_francespren

a place for authentic expression and mental health resources.

[francespren]

Why Strangers Can Seem so Attractive

Strangers have an odd habit of seeming a lot more attractive to us than long-established and well-known partners. That's not necessarily because they really ...

“The Incumbent Problem refers to the vast, but often overlooked and unfair advantage that all new people, cities and jobs have over existing – or, as we put it, incumbent – ones. The beautiful person glimpsed briefly in the street as we step off the bus, the city visited for a few days of holiday, the job we read about in a few tantalising paragraphs of a magazine; these have unwise tendencies to seem immediately and definitively superior to our current partner, our long-established home and our committed workplace and can inspire us to sudden and (in retrospect sometimes) regrettable divorces, relocations and resignations…” ~ The School of Life

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7 Essential Ways To Feel More Alive

Empty. Numb. Disconnected. Bored. These are among the most common complaints that permeate people in modern culture, and which I hear every day among my clients and course members. And they all have one thing in common: they're symptoms of being disconnected internally from your innate sense of aliveness.

So how do you feel more alive? Our culture says to do more, buy more, achieve more, succeed more, make more money, buy a bigger house, get out more, find a hobby, find a different job, live your passion. While there may be some truth to a few of these directives, the bottom line is that a full external life will not create internal fullness.

We all know people — perhaps you're one of them — who fall into the cultural trap of more and keep climbing the social, work, and health ladders, hoping that when they reach the top they'll finally feel alive. But it's a grand illusion, because there is no top: there's just another ladder offering another illusion of happiness. They've fallen into the "I'll be happy when ..." trap and, once in the trap, it's hard to find their way out.

What the culture fails to teach is that the road to aliveness is the other way around: when you're filled up internally you will naturally create a full external life. Just like meditation teaches that authentic and inspired doing arises from a still place of being, so the picture we paint on the canvas of life will feel alive when it's an expression of the fullness within.

There are many ways to fill your inner well. The following seven are just a few:

1. Lovingly attend to your physical health.

We start from the bottom up to address our physical health: food, drink, exercise, sleep, and hormones. Each of these has many subcategories, of course, but as a basic starting point ask yourself how lovingly you're attending to each of these areas. Just like a child doesn't feel balanced if he hasn't had enough sleep or is eating too much sugar, so you will have a hard time accessing your vitality if your physical body isn't getting what it needs.

2. Don't be afraid of moving through old grief and pain.

Many people squash down the pain they felt early in life to the point where what's left is numbness. In order to unleash the river of aliveness that is directly connected to your ability to feel the full range of your feelings, you have to be willing to pull the cork off your heart and allow old, unshed grief to surface and move through. I can write about this easily in two sentences, but for many people this is the work of a lifetime and requires the skilled guidance of a loving therapist to hold the space and lead the way.

3. Seek out nourishing, intelligent sources of information.

Sadly, we're sold a bill of goods when it comes to forming beliefs around love, sexuality, attraction, health, partnership, friendship, spirituality and death. These cognitive distortions often lead to anxiety, which then leads to emotional shutdown and deadness. One of the pathways back to aliveness includes replacing these falsehoods with the truth, which often means stepping away from Google, mainstream movies, and pop psychology and reading solid, well-researched books instead.

4. Maintain, or reconnect to, a sense of spirituality.

When we don't have a connection to something bigger than ourselves — whether that's nature, a higher power, or our own highest self — we tend to feel empty, alone and scared inside. Cultures from the beginning of time have created myths and rituals to help people anchor into a sense of meaning and purpose, as without them it's frightfully easy to feel like a speck of dust floating adrift in a vast universe. Full aliveness includes finding a spiritual path that feels right for you.

5. Develop a healthy concept of your sexuality.

Healthy sexuality begins with you as an individual. Most people carry unhealthy blueprints about their sexuality that include shame and unworthiness, and then they attempt to use sexuality as a way to feel alive and validate their worth. Two empty people trying to fill up through sex actually creates more emptiness. The healing work is to learn to love your own body first, and from that place of aliveness to share sacred sexuality with a loving partner.

6. Rest and play.

There can be no doubt that we live in a work-obsessed society. Unlike many South American cultures that include a siesta in the middle of their workday and follow the dictum of work to live, in America we live to work. This mentality is not really living, and it doesn't create aliveness. We need rest and play. We need to have fun. We need to get away from screens and into fresh air and real life. We need to tumble in the grass and swing across a river on a rope. We need to stop in the middle of the day just to be, instead of filling up every available time slot with things to do. This is what makes us feel alive.

