CONTENTS

1. Title Page

2. Praise for Joyous Resilience

3. Copyright

4. Dedication

5. Introduction

1. Have You Ever Wondered . . .

2. The Bigger Picture

3. My Perspective

4. This Bo0k Is for You If . . .

5. The Road Ahead

6. Helpful Reminders before We Begin

7. Connecting to Our Essential Aliveness

8. Incredible Lineages

9. Incredible You

6. Part I: The Cycle of Suffering

1. 1: Introducing the Cycle of Suffering

1. The Neglector

2. The Critic

3. The Vulnerable Self

4. How the Three Roles Work Together

2. 2: The Neglector

1. Three Faces of the Neglector

2. The Payoffs

3. The Cycle of Suffering

4. The Bigger Picture

3. 3: The Critic

1. The Judge

2. The Fearmonger

3. The Perfectionist

4. What Service Does the Critic Perform for Us?

5. The Difference between the Critic’s Voice and Healthy Anger

6. The Vicious Cycle of Suffering

7. At the Critic’s Core: Shame

8. The Bigger Picture

4. 4: The Vulnerable Self

1. Meeting Your Vulnerable Self

2. The Language of Emotions

3. We Are Emotional Beings

4. Why Do Emotions Feel So Overwhelming to the Vulnerable Self?

5. A Child at the Core

6. Emotional Expression

7. The Vulnerable Self and the Cycle of Suffering

8. The Bigger Picture

9. Body-Centered Ways to Express Our Emotions

5. 5: Intersectionality and the Cycle of Suffering

1. Key Concepts of Intersectionality

2. Matrix of Domination

3. Power, Privilege, and Oppression—Intersectional Examples

4. Collective, Historical, and Intergenerational Trauma

5. Radical Love

7. Part II: The Circle of Resilience

1. 6: Introducing the Circle of Resilience

1. The Model

2. How the Roles Work Together

2. 7: The Nurturer

1. Superpower #1: AccCCeptance, or the Loving Lap

2. Superpower #2: Lovingkindness, or Soft Eyes

3. Superpower #3: Compassion, or Helpful Hands

4. Understanding the Nurturer

5. What Nurturance Is Not

6. Connecting with Your Inner Nurturer

7. Putting It All Together

8. The Bigger Picture

3. 8: The Protector

1. Superpower #1: Self-Discipline

2. Superpower #2: Safety

3. Superpower #3: Thriving

4. Superpower #4: Emotional Empowerment

5. Becoming Our Own Protector and Champion

6. Putting It All Together

4. 9: The Resilient Self

1. The Circle of Resilience

2. Superpower #1: Self-Awareness

3. Superpower #2: Self-Regulation

4. Superpower #3: Self-Protection

5. Superpower #4: Self-Confidence

6. Superpower #5: Self-Transcendence

5. 10: The Soul Self

1. Superpower #1: Equanimity

2. Superpower #2: Perspective

3. Superpower #3: Interdependence

4. Superpower #4: Collective Well-Being

5. Superpower #5: Peace of Mind

6. Superpower #6: Joy

7. Accessing the Soul Self: Awe and Gratitude Practices

8. Deepening the Soul Self: Practicing with Suffering, Joy, and Forgiveness

9. Tonglen

10. Mudita

11. Forgiveness

12. Experiencing and Cultivating the Soul Self: Julio’s Story

13. Soul Self Meditation 1: The Light Within

14. Soul Self Meditation 2: Cave of the Heart

15. Embodying the Soul Self

8. Part III: Joyous Resilience

1. 11: Practicing Joyous Resilience

1. Intentional Practice

2. Intentions and Goal Setting

3. Starting to Set Personal Goals

2. 12: Foundational Practices

1. Rest and Resilience: Ali’s Story

2. Meditation for Self-Care and Nurturance

3. 13: Relational Practices

1. Connection Practices

2. Boundaries and Direct Communication

3. Emotional Regulation (Keep Your Focus on Yourself)

4. Apologizing and Making Amends

5. Cultivating Connections

6. We Need Each Other

4. 14: Creativity, Play, and Pleasure

1. Joy Culture versus Consumption Culture

2. Creativity, Play, and Pleasure Reflection

3. Reclaiming Time to Get Hands-On with Joy

4. Pleasure, Play, and Creativity: Zoya’s Story

5. Archetypal and Sensory Meditation

5. 15: Creating a Joyously Resilient World

1. Joyous Activism

2. Being the Change We Need in the World

3. Moving Forward

9. Appendix: Recommended Resources

10. Acknowledgments

11. Endnotes

1. Chapter 2: The Neglector

2. Chapter 3: The Critic

3. Chapter 4: The Vulnerable Self

4. Chapter 5: Intersectionality and the Cycle of Suffering

5. Chapter 6: Introducing the Circle of Resilience

6. Chapter 7: The Nurturer

7. Chapter 8: The Protector

8. Chapter 9: The Resilient Self

9. Chapter 10: The Soul Self

10. Chapter 11: Practicing Joyous Resilience

11. Chapter 12: Foundational Practices

12. Chapter 13: Relational Practices

13. Chapter 14: Creativity, Play, and Pleasure

14. Chapter 15: Creating a Joyously Resilient World

12. Index

13. About the Author

14. About North Atlantic Books

Joyous Resilience

A Path to Individual Healing and Collective Thriving in an Inequitable World

Anjuli Sherin, LMFT

Praise for Joyous Resilience

“Joyous Resilience is the book our hearts have been waiting for. In the midst of these unprecedented times, I know we are all searching for joy, hope, inspiration, and ways to nurture ourselves amidst our activism. Anjuli Sherin’s lens is culturally affirming, profound, inspiring, and engages us all in what it means to be alive and thrive and find strength in our vulnerability. The tools she provides are groundbreaking, heart-centered, nuanced, and grounded in anti-oppression frameworks. As a woman of color and trauma educator, I have been searching for a comprehensive resource of this nature that honors the lived experience of so many communities who are often left out of the conversation. This book is filling a much-needed gap in service delivery and will change the way mental health professionals approach their work, as well as how clients approach their healing. I am in complete awe of this work of art.”

—ZAHABIYAH YAMASAKI, M ED, RYT, PROGRAM DIRECTOR OF TRAUMA-INFORMED PROGRAMS, UCLA; FOUNDER OF TRANSCENDING SEXUAL TRAUMA THROUGH YOGA; AND AUTHOR OF TRAUMA-INFORMED YOGA FOR SURVIVORS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT (FORTHCOMING)

“Joyous Resilience is perfectly right-sized for this historical moment. In a rigorous yet heartfelt voice, Anjuli Sherin identifies the wounds we carry, how they can be healed, and the doorways they are for living a life of joy and affirmation. This is not an academic overture, but a book written with the deep experience and wisdom of a somatic healer across an inclusive intersectionality.”

—RICHARD STROZZI-HECKLER, PHD, AUTHOR OF THE LEADERSHIP DOJO AND THE ART OF SOMATIC COACHING

“At a time when the cries of collective trauma are reverberating across the world, Joyous Resilience is a poignant and profound anthem to survivors—a reminder that we all carry the light of resilience inside of our bodies and hearts. Through an intersectional lens that considers the impact of race, power, and privilege on the color and texture of our wounds, the practices offered in this book serve as a map, guiding us to access our innate power to heal, so that we can reclaim the joy that is our birthright.”

—AMY PAULSON, GLOBAL TRAUMA HEALING ADVOCATE AND FOUNDER AND CEO OF GRATITUDE ALLIANCE

“This book offers a powerful vision for individual and collective healing rooted in resilience. Through helpful practices and illuminating case studies, Anjuli Sherin combines insights from her years of clinical experience and theoretical study to help each of us joyfully thrive. It’s a powerful offering for the world at this time. “

—DAVID TRELEAVEN, PHD, AUTHOR OF TRAUMA-SENSITIVE MINDFULNESS: PRACTICES FOR SAFE AND TRANSFORMATIVE HEALING

“If one lives, one suffers to some degree, and in truth, we all could use help in healing trauma. This book is a healing journey—for the reader and even for the author who speaks, listens, and learns along with us. The content and practices introduced can help mitigate the roots and residue of historic and ongoing trauma, especially trauma that results from inter-generational, cumulative, and collective traumas. Healing from trauma need not be a solitary journey. In fact, we heal best and deeper when we are in connection, when we are in relationship, and when we are in community. If we open our hearts and our minds, together, we can cultivate and create a joyously resilient world.”

—LAKIBA PITTMAN, SENIOR ADJUNCT PROFESSOR, MENLO COLLEGE, AND SENIOR INSTRUCTOR OF COMPASSION CULTIVATION TRAINING AT THE CENTER FOR COMPASSION AND ALTRUISM RESEARCH AND EDUCATION, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Copyright © 2021 by Anjuli Sherin. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by

North Atlantic Books

Berkeley, California

Cover art © gettyimages.com/Lightboxx

Cover design by Jasmine Hromjak

Book design by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Printed in the United States of America

Joyous Resilience: A Path to Individual Healing and Collective Thriving in an Inequitable World is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

The examples provided in this book are composites drawn from thousands of clinical sessions. Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy and confidentiality of individuals.

North Atlantic Books’ publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sherin, Anjuli, 1979- author.

Title: Joyous resilience : a path to individual healing and collective

thriving in an inequitable world / Anjuli Sherin.

Description: First Edition. | Berkeley : North Atlantic Books, 2021. |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020034283 (print) | LCCN 2020034284 (ebook) | ISBN

9781623174231 (paperback) | ISBN 9781623174248 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Resilience (Personality trait) | Emotions. |

Self-acceptance.

Classification: LCC BF698.35.R47 S44 2021 (print) | LCC BF698.35.R47

(ebook) | DDC 155.2/4—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034283

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034284

This book includes recycled material and material from well-managed forests. North Atlantic Books is committed to the protection of our environment. We print on recycled paper whenever possible and partner with printers who strive to use environmentally responsible practices.

for my parents

for a love that set me free

to be joyful and resilient

thank you

and

my beloved clients

for trusting me to walk beside you

as we do this great good work

you are the change we need in the world

Introduction

This story is set in our deeply complex, perplexing, wondrously beautiful and terrifying world. Not every character in this story is set up to succeed as easily as another. Yet inside each person are three great forces: the power to feel deeply protected, the power to feel lovingly nurtured, and the power to be joyously free to thrive. These powers unleash a magic called resilience: the ability to live with a deep sense of inner joy, to flourish despite great stressors, and to reshape the very forces that threaten our lives in order to create a whole new world.

At the heart of this book resides this core truth. Resilience matters. Joy matters. In the increasingly difficult times we live in, our thriving matters—now more than ever.

Our life and well-being are our greatest wealth. Learning to nurture, grow, and sustain our aliveness is perhaps the greatest gift we can give ourselves and pass down to our children. We are at a moment in history when our ability to flourish reverberates beyond our own lives. Toward the end of writing this book, I, like billions across the world, found myself quarantined and sheltering in place in an act of social solidarity to help slow down the coronavirus pandemic. In the months since this pandemic reshaped every aspect of our daily lives, it also brought into stark, glaring focus the massive inequities and gaps in community care in the United States and across the world. External stressors became so forceful, making it abundantly clear that if we don’t learn how to care for ourselves and work toward a different reality, our species may not survive.

Even as the world grinds to a halt and provides the earth with much-needed respite, and even as some heave a sigh of relief at being able to work from home, slow down, spend time with loved ones, or shift from constant business, many, many more are overcome with the stressors of being out of work, unable to pay bills, fearful of being evicted, already homeless and at great risk, without health insurance, stuck at home and unable to work because of a lack of childcare, or forced to work a job that might put them and their loved ones at great physical risk just to retain access to basic food and shelter.

In such times, we have to become adamant about practicing exquisite self-care, but the bandwidth to access this inner resilience is in itself a privilege only available to some. This is why we must also be fiercely committed to changing the systems that threaten and erode the resilience of our communities. How do we go about this?

Have You Ever Wondered . . .

With so much information available on the most effective ways to build resilience—ranging from general tips for better mental health, such as meditation, exercise, time in nature, and online hygiene, to the latest statistics and strategies that neuroscience can offer—what keeps people from implementing all this well-meaning advice? Or if you practice these techniques and still find yourself exhausted, irritable, unhappy, anxious, or dissatisfied, do you ever wonder what is missing?

I did. Joy did not just fall into my lap during my years of doing healing work. Its appearance in my life was inextricably connected to a deeper, more harmonious relationship with my internal dialogue and my emotions. Accessing joy required me to attune to my own feelings and needs, and to soothe and nurture myself amid fear, anxiety, grief, and distress. It necessitated pushing back against and transforming self-imposed and societal limitations, so I could be myself and do the work I loved. It meant giving myself the permission, and acquiring the skills, to protect my body, heart, and time with firm boundaries. Joy needed my wholehearted attention to blossom. It demanded less listening to what the world said was broken, missing, wrong about me, and what success should look like, and more discovering and validating what my inner voice had to say.

I realized that if I wanted joy to come beyond the high days and holy days—the special occasions and celebrations—then I had to make it a practice. I had to choose joy at the center of my life. And choosing joy meant choosing first and foremost to become excellent at learning to truly and unconditionally love myself.

I had to learn a joyous resilience—the magical, powerful force that emanates from an inner locus of nurturance, protection, and emotional attunement. Resilience is the inoculation against stress and trauma, allowing us to reestablish contact with an inner joy so we can thrive.

Whereas trauma is a grievous breakdown in safety and connection that erodes our ability to feel joy and thrive, resilience is the ability to withstand, stand back up from, and transform the effects of life’s stressors and traumas into greater strength, compassion, and wisdom.

The Bigger Picture

We are becoming increasingly aware that although the United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, it also has one of the most stressed out, sick, depressed, scared, violent, isolated, and polarized populations.

Learning how to be resilient, to say nothing of accessing joy, is increasingly harder in our current sociopolitical climate, where the daily pressures of work, family, health, and finances are rising alongside environmental, economic, political, and human rights disasters. And the unavoidable truth is that access to resilience-building is not equally available to everyone, nor is our world set up to support everyone thriving. The impacts of trauma, stress, and oppression are disproportionately borne by marginalized groups, including Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC), LGBTQI, women, Muslims, immigrants, disabled, and lower-income populations.

Most self-help or psychology books that discuss resilience in a stressful world are based on the Western mental health mindset. Therefore, they attribute each individual’s suffering to their own psyche or to their family history. These books often only give a cursory glance (if that) to the larger issues of race, class, gender, environment, sociocultural pressures, and institutional and systemic oppression affecting people. These stress factors often overlap, requiring an intersectional approach (we will examine this approach more closely in chapter five). Such an analysis of sociopolitical factors is normally left to social justice or political books, which in turn can suffer from their own blind spot: a relentless focus outward without pointing to the inner changes that activists and regular citizens need to make in order to withstand stress, stay healthy, avoid burnout, and be resilient in their journey to transform our world.

From what I’ve seen, the truth lies between these two extremes of inward and outward focus. It’s true that resilience can only be built when we focus on the essential internal shift toward becoming our own best allies, protectors, and nurturers. It’s also true that we must explore and ultimately confront the intersectional obstacles that block our access to this resilience. This book creates a bridge between these two approaches. It is meant to speak directly to the broad dilemmas and stressors people are facing in our time and act as a galvanizing call at this vital moment of both personal and social awakening to take larger action wherever we can. It presents our personal healing journey as an opportunity to leverage our political, civic, and humanitarian power, deepening the skills we need to collectively thrive and create joy.

My Perspective

I am a Pakistani American woman, raised in Pakistan and now living and working in the United States as a clinician serving diverse communities. As a woman of color, an immigrant, and a Pakistani of Muslim heritage I have at times found myself at the nexus of those most affected by sociopolitical issues. On the other hand, as a US citizen, a cisgender woman, and an able-bodied person with a graduate degree that enabled me to move into a middle-class socioeconomic status, I have in no small part flourished due to access to these privileges. Both sides of that coin have fueled a commitment to my own thriving and being part of the efforts to create a world where everyone thrives. For more than fifteen years and thirty-thousand-plus hours, I have had the extraordinary privilege of doing my own healing work and sitting with folks committed to their own transformation and resilience-building as we deeply engaged with a crucial question: what does it take to feel joy and thrive amid the stress, trauma, and difficulty of our world?

The answers offered in this book go far beyond a nice idea or a great theory on paper. They are the sum of decades of lived experience, my own and my clients’, as we engaged in this deep, embodied investigation. The material in this book is the foundation I saw us return to over years that were filled with the normal highs and lows of life. This is what carried us through loss, illness, heartbreak, raising children, facing aging and changing bodies, financial stressors, job transitions, deeply troubling political climates, threats to our access to legal rights, rising environmental disasters, unfulfilled longings, unexpected crises, and grieving our loved ones. Conversely, it was the fount from which laughter, delight, pleasure, wonder, awe, and deep peace first bubbled up in brief spurts and then flowed freely until it became an ever-present pool to return to at our center. It was what gave us the courage to face over and over again the intergenerational shadows, demons, and fears that had held us back and kept us captive, so we could speak and act where we and our ancestors had once been forced silent. It was also the source of so much glorious creation—books written, babies born, businesses launched, degrees attained, art inspired, and wisdom shared in the world.

Finally, it was what allowed us to have tough conversations at home and tougher ones out in the world—about systemic racism, about police brutality, about the reality of climate change, and the pervasive inequities and breaches of justice crushing the life out of millions in our world. And in the process, to not give in to despair. Instead, working the path offered in this book allowed us to have the sustained resilience necessary for the long haul of life and the arc of history. Providing us with the ability to retain joy despite it all, to stay connected to our aliveness, and to work toward an equitable world. This is an extraordinary privilege. It is also the gift of this journey of becoming our most joyously resilient self.

Please know that there is not one exercise in this book, not one difficult learning or nudge to stretch further than you have before, that I have not experienced myself. I say this to share that I and so many others on this path are with you in this. There is not and never has been anything wrong or lesser about you or me that prevents us from being able to access our joy. And it is an extraordinary and worthy journey to embark on taking the steps to learn how.

This Book Is for You If . . .

- You have been feeling sad, depressed, anxious, irritable, or unhappy as you ride an emotional roller coaster that you long to get off of but don’t know how.

- You sometimes wonder if your emotional distress might be related to collective trauma, oppression, and the state of our world.

- You find that resentment, criticism, and self-judgment poison your days.

- You’ve been drowning in the day-to-day routine of your life; you’ve lost track of what matters to you and wonder if this is all there is.

- You want to cultivate a loving inner voice as a necessary flotation device, and you also see that measures such as a living wage, universal health care, and access to childcare might be the real life-savers.

- You tamp down your plans and dreams due to fear, doubt, and procrastination, or you see a legacy of dreams deferred in your family across generations due to oppression.

- You feel too guilty or scared to say no because you think that’s selfish, or you belong to a gender, race, culture, religion, class, or marginalized group for whom saying no has had severe consequences.

- You’ve been feeling lonely, unloved, or broken, like there’s a hole inside you that needs to be filled.

- “Self-love” smacks of selfishness to you, and yet you know you desperately need it.

- You want to experience deeper joy and more satisfaction in your life without guilt.

- You are exhilarated by the idea of seeing diverse bodies lit up with their own aliveness.

- You want to find the love of your life and are open to the possibility that you might be that one.

- You are a layperson, clinician, healer, advocate, teacher, or counselor who wants a path to building joyous resilience that also provides important first steps toward collective healing and thriving.

I wrote this book for you. For me. For all of us.

The Road Ahead

This book is divided into three parts, each focused on a different core concept. The first section discusses the Cycle of Suffering and explains how the three roles of Vulnerable Self, Persecutor, and Neglector keep people trapped in victimhood, unable to take advantage of the resources that cultivate resilience. It also looks at historical and current forms of oppression that exact a tremendous toll on marginalized communities, severely impairing their ability to thrive on every level—systemic, community, familial, and individual.

The second section walks us through building an inner Circle of Resilience by cultivating four alternate core roles—the Nurturer, the Protector, the Resilient Self, and the Soul Self—that shift our inner state from helplessness to a joyful resilience. These aspects of ourselves are who we truly are underneath all the drama and misery that the Cycle of Suffering causes. Together we will learn to access and strengthen these parts that are the true foundation for feeling joy.

The third section focuses on the playful, practical, and purposeful work of building joyful resilience skills in four categories: foundational, relational, creative, and political. Joy, like anything else worthwhile, takes effort, practice, and deliberate cultivation. This is how we ensure that our shift into wellness is lasting and that we feel power, agency, and hope amid long-standing oppression. In this way we can become a lifelong force for reshaping our global culture into one that has everyone’s resilience and wellness at its center.

Throughout the book you will find real-life examples, experiential reflections, and relevant research to make the work applicable and accessible.

Helpful Reminders before We Begin

The path and practices offered in this book come out of a body-centered psychotherapy. What this means is that the exercises offered are meant to guide you into a felt sense of the breathing patterns, sensations, and emotions that help you experience your own being. Although learning through a book can feel like a top-down experience—the mind is learning something, and then the body is supposed to follow—I have attempted to create exercises that allow you to take the information offered and translate it into experience through a bottom-up approach (i.e., let’s try it out through the body, and that will inform your understanding). In the end, the premise of this book is that change doesn’t happen through insight alone; it requires a felt, embodied experience.

As we get in touch with our sensations and then with our emotions and the content of our individual and communal lives that have shaped us in helpful or painful ways, we might feel discomfort or difficulty accessing or being with these states. As we will learn in the first part of this book, much of our suffering has come through an avoidance of our felt experience, often because the condition in which it first occurred did not provide the support we needed to endure experiences that were terrifying and upending. Instead, we coped the best we could by using survival strategies we are hardwired for as humans: our reflex to fight, flee, freeze, or appease. These strategies might once have been the best of the few limited options at hand, but then we use them time and time again, solidifying them into habits and even our sense of our own personality.

Thus, a child who is suffering physical or emotional abuse might respond by freezing and withdrawing into themselves, as the best way to survive an angry and violent household. If the abuse occurs over a long period of time, the initial freezing and withdrawal might start to look like more permanent states, where the child is now quiet as a rule and frequently goes into their own world of dissociative daydreaming. Such a child might have a hard time focusing at school and is likely to be emotionally distant from people both outside and within the home. A child in this situation needs help from a professional or from a community, culture, or spiritual tradition to acknowledge the violence; identify and feel the emotions of anger, fear, shame, or grief that accompanied it; and set healthy boundaries that keep the child safe. Without access to these resources, the unprocessed emotions and the survival behaviors that accompany them eventually result in the child becoming an adult who might believe they are a loner, a person who doesn’t feel much, or has a hard time in relationship. This personality is actually just the shell of survival mechanisms covering a long-standing trauma.

In this book, we begin by identifying these shells that we have grown to cover and protect our vulnerable hearts. We honor them and our younger selves for having created this armor out of a desire to survive. We also realize that in order to be truly alive, to be free of the reenactment of past pain, and to create a present that matches our deepest desires, we have to transform the pain these shells have been holding and shift from a shell of a self into a whole body and heart.

The path and practices offered in this book are designed to help us get there.

Connecting to Our Essential Aliveness

You may wonder what place joy has when it comes to healing. You might have thought that a book focused on joyful resilience might force a particular mood of happiness, lightness, or positivity on top of grievously painful histories. You might also think the idea of a joyful activism seems like an oxymoron. How can we be joyous when we’re dealing with trauma, injustice, and the realities of suffering?

Whenever you read the word joy in this book, know that the sense I am using it in is most akin to aliveness. This aliveness comes from having access to and allowing all of our sensations, feelings, needs, and desires. Aliveness is what oppression and suffering cheat us out of. Aliveness to our desires—to our capacity for pleasure as well as pain, to our capacity to dream as well as to take a stand—allows our pain to flow and heal.

Our resilience leads to flexibility in our being. Flexibility here doesn’t mean appeasing, pretending, or trying to be needless and wantless. Rather, it means having the ability to be with complexity, the many shades of our being, the multiplicity of our feelings, the many facets of our experience and evolution. Flexibility means we have a structure of inner and outer support that is strong enough to make us a vessel for the all-ness of who we are.

So joyful resilience and joyful activism will mean being able to be alive with our anger, our rage, our sorrow, our fight, our collapse, and our indomitable, ever-present, beating heart, our laughter amid our tears, our compassion amid our strength, our vulnerability that is a part of our indomitable spirit. We are joyful, and we are resilient, because we are alive. We are free because we feel, accept, and above all choose the responses that let us be more fully ourselves.

The joyful resilience practices in this book are meant to provide a foundation of inner strength and resourcing through which we can turn toward and face the pain and suffering of our life, including that caused by cumulative, intergenerational, or collective traumas. These resources are intended to help us use loving acceptance, wisdom, and healthy boundaries as we sit with and transform our pain. It takes ongoing, depth-oriented work to engage with specific traumas and their symptoms, and to build skill sets in compassion, communication, and creative expression. Learning about oppressive systems; understanding our privilege, power, and marginalization within them; healing inside these symptoms and working to dismantle them at large are lifelong, specialized tasks. The intersectional and social-justice lens offered in this book is meant as a first step for folks who are new to a healing that is politicized and who want to bridge the gap between personal healing and collective action that envisions everyone thriving.

For any of you reading this book, and especially for folks affected by past or present trauma experiences, I encourage you to do the work in this book in combination with working with a professional therapist or a healer from your tradition who has specialized experience in healing from individual or collective trauma. Healing from trauma, whether it’s individual, historical, intergenerational, or collective, is deep, intricate, and complicated work that is best not undertaken alone. Many of us have survived trauma, or continue to live in traumatic conditions, to this day without adequate support. This further entrenches the lack of safety and isolation that trauma brings. Getting the right assistance is a major step in breaking this cycle of suffering. To this end, I have also included resources at the end of this book that conceptualize individual healing and collective thriving as part of a whole. These resources may help you deepen into the areas of healing that are particular to your life history and collective experience.

Incredible Lineages

This book draws upon and carries forward the tremendous, brilliant work of clinicians, healers, elders, and long-standing cultural and psychospiritual traditions. It feels important to name some of the founders and modalities that have greatly informed my journey in developing this model, including the body-centered, somatic, and trauma healing teachings of Peter Levine; the work of Richard Strozzi-Heckler at the Strozzi Institute; the politicized somatics, trauma, and resilience trainings of Generative Somatics and Staci K. Haines; the drama triangle created by Stan Karpman; Gestalt, psychodynamic, transpersonal, internal family systems, and inner-child models; the nonviolent communication teachings of Marshall Rosenberg; the work of Joy DeGruy and Resmaa Menakem in intergenerational, historical, and racialized healing; the work on healing shame and vulnerability by Brené Brown; and the self-compassion research of Kristin Neff.

There is also a well of knowledge and resilience that has always existed, as intrinsic to us as the breath that animates our bodies, the memory of which lives in our bloodstream. This memory of resilience is just as powerful as the memories of oppression. It is these living, breathing traditions of healing through the body, through community, elder wisdom, nature, creativity, song, dance, spirituality, and touch at the center of indigenous cultures and earth-based, ancient, pagan traditions practiced worldwide, that are the richest resource this book draws on. These traditions invite us to turn to our inner, ancestral, body-based ways of knowing, thriving, and healing so we can clear a path to a new world.

Incredible You

I think folks who do the work of healing their hearts and reclaiming their joy are true love warriors. Warriors doing the heroic task of turning toward and facing the pain within. And carving out of hurt hearts a loving being and an agent of personal and social change. To be a part of your journey is an absolute privilege and a deep joy. Thank you for being you, as best you can, in our world. Let’s go take a look at what has been hurting and find the way back to the joy and resilience that has been within you all along.

PART I

THE CYCLE OF SUFFERING

1

Introducing the Cycle of Suffering

Your task is not to seek for Love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

—RUMI, THIRTEENTH-CENTURY SUFI POET

Cliché as it is to say that one thing changed my life, this one tool did exactly that. I have seen that same “aha” look on the face of client after client—that same light-bulb moment that I experienced as a twenty-two-year-old in therapy, when I first learned about a trio of undeveloped aspects of the psyche and the cycle of suffering they cause. The pain, angst, and drama of everyday interactions with others, as well as my inner dialogue, fell quite neatly into the mouths of three characters: the Vulnerable Self, the Critic, and the Neglector. They were the posse that I and everyone I loved had been keeping company with all of our lives. They were the characters at the root of so much of our distress—the enemies of resilience.

Known by a variety of names such as the drama triangle, the victim triangle, or ego-parts—or, as I eventually came to use it in my therapeutic work, the Cycle of Suffering—this triad represents a dysfunctional internal family system that colors how we respond to our own feelings, how we communicate or don’t communicate our needs, and whether we feel like we are powerless or have agency over our lives. Modern neuroscience tells us that most of our wiring for resilience and our sense of self gets put into place by age three, so these roles we fall into in order to ostensibly care for ourselves are frequently the direct result of the dysfunctional patterns we picked up from our family dynamics and how we were parented. These effects are often heavily exacerbated in families with histories of trauma, addiction, and high levels of socioeconomic stressors, underlaid by systemic inequality and oppression.

This chapter will provide you with an overview of the Cycle of Suffering, outlining the key concepts associated with the roles of Vulnerable Self, Critic, and Neglector. We’ll also explore how these three roles intertwine to create a perpetual downward loop into stress, helplessness, and lack of thriving in our lives—the very opposite of the resilience we want to cultivate. Before we can address or transform this cycle, we must understand it.

The Cycle of Suffering model is based primarily on the work of renowned clinician Eric Berne, the father of Transactional Analysis, and his student, Stan Karpman, MD, who first coined the term drama triangle in 1968 and broke it into the three roles of Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer.

Transactional Analysis focused primarily on social interactions and the games that people play within them. Berne believed that people were primarily incapable of getting their needs met directly, so instead we resort to games, of which he identified hundreds. All of these games consisted of social interactions that looked authentic but were instead filled with hidden messages and agendas, all resulting in a predictable payoff for the person initiating the game, which was usually the ability to either feel justified in venting an emotion or to get a specific emotional need met. The drama triangle was one of these games.

The drama triangle game had the important caveat that no matter which role people were occupying—Victim, Rescuer, or Persecutor—at the heart of each role, the person felt like a victim. It is important to make a necessary distinction here: victimhood as a mindset is quite different from someone who is victimized. Sometimes people are victims of crime or racism or abuse, and the ways in which this victimization affects our psychological makeup is the underlying premise of this book. When described as a role in the drama triangle, however, the idea of the Victim or Victimhood refers to a perceived state of being, marked by a pervasive feeling of helplessness to control our own lives and actions.

Over the years, as I grew to use this concept in my own life and in my countless hours of clinical practice with clients, I realized that a better description to apply to the role of Victim might be that of a Vulnerable Self, who is often akin to a vulnerable child. For many of my clients and myself, playing this game was a direct result of not having learned in those first three key developmental years how to successfully identify and regulate our emotional states. When overwhelmed by what life threw at us, we resorted to ways of taking care of our self—which is to say, taking care of our Vulnerable Self—in a manner that mimicked the rigidity or laxness of our early parental environments. This vulnerability frequently looked like feelings of powerlessness, helplessness, or the sense that life was happening to us and that we had no control.

The tag line of the Vulnerable Self is I cannot do anything or Poor me, which is code for: I do not have the skill sets and internal resources to take care of the emotional distress that comes up for me when I am in a stressful situation. In other words: I feel vulnerable and do not know how to respond to my own feelings of vulnerability with responses of nurturing and safety.

Without these key responses, children dissolve into panic and tantrums, and they eventually withdraw into quiet despair. This is also their reaction as they grow into adults who are unable to give themselves the nurturing and safety they never received as children. They find themselves anxiety-ridden, angry, or despairing about their inability to take positive action. They cannot be resilient because their internal model of response to stress, the Cycle of Suffering, is designed to make them feel worse than they did before.

Fortunately, the three roles that make up this cycle are common and easily recognizable in their extreme versions. They can be found internally or externally, that is, in a person’s inner monologue and self-directed behavior as well as in their reactions to people and circumstances.

To better understand the Cycle of Suffering, let’s examine a real-life example. Radha is a thirty-four-year-old Indian American woman who has been living in Silicon Valley and working at a start-up for the past five years. She’s a hardworking woman who regularly puts in extra hours at work and diligently performs her tasks, yet despite her best efforts she has not been promoted. She’s noticed that other colleagues in a similar position to hers have moved up on the organizational ladder while she remains stationary.

Understandably, Radha has been feeling stressed and frustrated at work, insecure about her performance, and anxious about her career. She finds herself turning to a variety of unhealthy coping mechanisms: soothing herself through eating sugary foods, distracting herself by spending time on social media, and withdrawing from friends and colleagues to avoid feelings of insecurity. At the end of the day, when the temporary relief provided by these strategies wears off, she finds herself once again facing the anxiety, frustration, and helplessness she started with, exacerbated by an added layer of shame and isolation brought about by her coping choices. In the midst of one such cycle she came to my office, seeking relief.

Radha is in a fairly common position, and her feelings seem like a reasonable reaction to her situation. What we begin to look at together is how she deals with her stress. If resilience is our ability to bounce back from difficult situations in ways that make us feel like we still have agency and choice in our lives, then a lack of resilience is the experience of being stuck in a situation, feeling powerless or helpless to shift it, and continuously bouncing back and forth between reactive choices that ultimately leave us feeling worse than when we began—i.e., the Cycle of Suffering.

Radha and I began to explore her issues by focusing on the key players in our cycle.

The Neglector

The Neglector is best thought of as the absent or checked-out inner parent who always focuses on others and not on themselves. A Neglector’s style of “self-care” in stressful situations runs the gamut, including dissociation (checking out through TV, the internet, or chronic busyness rather than tuning in), neglect (not taking care of one’s daily food, water, grooming, exercise, and other physical needs), numbing (through food, shopping, alcohol, drugs, or sex), overworking, people pleasing, or putting other people first, even when these behaviors are detrimental to themselves.

The Neglector’s inner monologue often includes phrases like:

- I have to take care of everyone else.

- Who, me?

- I’m fine; let’s talk about you.

- I have no time to take care of myself.

- Can’t I just check out for a while?

The Neglector has learned that the best way to get care or feel more in control when they’re feeling anxious, stressed, or insecure is to focus on others, thereby receiving approval and feeling needed—a feeling they equate with love and being good enough. In short, the Neglector does not know the difference between being needed and being loved and enough as they are.

The good news is that underneath the Neglector’s behavior is a strong desire to help themselves feel better. The bad news is that they believe helping themselves feel better is dependent solely on things outside themselves (substances, other people’s approval, distractions) that only temporarily provide a fix (until the high wears off, until the other person cannot show up, until the distraction does not work). This strategy creates a deepening sense of anxiety or insecurity because their emotional well-being is dependent on things outside themselves. The issue here is that because they have no control over these exterior factors, the only option they see is to do everything in their power to please others so they can feel okay. This is classic codependency.

The Neglector is overwhelmed by the pain of her own vulnerability. Underneath all the busyness and caretaking and distraction is the same helplessness felt by the Vulnerable Self. Neglectors do not feel good about themselves; nor do they know how to take care of their own painful feelings to help themselves feel better or loved. This role often arises from a childhood that includes being shamed, ignored, or belittled for voicing one’s needs, and being told one is selfish or wrong for being vulnerable. Most Neglectors were mainly acknowledged when they were either silent or taking care of others. From this they learn to feel guilty about focusing on themselves and their needs, and they are left in a helpless position wherein they can only hope and wait for another person to come along and give them what they want—help, approval, connection—without them having to voice it. The only way the Neglector knows how to compensate for their lack of ability and permission to truly feel, soothe, and self-nurture while facing difficult circumstances is to either keep offering the Vulnerable Self the drip-feed of approval through the dependency of others, or to succumb to the anesthesia of numbness, denial, and addiction.

Radha responds to her experience at work by activating an inner Neglector who deals with her insecurity and rising stress by overfeeding her body. She’s trying to care for her feelings by literally stuffing them down. Rather than helping Radha think through next steps or provide inner care, the Neglector helps by regularly pushing her to zone out on Facebook and internet media as a way to keep her attention off what is bothering her. The Neglector is the voice inside her head telling her that perhaps if she takes on more work projects or is more helpful and willing to do unpaid overtime for longer hours, she might be able to please her boss into giving her the recognition she wants. Finally, the Neglector often tells her she should feel guilty for lamenting her lack of advancement when there are so many others who would kill to have the job she has. If she wants to keep the job and the friends she has at work, the Neglector says, she should never share her own insecurity or sadness when she sees her colleagues advance.

Through the Neglector’s strategies—people-pleasing, ignoring the issue, depending on indulgence and unhealthy outside sources as a response, and using guilt—Radha is quickly learning to think of herself as “poor me.” The Neglector has told her she has no real power to shift either her feelings or her reality, other than to ignore what’s going on or wait on the good will of others to come and fix it.

Imagine a situation where a baby softly cries to express a need to be fed or changed, and the parents respond by ignoring the cries, turning the TV up louder, or sticking a pacifier in, rather than tending to the baby’s needs. This response will have only one effect: to instill a sense of helplessness under distress. Rather than the baby learning that its attempts to share its needs (crying) result in a helpful response and resolution (being picked up and fed or changed), it instead begins to form neural pathways between feeling distress and having to escalate—getting louder and more upset—in order to be heard; and even then, the baby’s needs won’t be met. When distress is frequently met with no response or an ineffective response, a child’s sense of agency erodes, and their sense of helplessness deepens. This is the opposite of building resilience.

In addition to our own family units, the Neglector role is also steeped in cultural and gender mores that occur globally. Many cultures offer great praise to those who turn aside from their own needs, focusing instead on helping or fixing or taking care of others. This is especially true of women, who are more likely than men to take on this posture of the Neglector, and it’s even more true of women whose families held to traditional gender roles. Women becoming Neglectors is a direct result of familial and cultural rearing that disproportionately teaches women that putting others first is the only way they will get the appreciation and recognition they need. In fact, if women do think about their own needs or desires first, society and family often respond with shaming and guilting. This is a common stressor for working moms, who are still expected to take on the brunt of child rearing while forging ahead with their careers. Is it any wonder that Neglectors are addicted to the shot of approval they get from pleasing others—the pseudo-dose of the care and nurturance their Vulnerable Self needs—and at the same time are incredibly fearful of losing connection if they actually take care of themselves?

The Critic

The Critic is the role that always has one finger pointed outward, with an attitude of resentment, anger, persecution, blame, and even hate. The Critic’s stance is I blame you, and the game they are best at is putting others down. This attitude can range from the almost benevolent guise of giving “helpful” critique—even though it demoralizes the recipient—to full-blown physical, mental, and emotional abuse. What’s the payoff? The irony is that most Critics are motivated by the desire to respond to and help the Vulnerable Self. The Critic feels dwarfed and overwhelmed by the Vulnerable Self’s pain and ashamed of it, and their instinct is to annihilate this feeling with their own brand of tough love: a stream of blaming, name calling, shaming, lecturing, and threatening, i.e., abuse. This is all an attempt to either shift themselves out of this state or to feel less small by making others even smaller. A strong inner Critic is often the direct result of being abused or criticized extensively as a child and of never having experienced any protection against this verbal or even physical assault. The child never learns that they deserve protection against such abuse, nor do they see parents enforce boundaries for how people are spoken to and treated; therefore, they internalize an inner abuser against whom they have no defense.

When the Critic feels stressed out or small, or when they encounter someone else in an even weaker position, they replicate their earlier abuse by acting in aggressive and manipulative ways. The instinctive learned reaction is: I will make you feel bad about yourself to make myself feel better. Or they direct this abuse inward, thinking that this is the way to motivate oneself because that is the message they got from their parents: I am only doing this for your own good. Either way, once again their original vulnerability remains untended and either covered over with a veneer of pseudo-confidence (see, it wasn’t my fault; it’s everyone else’s problem, not mine), which ends up leaving a series of broken relationships in their wake. Or, further exacerbated by the constant bullying to which they subject themselves, leaving them feeling even more insecure.

In Radha’s case, her inner Critic responds to her work situation with a persistent slew of critique, such as Your work is just not good enough, which is why you are not getting that promotion, or calling her names like stupid and comparing her unfavorably to all her colleagues. It picks on her for what she wears, how she looks, and what she eats, even as the Neglector works to counteract these feelings by promptly buying her another sugary dessert. It even threatens her by telling her she’s stuck in her job, she’ll be unable to find work anywhere else, and (in an attempt to protect her from rejection) she should not even look for another job.

At times, her Critic can turn its attention outward, blaming her supervisor for not seeing the high quality of her work and taking the initiative to speak to the director who is responsible for promotions on her behalf. What the Critic does not suggest, because that would feel too scary and threatening, is for Radha to directly ask her supervisor for support in obtaining a promotion and recognition for her hard work, or to set up a meeting with the director herself. The Critic continues to simply turn its fear and helplessness into passive-aggressiveness, secretly resenting the lazy coworkers who leave her picking up the slack all the time—again without encouraging her to draw a boundary with her coworkers and quit doing their work, because once again, she is reliant upon their approval to feel okay.

In the end, the hallmark of this role is that the blame game leaves Radha feeling temporarily righteous and justified in her anger, but over the long term it fuels the feeling of “poor me,” exacerbates her feelings of being worthless and inadequate, and refuses to tend to her Vulnerable Self.

The Vulnerable Self

The Vulnerable Self is the primary figure in the Cycle of Suffering. Vulnerability is an inner state wherein we are so in touch with our emotions and sensations that we are open to experiencing them, learning from them, and moving into responsiveness. The problem occurs when instead of responding to our own vulnerability with curiosity, care, and concern, we come toward ourselves with neglect and abuse. It is this reactivity that turns a Vulnerable Self into its helpless, powerless, overwhelmed, distraught, “poor me” version instead of a Resilient Self.

The Vulnerable Self often looks like an emotional rollercoaster, with extreme intensity of emotion at one end of the spectrum and utter resignation and dejection at the other. Feeling victimized, powerless, helpless, depressed, hopeless, ashamed, anxious, panicked, and despairing are its earmarks. People whose Vulnerable Self is untended frequently show up for therapy suffering from anxiety, depression, panic attacks, stress, insecurity, and physical maladies with a psychological origin (e.g., stomach aches, headaches, migraines, or ulcers).

In its extreme manifestations, the person playing this role can feel like their whole world is falling apart—but they have no idea why this is happening. They feel no sense of agency in their lives and no awareness of how they got here. This is them at their most vulnerable. Perhaps life has thrown a curveball like divorce, loss of a job, or a health concern; or it could be something more mundane, like needing to impress the boss at work, starting to date again, or stress related to aging and weight gain. When the feelings brought about by these situations are dealt with through an internal dialogue between the Critic and the Neglector, an inner environment of helplessness, insecurity, and fear is created.

This leaves the Vulnerable Self untended, feeling they are a victim to their circumstance and powerless to create change. The untended Vulnerable Self wants to feel better, but under the duress caused by its counterparts, its only way of getting attention is by falling apart. This shows up in the form of significant difficulties in making decisions, solving problems, finding pleasure in life, or understanding their self-sabotaging behaviors.

Radha was able to see clearly that in her case, a stressful—but still manageable—situation of overwork and lack of recognition had devolved into feelings of hopelessness, insecurity, and being stuck. The Critic had fed Radha’s insecurity by constantly criticizing and crushing her spirit, rather than building her up, while also keeping her mired in hidden frustration and resentment, rather than encouraging her to try direct communication. Meanwhile, the Neglector infantilized her further by providing no real nourishment, caring for her in ways that made her feel worse afterward, and teaching her that her self-worth depended on going out of her way for others—even when it added to her stress. As a result of this “care,” it is no wonder that Radha didn’t feel like a confident, assertive adult who was able to care for herself in a vulnerable state. Instead she felt helpless, hopeless, and powerless to make any change.

