives. Give yourself a break. Let yourself grow and unfold slowly. You'll find it's easier to move forward when you maneuver through those "bad feeling" obstacles, rather than try to pretend they don't exist.

Be Who You Are

I thought I'd share an excerpt from the always insightful book "The Language of Letting Go" by Melody Beattie. It's a book of daily meditations and affirmations, primarily written for people "in recovery" from codependency. I find much of it applies to all kinds of people, though. This is the meditation for October 1st. It can be helpful for anyone who has tried to fit in; to squeeze into "the box", discovered that it just doesn't work, but is afraid to truly just be:

Be Who You Are
In recovery, we're learning a new behavior. It's called Be Who You Are.

For some of us, this can be frightening. What would happen if we felt what we felt, said what we wanted, became firm about our beliefs, and valued what we needed? What would happen if we let go of our camouflage of adaptations? What would happen if we owned our power to be ourselves?

Would people still like us? Would they go away? Would they become angry?

There comes a time when we become willing and ready to take that risk. To continue growing, and living with ourselves, we realize we must liberate ourselves. It becomes time to stop allowing ourselves to be so controlled by others and their expectations and be true to ourselves - regardless of the reaction of others.

Before long, we begin to understand. Some people may go away, but the relationship would have ended anyway. Some people stay and love and respect us more for taking the risk of being who we are. We begin to achieve intimacy, and relationships that work.

We discover that who we are has always been good enough. It is who we were intended to be.

Today I will own my power to be myself.

Does any of this ring true for you? I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments below, on my facebook, or twitter @therapy4artists #bewhoyouare.

Is that how you REALLY feel?

When it comes to couples, a lot of people talk about "communication". Often we hear "A good relationship is all about communication" from advice givers or "We just didn't communicate" from recently broken hearts. Here's the thing: it's not that you communicate - because we all do, even when we're not speaking - it's how you communicate.

In love relationships, communication gets complicated. Because we've fallen intimately in love with someone, and they with us, we often expect them to know exactly what we need at all times. Why is it that we expect so much? I'm not completely sure why. Much of it has to do with attachment style, which dictates how we interact with others, but the rest seems to defy logic. Many times, we ask our partners to be superhumans - to behave in ways that are only agreeable to us and our wants and needs. If they don't, we get angry or upset and many times our partners have no idea why. Then they react, usually by either fighting back, going silent, or defending themselves in some other way. That's an all-too-familiar pattern that often brings couples to therapy.

Let's look at it a little closer with an example. I'll use wife and husband here to avoid confusion, but this could be any iteration of a love relationship: wife and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, husband and husband, etc.

A husband is patiently waiting for his wife to get home from work. He knows she gets home around 5:30. She has had a particularly stressful week, so he decides to make her a surprise dinner which will be ready right when she gets home. 5:30 rolls around... no wife. 5:45, he calls her cell and she doesn't answer. 6:00 and now he's really worried, pacing the floor, wondering if she got into an accident or worse. He calls several times and goes through all the horrible scenarios in his head, getting very anxious and concerned. At 6:30, his wife walks in the door looking perfectly fine. Before she can speak, her husband goes off, yelling about how inconsiderate she is, how the dinner is ruined, and how much she clearly does not care about him or his time. Instead of telling her husband about the long promotion conversation she had with her boss in the lobby and how her cell phone was dead, the wife says something like "You're being ridiculous! How was I supposed to know? You NEVER cook. I'm sure it was awful, anyway." and storms upstairs to the bedroom. Both partners are now pissed at each other over what is essentially "being late for dinner".

So, are these people communicating? They sure are, but they're communicating what Sue Johnson, one of the founders of emotionally focused therapy calls "secondary emotions".  These are the defensive emotions that come out of what is expected from your partner, but not the ones that started the process in the first place. In our example, the husband was scared about what could have happened to his wife and then hurt that she was fine, but did not tell him she would be late. The wife was then hurt that she was yelled at and accused of not loving her husband as soon as she walked in the door. She was probably also quite disappointed that she could not share her exciting news with her husband.  If this couple had communicated their primary emotions, they might have avoided an argument or could have at least had a more productive one. If the husband said something like "I'm so relieved to see you! I was so worried. Why didn't you call?" The wife likely would likely have immediately apologized and then shared her story.

I'm willing to bet this sounds familiar to you. I've done it and still do, although I tend to catch myself a lot more often nowadays. It's a hard cycle to break and we're human: sometimes we just go off without thinking about it. Here's a tip on how to become a bit more self-aware: when you're angry or upset with your partner, think about the situation - the interactional cycle - that caused you to feel this way. Are you hurt by something she said? Are you afraid he will leave you because of something he did? Do you feel lonely or unwanted? If so, try communicating that emotion instead of yelling, crying, or shutting your partner out. Or try to consider the situation for a moment: are you expecting your partner to read your mind? For example, are you upset because she is behaving in a way that she should know would hurt your feelings, even though she's trying to do something good? As I've said before, S L O W  D O W N, think before you react, and ask for what you REALLY need. State how you REALLY feel, before all those fight or flight mechanisms stepped in. If that's too much for you, take a step back, check the defensiveness rising in you, and see how you might soften your reaction. You may even determine that the anger is completely unnecessary and happily go on with your day! (Seriously, it's happened to me before). Now, this is not to say that anger or sadness are inappropriate emotions, but you'll be surprised at how productive a conversation can be when it starts out with a certain softness, with a statement of personal need or desire, instead of blaming, nagging, or walking away.