7. Get out into nature.

There are few faster medicines to connect us to a sense of aliveness than to spend time in nature. Nature is the great elixir, the untouched, wild realm that reminds us of our own essential goodness. If you could spend an hour a day in true nature, walking barefoot in grass or lying on a bed of leaves staring at the clouds, you would effortlessly start to feel more alive.

Sound like hard work? Yes, it's not easy finding balance and aliveness as a human being. But take it slow and be gentle with yourself. Even addressing one of these areas will help bring life to the numb places inside of you and set you on a path toward the aliveness that is your birthright.

By Sheryl Paul

Link: https://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-16079/7-essential-ways-to-feel-more-alive.html

[francespren]

How To Find The Perfect Guy

A typical session with a client often begins with this dialogue:

"I'm with a great guy and we're so well-matched. He loves me and accepts me and I've never felt so safe with anyone. He's caring, giving, generous, warm, open, trustworthy and available. He's hard-working and responsible. He follows through on his word. But lately I've been wondering if, perhaps, there's someone better out there for me."

"And what qualities would this better guy possess?" I ask. The client smiles along with me because some part of her knows that better doesn't actually exist and that the guy is the catch of a lifetime.

"Well, he'd be all of the above, plus majorly successful, always confident, gorgeous, socially fluent, and he'd know how to do things like teach our future kids how to ski and play tennis, plus fix the kitchen sink and repair broken toilets."

"Um hm. So you're looking for perfection. And you do realize that that guy doesn't exist, right?"

"I guess so," she responds. And then we sit together in a silence punctuated by a sense of deflation as my client watches the bubble around her fantasy man burst and float to the ground.

Sadly, we live in a culture that conditions women to chase after "the perfect man" that they see portrayed in mainstream media. When we burst their bubble, they often respond with something like, "But my dad was all of those things. He's successful and strong; he's socially adept and can fix things around the house. He's the alpha-male. Why can't my partner be more like him?"

To which I always respond, "And was your dad emotionally open and available?"

To which my client will invariably answer, "No. My mom always complained that she felt lonely in the marriage and wished that he would show up more emotionally."

Here's the deal: You can't have it all. We live in a "you can have it all" culture but, as with so many areas in life, the cultural message is false and, at some point, we realize that we've been sold a bill of goods. If you're with the alpha-male, it's highly unlikely that he's also emotionally available. If you're with the softer, more sensitive kind of guy, it's likely that he doesn't have a huge social circle and isn't the life of the party.

You can sit around wishing your guy were more social or extroverted, but then you're focusing on who he isn't instead of who he is. I guarantee you that you'll always have to sacrifice something from your list of qualities that comprise your "Perfect Partner" list. It's a hard fact of life and real moment of growing up when you let yourself digest the uncomfortable but ultimately liberating fact that perfection doesn't exist.

If you want to find the perfect guy, and you're in a loving, well-matched relationship, follow these steps to help embrace the realistic magic that exists right in front of you:

1. Let go of perfection.

I know it's tough, especially when you believe that you haven't been harboring a vision of perfection. But if you were raised on a steady diet of Disney and Hollywood, I guarantee that the template has been seared into the deepest recesses of your unconscious, just waiting to emerge as you're thinking about committing to your lovely partner.

It's at that moment, when the long-held fantasy clashes with reality, that you may hear a voice that says, "Wait! You can do better! You're settling! What if you're making a mistake?" If you don't want to walk away and spend your life chasing an impossible ideal, you have to be willing to acknowledge the fantasy and then grieve it. It's through the grieving that you can let it go.

2. Separate from Daddy.

Many women are unconsciously holding onto an idealized view of their fathers, and when they compare their partners to this ideal image, he inevitably falls short. As wonderful as your dad may be, you need to see him as he really is and recognize that there are good reasons why you chose someone who's different: you want someone who's emotionally available, who's your friend and confidant, and who can happily watch chick flicks with you.

And if you're like most of my clients, you've probably dated the CEO, tennis-playing, life-of-the-party type before and it didn't work. Again, if you're stuck in the mindset that you can have it all, you're stuck in a fantasy that won't serve you if you want to commit to a life partner.