The light bulb I had experienced years before in therapy was now lit for Radha as well. Though she did not see a path out yet, she felt great relief upon stepping back and clearly seeing what was creating the seemingly endless cycle of internal and external chaos. Her inability to identify, regulate, and address her feelings (Vulnerable Self) led to seething frustration with others and burning anger at herself (Critic). This barrage of judgment eventually led to shame, depression, and being paralyzed into inaction (Vulnerable Self), which was then met with guilt. Hoping to feel better, she turned to food or people-pleasing (Neglector), yet this only resulted in the next bout of self-critique and subsequent frustration (Critic) and helpless dejection (Vulnerable Self).

We learn our roles in the Cycle of Suffering through various means. Some of the layers of influence include society, culture, religion, and the institutions we are born into. We will go into these larger influences at the end of this section. For now, in Radha’s case, it is important to note that her Neglector, Critic, and Vulnerable Self are likely a direct reflection of norms she has grown up with, including gender roles in Indian and Western culture and American stereotypes of Asian women, all of which emphasize the value of a woman being a caretaker and taking on responsibility while remaining submissive or obedient to authority. These norms are passed down generationally, resulting in a disconnection from the self in order to stay safe and connected to others. This is a form of historical trauma. When a woman is given cultural appreciation for putting herself last in her family, and she also risks being shamed as a disobedient or unfit daughter or wife for speaking up about her needs, she is put in an untenable situation. She cannot pay attention to her own feelings and desires and learn to meet them directly because the familial and societal price—the price of losing connection, care, and protection from the larger system—is too high to pay.

How the Three Roles Work Together

Each of these roles attempts to address internal pain and meet other internal needs by focusing externally. This happens because each role wants to feel a certain way: the Neglector wants to feel needed by others, the Critic wants to feel powerful, and the Vulnerable Self wants to be cared for. Each role plays out this dance with the others, both internally and in relationships, believing that this is self-care and secretly wondering why they continue to feel insecure, angry, and caught in an endless cycle of frustrating, painful relationships. Deluded by the ultimate fantasy—everything will feel much better when something external changes, e.g., we get the job, marry the right person, lose the ten pounds, or retire—we wait for that external fix like it’s the carrot at the end of our proverbial stick rather than seeking out the present-time, real satisfaction that is felt as resilience.

The majority of humanity has been caught in this cycle throughout the ages, and it undercuts every technique for resilience we throw at it. This is because the ability to even access these techniques, much less practice them, requires us to make a fundamental internal shift toward tending our Vulnerable Self. This means that to become resilient, we must first turn into our pain and build the necessary skills to care for it, rather than trying to buy, achieve, exercise, caretake, numb, or blame our way out of it.

We must learn to meet our needs in ways that build us up and affirm us. Our families or society may never have taught us how to do this. The truth is that they never learned it either. When we learn to care for ourselves in this way, we break the cycle, freeing ourselves and future generations from its crippling effects. This requires each member of the cycle to wake up to the roles they are repeatedly playing.

In the vast majority of cases, this doesn’t happen all at once. Luckily, one person shifting out of their roles can catalyze others to shift out of their own roles and behaviors. This process starts when we begin to take responsibility for our own empowerment, seeing ourselves as a resource we can tap to meet our own needs. It takes profound practice and concrete skill building to turn our abusive, neglectful inner parents into the Protectors and Nurturers we need. Yet this is the only way for our Vulnerable Self to start to feel nourished, understood, and capable of creating joy in our lives. It is the only way we can grow ourselves into resilient adults who can bounce back from adversity and create lasting happiness in our lives.

As we go forward in this book, you may notice these three roles acting within you. They may affect how you feel as you read the material. As we deal with our emotions through the lens of the three roles, it is easy and even common to zone out or to fall into dejection, self-blame, or critique. I want to directly address your Vulnerable Self right now, to remind you of what I know to be true: your adoption of each of these roles, and the ways in which you’ve engaged with them since then, were your best thinking in the worst of times. They were logical solutions to help you get your needs met and take care of yourself in your toughest moments. They are probably how you have survived. But now we’re able to see that those outdated survival skills are ultimately creating long-term damage and pain in your life, and we want to find a new set of solutions. Honoring these roles for their underlying motivation and purpose—to help us survive—will help us do the work we need to do, which is to kindly, firmly, and patiently put them aside and move toward joy.

In the rest of this section, we will go more deeply into each of these three roles so you can identify how they work in your life, where they came from, and where they are keeping you stuck. We will also explore the broader factors that produce this vicious cycle, both within each one of us and on a global scale. We will then be able to confidently move on to parts two and three of our book, which focus on learning a healthier model—the Circle of Resilience—to build ourselves and ultimately our societies back up from their foundations.

I promise you there is a way out of this. We’ll move toward it together.

2

The Neglector

You’ve got to learn to leave the table when love’s no longer being served.

—NINA SIMONE

It is session number five with my client Ayla, and so far she has yet to spend more than a few minutes in each session talking about herself. Ayla is fortysomething and recently divorced, with a full caseload as a domestic violence social worker, elderly parents, and a younger sibling living nearby who is a single parent and whom she supports. She spends her weekly hour in therapy discussing her fears, worries, concerns, and cares about everyone but herself.

Ayla is warmhearted, loving, and empathetic, and she is also greatly fatigued, irritable, anxious, and burned out at work. She has been putting in long hours in unpaid overtime, and she regularly skips lunch and doesn’t take breaks, leaving her with a poor diet and no time for exercise. Her social life is nonexistent. She longs for girlfriends, but she never feels like she has time to go out or meet anybody and has felt hesitant reaching out to the friends she and her husband shared before the divorce. She spends most weeknights providing childcare relief to her brother, Jamal, and she spends weekends taking care of her elderly parents. On other evenings she works late and comes home to unwind by zoning out in front of the television for a few hours before bed. She has told me it’s hard to find the time to devote even this therapy hour to herself when there is so much need at work and with family. She only decided to come in to therapy on the insistence of her supervisor, who found her crying at her desk after a particularly harrowing day.

“You see, it really does just fall on me, Anjuli,” she says at the end of an exhaustive list of all her duties this week. “If I don’t do it, it won’t get done. My parents need someone around, and Jamal is working two jobs, and he’s so busy all week and on the weekend with his little one that I feel bad asking him to help out more. He has enough on his plate. Plus, I love spending time with my niece. It isn’t a burden. I’m just tired, that’s all, and I feel so guilty snapping at my folks or being irritable at work. I just wish I could take a week off and catch my breath and catch up on all the laundry and bills and mail that keep piling up at my house. The doctor says I should exercise more for my health, but honestly, I just don’t have the energy at the end of the week. I can’t do it all. I have to prioritize, and I feel guilty saying no to my family and my clients when they need me. Once things slow down, I’ll get to focus more on myself, but right now they need me.”

As our conversations progress, any suggestion I make to offer a different possibility is met with “Yes, but . . .”

For instance, during one session I say, “What if you swap childcare duties with the grandparents some weeknights?”

“Yes, but my parents really aren’t good with children at a toddler age. Jamal wouldn’t be comfortable with that, and it would just be more trouble trying to deal with all their questions and needs. It’s just easier if I do it.”

“What if you make lunchtime a priority to help with migraines and anxiety from low blood sugar?”

“Yes, but I can’t take a set time for lunch each day because clients might walk in any time, or a meeting might run over, and I couldn’t make them wait.”

“What if you just take one evening off each month, where you leave work on time and have the night to yourself?”

“Yes, but I can’t take a set evening off. I want to be available for clients if they walk in last minute, or I have to have my phone on in case my parents need me and Jamal can’t go over there. I don’t want to burden him. Anyway, I don’t even know what I would do with the time.”

Ayala and I are going in circles. In fact, we are in a vise.

Everybody has needs, but the Neglector believes other people’s needs can only be met at her own expense. The Neglector is usually so overworked, harassed, and overwhelmed by all the responsibilities and burdens she’s shouldering that she barely knows what her own needs are, much less how to find ways to meet them. Time has become so tight that getting in touch with herself to change this cycle seems close to impossible, and the knowledge that she has any choice about the matter has all but disappeared. The fuel that drives this all, despite the aches, pains, fatigue, irritation, ill health, and overwhelm is the powerful aphrodisiac every Neglector is addicted to: “They need me,” and “I am the only one who can do it.”

Ayla is a classic Neglector. You may recognize her in some of the warmhearted, caring people around you or perhaps in yourself. You see them walking around with a harried look, though they are quick to smile and tell you everything is fine. Their standard response is, “I’m fine, tell me about you.” People frequently say of them, “I just don’t know how she does it all.” As organizers at work and in the PTA, leading the office initiatives and participating in every family gathering, they are the caretakers, managers, and steadfast support of communities. They do it well, and often for a very long time, and it takes a lot before the cracks begin to show. How do they do it all?

They do it by consistently swallowing their own needs, feelings, and experiences. While they smile or put on a brave face to show the world they are okay, their constant suppression of themselves leads to a buildup of emotional pain, which they only know how to soothe through neglectful means: numbing through overeating, excessive drinking, binge-watching TV, playing hours of video games, scrolling on social media, or packing their calendar to the brim. These temporary fixes provide a short-term escape, but they leave the user with a growing feeling of numbness, insecurity, emptiness, and loneliness inside.

In the later stages of a Neglector’s life, the cumulative effects of these feelings, the exhausting cycle of giving too much, and lack of self-care finally catch up. Her health fails, and friendships are harder to maintain or are all one-sided affairs where the Neglector is meeting others’ needs. The Neglector’s personal dreams are lost beneath an unending burden of duty, and their daily life is tinged with the resentment, depression, and numbing dissatisfaction that is the hallmark of this role.

It is usually at this point that the Neglector recognizes that they too might need help and will show up to therapy. Like Ayla, they have a hard time shifting the focus to themselves. Their Critic will often use words like “selfish,” “self-indulgent,” and “luxury” to make her feel guilty for seeking this kind of care. If you are a Neglector, your task, as the famous quote goes, is to learn that “you, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”[1]

First, however, they must face and recognize the ways in which the “love” they have been giving has turned toxic in their life.

Three Faces of the Neglector

Martyr

“It’s exhausting to watch you martyr yourself.”[2] This line may have very well been written for this face of the Neglector, who says and believes things like this:

- I don’t need anything. How can I help you?

- I’m fine. How are you?

- I have to take care of it all.

- I have to sacrifice myself for others.

- I feel guilty taking up too much time/space/energy.

- I’m too busy taking care of everyone else to focus on myself.

If you hear any of the above statements said aloud, or if you think them silently in your own head, you can be sure you are in the presence of the Martyr.

Martyrs, like Ayla, have often been thrust into the task of caretaking early in life. They are the child in the family who listens to everyone’s problems, becomes a pseudo-spouse to one of their parents, or is delegated responsibilities in the house that are beyond their developmental age. As they get older, these duties continue within the family of origin or beyond. The Martyr adult organizes all the family gatherings and takes care of elderly parents’ needs while being the go-to person at the office and at home, the shoulder to cry on for friends, the financial or emotional rock for their partner, and the one who never says no.

What distinguishes the Martyr from someone who is simply helpful, highly organized, efficient, a brilliant multitasker, a great friend, or strongly family-minded? The key distinguisher is the feeling of resentment that creeps up inside the person doing all this giving, fueled by a guilt-ridden belief that they do not have the right to say no and the fear that stepping back or focusing on their own needs will mean disconnection from their close relationships and communities.

Martyrs feel like they have no choice but to say yes to every demand that comes their way, specially from those closest to them. They are victimized by their inability to say no and their conflation of being loved with being needed. Martyrs are terrified of setting boundaries and limits, sometimes because they were taught in childhood that asserting their own needs, wants, and preferences would result in physical abuse, emotional distancing, or shaming.

In chaotic households, the Martyr child is one who learns early that in order to bring a sense of peace or order, they will have to step in and be the intermediary or the helper, cementing the belief that they are the only one who can be relied on or that they can make everyone feel better if they cause the least amount of fuss and trouble. Usually these efforts are met with verbal or nonverbal acknowledgments, such as: You are such a good girl. You are the little man of the house. You never bother Mom. Just be quiet and don’t trouble Dad. These are the tokens of love that make the child believe that their value lies in being quiet and not sharing their own needs, and that love is earned by caretaking and self-annihilation.

Martyrs have a very difficult time even connecting to the latent anger they might have inside. It may come out in catty remarks à la the Critic: why are others so selfish? But this anger is quickly squelched because any such rebellion makes the Martyr feel guilty for feeling burdened or overwhelmed. Their whole persona is based on being there for others, and the danger signal is that this is always at the great expense of themselves—and sometimes also at the expense of their own family unit.

In Ayla’s case, this face of the Neglector was working very strongly within her. As we began looking at her life history, it became evident that a combination of family circumstances, gender norms, and social, financial, and disability factors had played a big part in forming her caretaking shape. Ayla was an only child until age ten, when her family moved to a small town in the Midwest where they had no previous ties, and her mother became unexpectedly pregnant with her brother and experienced severe postpartum depression, followed by two major surgeries in the next five years.

Ayla remembers this time with mixed emotions. She was excited and proud to be a big sister, but she was confused and scared by her mother’s emotional withdrawal and sadness following Jamal’s birth. She also missed her father, who was working full time as the financial provider and whose job kept him traveling many weeks at a time. She found herself taking care of Jamal, and she soon took charge of bottle feedings, diaper changes, and entertaining the baby when her mother was too overwhelmed or listless to respond. At the height of her mother’s depression, Ayla would come home from school to a house in shambles and a distraught mother, and she would try her best to clean up the home and prepare dinner. Afterward, too exhausted to complete her schoolwork, she’d fall asleep in front of the television.

I asked Ayla if she remembered whether her mother had received any help from other family members or any form of mental health support. The answer was no. To Ayla, that was just the way things were, and she had no other choice than to to step in. That’s the message she took away when her father said, “Ayla, you are the big sister now, and your mother needs you. I am counting on you to take care of things while I am away.” She internalized the same message nonverbally when she overheard her mother crying alone in her room or saw her sitting listlessly as the baby cried in his. The whole experience gave Ayla the pervasive sense that something was deeply wrong and that she must fix it.

We pieced together a story that will be all too familiar for the millions of people living with illness, disability, isolation, constrained financial circumstances, and limited social networks, who are in desperate need of care. In the case of Ayla’s mom, it was a time when postpartum depression was still a relatively unfamiliar concept for doctors and new moms. Also, Ayla’s mother had no close family nearby or friends with young babies who could relate to her difficulties. She felt debilitated by her mental condition, and the shame she felt about her condition led her to isolate herself further, which was also a symptom of her depression. In addition, she felt trapped because she had no close social ties to draw upon, and she felt unworthy because she thought that she should be able to do it all and that she was failing her job as a mother and homemaker. In light of all this, she inadvertently placed the burden of responsibility on her daughter.

In a household with only one earner, the costs associated with hiring extra help would have been an added stressor. Gender norms played a role as well; both parents were unconsciously operating from the learned worldview that their daughter had a responsibility to help her mother around the house and with childcare, and later to assume primary care of the parents.

Caught between her love for her parents and her brother, her real need for more comfort and stability at home, and the cultural expectations of what a girl’s role is in the house, Ayla adapted in the best way she knew how. She learned to let go of her own feelings and needs and to be what others required. Like many Neglectors, this habit formed out of necessity in her early years, became an unquestioned part of her identity, and shaped how she led the rest of her life.

People Pleaser

The People Pleaser “lacks confidence . . . craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself.”[3] This role says and believes things like this:

- I just want everyone to like me.

- I don’t want to be any trouble.

- I am fine. Tell me about you.

- I don’t mind just going along with what others want.

- I feel guilty having strong opinions or preferences.

- I don’t feel comfortable getting angry.

- I always start a sentence with “I’m sorry.”

My client Martin is a gay man in his thirties who has a hard time with conflict or expressing anger, and he feels guilty whenever he gets irritated. He has work friends who constantly undermine him, changing plans and flaking out on him at the last minute. They’ve even made homophobic jokes at his expense, telling him it’s all in fun. Martin tends to laugh it all off nervously and says he doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it.

When I probe further, I find out he has begun to withdraw at work and to socially isolate elsewhere, and he feels bad about himself. In his dating life, he tends to be drawn to forceful personalities, and in his last relationship he would often forgo his own preferences to accommodate his partner. He said he didn’t want to burden his partner and was afraid that if he came off too assertively, the relationship wouldn’t work out. People tell him he’s such a happy person and so easy to get along with, and he has a hard time seeing himself differently. Yet, more and more, the reflections ring false because he feels lost and isolated in the crowd.

Martin is in the classic bind of a People Pleaser. They believe they cannot be themselves and be liked at the same time. Their desire to be liked means spending a lifetime contorting their needs, feelings, and beliefs to other people’s expectations. When this goes on for long enough, it can be hard for People Pleasers to identify their own needs and preferences. Martin grew up with an alcoholic father who was explosively angry and reactive, and a mother who would try to mitigate these explosions by placating the father and walking on eggshells. In this tense, unpredictable environment, Martin was unconsciously being trained to believe it’s normal to feel hypervigilant and insecure in his own home and his own skin.

He learned that if he could make a joke, keep smiling, and act cheerful, he could sometimes defuse the tension in the house and make his mother’s face look brighter for a while. In turn, his mom praised his ability to not stress out his dad, who in turn was less likely to take out his anger on Martin if he stayed quiet and helpful. All in all, this was a winning strategy, except that Martin didn’t learn to notice or know what to do with the knots of tension he felt in his belly every day when his father came home. Or the feelings of fear and anger that coursed through him when he heard his father explode. Or the sadness and desolation when he saw his mother cry after their fights. No one talked to him about his feelings, but the unspoken messages in the air communicated volumes: Grin and bear it. Disagreement is violent and unpredictable and scary. Afterward, act like nothing happened. It’s best to avoid conflict at all costs.

Martin’s story carries many of the hallmarks of how people pleasing becomes a person’s survival strategy. This often happens for those who grew up with angry parents or in violent, unpredictable households, as well as for those who grew up in repressed, excessively rational, or even resolutely cheerful homes where anger and other difficult emotions are quickly dismissed as unnecessary, signs of weakness, or burdensome. To survive—that is, to receive safety, love, and belonging—you must become expert at being aware of others’ moods and emotions and at shifting yours to suit theirs, which means ignoring what your own internal cues are telling you. People Pleasers learn that they do not have a right to express needs and be heard with respect and courtesy. Finally, and rather significantly from the standpoint of resilience, they do not learn how to have healthy, generative conflict.

This way of being is often even more pronounced for individuals who come from marginalized sociocultural backgrounds, where standing out causes one to be treated with otherness, difference, isolation, or even physical or economic danger. People pleasing is an appealing strategy for those who are encouraged to be subservient, assimilating, or self-sacrificing as a way to win society’s approval—or at least escape its wrath. Here society has become the abusive, violent parent, and the populations at its mercy are the vulnerable child.

While healthy compromise, balanced flexibility, and consideration for the needs of others are valuable and necessary relational skills, they go awry when we base relationships on a denial of our true selves. The People Pleaser is not used to being in a relationship of two mutually loving equals. They play the part of a shadow, whose choices are based on the fear of conflict and the threat of abandonment and loss. People Pleasers are classic codependents; they do not know that they will be fundamentally whole and okay without the approval or agreement of another. Deathly scared of conflict, People Pleasers need to do everything in their power to make sure the other people in their life stay pleased with them.

On the surface, the People Pleaser may smile all the time, be the class clown or office jokester, and seem surrounded by lots of people and in popular demand. However, chronic anxiety, depression, and underlying insecurity feed this role.

The tragedy of the People Pleaser is that they can spend their life trying to get someone to love them, and yet, because this behavior is compensating for a core belief that they are unlovable as they are, any love that does come their way cannot really go all the way in. To the People Pleaser, that love will always feel falsely earned or seem like just a temporary reprieve from the future moment when any misstep will lead to abandonment.

Addict

These words of wisdom might as well have been penned with the Addict role in mind: “Not feeling is no replacement for reality. Your problems today are still your problems tomorrow.”[4]

Here are some of the Addict’s characteristic thoughts or statements:

- I’ll just work/drink/smoke/date/have sex/eat/buy/stay busy to feel better.

- Feeling numb is better than feeling.

- I just want to mentally check out and not be here.

- I’m too busy/stoned/high/lost to figure it out.

- I just want someone else to make it all better.

- I feel like my life is always falling apart.

- I just want something/someone to make me feel better now. To heck with the long-term consequences!

The Addict’s fundamental “self-care” strategy is based on the belief that something or someone outside them is going to make them feel better. To the Addict, “feeling better” means a short-term high, numbness, or reprieve from the larger pain they may feel. While all of us may occasionally zone out in front of the television, reach for a few too many sugary snacks, or have a drink, what differentiates this comforting behavior from that of an Addict is a high frequency of occurrence, a difficulty in remaining within self-defined healthy limits, and the behavior’s basis in a constant need to avoid feelings. This turning away is also a permanent condition.

In general, we can understand the differences between comforting activities, addictive activities, and generative activities in this way:

- Comforting activities feel pleasant and soothe temporarily but do not lead us to feel more capable of dealing with the difficulty at hand. For instance, I can drink a glass of wine to unwind after work, watch a TV show to entertain myself, or do a yoga class to get in some exercise. I do each of these with the intention to feel better but not as a way to get closer to my inner life.

- Addictive activities provide temporary relief with a greater cost or stressor on the other side. This happens when someone drinks at a frequency that causes them to make poor decisions or to compromise their safety or health.

- Generative activities leave us feeling more whole and better able to address the difficulty at hand. Examples include practicing deep breathing and spending time in nature so I can calm my mind, journaling so I can process my feelings, and talking openly with a trusted friend about what is troubling me so I can come out of isolation and into connection.

The most profound distinction between generative and addictive activity is that we engage in generative activity with the deliberate intent to reengage our wholeness so we can tend to our feelings and needs. Meanwhile, the Addict’s choices do not lead to a return to their feelings or help them deal with the difficult events in their lives. Instead, once the short-term high wears off from the substance or activity they are engaged in, they are left with only one solution: do it again. It will eventually take more and more of the “solution” to provide the same level of detachment, and a nagging sense of dis-ease, shame, and lack of control will begin to grow.

The Addict role falls at different points along a spectrum, depending on the toxicity of the substance folks are addicted to. For example, workaholics have picked a more functional behavior to be addicted to than alcoholics. Though both are overindulging in a behavior in order to stay disconnected from their internal state, one choice has far more severe consequences than the other. In addition, in the case of alcohol, the use of it can be an actual disease for some people, with severe physical effects. As we are conceptualizing it in this book, the Addict role encompasses folks who feel the need to check out through constant use of television, social media, video games, staying busy, spending money, using alcohol or drugs, romantic fantasy, or sexual encounters, among other things. These behaviors are problematic when they keep a person from feeling, facing, and transforming their inner and outer dilemmas. Left unchecked, for some people these unhealthy coping behaviors can become a source of deeper problems, such as eating disorders, alcohol abuse, substance dependence, sex and love addictions, gambling addictions, financial ruin, and legal consequences.

In sessions, clients who have been taking on the Addict role will often recall how, in troubling times at home, being taken out to eat or getting sugary snacks was the one source of comfort or joy when parents were too overwhelmed or stressed out to provide care. Others watched their parents deal with stress and anxiety by overeating, drinking alcohol, and smoking cigarettes. Some were left at home alone at a young age; or, like Ayla, they were left at home with a parent who was emotionally and physically unable to provide caretaking, so they started parenting (soothing) themselves through television, food, compulsive masturbation, or video games. All of them had in common households where emotions were left unnamed and unaddressed, and they received the clear nonverbal message that we deal with pain by covering it over or checking out.

We can have compassion for the Addict inside us and see the addiction as our coping mechanism of choice that we picked up when that was the best solution at hand, based on our best thinking at the time. The Addict is what happens when a person is overwhelmed and desperate for relief, and they often lack any other support to handle a situation that was far too big to be dealt with alone. The wake-up call occurs when we realize that the so-called way out has become a confining, self-destructive cage.

The Payoffs

It isn’t hard to see the myriad payoffs for enacting the Neglector role. Ayla’s example is especially useful because she exhibits all three faces of this role. In her case, the first and perhaps most important payoff comes from acting as the Martyr and receiving a sense of power, value, and worth from being needed. By taking care of others, putting out fires continuously, or learning to defuse tension by playing the eternal peacemaker at their own expense, Neglectors establish a sense of control inside the chaos. For some, using a substance, whether it’s food, alcohol, or drugs, provides a sense of calm, euphoria, and even confidence—the “shot of courage” that allows them to feel like they can be the more social, confident, calm, and capable self they want the world to know.

Ayla’s People Pleaser provides her with the second payoff of feeling liked and mitigating the fear of disappointing others, creating conflict, and feeling alone—although she never worries about pleasing herself. Human beings are motivated by feeling loved in all permutations: belonging, likability, importance, worth, value. We will do just about anything to gain this feeling because we long for the safety that comes from connection. The trouble with getting this payoff is that truly feeling loved and safe inside a relationship means being accepted for who we are, having a right to share our true feelings and needs, and being met with kindness and respect in our differences. The Neglector’s version of feeling loved is based on a denial of their true self at every turn, so the connections they do get never translate to anything but a hollow knock-off of the real thing.

Finally, Ayla’s Addict “takes care” of grief and loneliness, and the complex feelings of shame and failure, by keeping her too busy in the form of dissociating in front of the television and being consistently occupied with everyone else’s needs and problems. Getting to be numb, distracted, or absent from our feelings is the other big payoff the Neglector offers. Ayla learned this strategy to self-soothe as a young child. Overwhelmed by her mother’s emotions and the enormous responsibilities she was carrying, she found comfort in the sense of control she gained from staying busy fixing things around her, and from zoning out in front of the TV. She carried these strategies with her into adulthood, using them any time she felt beset by emotions and sensations she didn’t know what to do with. We use Addict strategies when it feels like our fear will engulf us, or when our Critic tells us negative stories about ourselves, such as Ayla’s Critic telling her that her divorce means she is a failure, the only reason she matters is because of what she does, and she will be a bad daughter or social worker if she takes time for herself. In the face of this barrage, the Neglector offers an understandably enticing reprieve down the rabbit hole of oblivion.

The Cycle of Suffering

The Neglector is our ultimate inner saboteur—the part of ourselves that pulls the rug out from under us to lay it under someone else’s feet, or simply to throw us to the ground over and over again.

How do we know we are in the Neglector’s Cycle of Suffering? When our giving, coping strategies, and attempts to please others produce pain for us, that’s when we’re acting out the Neglector role. No joy stems from our actions, and our choices leave us drained and depleted. The short-term control, love, and attention we receive ultimately leads to resentment and blame (from the Critic) and then back to more overwhelm (the Vulnerable Self).

Because many of these behaviors are societally normalized and even encouraged, it is tremendously hard for a Neglector to recognize that they are in a Cycle of Suffering or that there is a way out. The messages all around us say: Feeling bad? Go out and shop. Feeling a bit shy? Here, have a drink. Always busy and stressed? Wear it as a badge of success and importance! Too tired to do anything but zone out in front of the television and eat junk? Hey, that’s how adults relax. We’ve earned it after a hard day! Full-time worker and mother and caretaker? That’s your job. Lean in. It’s so amazing how you do it all! Stressed out because of it? That’s just life. No time or money for that? Well, you need to work harder and get a better-paying job. Too hard? Quit whining. Why are you having such a hard time? Here, take a pill. And so the cycle continues.

When society, family, and communities normalize dysfunctional situations, offer addictive, harmful, superficial options as “self-care,” and engage in victim blaming when an individual does not thrive in suboptimal conditions, is it any wonder that self-neglect and addiction are such big parts of modern society? When receiving love and attention requires dissociation and guilt about our own needs and wants, is it any wonder that Neglectors feel unworthy or even hopeless about bringing themselves into the equation, and unsupported in turning toward the pain inside?

At its core, the Neglector’s behavior is saying, “I am overwhelmed by my life circumstances and emotions. I don’t know what I am truly feeling or what I need or how to figure it out. When I become aware of discomfort, I can only respond by distracting myself or through someone or something else. I feel ashamed and guilty even trying to get help.”

That last sentence points to the cycle switching now to the Critic, who begins to berate the Neglector, further heightening the pain by saying things like: “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I get my act together? My life is a hot mess and I am a failure.”

These attacks further motivate the Neglector to flee from the increase in distress by exclaiming, “I can’t take this anymore! I need to switch off my brain. I need a drink. What’s wrong with giving myself a treat? When I have a drink, it’s the first time I get to just relax and tune out that voice that says its all my fault.”

Finally, the combined effect of criticism and self-neglect is to reduce us to the helplessness of the Vulnerable Self, who wakes up the next morning tired, with a throbbing head and a heart filled with dread and guilt, saying to herself: “I just feel out of control. I don’t know what to do. I hate my life. I hate myself, and I cannot change things.”

That is the unvarnished truth underneath all the Neglector’s behavior, just as it is underneath the Critic’s judgment: not knowing what to do in the face of our own overwhelm and pain. Our job is to learn new and effective ways to nurture ourselves that no longer come with a high hidden cost.

The Bigger Picture

While reading this chapter, you may have been wondering about folks who have no other choice than to be primary caretakers of their families due to economic reasons or lack of social networks. Can we just blame all of our stress and frustration with difficult life conditions on our proclivity for martyrdom? What if there truly is no one else to shoulder the burden?

Our society has created systemic conditions that gives millions of folks in dire need little or no option other than to sacrifice their physical, emotional, and financial health for their loved ones. It is a system that creates the stressors that destroy an individual’s and family’s resilience. There is also a significant gender bias across cultures that dramatically increases the onus on women to adopt the role of physical and emotional caretaker, lauding and oppressing her at the same time. These harsh realities must be acknowledged and included in the larger redressal that will shift our society’s shape from a Neglector into a Nurturer.

Viewing caretaking alone through this wider lens, we see that unchecked capitalism is one way modern society has created the conditions that overburden families. In America, a developed country with marked income inequality, the lack of affordable and accessible health care has created a drastic crisis for families whose members have long-term health care needs. Here, the gender and racial bias is glaringly apparent.

According to a 2010 survey, the approximately ten million caregivers aged fifty and older in the United States who care for their parents lose an estimated $3 trillion annually in wages, pensions, retirement funds, and benefits. The costs are higher for women, who lose an estimated $324,044 per person per year due to caregiving, compared to a loss of $283,716 per person per year for men.[5] Women who are caregivers are more likely to live in poverty, and the statistics are even more bleak when it comes to low-income and minority caregivers who bear the brunt of a heavier burden, such that “52% of women caregivers with incomes at or below the national median of $35,000 spend 20+ hours each week providing care.”[6]

These grim figures do not even account for the fact that caregiving is expensive. Prescription medications, equipment, and supplies are often not covered by insurance and have to be paid for out of pocket by families that are already significantly challenged financially. Caregiving also has serious financial consequences for employers and businesses, with the combined impact of absenteeism, employee replacement, and adjustment to reduced working hours adding up to “lost productivity to U.S. businesses [of] $17.1 to $33 billion annually.”[7]

Another study examined how caregiving also takes an emotional toll on caregivers, leading to depression, anxiety, and other mental health challenges. The study found that women in their fifties and older who provided care to their partners were “almost six times as likely to suffer depressive or anxious symptoms as were those who had no caregiving responsibilities.” The same study found that “women who cared for ill parents were twice as likely to suffer from depressive or anxious symptoms as non-caregivers.”[8]

The toll extends outward to affect social relationships because caregivers are less able to participate in activities outside the home. This leads to increased isolation and reduced psychological well-being, with symptoms including depression, hostility, low self-acceptance, and a lessened sense of agency, along with an increase in physical ailments including heart disease, hypertension, depressed immune system function, and higher mortality. In short, caregiving without adequate societal support is detrimental to our health.

Given such stark statistics, it is evident that in these situations the model offered by this book and by most psychological, wellness, or self-help specialists is useful but incomplete because it focuses solely on the individual, when the origin of the problem is systemic. We can make a lot of progress in building our resilience by turning inward; however, for many of us turning inward isn’t even possible because the larger financial, institutional, and systemic support for that endeavor is absent. In addition, the larger systems we’re embedded in aren’t geared toward our particular cultural, racial, economic, and social realities and thereby do not offer us the change we need to truly feel resilient as a member of society.

One study that sought to determine which broader interventions actually work[9] found that culturally competent, affordable counseling and support groups had positive effects on caregivers’ experiences. However, the study also found that such interventions needed to be offered in combination with tangible support services, such as employee or local government and service agency-sponsored respite, funds for home modifications or assistive devices, and information. These measures create real improvement in health, happiness, and stress levels in the lives of caregivers and mitigate the cycle of poverty, financial ruin, and physical disease.

Jessie Daniels is a sociology professor at the City University of New York and an expert on manifestations of racism on the internet. She writes compellingly about the disparity between the real-life stressors and lack of support experienced by a considerable cross-section of society, such as the caregivers described above, and the mainstream wellness industry’s focus on an individual’s ability to transform their condition, often through high-priced items that are out of reach for those most in need, or alternative treatments that have been appropriated for use and sold for profit without credit, permission, or contextual understanding.

Daniels points out that these solutions “ignore the things people actually need to be well, like ending poverty and systemic racism or providing access to free, reliable health care.” Instead, Daniels suggests, what we need is a “new communitarian model that has people engaging in real, political efforts to change the racial and economic status quo,” instead of one rooted in a false brand of self-care that simply affirms the individual.[10]

To break this Cycle of Suffering, we can begin by recognizing the lie we have been sold: that we are not enough, and our happiness lies in purchasing items, work without balance, material success, and being liked by others. We can do the inner work to unlearn the lie that it is our own weakness or fault that causes us unhappiness, stress, or financial, physical, or emotional failure. Then we can acknowledge and affirm that many of us are struggling because we are bearing the brunt of sorely lacking social safety nets, with affordable and comprehensive universal health care being one of the most vital.

As we continue, let us remember that our problems are rarely, if ever, simply rooted in our individual lives. Our solutions need to take the bigger picture into account as we reclaim our power to transform our inner Neglector into a Nurturer.

Self-Reflection

1. What are some areas in your life where you might be taking care of others at your own expense?

2. In such situations, what might you say to yourself to justify neglecting yourself? For example: “If I don’t do it, no one will.” “I just don’t have time for myself.” “I don’t want someone to get mad at me.”

3. Which aspect(s) of the Neglector did you most connect with—Martyr, People Pleaser, or Addict?

4. At what age might you have first taken on this role? Who did you learn it from?

5. 5. What has been the payoff for taking on this role?

6. What has been the cost?

7. What fears would you have to face in order to let go of this role?

8. What would be possible if you did face these fears and stopped neglecting yourself?

9. What cultural, ancestral, societal, religious, or systemic stressors do you think contribute to your taking on the Neglector roles?

10. What systemic, social, cultural, or religious support or change do you imagine might shift those stressors in your life or the lives of others?

Good job completing this section! We will be coming back to these notes later in the book, when we transform your Neglector into the Nurturer who will be a source of loving-kindness and compassion for you. That Nurturer is already inside and in fact is the one who helped you read through this chapter and complete this section.

Take a moment now to see how you might nurture yourself as a way of showing your appreciation to yourself and for doing such a good job. Take a break by stepping outside and taking in fresh air, getting a mug of your favorite tea, stretching your body or giving it a gentle massage, playing a favorite song with uplifting lyrics, or watching something that will make you laugh. Or simply wrap yourself in your own loving arms and whisper gently, “I am proud of myself for learning how to love and care for myself better.”

3

The Critic

I know the way you can get

when you have not had a drink of love.

—HAFIZ

It’s three p.m. on a sunny California afternoon, but my client is a picture of abject misery. Her brown eyes are downcast, tears stream down her face, and her chest caves in as she shrinks into herself. Miriam is an African American graduate student in her late twenties, attending an Ivy League institution. She began therapy a few months ago, seeking assistance for panic attacks, anxiety, and depression. A diligent student, she comes from a family of academics on the East Coast and has inherited their strong work ethic, keen intellect, and high degree of perfectionism. She frequently feels like a fraud despite all her accomplishments and has had a difficult time feeling at ease in her first year of graduate school.

She has spent the past twenty minutes recounting a meeting with her peer research group, a highly skilled and intellectual coterie of students who are supposed to collaboratively write a class paper over the course of the semester.

“I just don’t think I can do it,” she says, her soft voice rising with each new sentence, as her fingers ball up the tissues she has been using to wipe away her tears. “Everyone was throwing out brilliant ideas about the pieces of research they were excited about, and I just sat there and said nothing. I felt so stupid. I’m not even sure why they asked me to be in this group. I am pretty sure they are regretting their choice now! Ugh, I just feel so bad.”

I ask her, “What do you think made it so difficult to share your ideas with your classmates?”

“I don’t know, Anjuli. I’ve always gotten good grades in school, but I knew it was only because I was studying extra hard and my parents made sure I got extra tutoring. I wasn’t like the science whiz kids who could ace a test without even trying. I had to have help, and I always felt like an impostor.” Her voice rises, and suddenly it is as if the dam bursts and her anguish pours out:

“I just hate it. I hate that I get so clammed up and can’t speak up. My mind goes blank, and to be honest, I don’t even know what I would say. It’s difficult being the only African American woman in the group as well, but I should be used to that. I just feel different enough already, and now I’ve been so anxious lately that it’s just too much to feel like I stand out. Everyone else just seems like they are on top of it. I don’t even want to go the meetings, and it’s been taking me so long to get anything done on the paper. I’ve become such a slacker! I know it’s weak and I know I should just buckle down and do it like my parents do, but when it comes time, I just go blank. I feel like I’m being scrutinized, and I feel so anxious that it’s hard to sit down and calm myself. My mentor tells me it’s all in my mind and I need to build a tougher skin to survive academia. I feel like I’m letting everyone down, and just so guilty for wasting time when I should be taking advantage of this degree. My family is going to be so disappointed. What is wrong with me? I just need to fix this and get over it!”

With each painful pronouncement, Miriam’s body coils in deeper tension, and I can see that her tears and heightening voice are signaling a rise into panic. I invite her to breathe and bring her attention back into the present moment, as we cannot address these concerns unless her body is calmer.

“How about we slow things down for a moment and then unpack all this pain and the judgment you’ve piled on top of it,” I say gently. As Miriam gradually begins to calm her breath and become more present in her body, I think about what she has shared.

How is it that this bright, accomplished young woman with all the world open to her has become so detached from a sense of her own worth and value? Psychiatrists have diagnosed her with anxiety and depression and have prescribed her medication to be taken at the first sign of a panic attack; still, I wonder what’s at the root of these debilitating symptoms.

In Miriam’s words and actions I clearly hear and see the three faces of the Critic: the Judge, the Fearmonger, and the Perfectionist. These are the negative internal voices that are inexorably destroying her sense of self, pointing the finger at her in blame whenever she is in distress, and raising her frustration and anxiety into full-blown panic. It is time for Miriam to see that she is not the problem. It isn’t a lack of intelligence, worthiness, or strength that has reduced her to such a state. Nor is the problem necessarily a biochemical deficit that’s fixable with a pill. The root of her problem is the unchecked toxic inner voice that is a product of familial, cultural, and even institutional conditions that have been beating down her self-esteem and sending her on a roller coaster of anxiety and depression.

Those three faces I introduced her to on that summer afternoon are present and operative within many of us. How can you tell if you or someone you know has a strong inner Critic at play? Look for signs of anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, procrastination, or perfectionism. Let’s look at these three facets of the Critic together.

The Judge

This is the classic face of the Critic: judgmental, bullying, emotionally abusive, condescending, and even cruel. The Judge is always pointing a finger in blame toward the world, ourselves, or both. Common phrases that denote this role’s thoughts and behaviors are:

- What’s wrong with me/you?

- It’s all your/my fault.

- How could you/I be so stupid?

- You are/I am too old/fat/ugly to have someone love you/me.

- No one could love __________ about you/me.

If you find yourself thinking I would never say anything like that to myself or someone else, it may be useful to look at the following examples of a subtler version of this same abusive voice.

Saleem’s internal dialogue when he isn’t considered for a promotion at work: “Why am I not surprised? They always favor the younger tech guys over me. They don’t value experience. All they want are the guys who stay after work and spend all weekend coding. I should just quit. Who will hire me, though? I’m too old to get ahead in this business. I’m obviously lucky to just have a job. I guess I was never that good at this work anyway.”

Sue-Mei’s inner monologue when her family constantly asks her why she isn’t married yet, and when they remind her that she needs to get married soon if she wants to have children: “I’m in my thirties and I haven’t found my life partner yet. What am I doing wrong? Other people find their soul mate and have babies by this age; why don’t I? Maybe I’m too picky or just too idealistic, like Mom says. Or maybe all the good men are taken, and the rest are just not datable. I just need to grow up. Otherwise I’ll die alone with no one but my cat for company.”

The inner dialogue of Devon, who is dealing with chronic pain and feels ashamed and guilty that they (Devon’s preferred pronoun) have to be on disability to make ends meet: “What am I doing with my life? I don’t make any contribution. I didn’t even leave the house today. People must think I’m just lazy or pretending, and I can’t help but feel I’m just a drain on others. A waste of space. No one is ever going to want to date me. And what will people think when they know I’m on disability? It’s so shameful. I can’t share that.”

These are three examples of people who have vastly different ages, gender orientations, sociocultural backgrounds and vocations, yet they have the same symptoms as anyone who has been living under the abusive voice of the Judge: anxiety, insecurity, shame, anger, resentment, and the browbeaten helplessness of anyone who has withstood the constant pummeling of a judgmental voice.

The Fearmonger

The Fearmonger is the world’s worst psychic. It bases all its future predictions on the harshest possible assessment of a present situation or personality trait, and it creates a future scenario of unmitigated doom. The past exists in a haze of bitterness and blame. Time exists in two forms: always or never. The only immutable law of the universe is Murphy’s, and hindsight is twenty-twenty and laced with blame.

Classic Fearmonger statements include the following:

- You should have known better.

- If it hasn’t happened yet, it will never happen.

- Bad things always happen, so it’s foolish to relax.

- I have to think of what terrible thing is going to happen next.

- Don’t bother trying; it’s never going to work out.

- If it doesn’t work out, it was just a waste of time.

Building from the previous examples, we can see the Fearmonger taking over from the Judge as Saleem tells himself, “You just aren’t as smart or in touch with the latest technology as your younger colleagues (Judge). You will never make it further than you are right now. Just keep your head down, work harder, and try to keep the job you have. Who knows—you might get fired any day (Fearmonger).”

The Fearmonger turns Sue-Mei’s singlehood, childlessness, and dating history into the dire prediction that she will always be alone and will find herself dying in a retirement home without anyone to care for her. The Fearmonger uses Devon’s painful illness and difficult days at home to predict a life where no one will ever want to partner with them, and they will never have anything to contribute to the world.

The Fearmonger is an expert at turning the pain and difficulty of the past, and the turbulent feelings of the present, into a lifelong sentence. If you find yourself in a tough situation, the Fearmonger frames it as one for which you only have yourself to blame and where no helpful action or intervention is possible. When this auguring of doom heightens fear and anxiety, the Fearmonger uses those emotions as further proof that the situation is dire and cannot be changed. What the Fearmonger’s victims fail to realize is that this is less of an accurate prediction than a self-fulfilling prophecy. The self-defeating internal feedback is what saps their strength, feeds their misery, and hinders their access to the championing and nurturing that might bring a hopeful and helpful light to the situation.

The Perfectionist

The Perfectionist is seemingly the most benign face of the Critic. It is also the hardest face for people to identify as toxic because of how greatly modern society affirms, lauds, and celebrates its voice as necessary and functional.

The hallmark statements of this role are:

- I want to look/sound perfect/do it perfectly.

- I don’t need help. I should be able to do it alone. I don’t want to be needy.

- How do I fix myself?

- Can you fix me?

- I start a lot of projects, but I don’t ever feel comfortable sharing them or turning them in, because I need it to be just right.

- What’s the point of trying if you can’t do it right? Or be good at it? Or win?

- Crying and emotions are weak. Why am I still thinking about the breakup/loss/accident/difficult situation? Shouldn’t I be over it by now?

- Once I lose those fifteen pounds/get that promotion/buy that house/get married/give more to the world/gain a thousand online followers/become a successful artist, I’ll be fine.

You might have read the above examples and wondered, what’s wrong with thinking this way? Won’t these thoughts lead me to be successful and achieve my goals? Isn’t it good to get over my exes? Isn’t it important to be strong and not let my feelings take over? I thought the point of therapy was to help fix me and my relationships, so what’s wrong with asking for that?

Saleem, for example, fully believed his inner Perfectionist’s voice when it told him there was no need to share his ideas more in team meetings unless he had the most original and clear thought to offer, or to try to take on more leadership roles to boost his career unless he was clearly the best on the team. Why in the world would he risk appearing foolish?

Sue-Mei’s inner Perfectionist had convinced her that the answer to her relationship woes was to figure out exactly what was wrong with her and fix it. If she worked on herself more by going to therapy, reading dating books, going to the gym, upgrading her wardrobe, and joining the popular dating sites, she’d finally get it right!

And Devon was at the mercy of their Perfectionist, urging them to try to be included and accepted by matching the pace and lifestyle of able-bodied peers and papering over their need to stay in more, move slower, eat different foods, do less active excursions, or ask for help. How else were they going to have a social life?

The Perfectionist’s way of thinking is seductive at first glance because it seemingly offers a greater sense of power and control. Any difficulty or problem is just there to be fixed or masked. Emotions and painful physical sensations can be stoically ignored or rationalized, or we can just get over them with willpower. The Perfectionist can sound like a tough-love coach whose response to anything that is difficult, stressful, or painful is to look for the solution—and the solution is always to find a way to make things perfect again. That can feel especially helpful when we feel lost and ashamed. Someone has the answer, and implementing it will mean we get to be good—i.e., perfect—again. The only problem is that people, situations, and life are rarely, if ever, perfect.

The Perfectionist cannot accept the common human conditions that inevitably find their way into all of our lives. They are uncomfortable with not knowing, needing to learn, turning in things that are “good enough,” trying things for first time, or being with emotional needs and situations that cannot be fixed. Through the various messages of family, society, and institutions, the Perfectionist has learned that these vulnerable ways of being are shameful rather than normal, human, and acceptable. Underneath all its bluster is someone who feels deeply afraid that people will see these pains, insecurities, and uncertainties and judge them for it. So it points the finger of judgment at itself first.

The Perfectionist becomes a toxic agent in your life when you engage in procrastination and self-sabotage instead of asking for help to move forward and do work that is good enough. This face of the Critic makes it feel impossible to chase your dreams or take advantage of new opportunities, because you feel insecure and hesitant about participating in something that you are not already good at or that has an unpredictable outcome. It’s as if you can no longer engage in anything without pointing out the flaws, and any achievement is just an item to be checked off before the next task.

In the grip of the Perfectionist, you cannot forgive yourself for past errors, and you judge yourself as weak for having normal feelings like sadness, grief, anger, or even fear after a loss. You start to feel depressed, irritable, or numb because your Perfectionist rushes you to get over those feelings and get on to the next thing. You try to gain or lose weight not for health reasons, but because the Perfectionist makes you believe you are unlovable until you hit the magically right size. You feel like you have to hide your struggles and pain because the Perfectionist tells you struggling and pain are shameful. You view necessary support from your friends, family, work, or societal structures as a sign of weakness rather than a necessary part of anyone’s ability to thrive.

The Perfectionist makes us believe that we can—and should—do it all alone. It makes us forget how much of our success and our daily lives are tied to the fruits and hard work of countless interconnections. It causes us to forget our own vulnerability and interdependence, so we are unable to honor those traits in others. This is when our perfectionism turns into a lack of humanity. It can even make us feel a sense of enjoyment or glee at watching others fail, or it can cause us to blame others for their misfortune. When this occurs, the Perfectionist’s poison has done its work: disconnecting us from the love and empathy that is our true self and that we all need to thrive.

What Service Does the Critic Perform for Us?

We don’t do anything unless we believe it serves us in some way. When I first ask people “Why do you think you talk to yourself this way? What is it giving you?” most people will begin by saying, “I don’t know. I don’t think it gives me anything except misery.” However, on probing deeper, a few answers occur with surprising frequency.

The number one reason I hear people give for why it’s okay to speak to themselves critically is that they believe it will motivate them to change. Whether through family upbringing, classroom experiences, or societal influence, many of us have swallowed wholesale the idea that a harsh voice is what helps people get things done. Actually, most people won’t experience their inner voice as harsh at all; they just think it’s realistic or truthful. The statements shared in this chapter have become so commonplace that most people have lost the ability to recognize the damage they are doing or to know what to say instead until they hear the voice inside their head spoken out loud or hear me reflect it back to them in a session. Many people are conditioned to being put down in the name of motivation and are oblivious to the actual impact.

The second most common reason people give for criticizing themselves is self-protection. You would think that we need protection from the harshness and abuse of this inner voice, but people end up believing that the Critic’s voice protects them from rejection, disappointment, and the judgment of others. The underlying logic can be stated as, “judge yourself before they judge you,” and “stay small to stay safe.” After all, if your inner Critic has you believing messages like “you will never be good at that” and “don’t even try because you aren’t smart enough,” or if it speaks with an even more blatantly abusive voice, it’s easy to assume that the world will think of you this way too, in which case it’s better to hide.

In the end, all the Critic is doing is teaching us to fear vulnerability and disappointment as emotions that are too difficult to bear, rather than bolstering us to know we can love ourselves and care for ourselves enough to try, learn from our failed attempts, and still reach for our dreams.

What we do to ourselves we often do to others in equal measure. The Critic’s voice is often directed at others under the same misguided reasoning that its remarks will produce positive change. This also how we believe we protect ourselves from a perceived outside threat to our sense of self. This can look like intolerance toward people with different viewpoints than our own, becoming defensive when receiving another’s feedback, or making others feel bad about sharing their emotions and needs because we are so used to hiding and diminishing our own. The person whose Critic is aggressively attacking others is often unaware of the reason they are acting in this way. It is as if they have adopted the harsh viewpoint of the Critic for so long that it becomes impossible to see the world any other way. Their criticism of others may make them temporarily feel powerful, but in the end, it costs them peace of mind, strong connections, and respect.

The Difference between the Critic’s Voice and Healthy Anger

At this point it is important to distinguish between the Critic’s voice and a healthy expression of anger and assertiveness. Healthy anger and assertive speech mean sharing what is upsetting us without name-calling, belittling, or shaming. Anger is a potent inner gauge for knowing our own boundaries and limits. When we express anger in healthy ways that do not harm ourselves or others, we are empowered to speak our truth. This is assertive communication: speaking directly to our feelings, needs, and experience in any situation while staying connected to our own heart and the other person’s humanity. We are not out to get someone or hurt ourselves. We are speaking our truth in a kind and firm manner while remembering that the other person has a heart that deserves care, understanding, and respectful communication, just as we do.

Later in the book the distinction will become clearer as we build this inner voice, known as the Protector, as an antidote to the Critic.

The Vicious Cycle of Suffering

Does criticism actually serve to motivate us? Does it actually protect us from harm and reduce future suffering? It should come as no surprise that all the studies on negative self-talk, motivation, and performance—whether in individuals, teams, or corporate structures—answer with a resounding no.

Studies have found that negative criticism (as opposed to constructive feedback) is severely toxic to self-esteem, relational health, and productivity, and it’s a strong predictor of reduced success for any endeavor. In fact, studies “suggest self-criticism not only represents a risk factor in the pursuit of personal goals, but also for negative affect subsequent to setbacks in goal pursuit.”[1] In other words, the negative impact of criticism accumulates over time. People subjected to negative criticism accomplish fewer goals, and even if a task is achieved, any experience of satisfaction is short-lived, and healthy pride is squelched.

The Critic is an expert in negative feedback and is oblivious to the need to give credit. No sooner is something done than it looks for the next thing on the list. When I ask folks with strong inner Critics to tell me what they are proud of about themselves, they often have a lot of difficulty. They tend to discount any positive feedback received from others and believe speaking positively about themselves is prideful or boasting. These are the very words their inner Critic has been feeding them. People in this situation don’t realize that without positive affirmation we are more prone to insecurity and hesitation, and we are less likely to pursue further endeavors or derive joy from any experience.

A constant barrage of criticism can eventually stop someone dead in their tracks. Such people are completely blocked from trying something new, and they become reclusive and emotionally shut down. As the ability to function and perform tasks falters, the Critic has further ammunition for its cruelty and fearmongering. Driven by growing anxiety and fueled by a string of real or perceived failures, the painful inner dialogue turns into pervasive low self-esteem.

In the end, the Critic sets each of us up for chronic dissatisfaction, rising stress, declining performance, and eventual burnout—a Cycle of Suffering.

At the Critic’s Core: Shame

Underneath all its bluster, the Critic feels deeply ashamed. The Critic is the part of us that experiences shame about our insecurity, fear, doubt, feeling lost, not knowing, failing, and being imperfect. It can only respond to these emotions with a stream of criticism. Yet all the anger, blame, and finger-pointing are just smoke and mirrors. Even as it postures to distract attention from the core feeling of shame, the Critic needs tremendous help to articulate the softer feelings it thinks it needs to hide: “I don’t know what to do when I am upset, sad, scared, hurt, lonely, in the unknown, or stuck. I hate those feelings because they make me feel like I am weak and just ashamed. I have to bully myself to get out of it. It’s the only way I know to stay safe.”

Most of us formed this critical inner parent or caretaker at a young age, either by internalizing the negative voice of adults close to us or by talking to ourselves this way when adults neglected us. The Critic can be a child’s best idea of how to take care of themselves and feel strong. These negative voices are especially loud for childhood survivors of physical, sexual, or emotional trauma. Subjected to violence and terror at the hands of their caretakers, many children can only make sense of such a breach of trusted connection by placing blame on themselves. The overpowering feelings of terror, sadness, and anger they might feel when being abused or abandoned are replaced with shame.

As shame and empathy researcher Brené Brown describes it, guilt is the feeling that “I am doing something bad or wrong”; shame, on the other hand, is the feeling that “I am bad.”[2] For trauma survivors, the bad thing that happened to them becomes internalized as “I am bad.” They may think, “If I caused it, maybe I can fix it; maybe I can be good enough, nice enough, fast enough, quiet enough, old enough, look different enough, get good grades enough, help out enough, to stop this person from abusing me or ignoring me.” This is how the inner Critic does its best to provide some sense of control or agency in a devastating situation. As time goes on, this feeling of shame can lead to feeling unworthy of love that is not abusive and of healthy, consistent connection. It can also make us feel unable to be with those buried feelings of fear, sadness, anger, or loneliness without resorting to the Critic.

Shame and self-criticism can also become deep-seated in children whose parents are perfectionistic as a form of being overprotective. These parents can put enormous pressure on their child to succeed in school, to excel at extracurricular activities, or to be meticulous about their appearance. Rather than offering healthy encouragement and support for children to succeed, these parents give feedback in the form of negative criticism. They’re not building up their child’s confidence by acknowledging effort or valuing growth; instead, they cast a hypervigilant and hypercritical gaze upon the child that carries the full force of unrealistic expectations.

It isn’t hard to see the intergenerational cycle of suffering at play, as such parents are simply passing on an inherited legacy of critique and perfectionism. This legacy can often exist alongside collective historical traumas compounded by intersections of such factors as gender, race, class, or disability. One way to see the impact of these collective traumas is to note how the Critic’s perfectionist tendencies can appear beyond one particular family and show up in the community, culture, or religion we belong to, shaped to survive larger threats like bigotry, hatred, or racism. A strong inner Critic may have arisen as an internalization of the punitive and prejudiced voice of society teaching us that our skin color, faith, body, background, or gender we choose to love is dangerous, deficient, deviant, or otherwise less valued.

It could also be a response born of wanting to protect the next generation from a societal voice that was projected through mouths of those in power, tied to systems that can determine the most pivotal of outcomes: how well our children get to live, and how long it will be before they die. If we know our children’s lives will be scrutinized, marginalized, or even endangered at a much higher level than their peers—if we know our Muslim child in a predominantly Christian school is more likely to encounter teacher bias or peer bullying, or our Black son is at the highest statistical risk among his peers of dying of an unprovoked shooting by a police officer, or our child with a developmental disability will need to prove their right to fair work or fair medical care, or our biracial daughter has a 50 percent chance of experiencing sexual harassment or violence—if we know all this and so much more, it is understandable that in our community, we might start to show love by pushing our children to be more, do more, go farther, excel, to not get soft from being praised but to be hardened and strengthened by us so they can be prepared to withstand the outside world trying to crush their spirit.

The tragedy is that this strategy only ends up profoundly taxing bodies that are already severely burdened. The internalized Critic is in the end a toxic agent that crushes us from the inside, putting a burden on our inner system that psychologist Golan Shahar, researcher on the pathology of self-criticism, describes as ranging from mental and physical depression to anxiety, eating disorders, chronic pain, fatigue, and suicidality.[3] The shame bred by criticism, born of violence and suffering, breeds further violence and suffering. This harsh, punitive, and perfectionist treatment has led not to strength but instead to a brittleness that finds its way into our thinking and behaviors as self-criticism. Shahar says this self-criticism also leads to erosion of relationships at work and at home because the Critic tends to pick at others or be chronically dissatisfied with them and push them away. Shame is also highly correlated with addiction, depression, bullying, and violence.

The antidote to shame? Meeting our vulnerability, those feelings that criticism were designed to hide, with our loving nurturance, acceptance, and compassion—the skills we will practice in the next sections. To end the legacy of a cycle of violence, we have to carve a path forward that looks dramatically different—a path that actually cares for vulnerability in a way that turns it into resilience.

The Bigger Picture

We have come a long way in our understanding of the Critic, as did Miriam on that sunny afternoon. In the weeks of therapy that followed, she and I identified the aspects of the Critic at play within her, as exemplified by the following thought patterns:

- I feel so stupid. I am just not as smart as them. What is wrong with me? (Judge)

- I won’t be able to do it. I will probably need to drop out before I can finish the program. (Fearmonger)

- If I don’t have my ideas perfectly formed, I shouldn’t share them. I don’t want to take up a part of the research if I don’t already know how to do it. It is weak to be terrified in this way. (Perfectionist)

We also looked at her family, school, and relational history that might have seeded some of these voices. All of this is standard therapy. There was one additional crucial step we had to take to fully grasp the source of the Critic and ultimately face and address it. We had to go beyond her personal history to the larger systems at play—in this case, institutionalized racism and gender bias.

Miriam’s inner Critic had her viewing her anxiety and insecurity at school as a purely personal weakness, and her difficulty in overcoming it as a lack of grit. It boiled down to her thinking it was all her own fault. A big aha moment for her came when we began to acknowledge the real-life stressors that were causing her distress, with special attention to the racism and gender bias that exist in the United States at large and predominantly white educational institutions.

Miriam and I began by discussing “imposter syndrome,”[4] which is when people believe they have no right to the accolades or opportunities they might receive, and that their opinion and presence aren’t worthwhile, because they fear they’ve misled everyone into believing they are capable. This experience affects people of many social identities, but significantly more women and people of color report its effects. This sense of fooling others persists despite the person being completely capable of performing the necessary tasks. Those who suffer from this syndrome believe their own negative narrative, dramatically reducing their self-esteem while elevating hyper-vigilance as they live in fear of being exposed as a fraud. As a result they work harder, putting more pressure on themselves, and consequently raising their anxiety.[5]

Naturally, Miriam wondered why a woman of color might experience more academic-related anxiety. What was it rooted in? What fed it and exacerbated it? We explored these questions by consulting the work of Ebony McGee, an assistant professor of diversity and urban schooling at Vanderbilt University, who coauthored a recent study on Black students and mental health. The study, whose analysis is based on critical race theory, explored how racism affects the ability of high-achieving Black students to have healthy mental attitudes toward their work and college experiences.

The students in the study spoke of experiencing mental health conditions including anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, as well as physical symptoms including hair loss, diabetes, and heart disease. The authors attributed these symptoms to traumatic and “persistent racialized experiences” that included being tokenized; being considered representative of their whole race or culture; being bypassed or undermined for funding or projects; not having the history, contributions, and experiences of their race and background be represented or depicted accurately in curriculum; and having little to no support or even acknowledgment by teachers and staff at academic institutions to assist in naming and navigating the ongoing micro- and macroaggressions of being a student of color on a majority-white campus.

Access to therapeutic services is often compromised for students of color because of prohibitive factors such as cost, internalized stigma around accessing therapy, lack of culturally competent psychological care, and an implicit distrust of getting care at the very institution that is perpetuating racial harm. As McGee points out, “Going to a counseling center within a university that perpetuates institutional racism is a conflict of interest for many students.”[6]

One of the ways in which the voice of the Judge shows up is in society’s response to cases of stress like Miriam’s and other Black students across academia, which McGee describes as an exhortation to focus on “grit, perseverance and mental toughness” that is “primarily targeted at students of color as a cure for their so-called ‘failure of character.’”[7] This point of view is in line with the Critic’s finger-pointing because it views the student’s suffering as a sign of their own “weakness” rather than “properly acknowledging the multiple forms of suffering [Black students] have confronted (and still confront) as part of that story.”

When resilience is defined as an armor of mental toughness and suffering as “failure of character,” the Judge in our society is up to its poisonous tricks. It can gaslight us into the idea that our suffering is rooted in our own weakness and that there is no such thing as societal or institutional bias, oppression, or inequity; that the sources of intergenerational collective trauma do not exist; and that what we are experiencing is all in our own head. These larger aspects have immense consequences for the mental and physical health of vast numbers of our population. When left unaddressed, these societal factors keep us all from facing and implementing the change necessary to make this a society where everyone thrives.

For Miriam it was crucial to learn she is not alone in her experience and has never been “weak” or “crazy” or “too sensitive” when she experiences the impact of racism. She needed to learn that her healing is not a matter of grinning and bearing it or mental toughness. The grip of the Critic loosened the moment she began to realize that the punitive voice in her head had never been hers; nor did it really belong to her parents or ancestors. It was a voice born out of a collective pain and desire to survive that had unwittingly regurgitated the harmful narrative of the oppressor. Knowing this set Miriam free. She became eager to go to the next stage of our work, to feel and express her anger and sorrow at the impact of this voice, to liberate herself from the shame born of its lies, and to fashion a new voice of protection and championing that carried the love and wisdom of her ancestors. In doing this healing she knew that what was healing in her was also a long-awaited healing for them and for the generations yet to come.

Self-Reflection

1. On reading the example of Miriam in this chapter, what parts of her story and stressors could you relate to?

2. What are common areas—such as work, body image, or social interactions—where you might criticize yourself or others?

3. What criticisms might you say out loud, or inside your head, in these situations?

4. Which aspect of the Critic did you most connect with—Judge, Perfectionist, or Fearmonger?

5. At what age might you have first formed this voice? Who did you learn it from? Who might they have learned it from?

6. Are you aware of any historical, collective, or ancestral sources of this voice?

7. What is this part of you most afraid of?

8. How is this part trying to serve you in your life?

9. What actual effect does it have on your mood, bodily tension, health, and behaviors?

Good job completing this section! We will be coming back to these notes later in the book, when we transform this negative Critic into your strongest champion and Protector. Yes—it is truly possible!

Take a moment now to tell yourself you are proud of yourself for coming this far. If you notice any criticism come up, imagine yourself saying stop. Replace the criticism with gratitude or a positive message addressed to yourself, like “Good work. I am proud of you.” Let’s take a break and then keep going!

4

The Vulnerable Self

As none can see the wind but in its effects on the trees, neither can we see the emotions but in their effects on the face and body.

—NATHANIEL LETONNERRE

In many ways it is the Vulnerable Self we can thank for waking people up to a need to get support and to turn toward their healing. Vulnerability often gets a bad reputation and is equated with weakness. Guess which part of our psyche and our society came up with that label? You guessed right if you thought “the Critic!”

The word vulnerable comes from the Latin word for “wound.” It is defined as our susceptibility to being physically or emotionally hurt, including by criticism. However, showing our vulnerability—the part of our self that is hurting—and its distress is not shameful or a weakness, no matter how much we may have been taught to believe that.

Getting in touch with our Vulnerable Self means getting in touch with our feeling self, the aspect of us that has an emotional response to an external event or an internal stimulus. This response is a part of being human, and how we respond to our vulnerability internally and with others is often the make-or-break point between suffering and resilience.

You might associate vulnerability with tears and crying, and certainly that is one way we know when someone is in distress. However, it can be just as common for the Vulnerable Self to show up as quiet, irritable, sullen, depressed, dismissive, worried, ill, faking cheerfulness, numb, or stressed. If we look back at the stories we’ve read so far, whether it is Miriam tearing up and panicking about failure at grad school; Ayla’s stoic façade, headaches, and other psychosomatic ailments; or Martin’s nervous laughter and automatic smile that covered his pain at being put down by his colleagues, they are all different faces of the Vulnerable Self. What ties them together is that each is an example of a patterned emotional response to a difficult situation.

Notice how in each of these examples the vulnerability is more than just a passing feeling. Any of us might get sad, mad, glad, or scared on any given day, and having these emotions is a part of healthy and normal human experience. However, when our emotions begin to take over our life—when the feelings persist, can’t be shaken, and become our regular mood or reflex reaction—that is when the Vulnerable Self is well and truly activated. While an emotional state may certainly persist if the external stressor has not shifted, what we find as we look at the Vulnerable Self is that the larger source of overwhelming vulnerability and ongoing emotional distress lies in the inner response to our emotions. Quite often, it is the way we respond to our emotion, rather than the emotion itself, that ratchets these feelings and sensations to a higher level instead of calming, regulating, and transforming them.

Meeting Your Vulnerable Self

Think of a situation in your life where you have been feeling rather vulnerable lately. Perhaps a friend or family member you’ve reached out to a few times hasn’t called back, and you’re constantly thinking about it and worrying about whether they’re upset with you. Maybe you’ve been struggling financially, and you’re irritable, moody, and depressed as you apply for better jobs but don’t get called for interviews. You don’t want to take it out on your family, but you frequently snap at your partner and child. Or, it’s your first few months back at work after having a baby, and you’re tired out, stretched thin, pent up, and agitated. You’re procrastinating on important work deadlines, zoning out on the internet only to look up and find that hours have passed without you having accomplished anything. You feel upset and dejected, and you cannot wait to get home and reach for that glass of wine.

As you bring your own particular scenario to mind, start to notice what sensations it brings up in your body. Perhaps your throat tightens, your stomach clenches, your chest feels heavy, or your breathing becomes shallow; perhaps you simply feel numb. Whatever it is, just notice it for a few moments, without judgment.

Next, put your hand at the place on your body where you feel the most intense sensation. With your hand in place, ask yourself if there is any emotion you are aware of alongside this sensation. If your throat is closed, do you feel tears rising and a sense of sadness? Is the knot in your belly shot through with anxiety, frustration, or guilt? Even if you are numb or not sure what you’re feeling, you can ask yourself: If I was feeling something, what would it be? If I knew someone else who was in my situation, what would I imagine they would feel?

Once you have identified the combination of sensation and emotion, take a few breaths into the area where this experience is located, letting yourself get in touch with it more fully. This time, you are looking to see if the sensations and emotions you’ve identified evoke an age, a memory, an image, or words.

For example, if you find yourself hunched over, with a heavy sadness in your heart and a tight throat, you might ask yourself: How old do I feel when I inhabit this shape or way of being? Is there something young or even childlike about this emotion and posture? Or am I more in touch with an adolescent or young adult self? Is this combination of feelings, sensations, and posture familiar? Do I go into this state in other situations?

The answers can sometimes come as a felt sense or a knowing. You may even get a flash of a memory, a thought, or an image. For example, as you spend time in the hunched position, feeling into the heavy sadness, you may suddenly remember the time you hid under the dining room table as a child, listening to your parents argue about the impending divorce in the next room. The constriction in your throat now matches the tightness you felt then, holding back the tears of fear and helplessness about losing the family you loved. You might realize that this curled-up posture, desire to hide, and helpless feeling can still come up when you are faced with a major transition or change.

Trust whatever information you get, and know that you are being introduced to your Vulnerable Self.

I will frequently remind clients to look for the Vulnerable Self in their initial response to the information they discover. As we go through the examples and exercises in this chapter, you might be surprised at how difficult it is to pinpoint this first response, because the voice of the Critic (blame, attack, judgment) and even the Neglector (denial, suppression, dissociation) are so much easier to hear, simply because they are louder. In many cases, we don’t even recognize our initial emotional reaction to something, no matter what it is, because the Neglector and the Critic take over so quickly. However, the Vulnerable Self is there, and I promise you it wants to be heard and seen in its feelings and sensations. Once we learn to speak its language—the language of emotions—it actually has much wisdom, joy, and life energy to give back to us.

The Language of Emotions

Feelings are something you have; not something you are.

—SHANNON L. ALDER

Because emotions are the language of the Vulnerable Self, and the language that our bodies and psyches use to communicate with us and with others, let’s clear up a few misconceptions about them before we go further. If you have already identified a strong Critic or Neglector, you may tend to devalue emotions as irrational and useless, or to be afraid of them as an overwhelming place you do not know how to navigate.

Western culture has a long history of lauding reason over emotion, and relegating feelings to the level of an unnecessary and even dangerous distraction. A false divide has been created between our emotions and our mental reasoning, although in reality they each affect and contribute to one another. The dominant culture suggests that emotions must be set aside so we can think our way out of difficult situations. Conventional wisdom says the best way to deal with life is to find ways to not feel at all. Logic, applied by the mind, can look at a situation dispassionately and simply proceed without any of the messy disturbance caused by feelings.

You might even find yourself comforted by this way of looking at things. After all, it offers a way to bypass the pain and suffering that seems to come along with emotions. Why not shun this part of ourselves and simply stick with reason? One place I find clients wanting to apply this method is when it comes to grief. Why spend too long mourning the loss of a dear friend, pet, or partner to a breakup or death? It’s often the friends or family members of those grieving who have these concerns. They think: Shouldn’t my loved one be over the loss by now? Surely there is no point in dragging it out. After a few months isn’t it best to start dating again? If it didn’t work out, it’s only logical to move on. What is the point in crying?

The intention behind such questions is usually benign. We just want those we love—and ourselves—to feel better as soon as possible. However, there is a difference between drowning in our feelings and honoring, expressing, and supporting our feelings before healthily moving forward. Unfortunately, most of us have not been taught how to recognize or apply this difference.

We have been brought up to ignore and override emotions, starting with messages we received in childhood and following the model of our families and society at large. Some of us grew up seeing emotions being expressed in an unchecked, unregulated way: parents raging and becoming violent and frightening, sadness and grief that become an unrelenting depression, fear held in the body that becomes chronic worrying and timidity. None of these scenarios teach healthy emotional expression or instill a sense of safety, value, and agency. Instead, if we do express our emotions, as we are hardwired to do, our caregivers may respond with anger, shaming, guilting, or annoyance, which teaches us to feel badly about expressing ourselves. After enough of this treatment, we’ll fall out of touch with the messages our emotions convey to us.

The maxims “children should be seen and not heard,” “don’t make a fuss,” and “don’t talk back” often lead to long-term emotional suppression or emotional outbursts, which contribute to anxiety, phobias, depression, anger management issues, and difficulty in concentration, not to mention a plethora of psychosomatic ailments including headache, stomachache, pain, and a weakened immune system. This emotional dysregulation is also a significant risk factor in anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and clinical depression. In short, not learning how to speak the language of emotions in a healthy way carries a grave cost.

We Are Emotional Beings

Humans are born with the capacity for emotion.[1] In fact, babies can sense the emotional communications of others and respond adaptively. This skill is enhanced as we grow into infants and young children, when adults help us learn how to understand, label, and express these emotions in a conscious and healthy manner. Emotional understanding and expression are crucial to emotional stability and successful social interactions, and they set the groundwork for happiness and resilience in later life.

Emotions are universal across cultures.[2] However, the way we express emotions through facial, verbal, or gestural means—our affect—and the permission to do so vary across ethnic, national, and cultural groups. For example, research at the Stanford Culture and Emotion Lab[3] revealed that expressions of sympathy, a universal human emotion, vary based on culture. (Please note that the examples are meant as broad generalizing strokes and are not taking into account intersectional demographics of age, race, class, location, etc., which may provide even more variety in how emotions are expressed when taking into account more distinct factors.) Americans for example, are more prone to express sympathy in a positive manner, focusing on looking forward or the value one has gained from being in relationship with a loved one who has passed. Germans, on the other hand, might speak more to the bereaved person’s pain, because in that culture focusing on pain and suffering more directly when expressing sympathy is part of the norm. Latin American families might express warmth and love more easily through physical affection, while Asian American families might express care in a more reserved manner or through indirect praise, because of differing cultural attitudes about touch in intimate relationships.

Feelings are influenced by our thoughts and perceptions. The way you perceive an event or interpret a situation gives rise to corresponding feelings. Emotions involve a total body reaction that is mediated by a part of the brain called the limbic system and by the involuntary, autonomic nervous system. During moments of emotional stress, you experience bodily reactions such as increased heart rate and respiration, perspiration, trembling, and even shaking. Positive emotions like happiness have been found to produce the smile reflex and a warm glow through our whole bodies. Anger brings more activation to the limbs, such as clenching and tightening, while sadness weighs down extremities and produces a heavy, leaden sensation in the chest and throat. The body responds to events automatically and provides information through these reactions to the whole system.[4]

Feelings are never right or wrong. They simply exist. Multiple and even contradictory feelings can exist within us simultaneously, even in response to the same situation. For example, we can easily feel both love and anger toward a loved one. While our perception of what is occurring and the conclusions we draw might be correct or incorrect, the feelings are simply a part of the process and must be felt and expressed to move forward. We are all entitled to our feelings, and judging others or ourselves based on the emotions we feel is neither useful nor necessary.

All emotions have value. This includes positive emotions such as love, happiness, forgiveness, and compassion, as well as negative emotions such as hostility, anger, fear, and disappointment. Positive emotions help to secure relationships, build self-esteem, and produce a sense of happiness and emotional stability. Negative emotions, when expressed in nonharmful ways, alert us to any potential dangers if our boundaries are being crossed, provide impetus to take action to protect our dignity, help us proceed with discretion, and can lead to a deeper understanding of ourselves and others in any given situation. The key is learning how to identify, express, and address these emotions and the needs they are pointing to.

Feelings are contagious. You may have had the experience of feeling happy and then spending time with someone who feels extremely angry or sad, after which you start to feel downhearted or irritable the longer you are in their presence. Conversely, a positive and enthusiastic person might lift your spirits as you spend time together. We affect each other greatly, which is why getting in touch with our emotions and knowing how to regulate them is so necessary for our own health and for those we are in relationship with.

The ability to feel, identify, care for, and use our emotions constitutes a skill called “emotional literacy.” This skill requires explicit teaching in order to master it. If you feel bad that you don’t know how to respond well to your emotions despite being an adult, know that this is a skill like any other that has to be learned and practiced. Learning about emotions, and specifically how to identify and express them, is a necessary task for transforming the Vulnerable Self. The emotional intelligence we gain in the process is essential to our success and happiness at every stage and in every key area of our lives.

For example, when we are in touch with our feelings and express them in healthy ways, we gain access to a lot of energy. It takes a considerable amount of energy to consciously or unconsciously suppress what we are feeling. The stronger the emotion we’re suppressing, or the longer we keep it suppressed, the stronger the charge that is built up. Keeping that emotion at bay means we are keeping our life energy at bay. And when we block one emotion, we also lose access to the spectrum of emotions, including the positive ones. Our life energy is stuck and preoccupied, which can look like fatigue, numbness, apathy, and irritability. In this situation we no longer know what we are feeling or what needs our emotions are pointing to. We lose track of ourselves and of our inner compass and guidance toward what we want. We have a general sense of unhappiness or despondency but can no longer pinpoint where it began. When we finally are able to release the tears, anger, and fear inside, a surge of energy and clarity returns, which we can use to live our lives and create our future.

Why Do Emotions Feel So Overwhelming to the Vulnerable Self?

It is a grave injustice to a child or adult to insist that they stop crying. One can comfort a person who is crying which enables him to relax and makes further crying unnecessary; but to humiliate a crying child is to increase his pain and augment his rigidity.

—ALEXANDER LOWEN, THE VOICE OF THE BODY[5]

As you can see, we all feel vulnerable at times, and getting in touch with our vulnerability has a necessary purpose. It pushes us to contact our emotions, acting as a reminder of our humanity and frailty and our need for each other in order to survive. Encountering our vulnerability builds empathy and understanding for others who are in difficult situations. This in turn allows us to both give and receive more care and support with less judgment.

However, our Vulnerable Selves can become overwhelmed with emotion, especially in negative situations or when lacking in resources to cope well. We find ourselves living in a state of heightened anxiety, sadness, anger, and shame without the ability to return to a sense of safety, connection, and well-being. These symptoms are most intense for folks who have had experiences of single-episode traumas (accident, unexpected loss of a loved one, physical or sexual attack) and for folks with complex trauma (repeated incidents of violence, including veterans of war and victims of ongoing abuse) or collective trauma (genocide, war, natural disasters) and may be categorized as an experience of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

What causes emotions to feel so overwhelming for so long a time? Certainly, it might be the intensity of a situation and its frequency. An altercation with a coworker is likely to feel less overwhelming than the loss of a job or a life-threatening health crisis. However, it is important to note that intense emotions are not necessarily the problem. A Vulnerable Self in a situation of stress will have a very different reaction, sense of choice and agency, and chance of recovery from those experienced by a Resilient Self. A large percentage of the difference between the two is due to an internal negative response to the emotion we feel, which tends to intensify distressing emotions and make them feel intolerable.

We all have our go-to strategies to cope with difficult situations. Some are healthy and some are not. The difference lies in whether a strategy allows us to reduce our distress levels, defuse the intensity of the emotion, and return to a state of calm and agency. Even in situations that cannot be externally changed, like loss of a loved one, the healthy coping strategy will allow us to feel greater acceptance of the situation, connection to inner and outer support, the ability to find some meaning or greater understanding inside the difficult situation, and a strong inner core to rely on. The ability to effectively manage and respond to an emotional experience is called emotional regulation. Strategies like connection with nature, talking with a trusted friend or counselor, being held by a loved one, spiritual resources, journaling, crying to release grief, yelling into a pillow, making art, yoga, meditation, and prayer are all examples of healthy emotional regulation strategies. They leave us feeling recentered and better able to cope with the issue at hand.

In contrast, negative coping strategies always leave us feeling physically and emotionally worse for the wear. Often they exacerbate the very emotions and thoughts that were triggered by our stress, leading us into an unhealthy emotional and behavioral spiral of emotional dysregulation. This downward spiral is the direct result of the dysfunctional response of the Critic and the Neglector to the Vulnerable Self. As we look back at the Cycle of Suffering, we see that it stems from the common desire to avoid feeling difficult emotions. Hard situations like caretaking of family members, stressful school environments, or difficult work relationships bring up strong negative emotions like fear, sadness, anger, guilt, and shame. These emotions become cripplingly overwhelming when they are met with the response of the Critic (blaming, shaming, judgment) and the Neglector (ignoring, dissociating, deflecting, addictive coping). These responses lead to further heightening of the difficult emotions inside a person, rather than defusing, calming, or working through the emotions.

The voices of the Neglector and the Critic have a negative effect on the Vulnerable Self. Because emotions, thoughts, and behavior are all linked together, changing any part of this cycle by shifting these voices can interfere with the pattern of suffering and lead to more positive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors—i.e., resilience—down the road.

A Child at the Core

The Vulnerable Self is best understood as a childlike or young part of us that is having an emotional response to a certain experience. What matters most in raising resilient children is teaching them that their emotional experience will be met with care, warmth, understanding, and support. When a child receives punitive, harsh, or cold responses, or neglectful responses such as ignoring the child, pacifying them with treats or television, or leaving them alone, they start to emotionally fall apart. This can look like active and vocal signs of distress (crying, wailing, tantrums, physically acting out), quieter symptoms (psychosomatic ailments like stomachaches or headaches, apathy, withdrawal, quietness, caretaking of adults, or heightened cheerfulness), or a mix of both. These behaviors and symptoms are present in adults as well and may show up similarly, as well as in the forms of adult diagnoses of anxiety, worry, depression, withdrawal, irritability, violence, or addiction.

How do we dig deeper and understand our Vulnerable Self? How do we discover which younger age in us may be triggered by difficult situations, expressing our internal distress through external symptoms? At the beginning of this chapter, I asked you to check in about your stressful situation and see if you can get in touch with the age in you that is most affected by the stress. In sessions, I might ask clients “how old” or “how young” they might feel when they are distressed by an event. Helping them access this part of themselves provides a bridge to their inner emotional self and can sometimes help us understand the root of a situation, as well as the way in which we need to respond to care for this part.

This table gives some pointers to help you discover which of three age categories might be triggered inside you when you encounter a stressful situation.

Child

Adolescent

Young Adult

Possible indicators

Feeling scared, quiet, withdrawn, alone, or abandoned

Body feels small

High-pitched or childlike voice

Wanting to throw a tantrum

Eyes looking down

Overwhelming helplessness

Rebellion, belligerence, or “acting out”

Shutting down; feeling like you don’t need anyone else

Moodiness or irritability

Feeling awkward, misunderstood, or insecure; feeling like you don’t fit in

Wanting to be liked

Uncertainty about life path or choices

Difficulty making decisions

Wanting someone else to have all the answers

Possible triggers

Distance from a loved one

Quarrels or conflicts in friendships

Trauma or loss

Big transitions, life or environmental changes, or other novel experiences

Learning or school-related incidents

Uncertainty about the future

Navigating dating, sexuality, or gender norms

Dealing with new friendships or a new social environment

Concerns about fitting in with friends or family

Body image concerns, or worry about difference

Having to compete for jobs or opportunities

Career choices or shifts

Regret or uncertainty over life choices or relationships

Issues of worth, value, or merit

Monetary or financial concerns

Spiritual crisis

No matter what stage in us is activated—and often it can be multiple stages, including our current age—when we are vulnerable, we all need and respond to care, kindness, and respectful, healthy boundaries. We crave the acceptance and understanding of someone who tells us that all of our feelings are okay to have and to feel. When someone responds to our emotions in this way, we can have the necessary support to explore our emotions, ascertain what we need, and take necessary action. We are building emotional intelligence that is the key to resilience.

Emotional Expression

As we have learned, feelings are natural, and our body is hardwired for them. We experience them through a mix of sensations and emotions. Our body knows how to naturally move through a circumstance, through a release of this combination. For example, I might feel excitement, joy, and a bittersweet mixture of connection and longing when I greet my parents at the airport for a brief vacation after many months apart, while knowing we will be parted again soon. My body helps me experience this through a rapidity to my heartbeat and my breath signaling excitement, a closing of my throat as emotion wells, and a warmth in my chest radiating into a smile of joy. If my Critic tries to quell this rise of emotion by saying I shouldn’t get emotional or let them see my tears, I might stifle my breath, tamping down my sadness and inadvertently cutting myself off from my joy as well. If I did this over the long car ride back or repeatedly over the course of the trip as I felt sad about our impending parting, I might have to work harder. Employing clenched jaw and stomach muscles or having my mind be preoccupied by the Critic’s voice or distracted by the Neglector in the form of excessive busyness would lead to the emotions getting wound up tighter inside me. Instead of the wave of emotion being felt, processed, and moved through in that moment at the airport, I would instead be left with multiple waves compacted into a longer-lasting mood state, like anxiety or irritability.

If we go back to the moment in the airport before the Critic interrupted my body’s natural response, we might see a different scenario unfold. In the face of rising heartbeat and constriction, I would have reached for a deeper breath. The deeper breathing would have helped me start to relax, which would have been accompanied by some tears. These would have eased the constriction of my throat and allowed me to relax further into the joy and the sorrow that were all part of the love I felt for my parents. If we go one step further to the connection between me and them, if this emotion had been met with warmth, affection, and acceptance by my parents, it would not only allow me to drop further into connection with them; it could also set off a ricochet effect, allowing them to feel permission to feel and express their emotion as well. Although the circumstance of having to part would not have changed, the quality of connection, the ability to feel it in manageable amounts, and the prevention of it turning into dissociation, tension, or disconnection would have been markedly reduced. The entire situation would have acted as an emotional regulator.

Here are some general rules of thumb to follow when working with your emotions. First, remember that they are natural and normal, and they are here to help you experience life and get in touch with your felt sense and needs. Focus on your breath to slow things down, and as you do, when emotions or sensations intensify for a moment (you feel your strong pulse, your palms get sweaty, your eyes well up, you get hot), know that long, slow breaths will allow this to pass, as will simply allowing the sensations and emotions to be. I have included some body-centered ways to express different emotions at the end of this chapter, to help you work with your Vulnerable Self. As you feel and allow your emotions, you may find at times that you don’t know why they occurred, but it just feels good to release. At other moments, by speaking out loud as you emote or using the suggestions I give at the end of this chapter and the ones ahead, you will begin to hear the reason behind your emotion and even any needs. Again, often the need is simply to have permission to feel and to allow the body to release the emotion so we can really let an experience in, or let it go and move forward.

Important note: while all the exercises and inquiries into emotional expression in this book are designed to be gentle and to provide a sense of relief, clarity, and ease in the body, if sensations or emotions arise that feel strong or intense at first, generally slowing your breath, bringing your attention to the present moment by focusing on sights, sounds, and scents in the room, or simply getting up and moving around gently can allow the intensity to decrease. Learning to dip into emotion in a small dose and then gently dip back out is an important tool called emotional titration. It allows us to feel our emotions without getting overwhelmed. As we build trust with ourselves and our bodies that we can cry for a few minutes without losing ourselves, we might allow ourselves to cry longer, until we feel the freedom of tears without fear. Or if we know we can release our anger by saying all we need to in the privacy of our journal or by letting out our pent-up emotions by voicing a frustrated yell in the privacy of our home, or that we can shake out our fear through our body, then we can feel the freedom that comes from knowing releasing emotion purposefully just leads to greater ease.

It is also essential to remember that in certain instances—such as if expressing a particular emotion, like sadness or anger, is new territory for you; or if you are working with an experience that has a strong emotional charge, like loss of a loved one, a bad accident, or physical or sexual trauma; or if you find sensations, feelings, or memories arise that feel overwhelming—it is important to remember to take a break from the exercises and look for additional professional help to feel supported in processing these feelings and integrating them.

The Vulnerable Self and the Cycle of Suffering

Let’s put all this information together and take a look back at Radha from chapter 1. Radha was having trouble getting noticed for her contributions at work. The feelings that were coming up for her were fear and anxiety. This was her Vulnerable Self: the feelings elicited in response to the situation. The Cycle of Suffering began when, in response to this feeling, her Critic started pointing the finger at her for not being competent enough, or at other people for stealing her thunder. Her Vulnerable Self responded to this attack with an increase in anxiety, combined with feelings of frustration and anger at herself and others. Next in the cycle, her Neglector responded to these vulnerable emotions by feeding her sugary treats or encouraging her to dissociate online. Although these strategies may have worked to temporarily sideline her anxiety and frustration, in the end her Vulnerable Self felt ashamed, helpless, and anxious once again.

In discussion with Radha, I discovered that the fear and anxiety (her Vulnerable Self) formed as a dense ball in the pit of her stomach that made her want to curl up and hide. These emotions and sensations brought a memory to mind of her six-year-old self who’d had difficulty at school. She recalled experiencing crippling anxiety about raising her hand and speaking up in class, and about failing at tests. Her six-year-old self didn’t know she was anxious; all she knew was that she got tongue-tied and often had stomach pains before and during class. The six-year-old’s best thinking translated this experience into the beliefs that “something is wrong with me” and “I am not as smart as the others.” This was her Critic rising up in an attempt to parent and help her by making meaning out of the situation.

The problem here is that the meaning was incorrect and debilitating. This began a lifelong cycle of secretly resenting others who were more outspoken and confident, while feeling ashamed of herself. Despite her frequent stomachaches, she turned to soda or candy at the school cafeteria to soothe herself. Instead of the nurturance a parent might provide, her Neglector had stepped in with its best version of that care: sugar. This unhealthy coping strategy made her feel a little better, but it also set her up to be addicted to it as a soother, with no functional way to address the real hurt that still festered underneath. We can see how her Cycle of Suffering got set up when she was very young, as a way to take care of herself when she felt most vulnerable.