3. Proactively appreciate your partner's wonderful qualities.

If you're waiting for your kind, emotionally available man to suddenly become the jerk who took you for rides on his motorcycle and then threw your heart in a ditch and ran over it, you may as well leave and go find that jerk again. You're with your guy because he'd never treat you the way the exes did. And as long as you're wishing that he's someone else so that you can feel the longing which you've been culturally wired to equate with love, you're missing the beautiful man who's standing right in front of you.

Make it a practice to focus on gratitude by writing daily appreciation lists and you'll start to re-wire your mind so that you understand and embrace healthy, real love.

So how do you find the perfect guy? Chances are, he's standing right in front of you. All you need to do is change your definition of perfection and reorient your focus from what's missing to what's present and you'll have the relationship of your dreams.

By Sheryl Paul

[francespren]

It takes a lot for me to overcome my mind and share my thoughts like this.

A good emptying out of my brain into an online post is often met with furious mental chatter:

"Who the fuck do you think you are?  You're not qualified to write about this.  You're a fraud.  Don't pretend you've mastered any of this yourself. You've no idea what you're doing."

To which I say,

"I'm not here to pretend I've got this down to an art.  I'm here to share my experience, to assist others and find peace through the emptying out of my brain.  I'm no expert."

That's the truth.  I don't need to be an expert to write about this stuff.  All of this is an authentic expression of what I believe to be true and genuinely useful to others.  I don't want people to suffer needlessly at the mercy of their minds.  The part of me that believes I'm a bad person doesn't like me saying that, but I'm learning to step out of the grip of black and white thinking and accept 51% confidence in the things I say.  

I think this is what spiritual teachers and psychologists mean when they talk about getting comfortable with uncertainty.  It's the willingness to accept, "I think this might be right, but I can't be sure."

For a long time, I couldn't truly enjoy my writing, even though I felt continuously pulled back towards it when I stopped.  I felt like a fraud and my critical mind was loud, but writing this blog seems to be helping.  I'm writing to teach myself as much as I am to help others. 

Learn to be sceptical of what your mind says, even if it feels like it holds weight. We are riddled with defence mechanisms.  The critical voice that tells me I'm not good enough to be doing this has a job to do: maintain things as they are.  What is familiar, though painful, is safe.  Venturing into the unknown, even in the pursuit of wellness, is perceived risk.  

[francespren]

Another example...how the mind runs away with itself.

Sometimes we misassign meaning to the non-reaction.

*Hears a violent news story on the TV*

*Has no emotional reaction*

Thought/belief:  "There's something wrong with you.  If you were normal,  that would have upset you."

The truth?  Human beings are complex.  We often don't feel the 'appropriate' emotion to the 'appropriate' stimuli at the 'appropriate' moment.  The problem comes when we attach meaning to the reaction we deem inappropriate due to our conditioning.  I know you're not doing this on purpose (neither am I) and thoughts aren't as clear cut as I'm laying them out here.  It's one of life's toughest challenges to learn to watch this process, slow it down and spot what's going on.  

This can be particularly distressing when it comes to violent and sexual-themed thoughts and feelings.  In the privacy of your own mind, see what happens when you allow yourself to question: "Perhaps this isn’t true?”  Your mind won't like that.  Watch it kick off.  Even if the status quo is painful, change is a far riskier notion...and perhaps that's the purpose of this thought.  To keep you small, to protect you from the risk of growth.

[francespren]

An example of a false belief and how the misassignment of meaning to thoughts and feelings causes distress.

*Feels really good about self*

Thought/belief: "You're a narcissist."

The believing of this thought is so automatic that it feels true.  If anyone tried to lovingly challenge you on this belief, you might say something like, "No, it's true.  I know it.  It FEELS true."

You might even confuse this with your 'gut' instinct.

Can you be open to the idea that the root of this thought is the fear of feeling too good?  Many people have the fear that something bad will happen if they feel too good.  One of mine is: "If I feel good, if I take my eye off the ball, my parents will die."

This is a false belief: the idea that hypervigilance protects us from pain.  The fact is, my parents could die at any time whether I allow myself to feel happy or not. 

So, you close down.  Closing and opening are frustrating concepts to grasp, but as I understand it, it's about receptivity and willingness.  You just know when you're feeling receptive, don't you?  It's so subtle that if you brought your awareness to it, it might evaporate.  When we close down in an unconscious attempt to protect ourselves, we can't feel the full extent of our joy.