For Radha, linking her current anxiety at work to that of her younger self at school helped her understand where this cycle first began, identify what the real unmet needs were at that age, and tailor her current comforting, helpful responses to the Vulnerable Self accordingly. She realized that when the pangs of anxiety came up in her belly, what she needed was to bring her own loving touch there in the form of a gentle hand on her stomach, or imagining herself hugging her inner six-year-old as she invited herself to take a breath and relax the tension in her muscles. She needed to speak to herself with the comforting statements and reminders that she had not received as a child, such as “I’m right here,” “you are smart,” and “it’s okay to take your time to do a task.” She had to put a stop to the critical voice inside and instead to take a protective and nurturing stance toward herself.

Radha’s deeper breaths, touch, and loving stance all allowed her to release the pent-up anxiety in the belly, as it naturally unwound through pulsing and shaking and progressed into a release in tears. This physical expression lasted for a few minutes in her case, surprising her in its intensity. As she did not clamp it down, it then left her with a spacious ease and calm that she said she had never felt before. Her mind calmed in response to this physical release as well, and instead of pushing herself to perform through demeaning self-talk, Radha began to realize that the best way forward was through comfort, kind encouragement, and healthy soothing that would provide her inner six-year-old—and in turn her adult self—with the emotional regulation necessary to be calmer, more focused, more productive, and happier at work.

The Bigger Picture

Feeling into our pain is like drinking the bitterest of medicines. The cure feels almost as bad as the cause; our body has borne the suffering, but feeling into our sorrow, rage, and helplessness can feel like our hearts will break under it. Each time we are confronted with the Vulnerable Self and its unvarnished pain, we face a choice and an opportunity. We can turn away from the suffering, at the cost of our access to our hearts, or we can turn toward the pain and touch it with our presence by sitting down right next to it. If we do so, we may find an unexpected gift: that at the end of all the wracking tears and anguish, our hearts have been washed clear and have expanded into a larger container for joy and connection, because we let them be broken open.

Radha was in this very place of touching into compassion for herself, and by extension those in her close set of family and friends, when her heart encountered a unique situation that asked it to stretch its capacity to see, feel, and open to the suffering of the Vulnerable Self as it shows up in our world. Radha wasn’t alone; I faced this invitation too, as did billions around the world, when seemingly almost overnight the coronavirus pandemic changed the very structures of our lives: shutting down businesses, limiting travel, closing borders, throwing millions out of work, and confining folks to their homes, with the compounded stressors of physical illness, financial distress, and social isolation.

Radha was one of the lucky ones; her job transitioned to telework under lockdown, and as a single woman with no children, she was able to make this shift fairly easily. Empathetic by nature, and newly in touch with her Vulnerable Self and tending to its feelings, she was deeply affected and aware of the millions in dire financial and physical straits because of enormous inequities of wealth and access in our systems. These inequities meant the difference between financial stability to ride out the crisis and financial ruin; the ability to stay relatively safe by sheltering at home, versus being most at risk of infection because the threat of illness was less fearsome than the worry about not being able to pay one’s bills; the security of having health insurance versus the fear of getting a virus for which one could not access the treatment.

When the pandemic hit, among the most vulnerable in the United States were those who had always been the most underpaid and unprotected, communities that were largely made up of people of color:[6] restaurant workers, domestic and care workers, undocumented migrants, working-class folks without a financial buffer between them and the risk of losing their home because not working meant not being able to pay rent, the homeless, the uninsured, those who lost their insurance along with their job, farm laborers continuing to work without adequate access to physical safety, grocery store workers, and medical staff working on the front lines without adequate access to personal protective equipment.

The news from abroad was no less tragic. One of the hardest events for Radha to process was watching the footage of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in her country of origin, India, leaving the cities where their jobs had terminated due to the pandemic and trekking hundreds of miles home to villages where extended family might be able to provide food and shelter. As one article reported, “The lockdown to stave off a pandemic is turning into a humanitarian crisis.”[7] People of all ages, from young children to the elderly, walked for hundreds of miles in the hot sun, usually with no money for food or shelter along the way, and no other means of transportation. Many fell ill and died en route, while others lived in cramped quarters and poor conditions where the virus was more likely to spread.

Meanwhile, for the millions of poor service workers living in urban slums, the idea of sheltering in place to stave off a pandemic was ludicrous. Their abysmal and unsanitary living conditions already put them at the highest risk of disease and infection, while they also were the least able to get the care or sustenance they needed.

As we have discussed, the combination of insufficient access to resources and higher levels of social stressors greatly influences our mental, physical, and emotional resilience. It should come as no surprise that folks at the intersection of marginalization and poverty are the most vulnerable to harm on every level and have the least access to resources or systems of support to mitigate its effects.

The research on poverty and its toll on mental health shows clearly that this vulnerability leads to a toxic downward spiral that severely compromises people’s ability to function in all areas of life. Poverty’s devastating impact creates a resilience deficit starting at birth that is difficult or impossible to escape in societal conditions that only serve to entrench folks deeper into poverty. Studies show that “persistent stress and exposure to trauma trigger harmful stress hormones that permanently affect children’s brain development and even their genes. The damage to childhood development is severe.”[8] People who grow up in poverty experience countless stressors, such as chronic exposure to trauma in unsafe living environments, multiple losses of family and community members to neighborhood violence, racial profiling and feeling threatened rather than protected by a police presence that targets Black and Latinx communities, lack of access to affordable health care, lack of access to adequate food, and unlivable wages, all of which serve to greatly reduce adult cognitive function. Other effects of poverty include major anxiety and depression; higher rates of illnesses caused by environmental stressors, such as asthma, heart and lung disease, and high blood pressure; and a constant “cognitive burden”[9] that makes the difficult tasks of child rearing, working, navigating public assistance systems (when available), and daily living monumentally harder.

For folks belonging to the cross-sections of communities that have long suffered from the harsh inequities of a neglectful and abusive societal system, the coronavirus pandemic brought to light the real vulnerability at the heart of so many people’s lives. This vulnerability meant that when it came to building resilience, going to therapy was the last thing on most people’s list, not just because therapy was almost impossible to access given the lack of competent, affordable, and accessible care but also because the biggest stressors were not necessarily internal. In this case, they were not created by the Critic’s or Neglector’s response to their vulnerability; the biggest stressors were the direct result of long-standing societal neglect and abuse of poor, Black, brown, disabled, Indigenous, queer, marginalized bodies.

But how do I help? What do I do? I feel so helpless. It’s heartbreaking. How could we let people suffer like this? Why doesn’t the government do something? Why isn’t someone doing something?

For Radha, myself, and countless other Vulnerable Selves asking these questions, the best answer I would share is in the words of children’s television host Fred Rogers, who shared that in times of crisis, his mother advised him to “look for the helpers.”

Those helpers are found among the ranks of social justice activists, movement workers, healers, artists, politicians, collectives, teachers, everyday folks, and change makers hailing directly from or working alongside the communities most affected. Collectively doing the necessary work of transforming this legacy of oppression through organizing and movement work, to change and dismantle the intersecting systems of racism, capitalism, patriarchy, ableism, colonialism, and white supremacy that are at the root of societal vulnerability. They are the heart and soul behind the #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements; they are working to implement a Green New Deal to provide access to universal health care and education and address climate change; they are at the Southern Poverty Law Center or the American Civil Liberties Union, tirelessly fighting for laws that protect the lives of the most vulnerable. They are leading their countries and modeling grace and tolerance, like Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings. They are taking to the streets across the country to demand justice for the deaths of countless Black people at the hands of police brutality; they are making art on those same streets that highlights Black, brown, trans, and queer bodies; they tell stories and center narratives that have been obscured and demonized. They are taking back their language, culture, heritage, and rituals; they are standing up for Mother Earth and the land at Standing Rock; they are working to protect the forests they and their Indigenous ancestors have stewarded in the Amazon. They are showing up to town halls, pushing their leaders to pass laws protecting undocumented immigrants; they are domestic workers organizing to fight for laws that protect them at work.

For them, therapy is less about opening the heart to the suffering in the world and more about finding a way to hold their own suffering and care for it, when the need outside is so great. If you belong to this group, thank you. The rest of this book is a journey to becoming as resilient as you can for the great work to be done in our world.

Alternatively, if you’re waking up to the inequities exposed by the pandemic, the crisis of climate change, the impact of gun violence at your child’s school, the dire need for defunding the police and dismantling systemic racism, or the helplessness of not being able to afford the health care your loved one needs, this may be a time where your personal healing journey begins to include a possibility of a broader path and turning toward the vulnerability of the world. If this is you, welcome!

Or if you, like myself, are somewhere in the middle of this journey of tending to your own vulnerability and wanting to be engaged more actively in combating the injustice of this world, the journey to resilience is now and forevermore a dual one. We commit not only to our own joyous healing as part of the undoing of internalized oppression; we also commit to feeling and acting more deeply in ways that allow for the joyous resilience of all others. We commit to becoming the helpers. I am so glad we are on this path together.

Self-Reflection

In this section we focused on the Vulnerable Self and how it speaks to us through the language of emotions. The following exercise can help you get in touch with the Vulnerable Self by accessing your feelings about any situation that is troubling you. It teaches you how to identify your emotions, track their intensity, and start to discover what message they are providing. If you’re having difficulty identifying your emotions, you may want to reference the basic emotions list provided at the end of this chapter.

Think of a stressful area in your life, such as work, finances, relationships, family, health, or life goals. When you’ve identified an area to focus on, answer the questions below.

1. What is the first emotion or emotions that come up when you think of this area?

2. Describe the emotion, body location, physical sensation, and image that might accompany this thought. (Example: I feel a throbbing in my head and a feeling of dread and anxiety, and all I see are the piles of unpaid bills on my desk.)

3. If this sensation or feeling could move or express in any way, how could you safely externalize it as a gesture, movement, or sound? (Example: squeezing and releasing your fist to mimic and externalize the throbbing in your head, twisting a piece of cloth to twist out the anxiety and dread, tapping it out through fingers and feet, or giving it a sound like a wail, a long sigh, or a yell.)

4. If this feeling could speak, what would it say? (Example: I am afraid that _____, I am angry that _____, I am sad that ______.)

5. What age does this feeling identify with—a younger version of you, or your current self?

6. How does your inner Critic respond to this part of you? Think of what you identified in the previous chapter. Share what thoughts, feelings, and behaviors the Critic responds with.

7. 7. What thoughts, feelings, and behaviors does the Neglector display in this situation?

8. How does your response affect your original mood and behavior (the Vulnerable Self)? How does it make you feel, think, or act? Do you feel more or less vulnerable?

9. How are emotions identified or expressed in your family and culture? What messages about emotions did you receive? Why might this way of emotional expression (or lack thereof) have been adaptive for your family, culture, ethnicity, or social background?

10. What do you think your Vulnerable Self needs to see, receive, hear, and believe in order to feel less vulnerable?

11. What better coping strategies might you need to help regulate the Vulnerable Self?

Bravo! You have already come so far. You are in clearer touch with your Vulnerable Self, and you are beginning to see more clearly how the three players inside you are helping to create the suffering in your life. You are likely also ready and eager to move forward in changing this cycle and regaining your resilience. Let’s take one step toward that end right now by addressing any stress or tension that might have come up through reading this chapter and doing the last exercise.

Body/Mind Relaxation Exercise

The full guided version of this exercise is available at www.anjulisherinmft.com.

First, take a few moments to get comfortable in a seated or reclining position. You might even want to light a candle or put on some gentle, soothing music.

As mentioned earlier, we tend to hold on to our feelings in different body parts. For example, anger may be held in around our eyes, jaw, or pelvis. Anxiety might be held in tight shoulders, neck, and glutes. Even positive emotions like excitement might be bottled up in facial and body tension. We can tune into our body through breath and presence and find these areas, and then release them through muscle relaxation, allowing our nervous system to calm and return to a more well-managed state. This exercise will help you learn to do that.

1. Take a deep breath in and out three times. If comfortable, breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, to deepen the release.

2. Focus your awareness at the top of your head, and notice whether any tension seems to be residing in the skull. You might even gently massage your scalp, from the hairline to the occiput and the backs of your ears. Inhale, bringing your presence and physical touch to the area of focus. Exhale, relaxing that body part.

3. Continue down the body in sections, focusing on each part as you go: inhale, bringing your presence and physical touch to the area, and then exhale, relaxing that area.

4. Move down the body as slowly as possible, knowing that you are not only relaxing your muscles and releasing tension but also slowing down the mind.

5. If thoughts occur, gently notice them and then come back to your breath and the progressive process of relaxation.

6. At the end of the exercise, notice how you feel through your whole body, compared to when you started.

7. Although you may not yet know how to respond to all the concerns being held by your Vulnerable Self, you have taken the first step, which is to respond to the tension by helping to calm the body and mind. From this place, you will have clearer thinking to bring to the situation and to continue learning how to address and change these stressors.

Basic Emotions

Here is a list of major emotional states to refer to as a starting place for identifying your feelings:

- Anger: irritation, frustration, annoyance, rage

- Sadness: downheartedness, the blues, disappointment, despair, grief

- Fear: anxiety, worry, being scared, panic

- Guilt: the experience of having done something bad

- Shame: embarrassment, shyness, mortification, the experience of being bad

- Loneliness: isolation, separateness

- Happiness: gladness, feeling pleased

- Excitement: anticipation, enthusiasm, positive expectation

- Pride: feeling good about one’s accomplishments or achievements

- Joy: a sense of deep well-being, profound happiness, aliveness

- Wonder: curiosity, awe

- Calm: peace, stillness, ease

- Love: positive regard, warmth, affection, closeness, care, empathy, compassion

Body-Centered Ways to Express Our Emotions

For any emotional release work, as necessary, make sure you have a safe, private space to feel into and express your emotions. Take long, deep breaths into the area where you are feeling the charge, and allow it to move, express, sound out, speak in any way that feels right.

Below are some suggestions for tapping into, working with, and releasing three common difficult emotions. In addition, we will look at guilt and shame in chapter 10, and we’ll discuss positive emotions in parts II and III. For more in-depth work on these areas and emotional regulation, look to the Recommended Resources at the end of this book.

1. Fear: release through deep breathing, repeating the words I am afraid or I am anxious and speaking fears out loud, shaking, crying, twisting cloth, long release through sighs or through sound into a pillow, drawing or scribbling it out onto paper, writing out all fears and burning the paper as release.

2. Anger: release through loud sighs, repeating the words I am angry or frustrated or irritated out loud and speaking out the frustrations, yelling or shouting into a pillow, twisting cloth or paper, lying on a bed or sofa and thumping down with fists and legs, playing music that lets you dance or drum or shake or stomp or cry and yell out your anger, writing an angry letter or journal entry and tearing up the paper as release.

3. Sadness and grief: release through breathing deeply, tears, sighing, rocking, speaking the sadness out loud, writing it out, playing music that lets you cry or expresses your sadness, singing, wailing, drawing out your grief, making a special place to honor the memory of what you are grieving, sharing memories of what you are grieving.

5

Intersectionality and the Cycle of Suffering

There is a clear relationship between social injustice and the mental health of groups upon which the injustices are perpetrated. . . . [We] do not exist as individuals independent of society, culture, and context.

—HUGH CRETHAR AND MANIVONG RATTS[1]

We have come far in understanding the three roles that cause us to spin endlessly in the Cycle of Suffering. Most of Western psychology would lay the causes of this suffering solely at the doorstep of the individual: each person’s family, life history, beliefs, and psychobiology. The idea that institutional and cultural systems that oppress many and privilege a few are essential factors affecting mental and physical health has long been unseen, denied, or ignored. This has created a wide gap between the needs of people seeking mental health services and the efficacy of the care provided. The image of a perpetually leaky boat comes to mind, where most of the effort has gone toward bailing out the water or temporarily patching up holes rather than identifying and eliminating the factors that are continuously destroying the integrity of the vessel.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.”[2] In this case, the insanity of self-help books and Western psychology has been a continuous focus on the individual as the root of the problem and the source of change, without adequately recognizing the larger systems that shape lives and working to shift them. There has been a one-size-fits-all mindset, despite each of us needing an approach tailored to our cultural, economic, and sociological backgrounds. There is certainly value in addressing our attitudes and beliefs and boosting our inner resilience, but for the majority, the story cannot simply end there. Our lack of resilience is rooted deeply in societal ills, and the cure lies in naming that fact and learning to take larger action to dismantle the systems that cause this disease at every level. Otherwise, we remain in the realm of Band-Aid therapy—applying a Band-Aid to a mortal wound—and acting as if that will promote a journey back to wellness.

So what does this mean for you? It means that before we can start to build your inner cohort of resilience, we must take an important step: acknowledging the ways in which societal attitudes and systems have shaped you and your life. How have they eroded your ability to thrive? Conversely, how have they been a hidden asset in your personal resilience cache? Either way, societal factors have amplified and/or muted those three inner sabotaging voices that lead to suffering. Without a broader way of conceptualizing our experience, many of us have been blaming ourselves or our family, ethnicity, gender, or own body for our suffering, without recognizing that we and our loved ones have been at the mercy of unjust systems.

Some of us have known full well about systemic injustice and yet have found ourselves isolated in this awareness, experiencing our pain as invisible and delegitimized in the eyes of those in more privileged positions. And for others, perhaps our own power and access have meant that we have had to pay little or no attention to how our ability to move freely through the world is bolstered by the society we live in, while simultaneously making life much harder for others. When this inequity is pointed out, we might get lost in our Cycle of Suffering: dissolving into guilt or shame, reacting defensively and angrily because we didn’t cause the inequities, wanting to ignore the issue altogether, or attempting to save and rescue others with our own ideas of what is best for them.

Here is the Cycle of Suffering at play in larger society. The Vulnerable Self is represented by the poverty, poor health, violence, suffering, mental illness, and vulnerability to oppressive stressors suffered by large segments of the population. The response to this comes from society’s Critic, which says an individual’s race, ethnicity, ability, class, gender, or sexuality is a flaw or weakness preventing these communities from being able to pick themselves up. The Critic says people in these communities lack grit or willpower, or they’re just mentally unfit. Some marginalized individuals might internalize this criticism and direct this rage at themselves in the form of internalized racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, or classism, fueling feelings of unworthiness, shame, and depression. If they achieve any measure of success despite these oppressive factors, the inner and outer Critics engage in confirmation bias by using this as evidence that others who are having difficulties have only themselves to blame. If one person can do it, anyone can. These attitudes belie the countless complex external and internal factors behind any person’s achievements, as well as skewing the focus toward a minor portion of the population that has experienced success and holding them up as a rule, thereby feeding the myth of meritocracy, which stipulates that our lives are solely the product of our own efforts.

Next, society’s Neglector steps in, or rather, it steps out by ignoring rising homelessness in the world’s wealthiest cities; multitudes of women coming forward to say “me too” and sharing the horrifying, all-too-common experience of sexual assault; the continued regularity of gun violence; the rising pyre of names of people murdered or incarcerated due to racial prejudice and police brutality; and the exponential increase in environmental refugees and frequency of deadly natural disasters due to climate change.

In the face of all this, society’s Neglector offers a few “coping” choices.

There’s denial: “There’s nothing you can do about these things; it has always been so.”

Distraction: “Don’t feel good about the state of our world or yourself? Here’s a pill a purse, a credit card, a product, a drink, a get-rich scheme, a Netflix show to help take you away from it all.”

Fixing: “Fix yourself. Work hard, make more money, buy more, look better on the outside; that’s what we can fix.”

Saving: “We know what’s best for those poor people in that community. Let’s bring them our ideas, beliefs, philosophies, soldiers, religion, technology, products, assistance. We must lead the way to change. We must save them.”

In the same way that our inner Neglector ended up sabotaging us further into decline, so it is with society’s Neglector, which offers temporary relief through strategies that leave us feeling disempowered and disconnected in the long run, instead of addressing the root of societal pain through transformative and collaborative solutions.

Looking at these larger sources of suffering and our part in them is understandably overwhelming. Whether we are bearing the brunt of oppression or faced with the full force of our privilege, we might feel helpless, enraged, grieving, ashamed, guilty, and lost. Many of us have yet to learn how to work through our pain, acknowledge our unearned privilege, use our power and privilege effectively to challenge oppressive systems, and embody the knowledge that members of marginalized communities must lead and direct what’s best for their own communities.

The good news is that throughout history, including the major turning events of the twentieth century, there are people, communities, and countries that have responded differently to the history of oppression. These responses have helped communities step out of the Cycle of Suffering by identifying the oppression that exists, validating the experience of those oppressed, and pinpointing the systems that keep oppressive forces in place. This has been the foundation of resilient civil, environmental, and human rights movements.

The next section of this chapter presents and discusses concepts from the work of brilliant political thinkers and social justice activists who have helped to create these movements. Think of these concepts as meaningful signposts guiding us all toward a greater understanding of this inequitable world we live in and how it shapes our lives. For some of you this may be a review of well-known material; for others it may be a first step into new and unfamiliar territory. It’s okay to start where you are. This section is meant to give us a common vocabulary and framework we can use to look at our own lives and those of others through a broader, more inclusive lens.

Key Concepts of Intersectionality

Social Location

When we talk about social location—our place in the larger world—we’re shining a light on the external factors that influence the way we live our life and that shape our worldview. These factors include race, gender, socioeconomic status, education, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, ability or disability, nationality, and citizenship status, among others. Some of these factors may change over the course of someone’s life, such as income level, education, or religious affiliation; others are unalterable, like the ethnic group one is born into. If we predominantly live inside our own culture, class, or orientation, or if our social location is similar to the dominant culture (e.g., growing up as a white Christian in America or as a Sunni Muslim in Pakistan), we may come to believe that our own way of life is the most legitimate one or the standard by which all other walks of life should be judged.

Our reality is shaped by the belief systems we inherit from our family, culture, or religion—such as beliefs about money, religious expression, relationships, emotional expression, sexuality, and gender norms—and the ways these beliefs are upheld by the larger legal, educational, political, and economic structures of our society, such as the ways in which our ethnic history and culture are represented by the school system or in popular culture and honored with holidays or in our communities. Looking at ourselves and the world through the lens of social location shakes us out of the trance that our experience and belief system is the sole or most valuable one, helping us open our minds and hearts to others.[3]

Intersectionality

This groundbreaking concept was first introduced by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, an American civil rights advocate and a leading scholar of critical race theory. Later it was further developed by sociologist Patricia Hill Collins in her book Black Feminist Thought.

Intersectionality is defined as “the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.”[4] As Crenshaw states, “It’s not simply that there’s a race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class or LBGTQ problem there. Many times, that framework erases what happens to people who are subject to all of these things.”[5]

While Crenshaw’s discussion of intersectionality focused on what she referred to as “the double bind of race and gender,” Collins broadened the concept by incorporating class, sexuality, and nationality into this critical tool and explaining how the intersecting forces of race, gender, class, sexuality, and nationality manifest in a “matrix of domination” where we might simultaneously have access to power and privilege through certain identities, and suffer oppression through others.[6]

Intersectionality puts those complex, multilayered experiences at the forefront and reminds us that as we look at our social location, we can extrapolate out to times in our lives when we may straddle various identities and experiences that could either contribute to or detract from our resilience.

Lets break this down by taking a more in-depth look at where we may encounter oppression or have privilege in our lives.

Oppression

All the “Bigger Picture” sections of this book examine oppressive factors that play a key role in the lack of resilience folks are experiencing and that underlie what brought them to therapy. What is oppression? It is the systematic, institutionalized mistreatment of one group of people by another through the placement of severe restrictions on an individual, group, or institution.[7] This occurs through sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, ageism/adultism, ableism, racism, classism, and ethno-religionism, resulting in the loss of power by one group of people and an increase in the power and privilege of another.

How does oppression show up? What impact does it have in our everyday lives? Ugaigbe and Ekeba, researchers on systemic oppression and the rights of minorities, describe how in society “oppression operates on three levels at all times: a personal level, a cultural level and on a structural level.”[8]

Oppression at the personal level looks like prejudice, stereotyping, and negative judgments about people who are part of a marginalized social group. Oppression at the personal level consists of a person’s speech, thoughts, and behavior that issue from the belief that those whose intersectional identities are different from that person are inferior and abnormal. For example, some hold beliefs that others are less intelligent, rational, or normal based on their ethnic origin, gender, or sexual orientation: Mexicans are lazy. Women in touch with their sexuality are sluts. Gay people are mentally ill and need conversion therapy or medication to be changed to be normal.

Oppression at the cultural level is founded upon and perpetuates the myth of a superior culture with values, beliefs, and standards that are right and normal and that are used to dominate and oppress subordinate groups who are expected to conform to these values. This occurs through media, literature, storytelling, stereotypes, and popular culture that disseminate a message normalizing one way of being to the detriment or obliteration of the other. One example is the revisionist history taught in most Western school curricula that obscures, diminishes, or alters the history of suffering of Black, brown, and native peoples at the hands of white colonists, coupled with forced conversions to Christianity and the suppression of native languages and spiritual traditions. Another example is perpetuation of the idea that white skin is the highest standard of beauty or that speaking English is a sign of intellectual superiority, which led to internalized racism in members of previously colonized countries.

Racism is an example of oppression that is entrenched not only in individual and cultural attitudes, but also, perhaps most gravely, in our governing and legal systems. Racial categories have their origins in colonialism—the historical and political processes by which groups and nation-states enrich themselves through economic and social control of other countries and subgroups. Colonial forces used violence and pseudoscientific and religious ideologies to create the idea of race and then used it to legitimize the idea that white people were superior to other groups.

Today most people in the world who are negatively affected by racism are affected by systemic (also called institutional or structural) racism. Systemic racism consists of forms of oppression and privilege that affect almost every aspect of our society, including laws, institutions, schools, justice systems, media, culture, and everyday interactions.

Alongside racism, other examples of systemic oppression include sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, and ableism. Each of these systems is based on a similar premise of there being a superior norm (white, male, cisgendered, heterosexual, upper middle class, legal resident, able-bodied), which is then reinforced by perpetuation of personal prejudice, a culture that highlights these experiences on every level, and the institutions that benefit those who occupy these categories and have a pervasive, relentless, deadly impact on the financial, educational, political, mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health of marginalized populations.

We can see this starkly in the multiple forms of discrimination against the disabled community that are societally normalized and form the basis of an ableist society, where the lack of a disability is seen as the normal standard of living. Ableism is also the belief that people with disabilities “need to be fixed or cannot function as full members of society” and that having a disability is “a defect rather than a dimension of difference.”[9] Much of this narrative is created and fed by a capitalist economic model that values private ownership and profit over the well-being of people. In an economic system where profit is the primary goal and individuals own goods, industry, and wealth privately, it is easy to see how quickly people (along with everything on this planet, including animals, plant life, bodies of water, and minerals) are reduced to a commodity whose value is simply the profit it can generate.

People, the planet, and its resources are to be exploited without regard to well-being or sustainability until every last bit of energy is consumed, at which point they are disposable. It is this form of dehumanizing capitalism that fed the wealth built on enslaving human beings and that continues to feed behemoths like Amazon, whose billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, is one of the richest people on the planet but is unwilling to provide his workers with a livable wage,[10] asks workers to donate their paid sick leave to coworkers affected by the coronavirus rather than providing adequate sick leave for all,[11] and subjects workers to abysmal working conditions.[12] This is the greed and complete disregard for human life that led the fossil-fuel industry to lie for decades about the impact of fossil fuels on climate change, prioritizing profits while threatening the very continuation of life on planet Earth. And it is what fuels the idea that if a body is unable to work, perform, and produce at the level that capitalism demands to keep its profits afloat, then it must be worthless and left out or targeted at every level—i.e., ableism.

These attitudes create barriers for disabled people across all areas of life, such as inaccessible transportation and building structures (e.g., lack of wheelchair-accessible spaces), media and technology (lack of representation in literature, films, and art), and navigating health care, educational, workplace, and legal systems that have been designed by and large by able-bodied people. Able-bodied people make decisions on behalf of disabled people that severely circumscribe their ability to live life on every level. According to a 2012 survey on disability by Statistics Canada, 30 percent of disabled people discontinued their studies (and are less likely than nondisabled peers to graduate from high school or postsecondary school) due to significant systemic barriers, including lack of accessible classrooms, inappropriate teaching methods, insufficient accommodation around disability needs, and lack of accessible college accommodations.

Societal attitudes toward disabled people include pity (poor them/feeling sorry for them), judgment (they just want to collect free benefits/disability income), invisibilizing (not including the disabled experience or perspective in any discussions or media, or thinking the only disabled people are those with “visible” disabilities), and tokenizing disabled people who thrive (“despite” their disability). At the same time, mainstream society ignores the ways in which these people and millions of others continue to be discounted and harmed systemically. Many disabled people internalize these messages, resulting in decompensation of mental health and feelings of low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression.

In the United States, laws have mostly been written by able-bodied, heterosexual, cisgendered white men for more than two centuries, with the systematic intent of eliminating, oppressing, and circumscribing the rights and existence of native, Black, brown, women, LGBTQI, poor, and immigrant people. This has created an enormous and widening gap in the financial, physical, legal, mental, emotional, political, creative, and educational health and status of each of these marginalized groups.

Judy Atkinson writes about transgenerational “trauma trails,” a concept that captures the cumulative effects of oppression and trauma on Indigenous lives, including colonization, genocide, and loss of land, culture, and freedom. Atkinson writes, “Our first generations were killed and imprisoned, and females sexually misused. Our second generations turned to alcohol or drugs as their cultural and spiritual identity was damaged; in our third generations we had spousal assault and societal trauma. In our fourth generations the abuse moves from spousal abuse to child abuse or both. In the fifth generations, the cycle repeats as trauma begets violence, begets trauma.”[13] Her powerful words capture the impact of oppression as relentless, severe, and multigenerational in its persistence and scope.

These statistics underscore the impact of personal, cultural, and systemic oppression on daily life:

- Twenty-five percent of Native Americans currently live in poverty. Life expectancy among Native American populations is low due to lack of access to health care. [14]

- Violent crime rates in the 310 Native American reservations across the United States are more than two and a half times the national average, according to data compiled by the Justice Department. Rates of rape or sexual assault against Native American women are four times the national average. [15]

- Only six countries currently give women the same legal work status as men; the United States is not one of them. On average, women earn 75 percent of what men earn. “This means she is not only earning less at every level than what a male would earn, she is also circumscribed in her ability to receive a pension, job mobility, paid leave, health benefits etc., and as women live longer than men on average, there are more elderly women in poverty due to the accumulative impact of the pay gap. [In the United States, white] women earn 79 percent of what white men do; Black women earn 64 percent; Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women earn 65 percent; American Indian and Alaska Native women earn 59 percent; and Hispanic or Latina women earn just 54 percent.”[16]

- According to the NAACP, out of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States, one million are Black. Black folks are five times more likely to be incarcerated than someone who is white, and unarmed Black and native people are twice as likely to be killed by a police offer as an unarmed white person.[17]

- A 2018 study published in medical journal The Lancet[18] analyzed data from more than 103,000 Black adults to examine the impact of police violence on victims, victims’ families, witnesses, and the community at large. The results showed significant debilitation of mental health lasting for several months after the event, including symptoms of PTSD, such as hypervigilance, panic attacks, insomnia, and traumatic flashbacks. The study also found that predominantly African American communities had higher rates of depression and suicidality than predominantly white communities.

- People who identify as LGBTQI have fewer rights and face more oppression than do their straight-identified counterparts. Homosexuality is against the law in seventy-five countries and is punishable by death in five of those countries. Transgender people are systemically oppressed and denied full rights, exemplified by military service bans and the controversial North Carolina “bathroom bill,” which prevented people from using bathrooms that did not correspond with their assigned sex.[19]

- “In Alabama, South Dakota and Texas, laws enacted in 2018 target prospective LGBT parents, potentially preventing them from adopting or becoming foster parents.”[20]

- Studies show that close to 50 percent of LGBTQI teens have considered self-harm or suicide and that LGBTQI young people are six times more likely than their peers to take their own lives due to widespread homophobic and transphobic harassment and violence.[21]

Pause and Breathe

This is likely a good moment to take a pause and let yourself take a few deep breaths in and out. The difficult truths I have written about are so important to name, and necessary to witness, and as we do, the intensity of suffering these words point to is being registered in our bodies. When we pause to check in with ourselves, noticing the tension in our bodies, the acceleration of our heartbeat, or the emotions rising within us, we have a chance to be with what is in our hearts, tend to it, and digest it a bit before letting it move through. This is part of the necessary care required in order to lean into hard healing work.

Take time now to pause for as long as you need to let this information distill, get a glass of water, write in your journal for reflections, cry, move, shake, stretch, or release tension as you need. You may want to return to the body relaxation exercise at the end of the previous chapter as a way to bring yourself back into your body and reset your nervous system.

The forces we have described are relentless. This act of pausing, tuning into ourselves, digesting information as we can, and even shifting our state is all a countermeasure against the obliteration of ourselves that oppression teaches. So as we pause now, let’s remember that this tending to ourselves is a part of dismantling the legacy of oppression.

As you move forward, feel free to pause in this same way any time in the chapter you feel tension arising in your body, have difficultly staying focused on the material, gain an insight you want to reflect on more deeply, or have emotion arise. I have inserted the heading “Pause and Breathe” at different points as gentle reminders to check in with yourself.

Now, let us continue.

Matrix of Domination

To fully understand the forces at play in our lives, we must not only look at the facets of oppression but also the flip side of the coin: privilege.

Privilege is defined as “unearned access to resources (social power) that are only readily available to some people because of their social group membership; an advantage or immunity granted to or enjoyed by one societal group above and beyond the common advantage of all other groups.”[22] This immunity is enforced by systems and structures usually created and run by people who gain from these privileges. The systems and structures of privilege are designed to increase the privileged group’s access to resources, allowing that group to lead a more secure and fulfilling life at the expense of others.

Privilege and resultant social power are granted through social systems that value certain identities over others and treat them as the norm, while perpetuating the idea that other identities and social groups are inferior, deviant, or invisible. These identities include race, age, gender, class, sexual orientation, citizenship, physical ability, economic class, education, and religion, with researchers giving race, class, and gender the highest rankings in terms of association with privilege. In the United States this has situated white, male, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, wealthy, Christian citizens at the apex of privilege. The country’s economic, social, political, legal, and religious institutions benefit each of these social groups over others.

For example, wealthy white politicians set tax rates that benefit the richest in society (predominantly wealthy white men) while slashing benefits such as Social Security, food stamps, and Medicare that would aid marginalized populations: people of color, women, the elderly, disabled people, and poor people. Laws controlling women’s bodies, including the ability to access abortion and contraception, their right to equal pay, or even the technology used to design products like the safety features in cars (women are 47 percent more likely to suffer severe injuries in car crashes because car safety features are designed for men)[23] are all primarily created by men, at the expense of women (with an added impact on women of color and transgender women).

Privileged people are most often in positions of power and authority, so privileged people see themselves reflected throughout society, both in mass media and face to face in their encounters with teachers, workplace managers, and other authority figures. For example, in the United States it is highly likely that a white male will have a white male boss, professor, or doctor. This, researchers argue, leads to a sense of entitlement and the assumption that the privileged person will succeed in life, as well as protecting the privileged person from worry that they may face discrimination from people in positions of authority. This is an example of a privilege that is often invisible to those who have it, because it is so deeply congruent with the day-to-day experience of the priviliged person’s life that they can’t even see it.

Some attributes of privilege may be fairly visible, such as race and gender; others, such as citizenship status and birth order, are not. Some aspects of privilege, such as social class, are relatively stable, and others, such as age, wealth, religion, and attractiveness can or will change over time. Some attributes of privilege are at least partly determined by the individual, such as level of education, whereas others, such as race or class background, are entirely involuntary.

Scholar Peggy McIntosh highlighted the invisible privileges attaching to race in her seminal article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack.” In it, she talks about the countless ways she enjoyed “unearned skin privilege,” such as being able to shop alone without being harassed, seeing positive and predominant representations of her race in all media, being able to perceive and receive protective assistance from law enforcement without feeling the threat of discriminatory violence, attending schools where the history curriculum reflected her racial history as superior and as the moral conqueror, and being taught along with other whites “to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow ‘them’ to be more like ‘us.’”[24]

McIntosh observed that most people are reluctant to acknowledge their privilege and instead look for ways to justify or minimize the effects of privilege by stating that it was fully earned. For example, a white person whose family has advanced from poor economic beginnings to greater wealth may say, “My family worked hard to get as far as we did. We didn’t get help from anybody to have our home, income, education, and access to excellent health care. Why should we feel bad about having what we earned?” Such statements, which focus on individual effort, may in all likelihood be true insofar as they describe the family working hard and making efforts or sacrifices to achieve economic security.

On the other hand, this way of looking at the situation discounts and refuses to acknowledge the support systems that helped the family get where they are. White people have higher chances of receiving loans, being offered job interviews, getting hired, receiving higher wages, and having access to safer and wealthier neighborhoods that have better funding for schools. In addition, individuals with higher income have access to high-quality private health care and education that poor and working-class people—who are disproportionately people of color—do not.

This race and class privilege has been built on the continued exploitation of native, Black, and brown people for economic benefit, which began with stealing land, the genocide of native people, and the enslavement of Black bodies for the purposes of free labor and economic gain. The dominant class has continued to exploit these same people for low-cost yet essential goods and services—personal care, agriculture, infrastructure—until the present day through unlivable low wages for people of color and women, racist union practices, race and gender discrimination and exclusion from higher-paying work pathways and trades, and use of prison labor.

Whiteness is maintained through various discourses that buffer white people from having to think critically about race, such as the idea of “color blindness.” While many of us have come to understand that overt forms of racism are not permissible, we have also been taught to avoid thinking about race and examining how it might be at work in our lives and the world around us. In this context, when we say things like, “I don’t see race, I just see people,” our words are actually defending this privilege. Other statements like this include the following:

- We are all part of the human race. Why can’t we all just get along?

- I thought this book was about joy and self-love. Why are we focusing on what’s different about us?

- The fact that I’m white/rich/straight/able-bodied doesn’t mean I had it easy. I didn’t get anything I didn’t earn.

White privilege is the right to not recognize or acknowledge the ways in which whiteness has helped shift our life’s trajectory to our advantage. Again, it’s important to note here that privilege doesn’t mean a white person hasn’t faced difficulties and many hindrances to resilience; it simply means that race has not been one of those hindrances. Working through white privilege involves recognizing that for the people who don’t have white privilege, the denial of its existence negates their very experience and their struggle for safety, acceptance, and resilience.

As Phoenix Calida writes, “Privilege simply means that under the exact same set of circumstances you’re in, life would be harder without your privilege.”[25]

Going back to the concept of intersectonality, given our various social identities, we might simultaneously identify with some categories that afford us privileges while identifying with others that cause us to experience oppression. Sometimes people think that acknowledging the privileges they experience will discount their suffering or negate the oppression they may also experience. However, being a white male does not necessarily mean a person will benefit from all the privileges associated with that identity; that would depend on additional factors, such as his class, sexual orientation, religious background, and (dis)abilities. Our privilege does not erase the oppression we experience, and the oppression we are faced with affects our experience of those privileges.

One privilege I am often acutely aware of having is citizenship in the United States. This aspect of my social location has dramatically changed my life in comparison to other immigrant women of color who may share similar social locations and yet experience a much higher degree of day-to-day fear, uncertainty, threat, financial duress, violence, and restriction of choices. As a legal citizen of a country like the United States, I do not have to live in daily fear of being deported at any time and losing my livelihood, home, friends, and family connections in this country, with no recourse and no choice but to return to conditions of severe hardship or even deadly harm. This puts me in a position of privilege and power relative to nonpermanent residents, asylum seekers, deferred action for childhood arrivals, and undocumented migrants.

Many people look to migration as a way to flee oppressive and deadly conditions, including extreme poverty and hunger caused by environmental crisis, and mortal danger due to being transgender, gay, or a member of a persecuted religious minority or ethnic group. I am able to sponsor family members and a partner to come live near me, and I can freely visit them in other countries without fear of being unable to return. I can live without being coerced into unfair, discriminatory, and predatory work conditions where employers threaten to report me to immigration authorities as a way to exploit my body or labor. And in the wake of the US government’s horrific actions to detain thousands of migrant children in inhumane conditions at the Mexican border after separating them from their families, I do not have to live in fear of my children being forcibly taken from me, detained in cages, subjected to physical and sexual violence, and being lost permanently in a system that refused to reunify them with their families.[26]

Living with this stark privilege afforded by a simple piece of paper like a passport becomes an important daily reminder of the rights to safety, shelter, economic security, protection from violence, and exploitation that should be available to all. It is also an incentive to avoid a common pitfall, which is to resist acknowledging my privilege because doing so would require me to acknowledge that my successes have not resulted solely from my own efforts. My successes have been partly attributable to a system that has developed to support them. Sociologist Michael Kimmel describes the state of having privilege as being like “running with the wind at your back,”[27] unaware of invisible sustenance, support, and propulsion.

The refusal to acknowledge our privilege constitutes a further injustice against those who are disenfranchised, acting as a form of microaggression or microinvalidation that negates the experiences of people who don’t have the same privileges and minimizes the impediments they face. It would require me to admit that the ease of my ability to navigate migration to this country was not solely due to my own individual strengths or hard work; instead it was consistently supported by my privileged access to education, resources, and above all US citizenship (I was born in the United States to Pakistani parents) that paved my way to success, just as the lack of access to those privileges created insurmountable obstacles for others. Acknowledging my privilege would also ask me to step out of the ranks of those who may believe, as Peggy McIntosh found, that privilege is systemic and who nonetheless deny having personally benefited from it. Some who agree that privilege is systemic will even actively oppose efforts to dismantle it by voting against political leaders or legal measures that might provide pay equity, equal legal rights, or better housing to disenfranchised individuals.

Sometimes, I and other folks will look at the list of what constitutes privilege and say, but shouldn’t all this be considered a human right? Shouldn’t we all have equal pay and legal rights, feel seen and safe in our environments and protected in our communities, and have clean water, food, and shelter? Why do I have to acknowledge these things as a privilege, instead of just accepting them as my right?

The answer is yes, these things absolutely should be everyone’s rights. The harsh reality, however, is that they are not, because of a history of one group of people exploiting and harming others and creating a world of severe inequality. If we who have privilege do not work to open our eyes and our hearts to its inequitable reality—the persistent exploitation of multiple groups by one dominant group—we keep helping oppression hide in plain sight. We can neither address nor dismantle the harm we are unable to see.

Pause and Breathe

Take a moment now to check in with yourself, by taking a few deep breaths, doing the self-care practices shared in the previous “Pause and Breathe” section, or the body relaxation exercise from the previous chapter. When you are ready, let’s discuss some examples that bring all this information together.

Power, Privilege, and Oppression—Intersectional Examples

In America the myth of meritocracy and raising ourselves up by our own bootstraps—which involves the glorification of mental grit and the idea that people make it on their own—has led to a widespread shaming of those who don’t succeed and the inability to recognize the myriad ways we are bolstered by systemic support. The predominant view ignores the fact that if we come from a background with certain crucial qualifiers—male, white, cisgendered, upper class, heterosexual, able-bodied, legal citizen of a developed nation—we have been the recipient of such support, and we thus have access to power and privilege that others do not.

Intersectionality offers a way to understand the interplay of power, privilege, and oppression operating in a person’s life at any given time. Consider the everyday experience of Amy, a middle-income, first-generation, heterosexual, able-bodied Chinese American woman living in the United States. Her skin color and features mark her as “other” compared to the received notion that “normal” Americans are white. From early childhood through adulthood, she’s experienced neighborhoods, school and work environments, and media depictions where she is under- or misrepresented, facing cultural stereotypes in a country where her heritage has been popularly reduced to kung fu movies and the role of the studious sidekick. She is considered a foreigner, and despite being born in the United States, people constantly ask her, “Where are you from?” or refer to her based on her ethnic background, leaving out the American component of her identity and thus subtly labeling her as a perpetual outsider.

These and other microaggressions, everyday insults, indignities, and demeaning messages sent to people of color can erode their mental health, job performance, and quality of social experience. For Amy, they have given her a nagging sense of being less than or not enough. She has felt lonely and isolated in most settings, despite being excellent at her work and liked by her peers. She will need to name these thousands of “paper cuts” to her self-esteem and sense of self as microaggressions rooted in prejudice and racism, to help her understand her experience and learn how to turn her inner Critic—who has shamed her for her lack of confidence—into a Protector who can help her use her voice to confront these aggressions.

Amy also has certain privileges, based on class, education, citizenship status, being straight and able-bodied, and even the so-called positive racial stereotype of Asians being good citizens. Her privileges have helped her get by in society, achieve many of her life goals, and feel legitimized in her choices, all of which have contributed to her resilience and sense of well-being.

Let’s now look at the case of Pablo, a transgender gay man who is also an undocumented Mexican immigrant living in the United States. Despite his masculine presentation, which gives him some privilege in a society that generally values men over women, his transgender identity, skin color, accent, and phenotype mark him, like Amy, as other and foreign, which implies that he does not deserve the same rights and resources as others in the United States. His accent and heritage are commonly viewed as indicators of poor education and even lower intelligence, in contrast to Amy’s ethnicity, which is stereotyped as intelligent and high achieving. Pablo is also a target for anyone who wishes to exploit him, as his undocumented immigration status means he can be paid criminally low wages for his labor in factories or farms with no legal rights or access to legal representation. His gender identity and sexuality make him dangerously vulnerable because, in combination with his undocumented status, they might prevent him from seeking assistance, speaking out, or accessing health care or legal protection in oppressive or dangerous conditions due to fear of deportation.

If we only look at each individual through one lens—he is a man, she is a woman, he is working class, she is a citizen—we miss all the various factors that operate upon each person simultaneously, creating an interlocking context of privilege, power, and oppression that uniquely shapes each person’s world. The intersection of these factors can help people bounce back from adversity and achieve their goals, or it can undermine and damage their lives, despite their best efforts, at every turn. In the end, no person is an island, and none succeed—or fail—alone. An intersectional lens ensures that we don’t overlook the challenges faced by people who belong to multiple marginalized groups as we strive to achieve a more just society.

Collective, Historical, and Intergenerational Trauma

Looking at systems of oppression allows us to broaden our microscopic view of the factors that might be affecting our personal life. A systems perspective helps us look beyond the realm of our own nature, family dynamics, partnerships, and resources to see a holographic view that considers multiple large forces that have been affecting us all along but that we may not have seen until we broadened our gaze.

The impact of oppression on mental health can be described as collective trauma, which means trauma that happens to large groups of people. This includes (but is not limited to) war, genocide, slavery, terrorism, displacement, poverty, natural or human-made disasters, and pandemics. The term “collective trauma” was first coined by Native American scholar Maria Yellow Horse Braveheart, to describe the negative impacts on the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and behavioral health of Native American people in Canada due to unprocessed shock, trauma, and grief from five hundred years of historical suffering. Braveheart said this “historical unresolved grief”[28] stemmed from the shock of initial contact with colonizers, genocide, losses on multiple levels of culture and sustenance through invasion of land, elimination of access to traditional hunting and gathering, mass extermination, confinement or translocation, forced separation of children, prohibition of native language and customs, racism, urban relocation, and loss of native systems of governance and power.

These cumulative occurences, without any opportunity for healing or processing, led to unresolved grief, anger, loneliness, and hopelessness, which—compounded by the lack of access to psychospiritual, economic, educational, health, and social resources, can manifest within families and communities as increased addiction, domestic violence, child abuse, or neglect. Children exposed to these familial traumas while still living and growing up within the same conditions of poverty and complete rupture from cultural identity and resources can, in turn, withdraw, become violent, use substances, dissociate, and collapse into hopelessness. Others will suffer in broader yet still acute ways, as Professor Helen Milroy, an Indigenous psychiatrist specializing in child psychiatry, describes: “Even where children are protected from the traumatic stories of their ancestors, the effects of past traumas still impact on children in the form of ill health, family dysfunction, community violence, psychological morbidity and early mortality.”[29]

Without the lens of collective, historical, and intergenerational trauma, it has been far too easy for the narrative of oppression to simply point a blaming finger at the outward symptoms of suffering and look at signs like poverty, addiction, or violence within a particular community as a sign that something is lacking within the people themselves—back to the idea of grit. These viewpoints, as we have already discussed, can add to the demoralization of a people already reeling from the impacts of trauma by becoming a part of their narrative about themselves. This is the Vulnerable Self of the community, collapsing under the weight of society’s Critic and unable to see massive cost of society’s neglect in the form of lack of supportive structures.

It is for this very reason that the healing from these large-scale traumas begins with acknowledgment. A survivor of sexual abuse, violence, or neglect needs to know that their emotions and patterns of behavior stemming from the abuse are not their fault and are in fact adaptive (though ultimately limiting) responses to events that completely altered their view of themselves and the world. Similarly, survivors of collective, historical, and intergenerational trauma cannot heal unless we begin by naming the reasons behind their individual symptoms and how they are a part of the symptoms borne by the collective they belong to. Seeing the intergenerational cycle of violence also breaks us out of the binary mindset of perpetrator and victim, allowing us to recognize that the perpetrators of violence within communities are often themselves victims of trauma. “Anger, hopelessness, worthlessness and lack of genuine opportunities and disconnection run like a common thread through the experiences of both victims and perpetrators of violence.”[30]

This nonbinary understanding of the intergenerational cycle of violence is brilliantly and poignantly addressed in the groundbreaking book My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Hearts and Bodies, by acclaimed therapist Resmaa Menakem. In it, he speaks about the trauma inflicted by white supremacy and racism on African Americans (“the Black body”), Americans of European heritage (“the white body”), and police (“Blue bodies”), a term that refers to the bodies of law enforcement officers of any color.[31] He takes us back to the Middle Ages of European history, where powerful white people brutalized, maimed, and tortured other white people who were often subject to conditions of starvation, poverty, disease, and fleeing imprisonment and physical persecution. Therefore, the first white settlers in the New World were either survivors of collective trauma or descendants of people who had been brutalized, and they brought this unprocessed history of violence and victimization with them into their new life.

This legacy of unmitigated violence and brutality was continued not only within families but as oppression of white bodies by other more powerful white bodies through religious persecution, such as Puritans hunting down, burning, and killing other Puritans for the trumped-up charge of witchcraft, the Crown tarring and feathering tax evaders, or the regular instances of hanging, putting in stocks, and other brutal means of punishment that white people primarily used against other white people until the early seventeenth century. Menakem posits that it is this violent history—living on as unprocessed, cumulative, intergenerational trauma—that led to the profound schisms in mind and body, objectification of one human being by another, dissociation, denial, sickness of and in the self, and hatred and anger against the people of one’s own country or continent that became the source for the colonization, murder, and brutalization of Black, brown, and native bodies by whites. It also provided the fuel for the creation of a myth of race and whiteness (not present as a construct or idea until the late 1600s) as a way of denying and covering over the unprocessed pain, hatred, grief, oppression, and dislocation that had occurred for centuries between more powerful and less powerful white bodies, allowing whites to instead take out that hatred and anger on a racialized other.

Trauma of any kind cannot be processed by understanding alone. We cannot simply know what happened and why, or that it was wrong, in order to shift the ways our bodies, minds, and psychobiology have been wired by the horrific events we have perpetrated or survived. Racism and white supremacy, as perpetrated through the laws, governance, and social structures of oppression, have changed all the bodies involved in its maelstrom.

Joy DeGruy explains the lasting impacts of slavery on African American communities through her pioneering theory of posttraumatic slave syndrome.[32] This theory, the result of twelve years of research, examines how the residual impact of slavery, multigenerational oppression reinforced by institutionalized racism, and a lack of support structures has resulted in symptoms akin to the impact of historical trauma on native people that we just discussed. These symptoms include a loss of self-esteem; hopelessness; depression; violence against oneself, others, and property; suspicion and hostility toward others, including members of one’s own group; and internalized racism, including aversion to one’s own physical or cultural characteristics and customs. “In addition, historical trauma is a precipitating factor influencing racial/ethnic health disparities, as populations historically subjected to long-term, mass trauma exhibit a higher prevalence of disease even several generations following the original trauma.”[33]

Building on DeGruy’s work, Menakem says the legacy of collective trauma—especially vicarious historical and present-day trauma experienced by white bodies who have intergenerationally been witness to, if not participant in, violence against Black bodies—is a profound dissociation from, denial and dismissal of, the existence and experience of oppression, marginalization, and racism. Menakem offers a body-centered therapeutic approach to healing from intergenerational trauma and specifically the trauma inflicted by white supremacy and racism, with distinct paths for white and Black bodies. The first step on the path is the same for anyone healing from trauma and is in line with our work on joyous resilience: learning how to reconnect to the sensations in our bodies, calm our nervous systems through our breath, come back to present time, slow down our reactive reflexes, and pause. Without this ability to become present in our somatic self, we are forever stuck in the cycle of being triggered by a person, event, interaction, or situation, and reacting in ways that keep regurgitating trauma born of oppression.

Menakem reminds us that in order to heal, we must recognize the trauma that has been done; acknowledge our part as victim, perpetrator, or a complex mix of both; and above all, come back to our felt experience in the body. We need to feel safe enough within ourselves and this moment to touch into the reflexive responses to our own feelings and to the bodies of others who are different from or the same as us, to whom we have been conditioned and traumatized into responding by feeling threatened, indifferent, or enraged. We have to be able to feel into these emotions, recognize the history of violence and racialization that has informed these reactions, and feel the anger, grief, shame, regret, rage, horror, and terror underlying our litany of symptoms. If we are white, we have to specifically confront issues of white fragility, white skin privilege, and white supremacy that have been informing our behaviors.

All of us need to recognize that these symptoms as they show up in our individual lives, our families, and our communities are not our fault—but it is our responsibility to change them. They are a massive holding of historical grief and trauma that needs to first be recognized, then to be felt, then to be transformed, in order to be undone.

Healing from trauma—whether individual, historical, intergenerational, or collective—is deep, intricate, complicated work that is not to be undertaken alone. Many of us survived trauma, or continue to live with traumatic conditions to this day, without any support. This lack of support further entrenches the lack of safety and isolation that trauma brings. If you want to do deeper work on healing from oppression or individual or collective trauma, I encourage you to do so with the aid of a trained clinician in the field. At the back of this book you will also find resources on healing from trauma and doing more specialized work on many of the topics covered here, such as racialized trauma.

Wherever we stand in our unique configuration of intersectional identities, we must begin the journey of reclaiming those parts of ourselves that the double-edged sword of oppression and privilege caused us to lose. Although this book does not address healing from specific forms of trauma, the next two sections do provide a model for creating an inner resilient structure of support in the form of resilience practices along with a Nurturer, a Protector, a Resilient Self, and a Soul Self. This model gives us the strength, tools, and practices to delve more deeply into healing from trauma on every level. Healing from collective trauma and building your Circle of Resilience are not mutually exclusive. Reclamation of our inner compassion and nurturance, our fierce Protector, our interconnected Soul Self, and our creative, playful, and pleasurable resilience are all part of claiming necessary space to feel all the pain, grief, and anger lodged in our systems. This allows us to dismantle the reflex of flight, freeze, and fight and to move instead into responsiveness to ourselves and each other, and to reconnect and reclaim wisdom, love, and joyous bodily health that systems of violence and oppression robbed us of for generations.

This is also the necessary inner work that can sustain the long-term outward task of actively participating in dismantling the systems that oppressed us, or others different from us, for so long.

Radical Love

“Radical self-love demands that we see ourselves and others in the fullness of our complexities and intersections and that we work to create space for those intersections,” says Sonya Renee Taylor in The Body Is Not an Apology.[34] “As has been true throughout history, changing the systemic and structural oppressions that regard us in perfunctory and myopic ways requires sweeping changes in our laws, policies and social norms. Creating a world of justice for all bodies demands that we be radical and intersectional.”

How do we take intersectionality from theory into healing and then into collective action? First we allow ourselves to see oppressive realities and the harm they cause on every level; secondly, we dismantle oppression in our ourselves, in our daily interactions, and in our various locations; and thirdly, we work toward a socially just and interdependently resilient world.

We will speak more about action out in the world in part III. For now, the most important step is opening to an intersectional lens in our view of the world. We learn to look beyond our own experience of reality, recognizing that we live in a world of diverse individuals, many of whose voices, needs, desires, rights, bodies, minds, spirits, history, language, culture, and existence have been actively ignored, undermined, thwarted, and jeopardized. If we belong to one of those groups due to one or more intersecting social locations, then our work includes the painful and ultimately validating and liberating task of recognizing the generational impact of structural oppression on the resilience of our people. Where possible, our work involves accessing the necessary support to allow ourselves to feel and express our emotions (anger, grief, fear, helplessness) and to release our bodies, psyches, choices, and habits from the shame and guilt created by internalized messages and experiences of oppression. We do all this through paths and processes that are body-based and that are grounded as much as possible in our life-giving historical, cultural, communal, and spiritual traditions. This is healing from intergenerational and collective trauma.

If we belong to a social location that enjoys privilege—even if we also occupy an oppressed position—our task is its own painful and ultimately brave and radically loving journey of opening to the myriad ways we have been part of a system that has benefited us while oppressing many. Rather than collapsing into shame or guilt as a response, as can be the case with white fragility or white skin privilege, we must learn to dive deeper into the emotions of fear, anger, sorrow, grief, and helplessness, learning to embrace these feelings and allow them so we can rise into accountability, connection, and allyship. This too is intergenerational healing from collective trauma.

I have a dear friend, Jen, who is a consummate hostess. Anyone who has ever been to Jen’s home, whether for a half-hour drop-in to say hello, a lunch for two, or a holiday feast has an unforgettable experience. This experience is certainly founded upon her warm welcome, her obvious delight in each person’s presence, and her love of sharing food and hospitality, but what stands out to me is in her exceptional attention to the needs of each guest as a distinct person. Jen knows everyone needs warmth and welcome to feel at home, but as an exceptional hostess she also knows each person has different needs based on such factors as diet, health, distance traveled, or responsibilities at home. Jen acts on this awareness by asking about dietary needs beforehand, such as gluten intolerance, being vegan, or needing to not eat sugar because of health concerns. This information allows her to craft a menu where each person can feel excited about the food at the table and can fully participate in and enjoy the meal. Folks who are traveling a long distance might be invited to stay over if there is room at the house, and she remembers to include travelers’ pets in the invitation, knowing that the extra responsibility and financial burden of a pet sitter might keep people from attending. New guests are welcomed with the same love as those Jen has known a long time, and everyone has the sense they are being seen in the wholeness of their lives and needs.

While we may not all have the time, resources, or energy to offer this extent of hospitality, I think the principles Jen is applying lie at the heart of intersectional love. In waking up to our own unique social location and its configuration of privilege, power, and oppression, we realize that no one group owns the baseline for the entirety of human experience, and we learn to consistently keep in mind that our access to support, our collective history, and our present are all distinct based on our social location. We start to pay attention to perspectives outside our own experience, and we become more open to listening to and learning from varying points of views (specifically views that have been decentered in popular discourse). We seek out spaces that include people and perspectives different from our own. When we are there, we take time to listen deeply as people share stories and experiences that reflect these differences. Instead of putting the onus on folks with differing intersectional identities to educate us, we take time to seek out media, literature, art, music, and articles that allow us to learn more about our own social location, other intersectional identities, and the questions that emerge as we enter new worlds.

Most importantly, we look for ways to ally with and support the efforts of folks with identities different from ours by taking time to learn about and participate in their causes. In doing so we exhibit the radical self-love that knows your liberation and freedom are tied up in mine. I also show that I love you enough to make your cause my own, not by co-opting it or thinking I can save you because I have all the answers, but by respectfully standing beside or behind you as we work together on behalf of your concern. In this way we also build a stronger net where we each can come to the aid of the other, and we start to recognize and act from our common humanity that supports, sees, encourages, and gets behind our unique and important differences.

It takes a lot of bravery to look at the bigger picture: our pain, our power, and our privilege. The following sections of this book move us toward these inner qualities that allow us to be brave enough to face and heal from pain caused by systems that failed us, and to become resilient enough to never stop working to transform them.

Self-Reflection

1. What intersectional identities do you associate yourself with?

2. Have any of these identities changed over time?

3. What power and privilege have you had or do you currently have?

4. What are ways in which you and your family might have experienced oppression?

5. What feelings come up when you consider your privilege?

6. What feelings come up when you consider experiences of oppression?

7. What is one area where you would like to understand more about privilege or oppression in your life?

8. What is one area where you would like to understand more about privilege or oppression in another’s life?

9. What experiences of collective, historical, or intergenerational trauma might have affected you?

10. How do you see this trauma informing your cycle of suffering?

Knowledge is power. Gaining knowledge is the necessary first step toward action. Also, knowledge takes time to digest. Your Vulnerable Self may have been activated in reading this chapter. This is difficult information to get through and look at. Make sure you acknowledge the bravery of this step and the empowerment it brings. And respond to yourself with gentleness and care, and take steps to help your nervous system re-regulate. Walk through the relaxation exercise from earlier in the chapter, or get up, take a shower, let yourself cry, dance, sing it out to your favorite music, let yourself pray, speak with your ancestors and ask for their assistance, or go outside and visit with the trees and flowers. You are through with part I! It’s time to celebrate this achievement and then look ahead. Onward!

PART II

THE CIRCLE OF RESILIENCE

6

Introducing the Circle of Resilience

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.

—DEREK WALCOTT

A toddler seeks out her parent’s warm smile before joining the other children on a playground. A five-year-old who fell down hard while riding their first bike quickly calms down when hugged by their parent. An older child is cheered by the rallying cries of her parents rooting for her out on the soccer field. For our young and adult selves, these gestures all perform a similar function: they help to establish a secure, trustworthy, positive emotional bond with another person that provides the key to resilience and healthy development, or as it is known in psychology, a secure attachment.

A secure attachment is a “‘confidence and trust in the goodness of me, you, us’ that a person carries throughout their daily life. It is the sense of being loved and supported no matter what happens. And when [we] feel secure, a world of possibilities opens up.”[1] In infancy, it is the emotional bond between infant and parent that allows a child to use the primary caregiver as a secure base from which to explore and to relate to the caregiver as a source of safety and comfort. This bond plays a pivotal role in the regulation of stress in times of distress, anxiety, or illness. Although we are born hardwired to connect with our main caregivers, the quality of our attachment—the degree to which it is secure or insecure—is largely determined by the quality of parenting we receive, specifically when we feel a threat to our sense of safety and security (illness, feeling upset and frightened, being physically hurt).

In adults this sense of security occurs in relationships with others as well as with oneself. Attachment styles can shift and be shaped by multiple relationships and events throughout our lives. We might have an inconsistent caregiving relationship with our mother, causing us to develop an insecure attachment with her, while having a secure relationship with a grandparent who provided a higher quality of sensitive and nurturing care. Later in life, our friendships and romantic relationships can influence our attachment style in the same way as parent-child interactions. Harsh or abusive partnerships, bullying and peer pressure in friendships, and extremely difficult breakups can move a secure attachment style toward a more insecure one, leading to anxiousness, avoidance, and dysregulation.

Times in our lives when things are going well for us (we are succeeding in our job, have a new relationship, are feeling physically fit) can lead us to feel more safe and secure, until a difficult transition occurs (aging, loss of parents, serious illness, inability to have children, divorce), when we might find ourselves feeling more vulnerable and prone to insecurity. On the positive side, this malleability in attachment styles means healthier relationships later in life can be curative, including our development of a healthy relationship with our inner self. For example, having a loving partner or best friend who is caring in our times of distress and offers a consistent source of support can shift our attachment style toward security.

Why is cultivating a securely attached self so important? Because this grounding in a healthy emotional bond is what ultimately leads to resilient adults. Research over many decades has shown that a secure relationship in childhood is the most important foundation for developing happier, kinder, socially competent, and trusting children, who grow up to have better relations with parents, siblings, and friends. Secure attachment leads to doing better in school, staying physically healthier, creating more fulfilling relationships, and successfully reaching for our dreams as adults.

It is no coincidence that the roles in this book dovetail with the leading ideas of attachment theory and neuroscience. In the Cycle of Suffering we saw the impact of internalizing a parenting model of neglect and criticism that leads to an insecurely attached Vulnerable Self. The good news is that our chance to thrive did not end with childhood, our last unhealthy relationship, or our current state of insecurity and anxiety. This is just our starting state, which can be shifted through the same means that foster better emotional regulation, safety, security, and trust in children. I call this model the Circle of Resilience. In my years of practice I have found that the Circle of Resilience evolves from deliberate cultivation of four archetypal roles that are found in many psychospiritual disciplines, which I call the Nurturer, the Protector, the Resilient Self, and the Soul Self. Cultivating these roles in one’s life creates a positive internal feedback loop, much like that between a healthy parent and a child, that produces a sense of inner security, confidence, love, and connection that allows us to bounce back from difficult times and consistently thrive.

As young children, we can gain a model for a healthy inner protection, nurturance, and resilience from caregivers who show us respect for our individual body and self, provide for our emotional and physical needs, teach us how to speak up for ourselves, set reasonable and clear limits, normalize failure, and provide encouragement and support for our choices. These are the skill sets we must develop internally as adults if they did not get instilled at a younger age. We bridge the gaps in how we were parented by developing an inner Protector, Nurturer, and Soul Self, thereby neurologically rewiring ourselves to have a sense of worthiness and real safety. We wire ourselves to be resilient.

The Circle of Resilience is a model we can use to become a more securely attached person as an adult, allowing us to generate happiness, joy, possibility, and success from within. From this place of inner friendship and self-trust, we are able to seek out, receive, and foster new and positive relationships, experiences, and actions. We begin to feel the love we have been seeking all along, and we come to understand what it means when people say it was inside us all along.

The Model

For the past several years, I have created and led a monthly healing group, called Joyous Being, focused on cultivating joyous resilience. Each year’s circle consists of a small group of people, committed to boosting their resilience and putting joy at the center of their lives. They come together once a month over ten months to share, practice, and grow the four roles of Nurturer, Protector, Resilient Self, and Soul Self that make up the Cycle of Resilience. Many choose to repeat the circle, because they recognize that transformation is a long-term process, and they want to practice in a community. For me, the highlight of these circles has been watching each person unfurl and grow into their joyous self over time.

To get a sense of what’s possible, you might imagine yourself taking a seat in our welcoming circle one warm summer evening. The room is cozy and filled with the subtle smell of sweet roses; gentle music plays in the background. At the center of the circle is a terra cotta candle holder shaped like a circle of small figures looking inward to the warm glow of a lit candle. To your right sits Luke, who is in the first few months of learning this model of resilience. They (Luke’s pronoun preference) say they’ve recently been noticing a decline in negative thoughts and a sense of greater ease within themselves, as a new, kinder voice begins to respond inside.

“I catch myself more often when I am being hard on myself, and then I remember to breathe and tell myself I’m doing the best I can,” Luke says. “It’s still hard to let it in fully, but I do feel better the more I do it. Less burdened. I catch myself feeling lighter and happier during the day.”

The group smiles encouragingly at Luke, mirroring back their happiness at this shift. I catch Mariela’s eye; she is in her second year on this journey, yet she still remembers those first few months, which she described as stumbling toward a slowly growing light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

“I felt like for a while I just played at the edge of the tunnel,” Mariela says. “It felt so good to feel the light of kindness again, and so vulnerable at the same time. I wasn’t used to it. I had to practice there for a while, strengthening that voice inside. I love how it is so much easier for me to turn to it now. It’s really helped me to build that friendship with myself and just learn how to take care of myself, especially when I’m scared or upset. I never realized I wasn’t speaking up about things that were bothering me because I never knew I’d be okay, or that it was okay to say what I needed and wanted. I feel like learning to nurture myself these past couple of years has really given me more of a sense that I deserve to be loved and feel good in my relationships. It’s still hard to speak up, but I know more than ever before that I can help myself keep getting stronger.”

The group also includes folks at more advanced stages of building inner resilience. They have a strong awareness of their emotional life and have been regularly practicing bringing kindness to themselves, getting in touch with their needs and desires, and speaking up and setting boundaries. The resilience they have built is now serving as the launching pad for them to go after their dreams and desires.

Jamie, a loving mother of two, is a great example. She spent several years deriding herself for being out of the workforce as “just a stay-at-home-mom,” and feeling depressed, anxious, valueless, and envious as she watched former colleagues make strides in their careers. She had a strong sense that it was important for her to be with her children in their early years, but her inner Critic had made it difficult for her to see the value in her decision by constantly comparing her to others who were “successful.” This produced a nagging sense of shame and not being enough, which impacted her mood and behavior, leading her to slowly give up on her own needs. The children received all her care and attention, while, for herself, she stopped exercising, paid little attention to her nutrition, and rarely made time for friends or for herself.

She showed up to the very first group disheveled and half an hour late, feeling ashamed and apologetic and ready to burst into tears. The group showed compassion and understanding to her, but her shame and overwhelm made it too difficult for her to receive that acceptance for the first few sessions. It wasn’t until the other mothers and grandmothers in the circle reflected to her what a gift it was that she had taken this time for herself, how proud they were of her and happy that she had allowed herself to focus on her joy given how difficult mothering is, that her shame slowly eased and her Vulnerable Self could relax into their kindness. The group also validated and highlighted her obvious joy in raising her children and the value she was bringing to their lives, providing models of nurturance and protection from judgment, that guided Jamie as she began to cultivate these roles and attributes for herself.

Over the course of a few years, she had gradually evolved into the woman sitting at ease in the circle on this evening: a wonderful, nurturing presence who can be present for others with the same acceptance she brings to herself. Jamie’s journey taught her that she, too, deserved the care and comfort her children received, and it reminded her that she and her life choices are valuable. Becoming a better mama to herself helped her develop better physical and mental health and good boundaries, which finally gave her the space, time, and energy to turn toward what else she wants to create. There came a time when she could wholeheartedly tell the group, “When I am so fed inside with this love I feel, I don’t have to try anymore to be happy for others. I see them succeeding and doing their best life, and I feel proud. Even if I don’t know them, just the thought that we are all part of one big family, cheering each other on in making this world a better place, makes me feel love instead of the old envy. On the best days, when you win, I know I am winning too, and I feel such joy!”

Jamie had tapped into that reservoir of inner love and support that is the hallmark of joyous resilience and is a direct result of cultivating the four roles that make up the Circle of Resilience. Let’s take a closer look at these roles.

The Nurturer

Nurturing energy feels like a safe embrace: an infant resting in his mother’s arms as she gazes lovingly into his eyes; a toddler snuggled into her dad’s lap as he reads her a bedtime story; a grandparent combing a child’s hair as they talk and laugh; the big hug from Auntie as she welcomes you home from school; the kind gaze of a trusted mentor as they listen to your fears and reassure you that all is well. These iconic images that carry a warm, safe, and loving essence all provide a felt sense of the Nurturer. In the Nurturer’s presence we feel seen, heard, and tended to in a warm, compassionate manner. A Nurturer’s superpower is attunement—the ability to “respond with appropriate language and behaviors based on another person’s emotional state. They are good at recognizing moods and emotions in another person and adapting their own feeling response in accordance. Well attuned parents are important in that they are able to detect what their babies are thinking and respond appropriately.”[2]

The Nurturer is the antidote to the Neglector. Whereas the Neglector turns away from inner feelings and needs (the Vulnerable Self), the Nurturer turns toward them in a helpful, caring, and competent manner.

Nurturing actions begin with physical attunement: making sure we are fed, hydrated, clothed, and sheltered, and have medicine if we are ill. Next comes emotional attunement. Just as a healthy parent is responsive to their child’s cries, picks them up to soothe them, and makes an effort to understand what they need, so our inner Nurturer learns to pick up our physical cues—stress, tension, tightness, crying, sadness, anger, fear—as a sign that we are in distress, and it responds with attentiveness. The Nurturer takes time to figure out what the Vulnerable Self needs, and it responds to any concerns with reassurance and a lack of judgment.

In Joyous Being circles, one simple way for participants to start to build their inner Nurturer’s sense of attunement is to practice taking a few minutes in the middle of their day and asking themselves to H.A.L.T.—to check in with the Vulnerable Self to see if they are Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired.[3] The acronym is not only a reminder that nurturance requires pausing for a few breaths to actually turn our attention toward ourselves; it’s also a handy guide to help us remember what we need to check on. Learning to take a breath and focus on and respond to their needs gives circle participants a sense of control, agency, and comfort. This practice helps them build an inner Nurturer, and by responding to their Vulnerable Self with care and attention, they rewire themselves toward secure attachment with all its benefits: more happiness, more agency, and more resilience in the here and now.

The Nurturer is a resource state inside us that can be a safe harbor in the storms of life and a place to refuel and recharge, much like children do at the knee of their caregiver, before we venture forth again to meet the challenges of the world.

The Protector

The Protector is the healthy role that replaces the Critic. The Protector is the boundary setter, noticing and stopping the poisonous toxicity of the Critic, and replacing it with messages of worthiness, value, and dignity. The Protector sets boundaries against unrealistic and unhealthy expectations, comparison, and any form of judgment. This role tells us it is okay to try new things, go at our own pace, not have all the answers, and have needs and preferences. The Protector listens to these needs and champions our voice in the world in the form of clear requests, direct communication, and healthy boundaries. By telling us that our body, mind, and spirit are valuable and deserve to be treated as such, and by helping us feel that we can set healthy limits to guard us against physical, emotional, and mental harm, the Protector helps us feel safe and loved. In this way it is just as essential as the Nurturer.

When three-year-old Heidi says “no” to a hug from Grandma, and Grandma responds by praising her for saying what she wants, Heidi beams happily. Bodhi starts to learn a sense of safety and self-control when his mom sets limits on hitting or kicking when he is upset and teaches him how to use his words or express anger in healthy physical ways. Robin stops sitting shyly in the corner when a teacher in the play area helps him ask for the toy he wants. Older children develop a sense of healthy inner power and ability when they are encouraged to speak to a child or adult if their feelings get hurt, when this behavior is modeled for them, or when they are simply allowed to choose activities based on their own interests.

Setting healthy boundaries in a household through limits on use of electronics, set times for daily activities, and age-appropriate responsibilities such as chores and pet care all contribute to a necessary development of autonomy and individual identity. Instead of doing everything for children or keeping them from ever failing, “gently encouraging our children to problem solve and try different methods when they face failure shows them that it’s worth the effort to try our hardest in all we do, but more, it gives the opportunity for them to find in us a safe place when they do fail.”[4] Resilient children have had Protectors and Nurturers who model that it is absolutely okay to fail and how to bounce back. We do this by teaching children that failure is a normal part of life and an opportunity to grow, to learn, and to try again.

The safety we gain is not the belief that nothing bad will happen, which is the idea that fuels the Cycle of Suffering. Instead, the Protector helps us maintain connection to choices, possibilities, and authentic relationships amid difficult times. We are safe because we have inner resource states that know how to respond and effectively care for us and help us connect with others who can help. That is the tremendous gift the Protector brings: a vast freedom and power sourced from being our authentic self.

The Resilient Self

A few years ago, IKEA conducted an experiment on bullying by putting two nearly identical houseplants into classrooms for a thirty-day period. Each plant was given the same amount of sunlight and water, but one plant was given loving verbal messages every day, while the other was subjected to mean and harsh comments. After thirty days, the results were startling: the plant that received kindness was thriving, while the one that had been bullied was wilting and ill.[5] A video showcasing this experiment for Antibullying Day went viral, in large part because it illustrated the impact of negative messaging—an impact that can often go unseen in people.

Though the experiment has now been debunked, the wilted plant provides a useful metaphor for the Vulnerable Self. Whenever I’m seeing a client whose Critic is activated, and they express frustration at their own lack of success and thriving, I remind them that these symptoms are simply a barometer of how much nurturance and protection they are receiving. Like the wilting plant, the outward signs of debilitation are an indicator of the quality of care received, not of something innately wrong or unfixable. The Vulnerable Self feels overwhelmed by difficult emotions, unclear about needs and desires, and helpless to stop its downward spiral into anxiety, depression, or stress. Why? Because its providers’ responses have bullied, shamed, and neglected it rather than consoling, understanding, and supporting it in taking useful and empowering action.

Resilience is rooted in love. The Resilient Self is born of the union of Protector and Nurturer working side by side to parent, champion, and develop the Vulnerable Self. These roles act as a powerful, loving, healing balm that revives the ailing Vulnerable Self. This magical awakening is clearly visible; eyes regain a sparkle, genuine smiles and laughter are more present, tears can flow more freely, and crying—now that it’s not interrupted by criticism and is met instead with compassion—produces greater release and peace. The mind calms as the constant litany of inner abuse is replaced with compassion and affirming thoughts. There is greater well-being as self-care becomes habitual. Initial fears about setting boundaries begin to abate and are replaced by a sense of pride and achievement, as the Nurturer and Protector foster the courage to speak up for oneself. Positive affirmation, celebration of successes, and seeing failure as opportunity all transform the world into a place that feels safer and more exciting to explore. Real joy, contentment, and satisfaction emerge from this transformation deep within.

A Resilient Self knows these things: it’s okay to feel whatever is coming up; how to acknowledge, express, respond to, and gain wisdom from all its emotions and sensations; how to translate inner workings into clear needs and requests; it’s safe and possible to have clear and loving limits; how to dream and take steps toward actualizing dreams; they are enough and lovable just as they are; how to accept life’s ups and downs; they can move through life with greater ease and a sense of inner safety; to define their own values and sense of happiness rather than living by external standards; to enjoy the simple things in life; to experience happiness, pleasure, and beauty; to be freer of shame; to have more allowance of differences; to be able to have generative conflict; to be able to forgive; to feel a sense of being able to help themselves and obtain help in hard times; to grow throughout their lifetime.

The Resilient Self is a self that is ever evolving, each day awakening to a face in the mirror that is opening to greater joy and purpose, through the support of its fiercely loving inner companions, determined to “save the only life [they] could save.”[6]

When the roles of Nurturer and Protector are working together to bring back the joy to the face in the mirror, those two roles are working toward a great part of our life purpose and the most worthwhile task because you have the power to make that one life exceptionally beautiful. Imagine looking in the mirror and knowing you truly are responsible for bringing the joy back into your own life and heart. What a miracle! What a great life purpose.

The Soul Self

When you recognize that there is a voice in your head that pretends to be you and never stops speaking, you are awakening out of your unconscious identification with the stream of thinking. When you notice that voice, you realize that who you are is not the voice—the thinker—but the one who is aware of it.

—ECKHART TOLLE

The quote above is what I turn to when describing the experience of our Soul Self. As we engage with and develop the first three roles in the Circle of Resilience, we are learning to shift and change our habitual thoughts and responses to ourselves. This is powerful medicine, but the Soul Self invites us to take a vast leap beyond identification with any role. The Soul Self is an experience of ourselves as separate from and vaster than our mind and personality. It can also feel like being a part of something much larger that allows us to access greater wisdom, peace, and a sense of continuity and belonging with all of life.

The Soul Self may emerge spontaneously as we build this internal triad of strength, or it may come as a result of deliberate practices that connect us more closely with awe, wonder, spirituality, unconditional love, deep wisdom, and interconnectedness with all of life—signposts that we are encountering the Soul Self. Unlike the other aspects we have developed, the Soul Self isn’t necessarily about building a healthy sense of personal self or ego. Instead, the stronger inner structure that we have built up can now allow us to open and surrender to our smallness in this vast cosmos, the spaces in between our thoughts and emotions or the quiet, vast awareness behind. Instead of being overwhelmed or terrified by the unknown, we can find a peaceful surrender to the mystery of life unfolding.

The Soul Self has been accessed across cultures through spiritual practices like meditation, prayer, or chanting; belief in and connection with larger cosmic figures and spiritual guides, such as God, Yahweh, Allah, Orishas, Christ, and Buddha; our own inner, higher, wise, unconditionally loving self; a hands-on connection to nature and her cycles in earth-based traditions; or through activities that evoke a peak state connecting us to awe, like beholding vast, awe-inspiring vistas, such as the Grand Canyon. We are also transported to this state through exquisite sounds, such as Australian aboriginal didgeridoos, Native American drums, the wail of the qawwali singer from Pakistan, the symphonies of Beethoven, or the raw emotion of Mahalia Jackson belting out a hymn. Great works of art and architecture lift us there too, like Picasso’s masterful sculptures, Istanbul’s high-rising minarets and luminous domes, the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia’s brilliant, light-filled interior, and Monet’s wall-length reflections on water lilies. We can also get there through the miracle of witnessing a birth, the wonder of communing with nature as we encounter dolphins in the wild, or the simple ecstasy of the first wildflowers signaling a return of spring.

All of these experiences have one thing in common: they are transcendent. They take us out of ourselves, out of a sense of our own personality and everyday concerns, and for a moment or longer they connect us to an energy that leaves us more grateful, uplifted, and connected to love and wisdom. They help us know that we are whole.

Science describes this experience as accessing the gamma brain wave, which is most frequently observed in the brains of long-term meditators. The gamma brain wave creates a harmony among all our senses, leading to exceptional creative thinking, innovative solutions, and a greater sense of inner peace and coherence. The typical person will only experience a gamma wave very briefly—for example, when we’ve solved a problem we’ve been grappling with—and for a split second all our sensory inputs come together in harmony. The brainwaves of long-term meditators, however, show gamma all the time as a lasting trait, no matter what they are doing. “It’s their everyday state of mind,” says Daniel Goleman, a researcher on meditation and brain waves.[7] Remarkably, meditating on compassion raises the gamma brain wave dramatically in just a few seconds. This tells us that if we can practice this connection more regularly and work with it more deeply, it shifts from a momentary alteration of state to a vast, endless resource that allows us to truly begin to be “spiritual beings having a human experience.”[8]

Developing a connection to the Soul Self provides a vast, beautiful net that catches our perfectly imperfect selves and teaches us how to bring an equanimous presence, unconditional love, greater meaning, and serenity to the ebb, flow, unpredictability, and mystery of life. Profound courage, great wisdom, extraordinary acts of kindness, devotion, service, deep appreciation, and miraculous discoveries are born of this state, which always stays connected to the extraordinary gift we have of being alive. We are no longer simply a mind or body teeming with emotions and sensations, no longer simply loving or lovable. Our lives are not lived just for ourselves. We are one with life. We are love.

How the Roles Work Together

As we build each of these selves inside of us and respond to our Vulnerable Self through them, we are engaging in the Circle of Resilience and relating to ourselves and the world as joyously resilient. The joyously resilient self combines the resilient traits of a securely attached person with the resilient spiritual perspective of unconditional love, kindness, and interconnection with all of life. As joyous and resilient beings, we:

- Cultivate a higher emotional intelligence and are capable of understanding and expressing our emotions constructively.

- Send and receive healthy expressions of intimacy.

- Draw healthy, appropriate, and reasonable boundaries when required.

- Feel secure being alone as well as with a companion.

- Tend to have a generally positive view of relationships and personal interactions.

- Are more likely to handle interpersonal difficulties in stride.

- Discuss issues to solve problems, rather than to attack a person.

- Are capable of grieving, learning through failures and endings, and moving on.

- Are connected to something larger than our own personalities and emotions.

- Have greater peace and ease being with the unknown and unpredictable.

- Turn inward to find peace, love, worth, and our inner compass.

- Know that pleasure, play, fun, and rest are intrinsic to our health and happiness.

- Have access to and freely engage in creative expression.

- Learn from others, ask for help, and are capable of making decisions based on what has heart and meaning for us.

- Believe that our well-being is interconnected to the well-being of others and our planet.

- Take active steps to create a world where all beings thrive.

As we become joyously resilient, we will continue to have good days and hard days. We will make mistakes, forget to care for ourselves, get upset with others, feel lost or down, and feel overwhelmed at times. The difference will be our ability to utilize our inner resource states of Nurturer, Protector, Soul Self, and Resilient Self to return again and again to our inner compass, which unerringly points toward true north—a place of unconditional love and joy. This is the promise contained in the upcoming chapters, as we rebuild from the inside out and start a lifelong practice of joyous resilience.

7

The Nurturer

You, yourself, as much as anybody else in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

—SHARON SALZBERG, LOVINGKINDNESS: THE REVOLUTIONARY ART OF HAPPINESS

The longing for the consistent, stable love of a Nurturer must be universal. We all long for safe, loving arms that provide a caring refuge when we are in need; an attuned presence that is responsive to our feelings and needs; loving acceptance that understands and encourages us to be ourselves; the knowledge that we can explore the world and always have a secure emotional base to return to. We are born wired to connect, and we thrive when our caregivers are attachment figures who embody a harmonious weaving of safety, connection, and respect for our autonomy. This grounding in compassion is woven into every aspect of our life as we are freed to express our creativity, go after our greatest desires, try out innovative ideas, and share our vision.

Perhaps you are longing for these relationships but believe they are too good to be true. Maybe you already have them in your life, and you rely on them so heavily that they become overburdened; or maybe you have a difficult time taking in the love being offered to you. These are all good reasons to begin building a relationship with the nurturing companion inside you. Before we meet the inner Nurturer that is tailor-made for you, let’s go over three essential “superpowers” every Nurturer must have that are the secret ingredient in fostering secure attachment.

Superpower #1: AccCCeptance, or the Loving Lap

You’ve probably heard the saying, “What you resist, persists.” This applies when we get in a situation that brings up uncomfortable emotions, and we resist by saying over and over again: I don’t want to be angry. I hate being sad. I just need to get over my fear. I don’t know what my problem is. All of these responses are our understandable yet unsuccessful attempt to push against what we are feeling, in the belief that relief lies in simply hurdling over our discomfort. After all, who doesn’t want to feel better? And especially to feel better now!

Unfortunately, those feelings are our childlike Vulnerable Self, and we just deepened that self’s anxiety and emotional stress by pushing the child away with the sharp reprimand What’s wrong with you? Why are you bothering me? Just get over it. Enter the Nurturer, or the Vulnerable Self whisperer, whose first response to emotional upheaval is to take a deep breath or two (or ten). Those breaths are not only slowing our heart rate and regulating our nervous system, helping to physiologically relax our activated system; they are also shifting our thinking from the flight-fight mode of our animal brain (occiput) to the ability to access our reasoning mind (cerebral cortex). The message our nurturing self sends through our being with each breath is: I am here with you, and I am present and open to exactly where you are. The Nurturer is presenting a wide, welcoming lap to a Vulnerable Self that might be upset, crying, fearful, stuck, or helpless. The Nurturer knows that by accepting these feelings as they are, a great healing and calm begins to occur. We relax when we can just be ourselves, and it is only then that we are ready to receive further assistance. The paradox is that in order to truly feel better, rather than temporarily distracting ourselves, we need the Nurturer’s first magical ingredient: unconditional acceptance.

Superpower #2: Lovingkindness, or Soft Eyes

Lovingkindness is an attitude of “tender and benevolent affection.”[1] When we receive lovingkindness, we know that not only are we being met where we are, but there is an “unconditional positive regard” toward us. This is powerful medicine that can dissolve the shame that makes us believe we are bad, that we must hide our “flaws,” and that no one would love us if they knew our faults. If shame looks like the Vulnerable Self, shrinking with downcast eyes, the Nurturer not only offers her lap but gently lifts up our chin, presenting a warm, open face and a soft, loving gaze that beams a message of kindness.

If you find yourself thinking How will that help? How will we learn from our mistakes or even know right from wrong if we are always met with kindness? then you may be confusing lovingkindness with enabling or indulgence. Lovingkindness simply means that the Nurturer stays in touch with the humanity and essential goodness of every human being. The Nurturer sees each person as a perfectly imperfect human on a journey of learning and growth, and a natural part of that process is to make mistakes along the way—yes, even big ones. While the Nurturer knows that certain actions or behaviors may be harmful to others and deserve correction or require amends, this self never forgets that people themselves are neither bad nor wrong. The Nurturer stays connected to the wholeness of each person and always remembers that they are worthy of being met with kindness and understanding, providing the secure ground upon which true learning and change can occur.

Superpower #3: Compassion, or Helpful Hands

Compassion is the ability to understand and feel another’s emotions, combined with the desire to help. Unlike pity, which might motivate assistance from a place of feeling superior to another person, compassion is rooted in a sense of our shared suffering as part of the human condition. The compassionate Nurturer seeks to understand the feelings and needs of the Vulnerable Self, sees those feelings and needs as valid and normal, and offers to assist in a way that is respectful and empowering. The compassionate Nurturer brings helpful hands that accompany a deep listening presence and an open-hearted attempt to understand and meet needs. Sometimes our Vulnerable Self simply wants to be listened to; at other times, overt action is required, like a warm hug, a soothing cup of tea, a plate of nourishing food, flowers to brighten our day, a phone check-in to help us feel less lonely, a ride to a difficult appointment, or a comforting presence at our side when a loved one is sick.

The Nurturer is in respectful dialogue with the Vulnerable Self and does not presume to know what is needed; instead, the Nurturer asks the part that is hurting what would feel good, and tailors the help accordingly. This allows the Vulnerable Self to retain a sense of dignity and personal power, which makes it easier to receive and benefit from nurturance. The Nurturer teaches the Vulnerable Self that everyone needs help sometimes, asking for help is power, and receiving help is what allows us to be more resilient.

Imagine a day in your life with a nurturing presence inside you. Let’s say on one particular morning you wake up after a restless night of sleep. You are a little tired and already slightly stressed about the day ahead, and all you want to do is press snooze on the alarm and fall back to sleep. The Nurturer is the part of you that notices this slight strain and uses superpower number 1 to accept it: “I know you had a hard night’s sleep. I’m sorry. That is hard.” Superpower number 2 counteracts any ideas like “What did I do wrong?” or “Why can’t I get a fresh start?” and helps you take the blame off yourself, knowing you did nothing wrong. The Nurturer moves right to the third superpower—compassionate response. “What do you need this morning? How can I help the day start a little more gently or restfully for you?” The gentle understanding of this kind inner presence, and the permission to be exactly where you are, start to melt the stress away and keep anxiety from building up.

You find yourself able to ease out of bed, and the Nurturer attunes to your body’s cues, inviting you to decide if it is more relaxing to have a slower start with breakfast and getting dressed, or encouraging you to start your workout gently, knowing that once you begin you may naturally pick up the pace. This loving voice is there on the commute to work as well, touching in with you and helping you set intentions for the day that match your reduced energy. The Nurturer is present when you make your work list for the day, reducing the tasks if possible, giving you permission to go a bit slower, or reminding you to hydrate and eat to keep your energy up during the day. These check-ins throughout the day and the feeling of a nurturing presence by your side, encouraging you to take care of yourself, produce a subtle sense of well-being. You may be tired, but you are not crabby or tense; instead, it is as if a wash of love surrounds you.

In the afternoon, it’s the Nurturer who reminds you to close your eyes for fifteen minutes in your office or take a quick nap in your car, allowing you to feel refreshed for your end-of-day meetings. The Nurturer models permission and makes you feel proud of yourself for practicing self-care. The positive affirmation lifts your mood and allows you to feel good about how you showed up today. By the time you head home, your Nurturer is thinking ahead and is once again attuned to your energy, so it reminds you it’s okay to ask for help by asking your partner to handle dinner duty for the evening. Knowing you have been immersed in technology for most of the day, it is the Nurturer who gently nudges you toward running a bath instead of zoning out in front of the television, and it suggests engaging in your regular gratitude practice before getting into bed. You find yourself grateful for the inner companion who changed the tone of your day from start to finish by accepting and meeting you exactly where you are.

Now, if you think this sounds too ideal, like someone else’s fantasy life, or seems like it would take too much time, I want to remind you that a different version of this voice has always been there with you anyway. The voice of the Neglector has been focusing on other people, outer distractions, and guilt about self-care, which creates more work, takes more time, and leads to greater stress and dis-ease in your body. The companion is always there; it’s simply a matter of choosing how we want to direct its energy and whether we want to practice and cultivate self-neglect or self-nurturance. It was your Nurturer that picked up this book and invested the time and attention to learn how to better take care of you. The part of you that is kind, attentive, and empathic toward other people, animals, or the planet is the very same part that has the capacity to be responsive to you. It is this spark of loving energy that we are going to call upon now and invite to grow and become a force inside you—a force that can bring back an astonishing amount of joyful life energy that has lain dormant for years.

Understanding the Nurturer

The Nurturer archetype has been present throughout cultures across the centuries. Traditionally depicted as a maternal figure, it can also be envisaged as loving male energy, the benevolence of trees or the earth, caring animal figures, or even a benevolent, formless light. The Nurturer embodies the safe embrace that receives us with warm attention, caring eyes, soothing words, and acts of service like bringing us food, covering us with a blanket, or taking care of other needs. The Nurturer helps us feel at home within ourselves, where “home” is feeling safe to be who we are, comfortable in our own skin, and able to express ourselves. Along with the superpowers of acceptance, lovingkindness, and compassionate attunement, your inner Nurturer may also possess particular qualities that you most need at this time in your life; for example, Nurturers may be wise, playful, or affirming.

The Nurturer is the love and compassion that is already inside you. If you have ever comforted a friend in need, held a child as it cried, hugged someone who was sad, brought food to someone who was hungry, offered to help a neighbor, taken care of an elderly person, or simply felt empathy for anyone suffering, you were accessing your inner Nurturer. The difficulty for most people is turning this attention toward themselves without guilt and with a sense of loving care and healthy responsibility for oneself. Activating the inner Nurturer begins with simply recognizing that we too need this energy directed toward us. It may help to visualize our Vulnerable Self as a young child in need of help and loving attention, which can allow us to begin to soften. Other people may find that relating to themselves as a dear friend or a younger sibling can help switch them into a nurturing mode. As we learned in part I, trauma and cultural conditioning can make it difficult for us to access inner permission to bring this attentive focus to ourselves. This is where creating a model of an inner Nurturer comes in handy.

When we begin to develop a template for our inner Nurturer, we might want to look at our past encounters with anyone who may have carried this energy. The power of a positively attuned relationship is extraordinary. Research in trauma and resilience has proven that access to even one kind, loving person during our formative years can have a lasting positive impact on our overall health, well-being, and sense of self. If no one in our own life provided such nurturance, we can look to people outside our immediate circle, such as a friend’s parent, an affectionate or caring family figure whom we may have heard stories about, nurturing characters in books or media, or spiritual figures who represent unconditional love and acceptance. Sometimes our relationships with people have been so fraught and painful that as we first begin to open to the experience of nurturance, it is easiest to receive the loving energy present in nature or animals, such as the broad, solid presence of an oak tree, or the loyal gaze and welcome of the family dog. Finally, we may need for our nurturance to be embodied in no form at all. Simply visualizing light or focusing on pure sound, such as the primordial Om or the low gong of Tibetan bowls, can allow us to drop into a more still, open, and nurturing state.

Once the particular form we connect to is identified, we strengthen the experience of nurturance by enacting gestures that transmit care through our whole body. I have mentioned the embrace a lot; getting into the posture of a Nurturer can look like bringing our hands to our heart and belly, cradling a stuffed animal or pillow, or holding a small object in our hands, each of these gestures representing the Nurturer holding our Vulnerable Self.

Here’s something to try now: Take one hand and place it in front of you, palm facing up. Take a few deep breaths in and out, imagining that your exhalations are filling your hand with a caring, comforting energy. If you are visual, you may imagine that this energy has a particular soothing color, perhaps green or pink, or that your hand is the hand of someone very trustworthy and empathetic in your life.

As you stay connected to this loving energy, bring your other hand in front of you with the palm up, and let this hand fill with the energy of what has been troubling you. Perhaps this hand holds your anxiety, irritation, or sadness. Take a deep breath and bring the nurturing hand to the vulnerable one in a gesture of warmth and friendship. The nurturing hand might gently support and cup the anxious one from beneath, lie warmly on top of it, or even hold the other hand. The gesture conveys the three superpowers in one: acceptance of the vulnerable hand, loving and nonjudgmental presence, and a willingness to help when and if needed. As you take a few deep breaths in that position, sending warmth and care from one hand to the other, notice what impact that has. Don’t look for a complete solution or a radical change, although that may happen. Simply notice any shift at all as you bring the nurturing presence to the troubled place.

Each of these gestures is an ancient signal of acceptance, kindness, and compassionate action, recognizable by our primal brain that is activated when we are triggered. We respond fastest to bodily cues, and the use of nurturing gestures can help shift our state as quickly and profoundly as a crying child is soothed by the reassuring smile and sturdy hug of a caregiver.

The gestures we just described can be accompanied by simple statements of reassurance that develop and hone our inner nurturing voice. Some examples are provided below. Notice which ones you feel most comforted or relieved by. That’s a cue from your Vulnerable Self, letting you know you are on the right track. Think of this list as a place to start, and one you will add to as we go on.

The Nurturer sounds like:

- I am here for you.

- You can tell me anything.

- I don’t want to judge you, I only want to love you.

- I accept you as you are.

- I accept all your feelings.

- Your needs and feelings matter.

- You have my attention.

- I am sorry you are hurting.

- I want to take care of your health and your body.

- I want to help you feel good about yourself.

- Your happiness matters.

- I will help you make time for work, rest, and play.

- It’s okay to be sad, angry, lonely, frustrated, and scared.

- I believe in you.

- You are allowed to have hard days.

- Even when you aren’t at your best, I don’t forget your light.

- It will be okay.

- We can find a way together.

- It’s good to ask for help.

- You don’t have to do it alone.

- Let’s celebrate your successes.

- I bring you back to gratitude and appreciation.

The inner Nurturer is responsible for:

- Physical care—hygiene, routine checkups, health care, diet, massage, connection with nature, exercise, sleep, a clean and safe environment

- Emotional care—acceptance, identifying and expressing emotions, identifying and responding to needs, warmth and concern when in difficulty

- Mental care—positive and kind affirmation, celebrating little and big successes, avoiding binary thinking, creating self-care lists, calming the mind, taking pride in self-care

The Nurturer produces:

- Greater mental and emotional calm

- Healthy self-esteem and self-regulation

- Better routines

- Greater energy, joy, and happiness

What Nurturance Is Not

It’s worth noting at this stage the difference between nurturance on the one hand and self-centeredness, overindulgence, and lack of accountability on the other. The most common misconception people have about self-nurturance is that being kinder to ourselves and prioritizing self-care will cause us to become lazy, unproductive, and oblivious to our impact on others. Compassion for oneself has become thoroughly confused with selfishness and with the binary thinking that we can either be selfless (take care of others) or selfish (focus on ourselves). This either-or thinking situates us in a constant and unwinnable battle of wanting to be connected, yet believing that connection can only occur at the sacrifice of ourselves. We wind up feeling overwhelmed and resentful as we are stretched too thin, but we feel guilty and ashamed if we think about taking care of ourselves.

Self-nurturance is the manifestation of a brand-new paradigm, not either-or, me or them; instead, it’s a both-and approach. Self-nurturance means we can take care of ourselves as a part of, not instead of, being in relationships. Returning to the idea of our Vulnerable Self being like an inner child, we know that it is our responsibility to attune to the needs of our child and that children need regular routines so they can be emotionally and physically regulated and feel safe and secure because they have a general sense of what to expect. This security and regularity helps them show up at school, on the playground, or at the dinner table feeling alert, equable, and able to engage and bring their best self forward. Taking care of a child’s personal needs helps them thrive in the external, interpersonal world. The same can be said of the relationship between our Nurturer and our Vulnerable Self. We all know the difference between showing up to our job after we are rested and have had time off versus the day-in-day-out slog of having had little or no time to tend to our self.

Healthy nurturance is not the equivalent of the overly permissive parent who complies with all their child’s wishes without regard to their emotional regulation—letting them have all the sweets they want or watch endless TV and go to bed at any hour. The nurturing parent is attuned to the needs of the child, and provides age-appropriate activities, is kind and firm, and balances caregiving with understanding and respecting the child’s needs for autonomy. The Nurturer does not impose their will on the Vulnerable Self (do what I say because I said so), nor does it simply try to placate emotions and needs at any price (do whatever you want). As our own Nurturer, we are practicing being deeply interested in our own needs and feelings, and caring for ourselves in a way that takes into account not only the present moment but—like any good parent—the overall picture as well. For example, the Nurturer might let us know that after a long, hard day we might need comforting words and permission to have a gentler evening, and to make healthier choices on our own behalf like taking a walk instead of watching television for several hours or moderating our choices, like drinking one glass of wine rather than drowning our sorrows in an entire bottle.

Connecting with Your Inner Nurturer

We can shift our feeling state by imagining, visualizing, and practicing our way into a new experience. Doing this through body-centered, creative, playful approaches allows us to have a felt experience of what we are looking for, and it creates brand-new synapses in the brain. These new pathways turn into new thoughts and feelings, which, when practiced for long enough, turn into new beliefs and positive emotional states we have lasting access to; and when we act upon them, new behaviors. This is the journey of inner nurturing. First we awaken to our neglect; then we begin to invite, activate, and build the sensations, feelings, and beliefs of an inner Nurturer, and then we allow this Nurturer to practice caring for our Vulnerable Self, knowing that each time we do, we’re becoming a better parent to ourselves and more resilient.

In this section we will go through a series of deep and playful exercises that will allow you to begin this process. In so doing, we will follow the journey of Kamal, an Afghan American man who came to therapy to learn how to be a better father to his young son. Through this process, Kamal realized he had to reclaim and redefine his concept of nurturing.

EXERCISE 1: ENVISIONING YOUR NURTURER

Time required: thirty minutes to an hour of quiet, uninterrupted time

Items needed: scissors, glue, construction paper, magazines or old family albums, printed pictures, colored pens

In this exercise, we will create a template of the Nurturer that is personalized to you, and we will practice having the Nurturer meet you where you are and identify and respond to your needs.

Start by thinking of images that embody nurturance for you. You might want to spend some time looking at photographs, perhaps of you with a loving caregiver, or to cut out pictures from magazines or print them out from websites, that showcase aspects of this loving energy. Use glue to affix this image or images to construction paper. You are also welcome to add words, phrases, or quotes that feel particularly nurturing to you. Whatever you wind up creating, set aside a special place in your home for it, where you are able to see or sit with it daily and develop a connection with it.

When Kamal and I found a picture of two wizened hands holding two childlike ones, he was surprised that tears welled up in his eyes. He realized that the image reminded him of being a child, standing beside his Baba’s (grandfather’s) wheelchair. Baba would hold Kamal’s little hands tight within his own gnarled, strong ones, and that gesture left Kamal feeling safe and loved.

There may be nurturing qualities you are drawn to, precisely because you have never experienced them in your life. Let yourself include images and phrases that evoke these aspects as well. For Kamal, there were two such images. The first was of a young man crying in the arms of his father; the second showed a man tenderly holding a woman in his arms. These were aspects of masculine nurturing he had never seen exhibited in his own family and that had been culturally denigrated as weak and emasculating. Yet they both held within them the very qualities that Kamal recognized he needed in order to express his love to his wife and son, and to receive their love back.

As a young child, Kamal had been emotionally expressive and affectionate with his parents. Yet as his father consistently relayed to him the multigenerational messages of toxic masculinity, such as “boys don’t cry,” or “you’ll become a sissy if you spend so much time with women” whenever he wanted to be close to his mother, he learned to shut down his emotions, to cut himself off from his natural desire for connection, and to devalue women. Years of being disconnected from his inner self had caused him to be prone to angry outbursts and a chronic state of frustration. He had been exceedingly excited to have a child, but he soon discovered that his young son was already fearful and distant with him, as Kamal replicated the patterns of parenting he had learned from his father. Kamal’s wife had long complained of his distant mood and lack of affection, and he had come to therapy at her behest, realizing that if he did not address the root of his anger at home, he was at risk of losing his marriage.

Though he had strongly mixed feelings about picking these images, we used them as a way to give his psyche permission to simply choose what it was drawn to, knowing we could come to an understanding and make a decision about it later. Sometimes the very images that are hardest for us to let ourselves choose are those with aspects we unconsciously have long needed to express and allow. Over time, connecting with each of these pictures allowed Kamal to reconnect with the part of himself that could express his emotions vulnerably, demonstrate love and care through his affectionate attention, and receive that very care in turn. This process opened Kamal to new possibilities of what he wanted fatherhood, marriage, and being a man to look like for himself and his son.

EXERCISE 2: GIVING THE NURTURER A VOICE

Time required: fifteen to thirty minutes

Items needed: journal and pen

Once you’ve picked the images in exercise 1, it’s time to give words to the nurturing energy they contain. The Nurturer’s voice is shaped by the three superpowers: acceptance of where we are, lovingkindness, and respectful action. If the image you picked is someone you know, you can think of any comforting phrases they shared with you, or imagine giving words to the energy their loving actions conveyed.

Kamal was able to connect the image of his grandfather holding his hands and the feeling of safety and being loved that memory conveyed with these words: “Kamal, you are safe. I love you and I am here with you.” With the images you have chosen, take a few moments to see what sensations (warmth, relaxation, lightness, opening) they evoke in you, as well as emotions. If this image could speak, what are the first things it would say? In Kamal’s case it was helpful to go over the compassionate phrases listed earlier in this chapter. As he read them out loud, we noticed which ones resonated most by paying attention to those that produced the most relaxation in his body or evoked a positive emotional response. Those became his go-to statements to start practicing a nurturing voice.

See if you can create a list of at least five to ten phrases that you respond positively to, and put them up where you can easily see and access them. For example, you can put them on sticky notes in areas you frequent, such as your bathroom mirror. Phrases like “take a deep breath,” “you are loved,” “have a great day,” or “take some time to rest today” are simply loving reminders from the Nurturer. They’re also a way to begin stopping for a moment and making sure you’re paying attention to your body and well-being. To deepen the felt experience, say the phrase out loud or in your mind as you inhale with a hand on your heart or any part of your body that you feel like most needs to receive this care. On your exhale, imagine the message is moving through your blood vessels and permeating your whole body.

EXERCISE 3: YOUR SAFE SPACE

Time required: five minutes or longer

Items needed: journal and pen

You can find a full guided version of this exercise online at www.anjulisherinmft.com.

This safe space visualization has a threefold purpose:

1. To create (perhaps for the first time) a place that allows us to feel protected, easeful, and free to be ourselves

2. To give us a nurturing tool we can use at any time to shift out of stress and overwhelm into ease

3. To provide us with a secure base, within which we can be more receptive to nurturance

Many of us have had few or no experiences of a safe space of our own that is a haven from stress and suffering. Others have such busy lives that chances to rest are infrequent, much less the chance to get in touch with our innermost thoughts, feelings, and needs. This exercise begins to correct that deficiency by not requiring any external change of environment, although it may motivate you to gradually invite more of what brings you pleasure, ease, and comfort into your home or office space.

There is no right or wrong way to do this visualization. Even if your experience is mild or subtle the first few times you do this exercise, keep practicing, and you will find that the feeling-sense of being in your safe space will deepen over time.

Meditation: Close your eyes and take three deep breaths, relaxing all the muscles of your body with each breath. Then let yourself go to your very most favorite, safe, relaxing place. This is a place just for you. You may choose a space you have actually been to, or you can base it on a beautiful painting or image you like of an environment you want to experience. Let it be somewhere in nature if possible, perhaps by the ocean, out in a flowering meadow, or deep amid the trees. Let yourself be there now with all your senses: feeling the air move around you, noticing the light of the sun or the moon, listening if there are any gentle sounds, like water, wind, or birdsong. There may be a scent in the air, like the fragrance of trees, flowers, or the sea breeze. Your sensory immersion can be greatly enhanced by taking steps ahead of time to add sounds and scents that match your preferred landscape, such as a recording of ocean waves or a forest-scented candle.

With every breath you take, let yourself deepen into this experience. Notice how you feel in your body, and let all of you begin to relax and become even more at ease. Know that this place is perfectly safe, and nothing and no one can enter it without your permission. Feel free to explore or play or even rest in this space and do exactly what you need. Notice how the environment and all its aspects are there to nurture and comfort you and to bring you joy and peace. Take it in with every breath, knowing that nothing is needed of you now except to continue relaxing and receive. You may stay here for as long as you like, knowing that this place is yours and that you can return to it any time when you need to shift your state by entering a calm, relaxing place.

You may end the meditation at this point and simply journal about your experience or draw or collage an image of your safe space. If you’d like to continue to deepen the experience, continue to stay in your safe space and go on to the next meditation.

EXERCISE 4: TURNING TOWARD YOUR INNER NURTURER

Time required: ten minutes or longer

Items needed: journal and pen

This meditation is an essential tool to practice connecting with your inner Nurturer, speaking and responding to yourself in this role, and learning to receive nurturance. You can find a full guided version of this meditation online at www.anjulisherinmft.com.

Meditation: Find a place to sit and relax, and enter your safe space. Take a few deep breaths in and out, knowing that you are getting ready to meet a wise, nurturing being who is so happy to support you in all that is troubling you, and in your hopes and dreams.

In a moment, you will see in the distance your loving, nurturing guide approaching you. You may see a light or a soft, radiant energy that feels safe, warm, and welcoming, even from afar. The closer it gets, the more you can feel this energy of soft love emanating from your guide, and slowly you may even see their form. It might look like the Nurturer you have been connecting with through your exercises, or it might look a bit different. Invite your guide to come sit next to you, wherever feels most comfortable. Slowly notice how their being radiates warmth, comfort, gentleness, and kindness. Perhaps you feel it in the warmth of their eyes, their kind smile, or the energy that emanates from them. If it feels comfortable, you can even invite them to hold your hand, put an arm around you, or you can rest your head in their lap. When you are ready, let yourself tell this being about what brought you to this journey toward resilience and what your heart has been seeking. Know that they are listening with no judgment, only acceptance and support. When you are done, take in their love and acceptance in response.

Next, take a few deep breaths again, relaxing any tension in the body. Now it’s time to let your Nurturer know if there is anything you are worried or concerned about as you move toward resilience. Let them know your fears and concerns, slowly letting your heart unburden. When you are finished, take time to take in their love, acceptance, and support as you ask for their help with this now. Begin to imagine, feel, see, sense, hear their compassionate response to all you’ve said. Breathe deeply, letting this compassionate response touch your heart and relax your body.

Before you go, the Nurturer asks you if there are any additional ways they may support you to ease your fear and advance your goals for resilience. If anything comes to mind, let them know, and again listen to and receive their response. Trust the first things that come, and know that the more you connect with your Nurturer and your inner self over time, the easier it will be to engage in this communication.

Take a final look around at this safe space and nurturing energy. Know that they are both here for you, and you may return to this connection any time you’d like to feel restored, to set down your cares and concerns, and to feel more at peace and resilient. Notice if your body feels more relaxed and alive as it is filled with the nurturing energy you have received. If you’d like your Nurturer to accompany you as you return to your external environment, simply invite them back with you now, sensing their gentle presence as a guide and a source of love and encouragement at your side throughout the day.

Slowly come back to awareness of the room you are in, until you feel wide awake, relaxed, and at ease.

Putting It All Together

With the aid of these four exercises, Kamaal was able to build a clear and personal sense of his inner Nurturer; practice pausing in stressful circumstances and using his safe space to find greater calm and ease; learn to speak and respond to himself in a nurturing voice; and begin to understand and attend to his needs. Once this base was established, we were able to use the practices at the end of this chapter and the development of the roles in the chapters ahead to go even deeper in his self-care and in developing his ability to attune to himself. For the first four weeks, by pausing each day even for a few minutes, connecting to his body and sensations, bringing in the nurturing presence, and dialoguing with himself through this energy, Kamaal’s Vulnerable Self—which had been so frustrated, overwhelmed, and shut down—began to feel calmer, happier, and more able to connect with, express, and address his underlying emotions and needs. As he was able to understand what he was feeling, he felt more in control and stronger in his ability to care for himself. Over time, Kamaal became the husband he wanted to be and the father to himself—and to his child—that he had always needed, and that had always been present inside him.

The Bigger Picture

With self-nurturance and compassion, the proof, as the saying goes, is in the pudding. Folks practicing self-compassion clearly exhibit and share the improved mood, sense of self, and well-being that point to the power of this practice. Through research we now know that when practicing compassion, our heart rate slows down, and we secrete oxytocin, the “bonding hormone,” which allows us to feel safe, connected, and caring toward others. Not only is this essential for our own sense of well-being, it also provides a biological imperative for relating to others, providing care, and fostering societies that are interdependent rather than isolated and violent.[2]

The practice of self-compassion, which is the primary practice of the Nurturer in this section, has similar results, according to self-compassion research expert Kristen Neff, with the added benefit that unlike solely building self-esteem, we no longer need to “see ourselves as perfect or better than others.”[3] Kristen’s studies have showed that “self-compassion is a powerful way to achieve emotional well-being and contentment in our lives, helping us avoid destructive patterns of fear, negativity, and isolation.” In other words, we need the practice of nurturance and self-compassion to thrive internally and to create relationships and a society that is considerate and works toward more positive impact on each other.

From a developmental standpoint, science backs up the assertion that attunement (the key skill set of a Nurturer) is the essential predictor of childhood resilience. It’s time to abandon the myth that picking up our babies when they cry, comforting them, and being aware of their needs is “spoiling” them. Instead, promptly responding to a baby’s distress during the first six months of their life by picking them up leads to four proven outcomes by the end of their first year: they cry less, learn to self-soothe, are able to receive their caregivers’ attempts at soothing more quickly, and develop a secure attachment with the caregiver, providing a solid grounding for resilience into adulthood.[4] Guess what? The same applies to our responsiveness to ourselves and each other as adults.[5] Paying attention to our distress and having a prompt and kind response most of the time leads to the same results: fewer instances of emotional upset, greater ability to bounce back from a difficult event, feeling more secure in ourselves and our relationships with others, and shifting our attachment style from anxious or avoidant to secure.

Author Nora Samaran makes a powerful point along these lines when she writes, “Violence and nurturance are two sides of the same coin. Compassion for self and compassion for others grow together and are connected; this means that men finding and recuperating the lost parts of themselves will heal everyone.”[6] This is what makes Kamal’s story so poignant, and this work of self-compassion so crucial to the times we live in. By practicing the skill of self-compassion we are helping ourselves open to the whole host of traits that not only transform our own psychobiology; they also change the psychobiology of our relationships.

How can we begin to build a world that feels like a place that is safe, connected, loving, and inclusive for us and our children, when we don’t have internal knowledge of what attuned care feels, sounds, and acts like—and that we deserve it? We deserve such a world not because we have earned it by belonging to a certain group, earning a certain amount, or being a certain gender or age or race, but as a basic standard of care. We only have to turn on the news, or look around at the state of our world, to see what happens when nurturance is not at the foundation of society. As Samaran writes, “The opposite of rape culture is nurturance culture.” When men are conditioned to think emotions are weak, they are taught to disconnect from the very traits of attunement, feeling, and providing emotional safety, love, trust, and nurturance that we as humans are wired to exhibit in order to communally thrive. Instead, by shaming fifty percent of the human population to shut down their vulnerability, we have created what Samaran describes as a culture of violence. We must instead seek a culture of nurturance and compassion that will allow us to flourish, to appreciate the beauty and richness of life even in hard times, and continue to orient ourselves and our communities toward what gives us all joy.

Your Nurturing Practices

1. If you haven’t done so already, take some time now to do exercises 1–4 in this chapter, to build your inner Nurturer and safe space and begin connecting with this part of yourself.

2. Take a few minutes each day, and then a longer chunk of time (fifteen to thirty minutes) one day per week, to pause, focus on and relax your breathing, go to your safe space, and visualize and connect with your inner Nurturer. As the inner Nurturer, ask yourself the following three questions, and answer them, either in your mind, out loud, or in your journal:

- How are you? (Answer by describing your sensations and emotions.)

- Is there anything your heart wants to share?

- Is there any way I can support you with this right now, or is listening enough?

For each of these questions, take some time for your response, and then breathe and imagine, feel, see, sense, hear, or perceive the Nurturer attuning to you and sharing anything they have to share. When in doubt, you can always practice the nurturing statements you chose earlier, or simply respond as the Nurturer saying, “I hear you. I love you and I am here for you.” If you share any needs you have, take time as the Nurturer to see if you can say yes to them in the moment or commit to meeting this need at a later time. Make a plan to meet this need, and if in doubt, get help from a loved one or counselor.

3. Once you have built this daily connection to your inner Nurturer, identify one to three areas in your life that the Nurturer can begin to assist you with. This could be setting up self-care in your daily routine, eating three healthy meals every day, setting a timer during the day to remind you to pause and take ten deep breaths to de-stress, choosing five nurturing statements you’d like to hear said out loud to yourself each day that relate to a particular area you want support in, or setting aside time to be out in nature each day.

4. Create a self-care list, based on the information you go through in the exercises in this chapter, that you can turn to in times of stress. What are the top ten things that help you feel better emotionally? See if you can have at least one or two of them be ways of emotional release that we learned from the chapter on the Vulnerable Self. For example, I let myself write out my feelings in my journal, I allow myself to listen to music and cry, or I talk things out with a close friend.

Each of these practices will build a new foundation inside you, teaching you the art of nurturing attunement: pause and notice yourself, bring a positive regard and loving acceptance to what is occurring, and identify and meet your needs in a healthy, caring manner. Get ready to feel more confident and successful in your ability to care for yourself and to be present with and supportive of others!

You may read through to the end of the book and then come back to this chapter to begin your practices, or you may complete these first before moving on. You will want to at least complete the first practice in this chapter before moving on to the practices in the next one, as they build upon each other. I encourage you to practice each chapter’s exercises over a month before moving on to the exercises in the next chapter. Perhaps practice the first exercise in each chapter for a week before adding the next, so that you cover all four exercises in a month. You may always repeat an exercise for several months before moving on, to help yourself deepen and master it.

If you’re noticing any resistance to receiving or giving nurturance as you go through these exercises, here’s a gentle reminder: if we are not used to being loved and nurtured, it can be hard to give ourselves this gift, and the voice of the Critic can come up rather strongly, making us feel guilty or avoidant. For now, simply think of any difficult emotions that arise as a chance to practice nurturance. The same rules apply: bring your acceptance and desire to understand this part of you that is having difficulty, and just allow these feelings to exist and have room. As the inner Nurturer, say, “I know you are having a hard time. I understand. Let it all out, and I will listen without judgment. If I can do anything, let me know. I am here to love you, and you can receive whenever you are ready and at whatever pace you choose.”

Here’s the beauty of nurturance: just as we would care for a child on a day when they’re having a temper tantrum or acting in ways that are frustrating, so will we continue to care for and check in with our inner selves even when we’re shutting down. It is this steady, unwavering commitment to care for ourselves when we’re stuck that will build up self-trust and allow us to dig deeper and help even our most painful parts be understood and heal over time.

Nurturing and self-compassion are a muscle, and this is a lifelong practice. Start where you are, and trust that you will see positive results more quickly than you think. You have this amazing power within your grasp that is not dependent on anyone else: the power to help yourself feel better and to put a smile on your face and a glow in the eyes of the person you see every day in the mirror. Pay attention to you. It is said that children are so wonderful because they are so responsive to us and simply want to please us and are so easily gratified by our attention. I have found our own heart is rather like that vulnerable child. Watering it with kind words and loving attention does begin to melt it. It is worth the effort. Start now. Put your hand on your heart, take three breaths in there to bring your presence to yourself, and then simply let your heart know: I love you just as you are. I am learning to nurture you. I am not perfect, and I don’t need you to be. We can love each other and care for each other just as we are. I want you to be happy. How are you? Is there anything you need?

8

The Protector

Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.

—PRENTIS HEMPHILL

If you read the last chapter and found yourself having a difficult time staying focused on yourself, your Critic may have been activated, telling you that paying attention to yourself, saying no to someone’s request, and setting limits on sharing your energy and time is selfish and bad. As you may remember from part I, the Critic is often simply trying to “protect” us from the perceived judgment of others by putting us down before they can: “Better I tell you that it’s selfish to say no than to bear the hurt of someone else saying it.” This is also an indicator that the Critic is a less mature part of ourselves that has traded living a life that reflects our deepest values, desires, and needs for one of not disappointing others, and rarely saying no, for the sake of being liked. While there may be moments in life where we have to put our own needs aside for the needs of another, such as parenting, it is also true that when this becomes a chronic pattern of assisting others to our own detriment, we are in an unsustainable journey toward burnout and dis-ease.

The Protector is the answer to the Critic. The Protector not only interrupts and puts a stop to the negative stream of self-talk but also finds a healthy and direct way to provide protection by building boundary-setting skill sets, including the art of consent, setting healthy limits, and championing our right to choose based on what has heart and meaning for us. The Protector believes each being has a right to dignity, respect, and freedom of choice around decisions pertaining to their own body, mind, emotions, spirit, physical space, finances, and any other arena pertaining to their own life. These decisions are based on each individual’s values and ethics, stemming from what matters to them. Where these areas affect other people, such as shared spaces, joint decisions on finances, raising children in a partnership, or societal guidelines on living mindfully in communities, the Protector continues to honor diverse perspectives, the importance of consent rather than force, and a standard of not causing harm in any way as we care for ourselves. (Note: Harm here on an individual level stands for physical neglect and abuse, emotional and sexual violence, and financial abuse, and on a community level it includes all the forms of oppression mentioned in part I. Where personal freedom impinges upon the ability of another to live their own life fully, then we are no longer in the role of Protector; instead we have moved into Critic as oppressor.)

Without the Protector, we might be in many relationships without ever knowing what it’s like to actually be in authentic connection—the type of relationship where our selves can be freely expressed, where expression of needs and giving and receiving of nurturance are mutual, and each person is respected in their right to say yes and no to what is aligned with their needs and desires. We lose ourselves in the maelstrom of others’ lives, high on the rush of being needed, until we crash into resentment and feeling drained time and time again. We might also respond by rigidly breaking out of the cycle by marooning ourselves on our personal island, feeling the “relief” of being free of other people’s incessant demands, yet without a way to alleviate our isolation.

The Protector is master of safety, which is the lifeblood of connection. This safety is based on a profound sense that it is every being’s right to choose for themselves and to express that choice. We can encounter any person or situation and listen for our own yes or no before we act. This is the relational equivalent of being able to fly. By cultivating a strong inner Protector, we gain the ability to have boundaries and assert them as we go. Paradoxically, these boundaries give us space to form exceptional bonds and trustworthy connections. Connection does not come at the cost of compromising ourselves. With a strong Protector, being liked and being safe no longer mean appeasing or hiding; these strategies are replaced with self-respect and a sense of dignity around our needs, values, and desires. Safety is based on speaking the truth and knowing we can care for ourselves and will not be destroyed in the face of another’s disappointment or judgment.

You may need an inner Protector if you frequently find yourself doing things for other people that they could do for themselves, letting people cross your ill-defined boundaries (or finding yourself crossing others’ boundaries), comparing yourself to others, envying other people’s successes, berating yourself for failures, oversharing with colleagues, or inappropriately putting your emotions before those of your friends and family. Alternatively, you (or someone you’re in relationship with) might be putting yourself down, calling yourself selfish or lazy, tending toward perfectionism, or not tolerating disappointing yourself or someone else.

What are boundaries? One definition of a boundary is “something that shows where an area ends and another area begins; a limit that indicates where two things become distinct from each other; and limits one sets that define acceptable behavior.”[1] Individuals have physical boundaries (limits on how much and what kind of physical contact they would like and with whom) as well as emotional boundaries (the right to think, feel, and speak for themselves as distinct from another). Boundaries help us define and share with others what our needs and limits are in any interaction, to say no to what does not feel right, and to freely say yes to what we desire. Healthy boundaries are fluid rather than rigid; that is, they are adaptable to changing situations. For example, at the start of a new relationship we might have stronger boundaries around what personal information we feel comfortable sharing, and we may wait to divulge more vulnerable information until time passes and trust is earned (our boundaries become more open). This is different from always having to be shut down, and from having no boundary or limit on our divulging without awareness of the depth of the relationship, the trust built within the relationship, and the impact such sharing can have on others and ourselves.

How do we know when boundaries are being crossed? The answer lies in the response of your Vulnerable Self, which is your consistent emotional compass. If a situation leaves you feeling anxious, uncomfortable, angry, tense, embarrassed, resentful, or put upon, these cues are letting you know it’s time to cultivate an inner Protector who can help you understand these feelings and the needs they are pointing to. These would very likely indicate a need for a limit around your time, body, resources, and energy. As you grow in this way, you will also become aware of when you may have created similar distress in others by crossing their boundaries, not asking what they want, or not respecting their right to choose or decide for themselves. This is a chance not to collapse into shame or self-judgment around this realization and instead to get excited for the higher caliber of love and support you will be bringing to others as you allow yourself to be championed by a healthy Protector.

The Protector’s primary task is to ascertain our values, needs, desires, and dreams and to set boundaries in support of these, and thus to allow us to have the thriving self, relationships, and life we so want. Success in any area of life, including boosting our resilience, is impossible to achieve or sustain without this role’s essential intervention. Without the Protector’s prioritizing and limit setting, it is rare for us to get started on anything that matters to us, whether it is as simple as cleaning out our closet, or as complex as getting going on our big creative project. We won’t feel responsibility for our own well-being; nor will we be alert and equipped to respond when our boundaries are being crossed and our emotional or physical safety is threatened. The Critic will have crushed our dreams before they even get started.

Every day, I see souls flattened and stymied by inner and outer Critics. Yet these extraordinary beings, much like the dandelion that pushes its stubborn green shoot out of cracks in the concrete, resist being obliterated and will do anything to survive. Somewhere in there, we know we need to fight for what we want, and often that inner voice only gets louder, more raucous and shrill—and even violent, until it is heard. Something inside us refuses to be defeated, even when its only outlets for pleasure or awe are reduced to substances or dissociation. The point is this: we can either support our needs, values, and desires by learning how to express them in ways that are life-affirming for us, giving us the opportunity for mature connection to others, or we can hide, shrink, fight, and distort those values and needs, finding subversive ways of meeting them. The Protector, using its superpowers, offers the most direct path: the sunlight, water, and soil for us to grow sturdily into our full selves.

Let’s look at these superpowers together.

Superpower #1: Self-Discipline

When children have caretakers who set healthy limits, such as by teaching them to turn off the television and finish their homework or to practice an instrument or sport each day, this begins to instill a habit of healthy discipline. In those moments, the seeds are planted for shifting out of short-term-reward thinking, into recognizing delayed gratification and long-term rewards. Similarly, providing children with age-appropriate routines where they gradually learn how to manage their own responsibilities without having to be reminded, such as getting dressed, doing chores, or finishing homework, teaches internal limit setting and autonomy. When a parent models this type of limit setting and teaches a child to do it for themselves, they are producing a template for the autonomy, self-discipline, and self-responsibility that are the characteristics of an inner Protector. They teach the child to set healthy boundaries within their own routines and form good habits.

As an adult, when we invest in our inner Protector and prioritize healthy, life-affirming actions and goals, we begin to build the discipline and rigor that are required to successfully navigate life, care for ourselves, and stay resilient.

Superpower #2: Safety

Boundaries and limits are intended to keep us safe. When we learn to define these for ourselves, we know how to keep ourselves safe from harm and to mitigate stressful times by having limits that protect our body, time, and resources, and we consider this a sacred responsibility and a source of personal power. Children rely on caretakers to define safety and to shift limits based on age appropriateness. This covers such areas as playing outside alone, parameters around safe touch, walking to school or staying home alone, watching TV shows with violence or adult themes, internet safety, or doing activities independently. Along the way, caretakers are modeling for children awareness of their surroundings and themselves, the ability to notice when they are uncomfortable or scared, and their right and ability to say no and protect themselves in any situation that makes them feel uncomfortable. In this way, children get the essential message that their feelings, needs, and self are valuable, and their safety is a priority.

Learning to cope with manageable threats is critical for the development of resilience. Not all stress is harmful. There are numerous opportunities in every child’s life to experience manageable stress. With the help of supportive adults, this “positive stress” can promote growth and allow us to better cope with life’s hardships.[2] By cultivating our inner Protector, we are rewiring ourselves for this same sense of worth, ability to respond to difficult situations in generative ways, and clear sense of our limits and the ability to speak them directly. All that comes together to instill a deep-rooted sense of internal safety.

Superpower #3: Thriving

Parents are the guardians of a child’s long-term health and thriving, and supportive parents keep this in mind when creating structure and limits around eating, exercise, and physical, mental, and emotional hygiene. Whereas the Nurturer reminds us that health is important, the Protector is the parental figure who establishes the routines and makes the daily choices that turn this maxim into action. The perfectionist Critic views health as a way to fix or perfect oneself and creates inflexible criteria around diet, exercise, or body image. The Protector is connected to thriving rather than fixing. Its actions are informed by valuing our self and our body, knowing we must make “good enough” decisions that allow us to enjoy this body and life best as we can into our elder years. Thus, it is the Protector who creates daily habits, takes us to the doctor for our checkups, encourages us to eat healthy foods, and motivates us to move our body out of love for ourselves, becoming our ultimate champion for a long, healthy, and happy life. We learn to take care of ourselves because of how strong, powerful, healthy, and proud we feel when we do, rather than being “motivated” by criticism that leaves us feeling small and not good enough, or falling into self-neglect.

Superpower #4: Emotional Empowerment

The most common reason people share for not setting boundaries is not wanting to upset or disappoint someone else. When asked what their biggest fear is about disappointing someone, the answer is usually: “I don’t want to be disliked or judged.” If a child’s attempts to say no or express a different need or desire from their parent are met with censure, anger, or withdrawal, the child learns that their true feelings will lead to disconnection and disapproval. Since we are wired for connection and completely reliant on others as children, we will learn not to risk this disapproval, so we’ll cut ourselves off from our connection to ourselves.

On the other hand, a child whose parent sets healthy limits, like requiring the child to finish chores before playing, or setting a reasonable curfew for safety reasons—and who explains their reasoning to their child, staying firm yet kind in the face of upset and disappointment—learns a profound lesson. Limits are okay, and feeling disappointed when someone sets limits with you is also okay and manageable. By not caving in at the first sign of upset or making it wrong or bad to have upset feelings, the Protector parent provides a strong, secure, trustworthy connection. Children learn that the limits placed upon them are reasonable and that limits can be enforced without loss of connection. In the same way, building our inner Protector entails building a calm, equable inner presence, like a healthy parent, that helps us understand and be with our upset feelings and translate them into communicable needs and limits. Through our inner Protector we learn to assert boundaries and accept the boundaries of others, without becoming tyrants who expect everyone to do what we want, and without becoming doormats who shy away from feeling our own tough emotions and allow others to learn to do the same.

In the end, the Protector and the Nurturer, as experienced through early childhood relationships or as we reenvision them as adults, set a standard of care for our health and safety in every area of our life. They teach us what we will and will not accept, and they set us up to rise after we fall. As Dr. Phil famously said, “We teach people how to treat us,” and the Protector is the role we have to take on to carry out that responsibility wisely and well.

Take a moment now and jot down why it matters to you to have an inner Protector and champion who stands for your right to healthy limits and boundaries. What would having an inner Protector create in your life? What would it free up energy or time for? Why does it matter to you to embody this for yourself and also as a model for others?

The Protector sounds like:

- I have a strong boundary around physical, emotional, verbal abuse.

- I speak to myself with respect.

- I use positive affirmation and encouragement for motivation.

- I set realistic standards and expectations.

- I respect my right to decide what I do and with whom I share my body.

- I respect my and others’ physical and emotional space.

- I protect my time and energy.

- I express anger in healthy and appropriate ways.

- I express my needs and wants directly.

- I am responsible for knowing, setting, and caring for my own limits.

- Healthy love always includes boundaries and limits.

- I respect my right to say no.

- I make clear and direct requests.

- I take time to pause and think things over when needed.

- I set myself free from resentment by establishing healthy limits.

- I live according to my own values.

- I address issues directly rather than judging and persecuting others.

- Feeling disappointed is a part of life and is a manageable emotion.

The Protector is responsible for:

- Physical safety: prioritizing safe environments and boundaries against physical violence

- Emotional and mental safety: staying alert to and setting limits on negativity and judgment

- Relational safety: creating standards for healthy relationships and setting limits on toxic, draining, or abusive relationships

- Financial health: healthy standards and responsibility for earning and spending

The Protector helps to do the following:

- Set healthy limits and clear boundaries.

- Communicate firmly and kindly, and make direct requests.

- Affirm achievements and learn from failures.

- Build safety, resilience, and a strong sense of self.

- Foster respectful, strong relationships.

- Establish self-worth, discipline, and self-trust.

- Encourage peace, confidence, strength, fearlessness, self-love, and happiness.

Becoming Our Own Protector and Champion

Sandra is a Latina woman and artist in her early thirties who came in for therapy a few months after she left a relationship where she had experienced domestic violence. She was left shaken, anxious, and severely critical of herself for having stayed in the relationship despite the ongoing emotional and physical abuse. Sandra had recently moved into a new space and was feeling extremely reluctant to express her boundaries and needs to her housemate; she was afraid to speak up for fear of eliciting a negative response reminiscent of her ex-partner. Her dream was to support herself financially through her work as an artist, yet her self-criticism kept her from sharing her work widely and from charging appropriate fees for her commissioned works. Her goal for therapy was to let go of self-blame, regain her confidence and her voice, and keep herself safe.

Sandra needed to build her inner Protector. As you experience her journey while going through the exercises she and I walked through together, may it be a source of inspiration for you to also embrace your fierce inner advocate.

EXERCISE 1: VISIONING YOUR PROTECTOR

Time required: thirty minutes to an hour of quiet, uninterrupted time

Items needed: scissors, glue, construction paper, magazines or old family albums, printed pictures, colored pens

Start by thinking of a figure or figures that embody protection for you. You may find a statue or image that typifies this energy, such as a mighty lion or bear, the fierce Hindu goddess Kali, or a protective knight with a shield. Your inner Protector can also take the form of a landscape or structure, like a field with fences around it, a powerful light that surrounds you, or a stone fortress. Allow yourself to go toward what first sparks an interest, without judgment, and trust that the reason for its appeal will unfold and that your personal Protector might evolve over time. You might spend some time finding photographs (perhaps of you with a particular caregiver) or other images that showcase aspects of this fierce, strong energy. You are also welcome to add words, phrases, or quotes that feel particularly resonant to you. Use scissors, construction paper, and glue to cut out these images and create a picture of what your Protector looks like to you. Create a special place in your home for these images, perhaps alongside your Nurturer, where you can see them daily. You may even sit with them for a while each day as you do the visualizations and meditations later in this chapter to develop a connection with them.

Three figures came to Sandra as she built her inner Protector. The first was a carving of a tigress she had been given by an old college roommate. It had stayed with her through changing apartments and shifting relationships, and she had it with her in her newest home. The figurine had felt like a reminder of a feisty, sassy, fierce part of her that was present in her college days and that her roommate had seen. Keeping it nearby had been like a talisman, reminding her of an aspect of herself that might have been buried but that nevertheless existed.

The artist in Sandra was drawn to bright, vivid colors and especially to the dark, poignant paintings of Frida Kahlo, a revered painter from her ancestral country, Mexico. Sandra brought in a photograph of Frida lying in bed in a full-body cast after being injured, determinedly painting and creating something beautiful out of her pain. For Sandra, connecting with Frida was a way to evoke the fierce feminine she wanted to embody. She found courage and inspiration in Frida’s journey to create art from the hardest experiences in her life, and from her determination to express herself freely and take pride in her eccentricity.

The last item Sandra chose was a picture of a stone fortress with a wide moat and a drawbridge in an old children’s book. In the picture a warm light emanated from the small slit windows at the front of the fortress, giving an impression of well-being inside. Guards stood in full armor at the barred gate and above in the tower overlooking the moat. The fort was set atop a high hill, so the guards were easily able to see anyone approaching from many miles away. The moment Sandra saw this picture, her body began to relax, and she was surprised by tears. It came to her that part of building an inner template of a Protector for her, and recovering from the trauma of domestic violence, included a connection with a protective space wherein she could regain the feeling of being safe inside her own home and body.

EXERCISE 2: GIVING THE PROTECTOR A VOICE

Time required: fifteen to thirty minutes

Items needed: journal and pen

Once you’ve picked your images, it’s time to give words to the protective and championing energy they contain. There may be protective qualities you are drawn to precisely because you have never experienced them in your life or because of experiences where your safety was undermined or threatened. The Protector’s form, and the words you give it, might sound much stronger or blunter than you have ever dreamed of sounding in real life. That is okay. Sometimes the very images we have the most difficulty choosing are aspects we unconsciously have long needed to express and allow, such as anger and frustration. The Protector can help you express your anger in the healthy ways we covered in chapter four, highlighting emotional expression. From this you can learn about boundaries that may have been crossed and gain the courage to speak your truth and set the limits you need to live with your life with greater dignity, integrity, and self-respect.

For Sandra, the tigress voiced a roar she had never been able to express against all the violence and abuse she had sustained. Simply imagining the tigress roaring, lunging, clawing, and flashing her eyes and teeth was a tremendous release of energy for Sandra. This provided a way for Sandra to feel safe enough to express, through the animal Protector, her pent-up rage at what she had endured. Over time we put words to the roar, like “STOP,” “GET OUT,” “NO,” and “YOU CANNOT HIT ME,” which Sandra expressed through her body by shouting them out loud, pushing her arms out in the gesture of “stop,” and stomping her arms and legs as she let out all the things she wanted to say in the relationship and could finally do so in the safety of the therapy room. Sandra also identified Frida’s voice with championing messages like, “You are a strong, powerful, and creative woman,” “You don’t have to hide your hurt and broken parts,” and “You can make something beautiful and inspiring out of the suffering.” Sandra identified that she wanted both Protectors to counter her inner Critic with messages like, “No one has the right to hit you or disrespect you,” “You are not the problem, the abuse is,” and “The abuse was not your fault.” Finally, as Sandra imagined herself inside the fortress, she was able to give voice to its message: “You deserve to feel safe and protected in your home,” “You get to choose what you allow in and what stays out,” “Your home is a place safe from violence,” “You have a right to protect your space and your body,” and “You have a right to feel relaxed, free, and happy in your home.”

Take some time now to give voice to your Protector. If the image you picked is of someone you know, you can think of any protective phrases they shared with you, or imagine giving words to the energy their actions conveyed. Take a few moments to see what sensations or emotions the images evoke in you, such as warmth, relaxation, stability, or strength. If this image could speak, what do you imagine are the first things it would say? You can also use the phrases shared earlier in this chapter. Read them out loud, noticing which ones resonate most. Pay attention to those that produce the most relaxation in your body or evoke a positive emotional response. See if you can create a list of at least five to ten phrases you respond positively to, and put them up where you can easily see and access them, such as by your bathroom mirror.

EXERCISE 3: EMBODYING A BOUNDARY

Let’s do a meditation to concretize the experience of our personal boundaries. You can find the full version of this meditation online at www.anjulisherinmft.com.

Begin by taking a few deep breaths in and out. Take a few moments to bring attention to your body and its sensations, perhaps the rise and fall of your belly and chest as you breathe, or the sensation of your feet resting on the floor. With the next breath you take, start to focus on the sides of your body. You can even bring your hands to your sides to enhance this connection. On the inhale, fill up your ribs like an accordion inflating, and then feel them contract on the exhale. Finding our sides left to right, feeling ourselves back to front, and becoming aware of ourselves top to bottom lets us feel the container of our body. These are our boundaries, covered by our skin, with openings like pores that allow what needs to be let out to pass through, and like our mouth and nostrils, that allow what we need—like oxygen and food—to flow in.

Now raise your arms and stretch them out wide. Draw a bubble around yourself. We all have an electromagnetic field around us, four feet wide and six feet tall. This energy field is part of the space we take up. Research on the impact of this field, conducted by the HeartMath institute, shows that we can shift the energy we emanate by focusing on gratitude and compassion, which can affect people who enter our electromagnetic space.[3] This energy is a real extension of us. Allow yourself to take up this space by stretching your arms and legs wide or simply sweeping your arms around so you can feel this bubble of space that you get to live inside.

Close your eyes now and give this space a color or light, such as a strong, vibrant gold or a protective indigo blue. This color surrounds you and fills your energy bubble. Feel what it’s like to sit inside this bubble and to allow it to be a part of the space that you get to inhabit. Next, imagine expanding this bubble until it is as wide, tall, and deep as you’d like. Play with it, slowly expanding it in your mind to the size of the room you are in, the size of a house, or even the size of a small island—or the whole world! How does it feel to have space for you and your body? If you sense any judgment come up from the inner Critic, or if it feels like the bubble is separating you from others, simply bring your Protector into the bubble, who reminds you that you get to experience having a safe space for yourself. You get to choose what type of connection you would like to invite into this space or keep out of it; you also get to allow in just the right amount that is not overwhelming. Keep coming back to the sensations in your body, as you playfully stretch out in your bubble, reminding yourself that you are in charge of allowing into your boundary what feels good, and that your boundary protects you from what does not feel good. Let yourself feel what it is like to be in your space with these limits. What would it be like to inhabit your body, your room, your home, your relationships with such boundaries?

For Sandra, the personal bubble became combined with the fortress she had chosen as her protective space. She would spend time imagining herself transforming the fortress into her own personal place of restoration and retreat. The more she let herself inhabit the space of the fortress, the more she found different aspects of herself coming to life. She envisioned many different rooms for herself in the fortress—some dedicated to her art, others for books—as well as an abundant garden where she could freely roam. The high ramparts and the tall towers gave her a sense that she could take time to look out at the lay of the land and make decisions about what was coming toward her without having to hurry. Sandra imagined lowering her drawbridge for certain close friends, inviting people she trusted into her space. She also imagined saying no to harmful relationships with the help of the fort and the tigress. By playing in this way, she was learning how to practice setting boundaries, giving consent, taking up room to express herself, and giving herself permission to have her body and home belong to her and be respected.

EXERCISE 4: BECOMING THE PROTECTOR

Now that you have your template of a Protector, a connection to their voice, and an experience of your physical boundaries, it’s time to practice becoming—that is to say, embodying—this role.

The best building block for becoming our inner Protector is to practice giving and receiving consent. Consent simply means that any energy coming toward us in the form of a request, demand, offer, or invitation is something we can assess and have the right to say yes or no to; or we can pause for further consideration. We are not obligated to grant every request or need that comes our way, and neither is anyone else. In fact, as a resilient adult it is our responsibility to make sure the decisions we make in response to the world are aligned with our deepest values and beliefs. This is how we live and create relationships that are sound in integrity.

For many of us this possibility is revolutionary. We don’t have to immediately comply with whatever we’re asked to do? We even have the choice to pause, consider, and include ourselves in the equation? This is often where the Critic gets most activated, telling you if you loved the person or if you really cared about them, you wouldn’t be selfish and think only of yourself. How could you even think of saying no to someone else’s needs? If this harsh litany comes up, remember how we’ve discussed where you learned this and how it has served you—and the tremendous toll it takes on you and your relationships when you continue to dishonor your inner voice by saying yes when you mean no.

Now, reconnect with your particular reason for wanting to make sure you set boundaries and share your limits, even if it disappoints others, and even if you are afraid. For Sandra, it was a clear line: she knew that love mattered above all, and love meant saying no to abuse. Loving herself meant setting healthy limits, having people in her life who respected her right to say no, and being safe from all forms of violence. This strong message was at the core of her Protector and served as a guideline for future choices and a firm, unwavering response to the Critic, allowing Sandra to stay committed to setting healthy limits for herself over the course of her life.

Now it’s your turn. (You can find the full version of this exercise online at www.anjulisherinmft.com.) Take a few minutes now to connect with your inner Protector. Take three deep breaths in and out, feel the boundary of your body, and then feel the space of your personal bubble. Next, invite your Protector in, and feel, see, sense, imagine, and know they are next to you. With every breath you take, their presence becomes more and more tangible. You can feel them beside you and hear their voice encouraging you, reminding you why you deserve protection and to set healthy boundaries, and telling you they are proud of you for considering your choices before giving consent. The Protector is invincible and can withstand any attack or judgment that comes toward them. They are here to protect you, speak up on your behalf, and keep you safe from anything harmful or scary.

If it feels good, let the Protector speak the following words on your behalf to anyone or anything that has harmed you, especially your inner Critic:

“You, as much as anyone else, are worthy of respect. You have the right to say no to anything that is harmful. This is a healthy standard that is the right of every being on this planet. Without it we are drained, abused, resentful, anxious, and hurt. Without it this has been the cost to you. I am proud to protect and champion you.”

Hear the Protector repeat that a few times, and breathe and let it sink in. Each time you feel guilty about these words or afraid that someone will judge you because of them, tell your Protector. Imagine your Protector repeating these words as often as you’d like, simply breathing them in. You might tear up, or it might take several rounds before you feel the presence or impact of the Protector. It is all okay. Feel free to change the words or instruct the Protector to say anything you want on your behalf to your inner or outer Critics.

You may want to do a few rounds where the Protector reminds you and your inner Critic that you also have the right to say yes to what you truly want. The Protector can remind you why that matters and what kind of positive impact it will have in your life. If you get stuck, let the Protector remind you of the impact when you do not say yes to what feels good for you. Do this exercise as many times as is necessary to help you feel more connected to this voice and until you feel ready to stand beside the Protector and say the words yourself, or to imagine yourself as the Protector, speaking these new truths directly to your inner Critic or to any pertinent relationship in your life.

Putting It All Together

Trust in our ability to protect ourselves is built over time. This self-trust is a big part of feeling securely attached and comes from consistently meeting our feelings with a caring, uncritical, nonabusive response. When we meet ourselves in this way, we show ourselves that this new stance is reliable and can be counted on. This in turn shapes our choice of relationships; we are more likely to pick people who share these values and treat us with this same respect around limits and intimacy. Above all, our safety is no longer obtained from trying to please people, criticize ourselves into perfection, or avoiding others at all costs. Instead, it comes from a sense of security born from knowing we are free from our own judgment and can advocate for our needs in relationships in ways that foster connection without relinquishing self-respect.

The unexpected by-product of learning how to protect ourselves is the sheer joy of connection that returns when boundaries are permissible and in place. So many people see boundaries as doing something for their own good that will ultimately result in them being alone behind an iron wall. In this conception, safety requires a trade-off with being alone. The truth is liberating and joyous. When we love in a way that allows ourselves and others to listen for our truth, share our needs and wants openly, know that abuse in any form is off limits, and feel respected, validated, and supported in our yes, no, and right to choose, our hearts are set free. When we give, we know it is with honesty and with gratitude. When we receive, we know it can be free of the taint of guilt. When we love, it is in a way that sets ourselves and others free. That is the worthy promise and commitment of the Protector.

Your Empowerment Practices

1. If you haven’t done so already, take some time now to go over exercises 1–4 in the chapter on building your inner Protector, and begin connecting with this part of yourself. You can also find the full guided meditations for exercises 3 and 4 on my website, www.anjulisherinmft.com, if you prefer to listen and follow along.

2. Take a chunk of time (fifteen to thirty minutes) where you pause, focus on and relax your breathing, go to your safe space, and visualize and connect with your inner Protector. As the inner Protector, ask yourself the following questions, and answer them in your mind, out loud, or in your journal.

- What is an area in your life where you would like to have better boundaries?

- What do you need to say no to in this area?

- What do you want to be able to say yes to in this area?

- Why is it important that your Protector helps you set these new standards or limits?

- What positive changes will this change bring in your life?

3. Set a date on the calendar by which you will begin to implement these boundaries in your life.
Use exercise 4 to imagine your Protector speaking these boundaries directly on your behalf, and work up to speaking them directly yourself, with the Protector supporting you. Repeat the affirmations from your Protector and why it matters to speak up, to build courage as you practice. If you feel stuck or scared, make a plan to practice speaking these affirmations out loud with a close friend, or to get help from a counselor to work through residual fear.

4. Repeat this practice with other areas in your life and any time you feel your Critic arise, or when the emotions of resentment, anger, frustration, anxiety, or sadness alert you to the possibility that you might be feeling unsafe in a relationship and in need of protective boundaries.
Each of these practices will build a new foundation inside you, teaching you the art of protective championship: pausing and noticing your feelings, seeing your fear or frustration as a possible sign that boundaries are being crossed, identifying what is bothering you, setting new standards based on what you actually want to say yes and no to, and learning to speak these new limits out loud. You will also be able to bring this care to other’s boundaries and needs, and you will know that even if your needs cannot be met, you will be able to care for yourself with the help of your inner Nurturer and Protector and move toward healthier relationships.

9

The Resilient Self

To love yourself right now, just as you are, is to give yourself heaven.

—ALAN COHEN

All this time, as we have been moving toward the Resilient Self, what have you imagined it to be? Is she the one who can face challenges and rise, a warrior, a happy child, or an independent adult? A lone hero or a communal figure? Human, flawed, and perfectly imperfect, or an ideal to be striven for and permanently claimed?

For those of us who are shaped by the Western mindset through birth, colonization, migration, or diaspora, there is a conditioning toward resilience being akin to a self-reliance that looks like not needing anyone or anything. In fact, the very idea of needing, emotional vulnerability, and collective interdependence is anathema to the selective idealization of grit, independence, and an individual being solely responsible for their own success or failure. Many people turn to self-help and therapy as a fix-all, a way to get assistance with what is “broken” inside us that keep us from functioning alone as well as with other “normal” human beings. In that way of thinking, the only way to be worthy of belonging, love, and respect, is for the therapist or the self-help book to figure out what is wrong with us and quickly fix it so we can become a perfect self—one that is invulnerable and needs no one else. Often this is just another face of our vulnerable child, so wounded by the hurt in relationships that the way to survive becomes surviving alone.

Research on individuals and communities tells a different story, with connection and support being the strongest predictors of resilience rather than individual skill sets. According to the Harvard University Center on the Developing Child, “The single most common factor for children who develop resilience is at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive parent, caregiver, or other adult.”[1] The traits of this positive caregiving relationship are in line with the characteristics of the Nurturer and Protector, who work to counterbalance environmental or biological factors, such as physical illness or disability, traumatic life events, and other hardships, helping to stack the deck more in favor of a resilient response to a stressful environment.

The Resilient Self is not a triumph over the Vulnerable Self, i.e., an elimination of all insecurities, imperfections, mistakes, and failures. In fact, the Resilient Self is the Vulnerable Self, transformed by a deep, consistent commitment to love ourselves in a way that meets us exactly where we are: snotty-nosed, tongue-tied, scarlet with shame, on our knees with grief, dead broke, flustered and lost for the millionth time. The Nurturer and Protector look at the Vulnerable Self in the mirror, unkempt and afraid, and still wash her face, put her in the shower, get her dressed, feed her breakfast, get her out the door, help her keep that job, and drive her to the appointment with a professional, a friend, or an AA meeting. They remind us that the vulnerable face in the mirror is whole and worthy of love, no matter her imperfections. With their acceptance and support, they empower the Vulnerable Self to become resilient.

The Circle of Resilience

Joyous resilience emerges as the Cycle of Suffering is replaced by the consistent, positive, and generative interactions of the four actors in the Circle of Resilience:

1. 1. Nurturer: providing an internal supportive relationship

2. 2. Protector: providing a sense of safety and agency

3. 3. Resilient Self: able to self-regulate, build new skill sets, and experience joy and connection

4. 4. Soul Self: access to hope, awe, and amazement through a connection with culture, spirituality, or the natural world, and a sense of communion with a larger reality

Though we have separated joyous resilience into these four aspects, in actuality the Resilient Self contains them all, and it is their synergy that produces the five superpowers (self-awareness, self-regulation, self-confidence, self-empowerment, and self-transcendence) that distinguish the Resilient Self from the Vulnerable Self. You may find that some of these resilient traits or roles are already at play in your life, while others may be a stretch for you at this time. Let’s look at the traits of a Resilient Self through the lens of one client’s story and then deepen into them through the exercises in this chapter and through the remainder of the book.

Doussou Mara, a dignified Guinean woman in her midsixties, entered therapy to navigate anxiety and stress as she transitioned into retirement, as well as grief over the recent loss of a grandchild. Ms. Mara, as she preferred to be called, immigrated alone to the United States as a teenager, the first of her family to leave her home country. With a characteristic resourcefulness, she mastered the new language and customs, worked her way up educationally from a secretarial course through night school in business administration, and went on to become the highly valued human resources manager of her department for more than two decades. Along the way, she married, raised three children, divorced, saw her children raise their own families, and experienced loss: the passing of one of five beloved grandchildren, as well as her mother back in Guinea. Solid, capable, with a warm, infectious laugh far younger than her years, she had wended her way through the big and little crises of life without noticing, or having time to notice, the accumulated strain. Proudly connected to a strong line of matriarchs who had raised families and tended livelihoods through poverty, political upheaval, and religious strife, Ms. Mara saw navigating highly stressful circumstances as part of life and not something that needed to be overtly acknowledged or dwelt upon.

In the United States, Ms. Mara lacked the circle of emotional and financial support and connection that she would have had in her home country. Although she was known as a woman who never stopped, eventually the late hours, predominantly solo parenting, and navigating many micro- and macroaggressions as an African immigrant started to take their toll. By the time she reached her forties, she had gained excess weight, which put pressure on her back and knees. She also regularly experienced crippling migraines and was diagnosed with high blood pressure. In her sixties, in the year when her grandchild and mother passed away, she experienced heart palpitations and difficulty breathing that brought her to the emergency room. Soon she was also diagnosed with anxiety, and after a severe panic attack after her retirement, she finally agreed to seek mental health support, as her doctor and children had recommended. Given the taboo on seeking mental health support from her cultural background, as well as the difficulties of finding and feeling comfortable with a provider who was culturally competent, entering therapy and seeking help was as big a bridge for Ms. Mara to cross as whatever work lay ahead.

As I sat with Ms. Mara and gradually learned the outlines of her story, I was struck by her remarkable resilience through her solitary immigration, immersion in a new culture, subsequent poverty, lack of access to education or good health care, and financial hardship. She had maintained a sense of dignity and pride in her achievements, a gratitude for the gifts of life, a trust in her own strength, and a faith in a higher source (she had a strong connection to her Christian tradition) that allowed her to work through the hard times. She had infused her life and relationships with a sense of humor and a love of celebration: she was known for planning the lively office gatherings and parties to honor each person’s life events, vaguely reminiscent of the childhood gatherings at the homes of her various aunts and uncles.

What she couldn’t replicate was the comfort of sharing emotions and letting out sorrows within a circle of arms. Her strength of spirit had become entangled and confused with stoicism. Looking ahead and not letting the past drag her down had enabled her to make tremendous achievements, yet she carried the staggering weight of years of unreleased emotion. Ms. Mara’s biggest strides in resilience would come from recognizing that feelings are not a weakness, that she could feel sorrow and loss without falling apart, and that she too could benefit from the care of her family without diminishing their respect in her as matriarch. Learning to lean into her grief and resolve her feelings about her past through the use of cultural and spiritual rituals and traditions would provide the container for her to grow into her most Resilient Self.

As we learn about the superpowers that go along with the Resilient Self, we’ll also learn about the “dial tool,” which can help us build each of these superpowers. You’ll see how Ms. Mara used the tool and then have a chance to practice on your own.

Superpower #1: Self-Awareness

Unlike the vulnerable self, which is subject to sensations and emotions without being aware of them or knowing that they point to psychological and physiological needs, the Resilient Self is a result of cultivated self-awareness. By using the self-awareness tools and emotional chart we covered in part I, the Resilient Self can notice what arises in the body and the emotional state one is in, can release and express them, and can articulate this to themselves or others as a need or request. Anxiety lessens and confidence grows alongside greater ease of knowing how to identify emotions and sensations, permission to feel whatever is arising, and an appreciation that whatever is present can be sorted out and dealt with, either on one’s own or with help.

Personal dial tool: I invited Ms. Mara to pause a couple of times during our session to practice this tool. Once she was comfortable using it in session, I invited her to use it one to three times a day. To use the tool, she imagined a dial ranging from zero to ten—with zero being the lowest intensity and ten being the highest—and she checked herself for three indicators: physical distress/relaxation, emotional distress/well-being, and mental distress/calm. Ms. Mara was long used to ignoring her bodily cues and needs and simply pushing past any internal signals indicating a need or distress, so this exercise was essential to help her start to attune to herself and her needs.

She tracked her breathing, muscular tension, ability to feel her physical body on the chair, body temperature, heart rate, and other physical indicators as a way to gauge her level of physical distress. Anything above a four (e.g., shallow breathing, rising muscular tension, some shortness of breath, rising heart rate) was identified as a place where she would want to slow down and intervene to avoid escalating further into anxiety and panic. We applied the same tool to her mental and emotional states, which were often linked to her bodily cues. Anxiety moving into fear or panic, or mild worry or sadness moving into despair or hopelessness, were cues that her emotions were starting to get elevated in a negative direction. It was an enormously eye-opening and ultimately liberating tool for Ms. Mara to recognize that there was a way to identify where she was in a certain moment and that her physical, mental, and emotional distress had a gradual rise to it that could be tracked, had a regular pattern, and ultimately could be regulated.

Practice: Take a moment to look at your own physical, emotional, or mental dial. How are you in this moment? What cues can you use to track your number on the dial? If you were going to track one particular emotion, like anxiety or frustration, what are the physical signs, emotions, and thoughts that accompany mild, medium, or highly elevated levels of this emotion? Take a moment to write this down.

Superpower #2: Self-Regulation

Our Vulnerable Self is caught by the messaging that pain is bad and difficult feelings should not occur or are a sign that something is wrong with us. What makes us resilient is knowing that pain and difficulty are a part of life, natural waves we must learn how to ride, accept, and act upon. As we learned in the last chapter, the Nurturer has a plethora of ways to provide stable, consistent care, to help us feel grounded and secure, and to restore well-being in our bodies. With the presence of the inner Nurturer, disappointment or anger can be felt and let out. Fear and worry are not an endless loop but simply a reminder that we might need a different pace or some helpful strategies or assistance to get over a hump. Even unsolvable issues like grief over the loss of a loved one, lifelong illness, or not being able to have a biological child can be held within the security of a loving, nurturing inner presence that will provide care and comfort and will reach out to others who’ll offer such emotional support. The biggest self-regulatory tool offered is the loving understanding that healing is a process, stressful situations take time to work through, and pain can be felt and met and worked through, given enough time, care, and the presence of internal and external supporters.

Dial exercise 2: At this step, Ms. Mara began to practice her inner Nurturer by responding through self-care to tension in any area—for example, breathing deeply and stretching to relieve tension, getting a glass of water and some food to care for physical needs, or taking time to journal out feelings, cry or shake out emotions, and respond to anxious thinking or resentment with lovingkindness and nurturing affirmation. We began to ingrain in her the message that rather than overriding her stress or giving up and letting the stress take over, we can lean in to experience the full range of emotions and intervene in nurturing ways that help us bounce back. The examples of self-care habits from the chapter on nurturance became a list that Ms. Mara could build on and begin to use in and out of session to support her when she needed it most. Some of the things she had been doing already, such as turning to uplifting spiritual texts, cooking foods from her home country, or spending time with family helped boost her spirits. Doing these things while intentionally identifying them as sources of resilience that she needed to help her tend to her Vulnerable Self and shift her dial greatly enhanced their effectiveness.

Practice: Help move your physical, emotional, or mental dial to a more resilient place by intervening in any of the ways you outlined in your self-care menu. What are a few go-to moves that work to calm you and help you feel better in the moment?

Superpower #3: Self-Protection

The Resilient Self is rooted in a sense of self-worth—the belief that you matter and that your physical, mental, and emotional safety is worth being tended to through healthy boundaries and the right to the dignity to assert them. Knowing we deserve protection and can protect ourselves in accordance with our values enables us to traverse the terrain of life and relationships while responding to any situation with integrity. When we teach a child to look both ways before crossing the street and making sure they hold on to our hand when they do, or let a child know they can go to an adult if they feel frightened or in need; or when we teach a teenager about their right to experience pleasure in sexuality and how to assert themselves in a healthy way in dating, or we take seriously their experience of bullying or peer pressure, we are consistently giving cues that their well-being matters and that taking care of themselves in this way is worthwhile and laudable and that it strengthens healthy connection.

This is what leads to strong, integrated adults who have a strong inner Protector. Our resilience is fostered and protected by putting a strong boundary up between us and our internal Critic, as well as any outer forms of abuse. This healthy sense of self-worth that comes from honoring inner boundaries also translates into an ability to treat others with respect and care as well. We realize that we matter, and that we all matter.

Dial exercise 3: The information gleaned from the last exercise might let us know we need to have better boundaries, separation, or direct communication about a given matter. In Ms. Mara’s case, it became clear that some of her elevated anxiety was related to her own aging body and not feeling well enough to provide as much childcare for her grandchildren as she had in the past. She also wanted to explore traveling and connecting with old friends and family, which she had forgone due to guilt about not being present as a grandmother or wanting to do something that was just for herself. By starting to question and unpack these concerns and old beliefs, she was able to construct an inner Protector with more nuanced core values and a sense of self-worth that was tied to an inner dignity and being her own person as well as a parent and grandparent. She was able to stop and address any negative self-talk that made her feel guilty or bad for prioritizing herself, realizing that each part of her personhood deserved time and energy. Over time she began to formulate her feelings into clear boundaries and requests that she could bring to her family while also caring for herself.

Practice: Ask yourself if there are any underlying needs, requests, or desires for boundaries that might be fueling the physical, emotional, or mental aspects you have attuned to in the past two dial exercises. See if you can articulate them to yourself or write them down. Would you be willing to address them? If you are stuck, whose help could you get? How does this shift your dial?

Superpower #4: Self-Confidence

The secure attachment fostered by the Nurturer and Protector leads to a real shift away from insecurity to a resilient self-confidence. This confidence is a direct result of the past three traits and their interventions, which allow us to feel mastery or competency in caring for and fending for ourselves, having connections while keeping our sense of dignity intact, and going after opportunities at the right pace and level for us. Our sense of success is no longer bound to positive outcomes; instead, we find pride and achievement in how we move through any experience, and in our ability to be true to ourselves and our values inside difficulty, the unknown, and so-called failure.

Building this sense of confident resilience is rather like building muscle strength through weight training or exercise. We tackle challenges and new learnings in bite-sized segments. We start slowly to build a sense of accomplishment and ease, and as difficulties arise, our inner Nurturer and Protector help us be at ease with being a beginner and reaching out for assistance. When not knowing, failing, and being stuck are no longer considered shameful weaknesses to be hidden and instead are met with nurturance and the ability to reach out to, cultivate, and rely on social connections that are affirming, protective, and present, we automatically begin to thrive. We give ourselves permission to practice allowing self-appreciation, and taking in appreciation from others, so we may experience pride in our accomplishments and the joy that comes from celebration of big and little achievements. As perniciously as self-criticism undermines and chokes our self-confidence, learning to give ourselves positive feedback and receive it from others fosters a sense of inner security and competence derived from the permission to feel good about ourselves. Such confidence produces “feelings of hope, efficacy, optimism” and the presence of resilience,[2] making us more likely to take on new tasks, expand our social circle, take risks—and try again if a risk doesn’t pan out.

Dial exercise 4: Ms. Mara felt great healthy pride and relief when she shared her personal and professional triumphs with friends and family, and they shared with her stories of what they thought were some of her best traits. She learned that they saw her as strong because she was able to withstand so many hardships and keep her equilibrium, rather than because she had never revealed any hardships at all. She was glad to see none of them felt she was tooting her own horn or acting prideful. By talking openly about the things she was proud of, she learned for the first time what her family truly felt, which was necessary for the development of her authenticity in relating to them. She had to learn to take these words and feed them to herself, and she also needed to remember how she had taught herself a new language, a new culture, and a whole new vocation bit by bit; and she needed to know that same ability could be applied to learning how to navigate this new landscape of retirement and personal growth. She was allowed to look to her strengths to give her further courage, to celebrate her life to invoke inner joy as she celebrated others’ anniversaries and special occasions, and to grieve in others’ arms and trust that others had strength just as she did.

Practice: What areas of your life do you feel confident in? For example, this could be your ability to be a caring friend, a good cook, a skilled employee, or your do-it-yourself prowess. Who are the people in your life who add to your strength by their presence and support? What affirming things have they said about you that would feed your resilience if you took it in? How does focusing on these aspects of yourself shift your dial toward resilience?

Superpower #5: Self-Transcendence

One of my favorite, paradoxically beautiful traits of the Resilient Self is that at some point we realize we are more than just our individual selves. We are part of a larger whole, interwoven with all life and all creation. We find we are fed by, part of, and must return to something that is much vaster than ourselves in order to get through this “one, wild and precious life.”[3] We are moving now toward the Soul Self, which we will delve into more deeply in the next chapter. Our attention expands to something larger than our own concerns and life; a sense of interbeing; transcendence.

According to Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, “Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos.”[4] In this state, we go beyond our personal concerns, access a broader and higher perspective, may experience strong positive emotions like joy and peace,[5] and face life’s vicissitudes with greater equanimity.[6] Self-transcendence involves a shift in focus from self to others and a shift in motivation from external to internal (whereby doing a certain activity is rewarding in itself), increased concern for others and caring for the collective, and the ability to access higher-order emotions such as awe, ecstasy, amazement, and upliftment.

This experience of self-transcendence is accessed through a variety of means, such as meditation, spirituality, activism, writing, nature, connection with animal life, and dedication to a larger cause. Self-transcendence and the subsequent emergence of the Soul Self help to provide a vast resource for deep nourishment, resources, and answers. Through this superpower, we gain the ability to look at difficult and contradictory things as part of a greater unfolding and have a felt sense that how we look at things truly does change what we look at. Our eyes are softened into compassion and nonjudgment, knowing that we are not so very different from those we view. We can do our part, be contributors, and give back, knowing that our small bit contributes to the greater whole. This allows us to find a way to feel strength and agency amid the terrible suffering and injustices of this life, by taking an active part in change. We may even work harder to be better in every way, not motivated by insecurity fueled by the guilt and fear of the Critic, but by the love and strength infused in us by nurturance, protection, and belonging in this life. Each of these aspects leads to the development of self-transcendence and the subsequent generation of hope, purpose in life, and cognitive and emotional well-being—in other words, resilience.

Dial exercise 5: For Ms. Mara, this aspect of resilience came most naturally through her strong connection with her faith and spirituality. Because she looked at her journey and even her losses in the longer-term view of a spiritual journey, and from the perspective of a larger plan or meaning, she was able to find peace. Her task was to not use spiritual teachings to bypass her emotions; she didn’t need to feel guilty for feeling the loss of her grandchild, thinking that her faith required her to simply believe it was God’s will, and any protest inside was something to feel guilty about. Instead, her faith became a strong enough vessel in which she could experience all the tumult of her emotions and trust that the fundamental teachings and belief in compassion, and acceptance for the ups and downs of life and the cycle of life and death, would hold her up even as she felt through all she needed.

Practice: What are some places, times, activities, or experiences in your life that help you feel a connection with something bigger than yourself? When you have had these transcendent experiences, what physical, emotional, or mental impact did they have on you? How does connecting in this way transform how you relate to yourself or your life? How does it shift your dial?

The Resilient Self sounds like:

- I can do it.

- I am well.

- I am loved.

- I am safe.

- It’s safe to feel my feelings.

- I can say what I need and want.

- I have dreams.

- I am free to create my life.

- I can accept the things I cannot change.

- I can relax.

- I can get help.

- I can create good friendships.

- I can give and receive.

- I can try new things.

- I take pleasure in my body and through my senses.

- I know hard times will come, and I know I will be okay.

- I am glad to be alive.

- I feel strong.

- Making mistakes and failing is a part of life.

- I love myself.

- I am proud of myself.

- I belong as I am.

- I can be celebrated.

- I am allowed to have fun.

- I am grateful.

The Resilient Self is responsible for:

- Being connected to sensations in the body

- Being connected to emotions

- Being connected to needs, wants, and desires

- Being able to reach for longings

- Trying, failing, and trying again

- Staying connected to self and others

- Creativity, play, fun, sensuality, sexuality, enjoyment, and wonder

The Resilient Self produces:

- Inner confidence

- Intuition and felt-sense wisdom

- Feeling grounded and at ease in your body

- Feeling secure in your relationships

- The buoyancy to bounce back from hard times

- Joy, pleasure, and freshness in experiencing life

EXERCISE 1: ENVISIONING YOUR VULNERABLE AND RESILIENT SELF

Time required: thirty minutes to an hour of quiet, uninterrupted time

Items needed: scissors, glue, construction paper, magazines or old family albums, printed pictures, colored pens

In this exercise, we will create a template of the Vulnerable and Resilient Self that is personalized to you. Begin by seeking out an image of the Vulnerable Self. The vulnerable child is that part of ourselves that feels untended, overwhelmed, and overpowered by emotions. You might have an inner vision of this part that you may draw or find an image for, or there may be childhood photographs that represent a certain painful time period when this part might feel most represented. We bring this part forward and envision it as a vulnerable child or teenager, to be better able to direct our love toward it and to remember that what we are practicing is giving this child the consistent care and connection they never had, so that they can transform into their most resilient self.

Next, seek out an image of the Resilient Self. For the Resilient Self, you may also look back at childhood pictures for a photograph of yourself when childlike exuberance, joy, or innocence was still apparent. If a significant life event like death of a parent, being sent to foster care, or sexual or physical trauma occurred at a certain point in time, we look before the event to find the child who had resilient qualities like hope, laughter, curiosity, and playfulness, before the event dampened them or shut them down. It is also perfectly okay if you do not have access to early childhood photos or if it is difficult to find a time when the child self was not in a vulnerable and untended state. In that case, we look for images of what we imagine our thriving inner child looks like, and we keep our focus there.

Use scissors and glue to affix these images to construction paper. You are also welcome to cut out or add words, phrases, or quotes that feel particularly resonant to you to accompany the images. Put the two selves side by side, and if possible, surround them with the images of the Nurturer and the Protector you have already created in that special place you have created in your home. You will want to return to these often as reminders of the part of you that most needs love and of the transformation that is possible through your own love and attention.

For Ms. Mara, her Vulnerable Self was at first difficult to access because she had spent so long denying her vulnerability. She could only choose words like anxiety and panic attack as a way to access the difficult symptoms she was encountering. She finally ended up choosing a recent picture of herself where the sadness over the loss of her grandchild was evident to her eyes. She also recalled that her mother had lost one of her children (Ms. Mara’s sibling) at a young age, so finding a photograph of her mother and being able to connect with her empathy toward her helped Ms. Mara access the feeling that she too might get to feel her vulnerability and sorrow about a similar loss and be in need of care.

For the Resilient Self, Ms. Mara chose a few photographs. One of them showed her embracing a coworker and surrounded by laughing colleagues at a shared community event she had organized. Another showed her standing with her children and grandchildren, beaming with contentment at having fulfilled this part of her life, and a third showed her as a child standing between her mother’s legs, smiling mischievously at the camera, holding on with utter trust to the broad, capable hands of the matriarch behind her. For Ms. Mara, it was this childhood self, free to lean into another, that was pivotal. Seeing that child, recognizing her as herself, and remembering the nurturing and protective presence of her mother awoke inside her the recognition that she needed to access these messages again and use them to care for herself.

EXERCISE 2: AN INFUSION OF LOVE AND PROTECTION

Time required: five minutes or longer

Items needed: your images from past chapters and the words that go with them

Place all the images you’ve collected thus far, and the words that go with them, in front of you. You may want to light a candle or play some gentle music in the background. These are sensory touches that create a gentle, soothing, receptive environment. Hold your image of your Vulnerable Self in your lap or hands and close your eyes. Take a few breaths to relax your body and get in touch with this part. Imagine the presence of your Nurturer beside you, directing loving energy, kind eyes, and compassion toward this part that has been hurting. Take a deep breath in. On the in breath, imagine you and your little one are breathing in the Nurturer’s gaze and kindness and hearing their loving words. On the out breath, visualize that love flowing through your body and that of the Vulnerable Self. Repeat this ten times, each time allowing the messages to come in a little more deeply.

Next, connect with the presence of the Protector, and feel them beside you, behind you, or in front of you, whichever position makes you feel most relaxed and at ease. Let the Protector’s strength, competence, and safety start to come in with the in breath, along with any words they say that make your Vulnerable Self feel particularly safe. On the out breath, let that feeling of safety sink in more deeply. Repeat ten times.

Notice how you are feeling in your body now, and now invite the Vulnerable Self to express itself in any way it chooses. Remember, you are the Vulnerable Self, and it lives inside of you. What sensations come up as you focus on the Vulnerable Self? If that self could speak what would it say? Allow the Vulnerable Self to share whatever sorrow, anger, fears it wants to share. As emotions come up, remember to breathe, put a hand on your heart or belly to offer comfort, rock as you cry or emote to help the release, or simply pause and take in the messages of the Protector and Nurturer to help remind you that you are loved. Trust whatever comes and let it be the start of getting in touch with this Vulnerable Self. You can also return to this exercise again and again until this self has shared all it feels, remembers, and needs.

Once you have released for a while (or at a separate time if you need a break) bring forward the image of the Resilient Self. Place them in your lap, hold them in your arms, or sit down beside them in your mind’s eye. Notice the degree to which the Vulnerable Self is feeling more closely connected to the feeling of resilience or moving toward it. Start where you are, knowing that sometimes the gap between them may be bridged rapidly by the loving infusion, and that often it is a slow yet steady journey fueled by repetition and practice.

Wherever you are, in this moment let the Resilient Self begin to speak. How does it feel to be loved and protected in this way? What sensations come up in the body? What emotions? What sense of self? Trust whatever comes, and let it be the start of your finding the voice of your Resilient Self. You will add to it and build on it in the next exercise, and the more frequently you come to drink from this meditation, the stronger it will get with time.

For Ms. Mara, it was profoundly healing and reparative to simply sit with these pictures, and starting with her mother, to allow that loving energy to direct itself toward her own pain and anxiety, and to cry, speak it out loud, or remember it silently. Over several weeks of sitting in this way, she began to feel her mother’s energy more and more, and in turn, she began to accept that accessing this vulnerability and being cared for was just a part of her. It did not negate her role as matriarch and helper; instead, it simply allowed her to see herself and her mother as human. She and her mother were people who could care for and nurture others, and they could also receive that care without abandoning dignity or respect. She began to feel her mother’s love and affirmation that it was important for her and for the legacy she was a part of to do what mothers her before could not do and to leave this example for the next generation: to embrace their own voices and lives, as much as they had embraced the lives of their children.

EXERCISE 3: GIVING THE RESILIENT SELF A VOICE

Time required: fifteen to thirty minutes

Items needed: journal and pen

Building on the last exercise, take some time now to give voice to your Resilient Self. Take a few moments to see what sensations (warmth, relaxation, stability, strength) and emotions have been evoked in you. If the image of your Resilient Self could speak, what do you imagine are the first things it would say? Do your best to put the information you get into phrases that are speaking directly to you, or use the phrases shared earlier in this chapter. Read them out loud, noticing which ones resonate most by paying attention to those that produce the most relaxation in your body or evoke a positive emotional response. See if you can create a list of at least five to ten phrases you respond positively to, and put them up where you can easily see and access them. If your language of origin is different from English, make sure to have these statements in that language, to speak more directly to your inner self.

By finding these phrases, Ms. Mara built a vocabulary that fed her and eventually became a part of how she spoke to her grandchildren and her family. You may want to take sticky notes, write a resilience message on each one, and place them in areas you frequent where you may naturally pause and gaze, such as your bathroom mirror. Phrases like “I am loved,” “ I feel strong,” “I am so well cared for,” “I get to be happy,” and “I feel safe with myself” are all boosters of resilience and wonderful reminders of the well-being you are creating for yourself.

Resilience is not a DIY endeavor.

—MICHAEL UNGAR[7]

Much of the literature on resilience begins and ends with individual traits. We are able to thrive through our will, grit, intelligence, and adaptability, and self-work is the primary pathway to bolstering our strength. In looking at Ms. Mara’s journey, or any of the other people we have encountered in this book, it is clear that lack of external support structures (institutional, financial, educational, familial, communal, spiritual) directly caused and exacerbated distress. Research shows that in many instances of outside stressors and trauma (e.g., health crisis, environmental disasters, violence, loss, accident), the most efficacious intervention is seldom individual counseling or psychotherapy. Instead, a strong and swift intervention of resources—financial resources, easily accessible and affordable health care, shelter, clothing, food, adequate integration into the educational system or workforce, legal support for safety, and safeguarding of rights—all ensure the stabilizing of an individual or community after a trauma and the return to overall health and satisfaction in life. Lack of access to these resources in everyday life produces generational vulnerability in all areas of life, making it less likely or perhaps impossible to gain access to the mental health resources that at best would be provisional help.

There is a time, place, and purpose for self-help and for building our inner selves and sourcing resilience from the inside. It is a necessary and worthwhile effort, and if you happen to be reading this book, chances are high that you, like myself, may have access to a certain basic structure of resources—such as daily needs being met, financial safety, education, some freedom of time, some legal rights, and access to a source of income—that allow you to have enough bandwidth to process this information and apply it. Chances are also high that even as you do this work on yourself, there is daily systemic pressure on your quality of life driven by forces that are less in your control: inadequate support structures at your job; lack of childcare; expensive health care; environmental pollution; threats to your safety and legal rights if you are from a marginalized group; lack of access to care or service providers who are from your cultural, ethnic, or religious background; or inordinately high costs of living. All of these cannot be resolved by inner work alone.

Inner work will help reduce the self-blame, judgment, insecurity, and self-harm that these conditions can exacerbate; however, we must recognize that true change cannot occur unless the systems that cause us pain are changed. It will require enormous effort on our parts to use our privilege, our votes, our jobs, our voices, and our funds to ensure that these systems change to facilitate a long-term, sustainable, and truly revolutionary growth in resilient joy across all people. We need not only a Nurturer within, but nurturing communities that are made up of our connections and activities with extended family, neighbors, and community members (e.g., AA, spirituality, yoga, dance, volunteering). We need Protectors who work to care for us—health care workers, social workers, firefighters, food banks, law enforcement—rather than terrorize or abandon us. We need systems of education and finance that are less polarized and predatory and that instead work to build up resources through easier access to disability insurance, pension plans, universal income, and a high quality of education for all regardless of income level and neighborhood.

Because those who most need services can often have the hardest time advocating for them when in distress, joyous resilience and developing our Resilient Self—giving time to our inner voice and developing this aspect of ourselves—entails asking each of us to then go further: to use this power of resilience to create the change in the world that underpins thriving. We must create real societal infrastructure that catches us, not a belated response after the fact in the form of therapy or an enabling of the same inequities through relying on a temporary response like charitable giving. Instead, we need radical and lasting change that begins at the root and makes charity obsolete. As we shift our inner view, we must recognize and fight for the ways in which we can have better rights and be supported in our work environments, our communities, and society at large. This sense of safety, financial support, and legal backing all lead to the resilience we are looking for. I do not think we can have one without the other; instead, we work for one to feed the other and produce a world where our inner Nurturers and Protectors are mirrored to us in our societal nurturing and protection of each other and our vulnerabilities, in a society transformed into resilience.

Your Resilient Self Practice

Now that you have a template for your inner Nurturer, Protector, Vulnerable Self, and Resilient Self, take some time to walk yourself through a particular situation that has been hard, using these four roles and the tools in this section.

1. Starting with Vulnerable Self and your emotional dial, take a read on yourself:
I feel ___________ (emotion/s) at the level of ___ (1–10, with 1 being lowest and 10 highest) when I think of ______ (difficult situation).

2. Bring out your Vulnerable Self photo, or the stuffed animal or other object that represents this part having a hard time. Do your nurturance practices from earlier in this section (breathing, holding, inviting the Vulnerable Self to share its concern, and offering nurturing, loving statements). Notice your emotional dial and whether it’s going up (getting worse), staying the same, or coming down (feeling better).
The practices above may be enough if your dial has come down to a 2 or 3 or lower, because sometimes all we need is to express ourselves and feel tended to. If so, you can continue on to step 4. If not, go to step 3.

3. Next, apply the protection practices from earlier in this part of the book. Ask yourself if there are any needs that the Vulnerable Self has, as indicated by the content of the concern; for example, “I feel bad that I have to stay late at work every day,” or by direct expression of desire, such as, “I wish I could just stay in bed, I feel so tired.” Allow yourself to respond as the Protector (reminding Vulnerable Self it is worthy of respect and its needs matter; identifying the need; and, if possible, making a plan to meet it or to get help for it.)
Notice your emotional dial and whether it is going up, staying the same, or coming down.

4. As your dial goes down, the Vulnerable Self should feel more like a Resilient Self. It is important to highlight this change and to deepen your ability to speak, feel, act, and identify as this part. Bring out the Resilient Self photograph or image, or if you are working with a stuffed animal or simply speaking with a hand on your body, let yourself say how you are doing now.

If the part of you that has just been nurtured and cared for can speak, what would it say? You can always go back to your chosen statements from this chapter. Take a few breaths in as you speak them out loud, feeling the sensations in your body, your posture, and your overall mood as you say them. Take in that power. Thank all parts of yourself for showing up. Feel the power in knowing that this is a skill you can repeatedly use and enhance with time, and you can apply it to any part of your life.

10

The Soul Self

I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness. I am the Now. I Am.

—ECKHART TOLLE

You will know you are encountering the Soul Self when you experience any of these three special states.

1. A sense of being connected to something greater than ourselves; the vastness of the universe, the natural world, spirit, or humanity; a simultaneous experience of interconnection with the greater whole and the smallness of our physical self in relation to it.

2. This sense of interbeing leading to a greater altruism, compassion, and forgiveness toward other beings.

3. Finding within ourselves an equivalent vastness that becomes a backdrop to the stream of thoughts, ideas, and identification with self-labels and personality; a space of peace, expansiveness, and even bliss within. This state has been described by scientific researchers as well as in spiritual texts, philosophy, nature writings, and poetry throughout history.

The Soul Self is a transcendent self, as described in the previous chapter. This state is connected to strong positive emotions such as joy, peace, serenity, and an awareness of a higher perspective. It may be accessed spontaneously, or a person can deliberately open to it, practice it, and sustain it over time.[1] On a neurobiological level, this state connects us with gamma and theta brain waves, opening up our right-brain thinking and facilitating creative insights, solutions, and perspectives that are a requirement for thriving under stress.

The Soul Self sounds like:

- I am a part of all that is.

- I am here.

- I am present.

- I am eternal.

- I am well.

- I am whole.

- I am love.

- I serve.

- I am still.

- I am a part of a larger purpose.

- I am one with all that is.

- I am at peace.

- I let go and surrender.

- May all beings be peaceful, happy and well.

The Soul Self is responsible for:

- Physical wellness: viewing and caring for the body as a sacred gift, and appreciating it in all its stages

- Emotional wellness: a connection to peak emotional states such as awe, profound joy, and deep gratitude

- Mental wellness: greater ability to respond with equanimity, acceptance, and a broad perspective

- Relational wellness: greater empathy, compassion, forgiveness, and altruism in relationships

- Spiritual wellness: a sense of deeper purpose, meaning, and ritual in daily life

The Soul Self produces:

- A deep sense of calm

- Greater peace of mind and a feeling of wholeness

- A feeling of fulfillment from the inside

- A feeling of interconnection with the larger world

- Great satisfaction in being of service to the world

- An acceptance of loss and change as natural and necessary parts of life

- The ability to let go and forgive

- An enhanced ability to find joy and pleasure in, and appreciation of, the gift of life

Soul Self superpowers are predicated upon and strengthened by the self-awareness and integration that have occurred by developing a healthy Protector, Nurturer, and Resilient Self. Although one may awaken to this sense of being connected to something larger without having fully developed the other roles, the robust Soul Self has a strong inner foundation that provides the inner strength and safety to open to interbeing and transcendence. In other words, it takes a connection to our power, agency, and sense of self to be able to withstand experiencing our own vulnerability and smallness. In turn, it is easier to experience the fluctuations and sudden changes in our lives, the unavoidable downturns and suffering in the world, with the aid of a larger perspective.

Superpower #1: Equanimity

The Soul Self’s equanimity comes from an ability to accept what is, in a way very similar to the serenity prayer: “Give me the courage to accept the things I cannot change, the strength to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” The Soul Self knows that difficulty is a part of life; pain, uncertainty, and stress will ebb and flow; and leaning into our feelings, experiencing them, and learning from them gives us the strength to bounce back and continue flourishing through time. Rather than being in a stance of fight or flight against our inner or outer world, we meet the present moment with an openness. We look at things as they are and accept them as they are in the present. We do not take this stance to change a circumstance, but this attitude already changes a situation. When we are able to retain a sense of equanimity within and bring it to tough situations, this provides a space from which to see what change or action is possible.

Superpower #2: Perspective

The Soul Self goes to the poet Rumi’s proverbial field, “out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing,” a place of possibilities, nuance, complexities, and broad perspective, where it is possible to live without having it all figured out, and to allow answers and life paths to unfold organically over time. The Soul Self is able to envision possibilities rather than getting locked into how things have always been. The Soul Self also refrains from believing that temporary feeling states, fluctuating life conditions, or old habits are our unalterable identity. From this stance, we are creating our own experience through our interpretation of what is occurring; and as such, we can always change our perspective, thereby taking back our power over our own story. We get to decide if we tell a tale of helplessness or heroism, invulnerability or growth, being at the mercy of life or making meaning out of it. When we take a long-range view of personal and collective history, there is a sense of growth and change that can occur over time, allowing for hope that seemingly insurmountable situations can be improved through effective action, growth, and maturity.

Superpower #3: Interdependence

A natural evolution of the superpowers above is a shift in focus from the self to others. This can mean looking at relationships as a context within which we develop as people over the course of our life, rather than thinking one special person, like a partner, will save us. Or it can mean looking at our treatment of all beings and stewardship of the earth as part of our greater evolution and commitment to future generations. The Soul Self is greatly aware of the world around her and of her interdependence and ties with all of the natural world and its beings and resources. At this level, the nurturance and protection that was extended to one’s self can more easily and sustainably be extended to other human beings and be woven into larger institutions and systems of governance, business, and the fabric of social culture and environment. We begin to make decisions, take actions, and create in little or big ways that take into account not only our own well-being but how our well-being can support the greater whole.

Superpower #4: Collective Well-Being

The Soul Self derives satisfaction and a sense of purpose from being in alignment with inner values, even if they go against the grain of societal norms. The Soul Self moves away from a primary focus on accumulation of wealth or personal acclaim and toward collective well-being. Although monetary and worldly success may still be attained, the Soul Self is no longer vulnerable to mistaking adulation, accumulation, or force of will as substitutes for self-worth, self-love, and inner empowerment. Instead, the Soul Self recognizes each of us as an irreplaceable, valuable part of the universe and is fed by a growing inner love (the Circle of Resilience) as well as the fulfillment found in being connected to something much greater, such as a social cause, nature, community, or Spirit. The focus also shifts from the destination to the journey. From this place, everyday choices, finding and forging connections, and work in the world are not only more authentic and meaningful; they are also a source of great satisfaction independent of final results. The Soul Self is free to express creative urges, to love and learn, and to come into a selfhood that has less to do with a final outcome or product and more to do with how one grew, learned, loved, shared great joy, and was of benefit in the world.

Superpower #5: Peace of Mind

Not only is sitting in silence a path to connecting with our Soul Self; it is also one of that self’s abilities—the ability to be silent and at peace, to sit with shifting thoughts, emotions, bodily discomforts, difficulty, and stress without running away, acting out, or distracting ourselves. There is a peace we can feel within when we are in touch with this part, and it is palpable to others. It can manifest as sitting quietly with another as they cry and letting our compassionate presence bring comfort. It can also look like finding equanimity within through quietly breathing and focusing on our sensations while standing in a long line, being caught in traffic, or when receiving difficult feedback from another. The source of this peace and calm is once again within. It’s derived from being able to be present with what is arising, knowing the moment will pass, and we can mindfully choose to bring the same acceptance and openness to whatever occurs that we have been practicing with ourselves.

Superpower #6: Joy

If the soul has its own delight, then that delight must be known as Joy. Joy at this level is not a momentary happiness; it is a rising tide that fills us from the inside and begins to accompany us through all of life’s activities. It is experienced on a spectrum that can range into peak experiences of bliss that can move us to uninhibited and surprising tears and laughter. Joy can also feel like a low, steady hum of contentment, peace, and ease flowing through our being. This joy emanates out of us, radiating through the magnetic field of our heart[2] with the power to positively touch and transform the physical and mental states of those around us. This joy is both personal and felt deep within, and communal—it awakens compassion, unconditional love, and the desire for others’ well-being. It provides the ability to see beauty, be moved, and find profound meaning amid and through the travails of life. It is a tapping into a reservoir of well-being and resilience that is unsullied and untouched by the stressors and trauma of the outer world. This joy is a return to the innocence, delight, and pure presence we were born with, and it’s a freedom in knowing we can find our way here again and again.

Accessing the Soul Self: Awe and Gratitude Practices

Two essential emotional states that act as gateways to the joyous Soul Self are awe and gratitude. If you lie down outside and look up at the night sky’s dome, you may marvel at that stunning net of lights strung overhead. You may think of the first humans who ever dreamed of flying those night skies, and then shake your head in wonder as an airplane passes overhead: an ancient dream made real. Your heart may open at the sight of a child cooing with delight, experiencing for the first time the dance of dandelion fluff borne aloft on a puff of breath, or you may find yourself moved by the unexpected kindness of strangers who band together to fully fund the lifesaving surgery of a beloved friend.

Whether you’re seeing something vast and majestic, contemplating something anew, encountering a wholly novel experience, or experiencing an act of compassion and kindness, the emotion elicited is awe.[3] The dictionary defines awe as “an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful.”[4] Another definition looks at awe as “a form of self-transcendence loosely defined by a temporarily blurring of your own edges and feeling a connection to something greater than yourself.”[5] Research shows that awe is necessary for our well-being on multiple levels: it bolsters our immune system, reduces inflammation, boosts happiness with specific positive results in veterans with PTSD, and shifts our myopic and short-term focus to a more expansive and broad understanding of our own strengths and weaknesses and of the ups and downs of life. On an evolutionary and essential level, awe produces in us the desire and proclivity to cooperate more with each other and to expand our tendency to be kind, openhearted, and compassionate—to be, in short, our Soul Selves.

As we discussed earlier, the Soul Self or experience of transcendence is correlated with feeling small, which, rather than leading to insecurity or self-diminishment, is actually a necessary feeling for encouraging interdependence and creating compassion and empathy for others. Awe is the emotional experience that produces a sense of smallness that is healthy for our personal development, according to Amie Gordon, principal research scientist in the Emotion, Health, and Psychophysiology Lab at University of California, San Francisco. Gordon’s research shows that the experience of awe “makes us see ourselves as a small piece of something larger. Feeling small makes us feel humbled (thereby lessening selfish tendencies like entitlement, arrogance, and narcissism). And feeling small and humbled makes us want to engage with others and feel more connected to others.”[6]

Gratitude, the other positive emotion that facilitates access to the Soul Self, encompasses thankful appreciation, acknowledgment of the goodness in our lives, and, as with awe, a connection to things outside ourselves (e.g., other people, grace, nature) that are contributing to our well-being. Research shows gratitude contributes greatly to resilience by boosting cardiovascular health, improving sleep, fostering strong relationships, reducing materialism, deepening a sense of spirituality, and producing a greater ability to weather stressful times.[7] It allows for that longer vision or hopeful perspective focused on possibilities and interbeing that denotes the Soul Self.

Psychologists Robert A. Emmons of the University of California, Davis, and Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami, both eminent in the field of gratitude research, studied the impact of writing even a few sentences per week focused on gratitude. They found that writing about gratitude produced a greater sense of hope and positivity in people’s lives and led to an increased tendency to engage in unrelated better habits, such as increased exercise levels, an enhancement in physical health, greater frequency in acts of spontaneous kindness and helpfulness toward others, a connection to spirituality, and a greater resilience to stress.[8] Similar research on written and verbal expression of gratitude found that happiness and motivation levels increase substantially and over a long period of time in folks giving and receiving these expressions of appreciation. People experienced increases in performance motivation of up to 50 percent, according to one workplace study, and they experienced higher psychological well-being for up to a month in a mental health study.[9]

There are a variety of simple, joyful, and research-supported ways we can deliberately practice feeling awe and gratitude, creating a through line to experiencing the Soul Self:

1. Nature and the natural world. From the recent trend of “forest bathing” in Japan to alleviate stress, to “forest therapy” and “eco-therapy” as physical and emotional health prescriptions, copious research has shown that being in nature—or even looking at photographs of nature or hearing audio of nature sounds—increases our resilience on every level.[10] The mind calms, we are more present and focused, cortisol levels drop, the immune system is boosted, and there is a general increase in well-being. Nature is also high on most people’s lists of ways to connect with the experience of awe, whether it be through climbing high to reach a spectacular view, being amid the quiet presence of old-growth trees, or simply spending time amid the flowering beauty and splendor of a garden and seeing something new on your daily walk as nature goes through her seasonal rounds.

2. Meditation and mindfulness. Whether it’s vipassana (breath) meditation, compassion practices, or lovingkindness meditation, research shows that sustained practice can bring about enduring changes in brain function and the kind of transformation in behavior that dramatically increases the limits on psychological science’s ideas of human possibility. Meditation that focuses on a particular positive quality or value, such as love, peace, or positive regard, can also deepen our capacity to feel and experience gratitude. This practice, in congruence with the Soul Self, leads to an increase in kindness toward others, greater empathy, broader perspective, greater capacity for joy, increased focus, peace, and reduction in pain and anxiety.[11]

3. Acts of kindness and appreciation. As we know, simply witnessing acts of kindness can elicit awe, leading to greater hope, compassion, and altruism. Hence, actively contributing in helpful ways can highlight, concretize, and deepen our experience of pleasure, satisfaction, and connection to others. This can take the form of extending our time, resources, and energy to others as an expression of love and service by helping out a loved one, volunteering, joining a team effort, or working toward a cause. It can also look like recognizing others’ contributions to us by reflecting on their kindness in a gratitude journal, writing thank-you notes, or expressing verbal appreciation for ourselves and others. You may want to keep a kindness and gratitude journal where you track at least one way in which you extended care to yourself or outside yourself each day, as well as one or more things you were deeply appreciative of. This will help you shift focus and perspective to having versus lack, to possibility, the ability to create positive change, and knowing that you too are the recipient of a grace outside yourself. All this grows the Soul Self mental state stronger with use and practice.

4. Novelty. Novelty is a big part of awe, and experiencing it does not have to require a large budget or going a long distance from your daily life. It does require looking up from our phones, switching off our autopilot habits, and staying open to little and big ways that wonder and newness can enter our life. You can treat your neighborhood or town as a travel destination and deliberately look for new routes to take or new places to visit. Change the time you take a daily walk, and let yourself be surprised by the way the different quality of light transforms familiar landscapes. Go to the library and pick up books about a topic or place you know nothing about, or listen to an inspiring podcast that opens up a brand-new worldview. Watch a program that explores the marvels of history, the natural world, or remarkable feats. Turn on a gorgeous piece of music, or better yet, learn to play an instrument or attend a live performance. As much as possible, look for novel experiences that can be experienced in 3D, as the experience of awe is magnified greatly through live immersion. As we deliberately seek these novel experiences, we are wiring our brains to feel more comfortable with newness, taking risks, and being with uncertainty. When we add gratitude in the moment for being able to have these new encounters, we drink more deeply from them and emerge even more connected to the Soul Self perspective.

5. Spirituality/religion/energy healing/ritual. Depending on your own particular history and proclivity, you may find that tapping into awe, gratitude, and the transcendent state is possible through immersion in religion, spirituality, energy healing, or ritual. We can think of religion as an organized, community-based system of beliefs; spirituality as a personal belief system about meaning of life, connection to Spirit, and practice; transpersonal therapies and energy healing, such as transpersonal psychology, Holotropic Breathwork, and Reiki, as methodologies that provide ways to experience the self as more than a physical body or a personality, and instead as an energy, spirit, or soul; and ritual, whether religious, spiritual, or secular, as a practice that focuses on a connection to something larger, like the earth, the divine, cosmos, or community. These practices drop us into awe and connection, and they help us traverse change through ceremony, such as funerals, memorials, and rites of passage, thereby eliciting inner or outer change. Through any of these pathways, the Soul Self may be cultivated, along with the ability to feel more peace and equanimity, find greater meaning in life as well as a sense of comfort and inner security, the ability to forgive, feel belonging, learn compassion, feel that connection to something bigger than ourselves, and deepen appreciation of the world around us and our relationships.[12]

Deepening the Soul Self: Practicing with Suffering, Joy, and Forgiveness

There are pains that feel too great to bear. There are questions that are unanswerable, life states that are unchangeable and unfair. Even as we work to shift our inner state and create a better world, we are handed events and circumstances that bring us to our knees or trap us in our beds through the profundity of our helplessness, and the pain and suffering in our individual and collective lives. As human beings, our general and understandable tendency is to move toward pleasure and away from what brings us pain. All the skills we have built so far in the Circle of Resilience mitigate that tendency by helping us build compassion, nurturance, and skill in sitting with our pain and learning to care for it. For the Soul Self, this process goes further, moving from our own pains and pleasures to feel the pain and joy of others and to work with these states as a way to awaken and deepen a love for all beings in our world.

There are three places of universal suffering that the Soul Self can use as a gateway to awakening deeper compassion, lovingkindness, and peace: first, when we encounter pain in the world that we feel helpless to do anything about, and we have the choice to close our hearts and turn away or keep them open without drowning in pain ourselves; second, when we see another experiencing joy or happiness that we don’t have or can’t experience, and we can either feel envy or jealousy or choose to practice sympathetic joy for the other; and third, when we have been harmed by another or have caused great harm ourselves, and we must choose between holding on to anger or hatred, or practicing forgiveness so we can be a source of peace.

So much of the pain our lives, in our own bodies, and in our collective bodies is a product of struggling with these three states. Many traditions offer a path to working with these states. Some practices are individual, others collective, as people go inward for contemplation and meditation or come together in mosques, churches, sweat lodges, synagogues, pagan ceremonies, and secular meetings to pray, meditate, break bread, and share in transmuting collective grief, pain, and suffering. These age-old ways of seeking a connection to an energy vaster than we are or asking assistance from communities are certainly not meant to replace direct assistance and help in the face of suffering. Nor can they necessarily change the difficult circumstance that is causing pain and suffering. Instead, they were and are meant to provide a way to make the unbearable bearable. These practices provide a space, a community, a container, a path to let us feel into emotions and situations that feel too threatening to experience alone and that require being held by something much greater than our own being, whether it’s the presence of family and community that grieves together, a collective of ancestors that we pray to and ask for help so we know we are not alone, or a source or energy like our Soul Self, Spirit, or the consciousness that permeates all living things that we tap into through meditation, ritual, reflection, or formal practice.

In this chapter and in this book’s Recommended Resources section I have chosen to highlight some practices that have been especially useful for me, my clients, and millions around the world in cultivating the Soul Self and bringing its characteristics to these three manifestations of suffering.

All these practices have in common a trait that is in alignment with the fundamental premise of joyous resilience: they turn toward the pain and suffering, allow the feelings to touch and open us, and work with the feelings in a way that fosters greater compassion toward ourselves and others, allows for healthy, loving boundaries, and brings us more into tune with our wholeness and humanity as well as that of others. In a nutshell, through these practices we get to strengthen all four aspects of the Circle of Resilience at once and significantly deepen our Soul Self by not only softening our heart toward ourselves, but also by becoming much more attuned, connected, and open to our shared humanity.

Tonglen

I am so grateful for being introduced to the practice of Tonglen in my early twenties through the teachings of Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön. I was just out of college, working as a case manager with at-risk teen mothers, and though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was stressed, angry, and grief-stricken at the daily struggles my clients faced, which all my efforts could barely make a tiny dent in, much less resolve. I had not yet learned the term “vicarious trauma”; nor was I aware that the heaviness in my heart, the anxiety that followed me home after work, and even the numbness I began to feel at the end of the first year on the job might be related to the struggles I was encountering at work.

I was caught in the dilemma common to anyone on the front lines of service work, as well as anyone whose life brings them into contact with suffering that is larger than they are, larger than what we can change in any given moment. The dilemma is a choice between opening our hearts to the pain, trying desperately to do everything we can to attempt to change, fix, or save, one more person or life; or closing our hearts, giving up, and deciding that the pain is too much and we cannot change it for anyone, so we won’t try. Both paths lead to burnout, anxiety, and suffering. Both courses of action are understandable human reactions to vicarious trauma or compassion fatigue, an emotional residue that accompanies continuous or unmitigated exposure to suffering such as ongoing violence; new stories or real-time experience of seeing others suffering through starvation, homelessness, poverty, or disease; or, in the case of social workers, crisis counselors, and mental health providers, exposure to hearing trauma stories and bearing witness to the pain, fear, and terror that trauma survivors have endured.

My resilience practices in the face of my suffering included many of the skills we’ve already covered in this part of the book, such as regularly allowing my Vulnerable Self to release my sadness and anger through the body, practicing better self-care and boundaries around my time and energy, and taking in the positive impact of my efforts and the strength and resilience of my clients. This was all an intentional practice of keeping my heart and body resilient and strong enough—and my respect for and faith in my and my clients’ combined abilities steadfast enough—to keep working toward positive change for the long run.

When I discovered Tonglen, it provided even greater support for the work I was doing. Tonglen is an eleventh-century Tibetan Buddhist meditation that serves as a purposeful gateway to practicing opening our hearts in the face of suffering, overcoming fear, and sharing our care with others. In Tonglen, we go against our usual tendency to push away suffering; instead we visualize breathing in the pain and suffering of others, bringing it into our own heart with our in breath, and with our out breath sending people whatever we think may be of benefit. This is a practice designed to awaken compassion and teach us to connect to others by coming toward their pain rather than shying away out of fear. The practice teaches that the heart can receive suffering and transmute it through its boddhi-chitta or true nature of awakened heart; thus, it also teaches us to connect with that place inside of us that is spacious, unlimited, and open, i.e., the Soul Self.

Tonglen meditation can be done in the face of any situation that brings up pain or fear for us, such as illness, death, emotional distress, and grave injustice. It can be done for victims as well as perpetrators, recognizing that in the end both are victims of harm that is being recycled forward. Tonglen is a practice that is meant to be taken off the meditation cushion and out into the world, as it can be practiced wherever and whenever we come into contact with pain. We may be on the street and see someone in pain, or at our family dinner encountering prejudice; wherever we are, we use Tonglen to turn toward the pain by breathing it in, and we transmute it by breathing out any form of relief that we feel might be useful.

The Dalai Lama, who practices Tonglen every day, shares how this practice may look like it’s teaching an impossible thing; we cannot literally take on others’ suffering or give them our happiness. However, the practice actually teaches traits of resilience in the face of suffering: strength, determination, and openness to cultivating our compassion. We reduce suffering in the world by finding a way to center and become present in ourselves in the face of pain that normally would make us dissolve in fear or react in anger that is not connected to compassion. In that way we become additional victims of the suffering or join in its perpetration by matching the energy coming toward us with equal hatred and violence. For the Dalai Lama, Tonglen “gives me peace of mind. Then I can be more effective, and the benefit is immense.”[13]

In fact, Tonglen, along with other compassion-focused meditations has concrete benefits including reduced levels of stress and cortisol (the “stress hormone”), lower anxiety and depression, and a greater sense of peace, belonging, self-esteem, and happiness.

Over time, Tonglen became a touchstone for me, a way in which I could learn to work with suffering as a force for awakening my heart. This practice felt much more strengthening and purposeful for my heart than my habitual stance, which, though understandable, had led me to feel terrified of feeling the pain and rendered me helpless and paralyzed under its weight.

Practicing Tonglen

A link to a full guided Tonglen meditation can be found in the Recommended Resources section at the end of this book.

First, take a moment to get connected to your breath, and if possible, close your eyes.

Focus on someone you care about who may be suffering.

Imagine that with your in breath you take in their suffering and let it come into your heart, as a way to relieve their suffering.

Your heart carries within it a pure, transformative energy that takes in the heaviness and is able to transmute it into light.

Imagine, feel, or sense this pure energy, your heart’s true nature, or your Soul Self turning all the suffering you take in, into light. No matter what is brought in, this awakened heart is connected to a love and light that can absorb all that comes without losing its fundamental light nature.

With your out breath, you send the suffering person anything that may be of benefit: a warm hug, peace, or the knowledge that they are loved.

Continue this practice for any length of time that feels good.

Then expand it to anyone else who may be suffering in a similar way.

Breathe in everyone’s suffering, and imagine it being transformed in the light of your heart.

Breathe out and send whatever you feel may be of benefit—or simply the wish “may they be free from pain and suffering”—to all those you are focused on.

Repeat this practice for three to five breaths or for as long as you would like. Later, you may try it with a loved one, a stranger, or even with someone who may be difficult for you. If you get stuck, come back to yourself and breathe in the feelings of stuckness, allowing your heart to transmute those. Breathe out and send love and acceptance to yourself and to anyone else who may have ever been stuck.

Remember that this practice is asking us to dissolve knots of fear and long-standing patterns of moving away from emotions, situations, and patterns that bring up aversion for us. In learning to open our hearts to these experiences, we must be patient. The good news is that Tonglen is a practice that meets us exactly where we are and lets us breathe in whatever is arising rather than push it away. It allows us to then feel it being transformed within our hearts (including our own fear and aversion) and to send ourselves the assistance we may need, while reminding us that we are connected to so many others who are in the same predicament. We are not alone. And we have a powerful love and spacious energy inside us that is a refuge and a strength we can count on.

Mudita

Mudita, which means “sympathetic or unselfish joy” in Sanskrit and Pali, is a Buddhist meditation practice for transmuting envy, jealousy, and greed into the ability to feel joy for others’ good fortune.[14] Mudita is one of the four brahma viharas, or sublime states, that Buddhists cultivate in order to awaken to our true nature. We may tap into Mudita when we feel happiness for a friend on receiving the promotion they so wanted, when we participate wholeheartedly in celebrating their child’s birth, or when we feel our heart fill with gladness when someone recovers from an illness, or with gratitude that a community is provided resources for recovering from a natural disaster. In all of these instances, we are in touch with a vicarious joy that comes from feeling glad for others in the way that we would feel glad for ourselves should similar circumstances have happened to us.

This can only occur by seeing others’ happiness as part of our own—an essential trait of the Soul Self, which recognizes and gains satisfaction from feeling herself as one with all beings. One clarifying distinction to make here is that the joy we are opening to is not for success brought about by someone’s unethical action, such as profit made by unethical means. Mudita is meant as a practice for opening to and rejoicing in the “wholesome joy, sensory pleasure, good health, successful work, and positive relationships”[15] of others.

This practice may very well be one of the hardest to do. Both its difficulty and its value are poignantly captured by author Toni Bernhard in her book How to Be Sick. In 2001 Bernhard suddenly became chronically ill with a viral-induced central nervous dysfunction, and since then she has had to spend many years restricted to her home and bed. In what can only be described as true spiritual warriorship, she turned this experience of relentless loss, pain, and restriction into a path for growing her capacity for the brahma viharas, the feeling-states of lovingkindness, compassion, equanimity, and sympathetic joy. A Buddhist practitioner, she describes with great candor her envy and anger at having to watch her partner or family and friends get to do simple, everyday things like driving to a favorite beach, attending family reunions, or going to the opera, and realizing she had lost access to that life. Step by step, and often with gritted teeth or faking it till she could make it, she would practice feeling joy for others as a way to mitigate her envy.

Bernhard’s humanity is deeply reassuring. She struggles in this practice, and she allows herself to struggle and feel what she needs, even as she tries again and again, because practice truly does lead to change. For Bernhard, the change was not only the ability to genuinely feel joy for others but also to find—to her astonishment and delight—that “ the joy I felt was no longer just the joy that emanated from connecting with the joy of others, but an inward joy as if I were engaging in these cherished activities myself.”[16] She felt “flooded with joy” and found what can only be the ultimate liberation and gift of connecting with our Soul Self: a source of inner well-being that is invincible even when our lives are far from perfect.

Mudita practice not only is a great way to grow our connection with our inner wellspring of joy; it also allows us to deepen our gratitude practice by giving us a way to constantly refocus on the joy and good in the world. It also functions as a generosity practice, in that it teaches us to share our joy and recognize the joy of others as a part of our abundance. Mudita is also a way in which we can free ourselves and others from guilt, envy, and jealousy, releasing us to feel compassion for these states within all of us and awakening us to the possibility of feeling beyond these states into love and great joy.

Mudita, like Tonglen, can be done as a formal meditation practice, as it is described below, or we can do it as we are in active engagement in our world. We can look for instances of someone we encounter who is experiencing well-being, joy, or good fortune. This could be a couple in love at the table next to you at dinner, a Facebook post from an acquaintance celebrating their graduation from a prestigious degree program, or simply someone smiling at the bus stop as you commute to work. Whether on our mediation cushion or in the world, we practice Mudita in the following ways.

Practicing Mudita

A link to a full guided Mudita meditation can be found in the Recommended Resources section at the end of this book.

We begin by focusing on our breath and relaxing our body.

Mudita is traditionally practiced first with a “cheerful person who is a good friend,” someone whose way of being is easy for you to feel appreciative of. Let yourself focus on this person, taking in their positive demeanor and happiness and letting it fill you.

Bring to mind the blessings in their life, and as you go over them, repeat these phrases slowly, leaving room to breathe in between each one, and open yourself to the feelings they evoke:

I’m happy that you’re happy.

May your happiness continue.

May your happiness increase.

May you feel joy.

Once this feeling gains strength within you, you may then focus in turn on someone you dearly love, a neutral person, someone who may be difficult for you to feel sympathetic joy toward, all beings everywhere, and yourself. If you’re doing Mudita out in the world, simply focus on whomever you have encountered.

Mudita is an ongoing practice. When doing Mudita, it is normal to encounter the very reasons we engaged with it in the first place: our own envy, fear, greed, and jealousy, raising their heads and making it difficult for us to feel into joy in our own life and for others. As with any other practice, we allow ourselves to feel into these emotions, bring our compassion and lovingkindness practice to ourselves, and then open to Mudita again. Each time we do, we are opening a pathway out of our suffering self into our Soul Self and the radiant light of joy that is our true nature.

Forgiveness

The final practice of using suffering as a way to open our hearts to our connection to others is that of forgiveness. Like all the Soul Self practices, in doing it we realize that it offers us freedom and wholeness from what is poisoning us. Our true benefit to others through these practices is that we can show up with more of the calm and love the world needs.

Perhaps one of the greatest examples of a collective forgiveness practice is the truth and reconciliation process undertaken in South Africa in the aftermath of apartheid. This process allowed white and Black South Africans to go through a process of “confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation” that allowed the nation to go forward on a path of healing instead of revenge and retribution. Archbishop Desmond Tutu led much of this process as chair of the nation’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Based on this experience, he and his daughter, Mpho Tutu, cowrote The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World, which describes forgiveness as “admitting and acknowledging any wrong or potential harm; telling one’s story and witnessing the anguish; asking for and granting forgiveness; renewing or releasing the relationship.”[17] The authors remind us that “because we are human, some of our interactions will go wrong, and then we will hurt or be hurt, or both. It is the nature of being human, and it is unavoidable. Forgiveness is the way we set those interactions right.”[18]

This fourfold path is for perpetrators of harm and victims of harm alike; it reminds us that those who wound others are often injured themselves. “They have wounded us because they have stood inside their own story and acted out of pain, shame, or ignorance. They have ignored our shared humanity. When we see pain in this way, we are able to see our common bond.”[19] This reminder does not in any way condone the hurt caused or dismiss the impact on the victim. Instead, it simply includes the perpetrator in the mercy offered by a path that lets them feel the impact of their actions by taking in the real anguish of the one harmed, and the opportunity to take accountability and ask for forgiveness. This allows the perpetrators to regain a connection to their own humanity and that of others, which is the ultimate pathway out of the cycle of violence and harm. This is the Soul Self’s way—to view healing not simply as an individual path but one that involves the collective whole. The way out of pain is to shift out of reaction and retaliation from hurt and anger, and to refrain from using these emotions as a way to cut ourselves off from our humanity and do harm in return. Instead, we need to do the much more difficult and ultimately collective soul-healing work of learning to heal and strengthen bonds through forgiveness.

As with the previous deepening practices, forgiveness is a process that takes considerable strength, patience, and assistance, especially depending on the gravity of the harm caused. We may have to return to this process many times, and we may need time to even reach the place where we are ready to engage in the process. And process is the key word here. Forgiveness takes time, and it requires moving through certain steps that allow for the experience of forgiveness to emerge through practice. These steps are much easier to take when we’ve done the work of building our inner Nurturer, Protector, and Resilient Self, because they require us to begin by naming and validating the pain we have felt or caused, and to take the time to allow all of our feelings in relation to the event to be shared and witnessed. This can occur as a written process in our journal, in a letter, in conversation with the person who caused harm or whom we have harmed (if we have their willingness and consent), or with the aid of a healer or mediator, like a therapist.

It is only when these feelings have been honored by being acknowledged and felt that we can move to the next step of the process, which includes asking for forgiveness (after deeply taking in our impact and reflecting on the harm we caused), and deciding to forgive (out of the understanding that we wish to free ourselves of the burden of hatred and resentment). We then choose to remember that the compassion we can feel toward another who has erred is what will keep us connected to compassion for our own shadow parts. At this point there is a further crucial step to the process, which is deciding if we want to maintain relationship with the person who has harmed us, and if so, in what form; or whether we want to end the relationship. This step in itself can be a great relief for victims of harm because it allows the peace of forgiveness (the Soul Self) without mistaking it for having to be in close proximity to or contact with those who have harmed us. This lets us have our boundaries (the Protector) while staying connected to our compassion and love (the Nurturer) and remaining able to thrive (the Resilient Self). The path and practice of forgiveness offer us and our world tremendous benefits. You will find more information on this practice in the Recommended Resources section at the end of this book.

A note on mindfulness, meditation, forgiveness practices, and trauma: the Soul Self practices offered in this section are profoundly valuable, in that they offer time-honored paths of working with extremely difficult feelings, states, and experiences. Although meditation, mindfulness, and forgiveness practices are generally helpful, it is important to approach any of these practices with a trauma-sensitive perspective. This means that if we have a history of trauma, or if we become aware that the practices are causing more discomfort than ease—feeling less grounded, dislocated from the body, intense physical or emotional distress, an increase in intrusive thoughts or painful memories—it is very important to pause the process and do this work with the aid of a meditation practitioner or therapist who has a trauma-sensitive approach and can help you use these tools more effectively. You will find information about trauma-sensitive mindfulness and yoga in the Recommended Resources section to assist you.

Experiencing and Cultivating the Soul Self: Julio’s Story

Julio is a Mexican American trans man in his late thirties, with a history of physical and sexual trauma that left him prone to bouts of depression and anxiety. Assaults on trans rights by the Trump administration, as well as media reports of detention of immigrant children who were forcibly separated from their parents (many of them Mexican) and held in concentration-camp-like centers, had further elevated this tendency and triggered suicidal thoughts, helplessness, and panic about being further persecuted and harmed for being trans and an immigrant.

As Julio and I looked together for sources of resilience in his life, it quickly became apparent that he had a deeply soulful and spiritual nature. He was raised Catholic, but he had stepped away from the church and the practice of religion because he felt unwelcome in his religious community due to his gender transition. What had remained with him, however, was a sense of connection to and solace in a higher power, and he recalled extremely stressful times in his life when turning to prayer and meditation had been his saving grace. As an adolescent he had lived in a rural environment without access to a car, and he had spent much of his time walking through country roads and fields to get to his job. His walking had become a form of contemplative practice for him. As he got older, this practice had fallen away with the hectic pace of urban living and being in a car most of the time, as well as not being connected to others in his social circle who were interested in nature, hiking, or spiritual growth and practice.

After Julio and I started therapy, I became aware that although he was usually noticeably agitated when he first arrived, one day he showed up more peaceful than usual to the session hour. When I mentioned this shift, he shared that, prompted by the memories that had come up in our recent discussions, he had spontaneously decided to spend time in the forested area that abutted his home, walking around and then sitting and doing his journaling for session amid nature. The environment had been so relaxing that he found himself naturally falling into quiet meditation for a few minutes, brought to a peaceful state by contact with the natural environment. As we slowed down and took note of the impact this choice had had on him, he was able to note how he felt more connected and calm in his body, and his thinking had slowed down; as a result, he had felt less threatened and activated on the usually stressful drive over, and he even felt a sense of kindness toward people on the road. The difference in his state provided clear, palpable proof that we had accessed a part of him that was essential to his healing. This part was able to tap into an internal peaceful reservoir, despite the stressful circumstances of the world, and it was a place where he became connected again to the flow of life and open to compassion and even possibility—his Soul Self.

Some people will come into therapy already having an experience with or connection to the Soul Self. They might call it ancestral medicine, spirituality, religion, their higher self, or having nature be a place of solace and reflection. I always encourage folks to start with what they know and feel an affinity toward. If you already have a strong secular or spiritual practice (perhaps in your own culture or tradition), then this chapter may simply serve to highlight ways in which this connection highlights resilience. If you are new to accessing this state then may the traits and practices we covered, or the following questions and meditations that I used with Julio, help point toward possible ways to tap into and grow this connection.

For Julio, identifying the practices that got him connected to the Soul Self state was an important step in our journey, and one that would yield greater and greater results the more he turned to them. Some of that work required healing from the shame and trauma of being rejected by the church and reclaiming for himself that he got to have a personal connection to teachers like Jesus or the peace he felt through some of the Christian teachings without having to take on the bigotry or hatred (the external Critic) that he had been confronted with. If you have had similar experiences of having parts of yourself be rejected or devalued by a spiritual or religious tradition, it will likely be important to do some healing work with a professional or in your healing community around this legitimate pain and to reclaim and reshape how you would like to access the parts of the Soul Self that feed your resilience.

Soul Self Reflection

- What traits of the Soul Self did you most connect with?

- Are there ways that you already embody or have experienced any of these traits?

- Are there any secular, spiritual, or religious practices that you are a part of (or that are a part of your cultural or heritage) that are a resource to you? If yes, how?

- If no, are there are any that you have been curious about (for example, meditation, gratitude practice, Reiki)?

- What has kept you from accessing or deepening this connection?

- What might be possible for you should you open to it?

Soul Self Meditation 1: The Light Within

You may find the full version of this guided meditation at www.anjulisherinmft.com.

Take a few moments to get into a relaxed and comfortable posture, and let your eyes close. Let your attention come to the cave of your heart. As you breathe into your heart, start to imagine, feel, see, or sense a light emanating from the center of your chest. With every breath you take, that light glows a little more brightly and starts to get a little bigger. Your breath fans it like a flame, allowing it to grow brighter and brighter. It may feel warm or cool, and there is a sense of peace that emanates from it. As you continue to breathe, the light fills your chest, and eventually it fills your full torso. You feel light and space within your body. Continue to breathe, focusing on the sensation of light and space within. Eventually the light and space fill your whole body and start to glow all around you. You are sitting in a bubble of light and space. With every breath, the light and space around you expand, and there is more and more peace.

If it feels good, you can imagine that the light and space bubble around you expands until it is as big as the room you are in, or even the house or building you are sitting in. The bubble can grow as wide and vast as feels good, expanding until you have a bubble the size of the earth all around you, or expanding until you are as spacious and vast as the light-filled universe. You are connected to and part of everything, and everything is connected to and part of you. In this space, a whole new perspective opens up, a sense of well-being, ease, and even clarity or peace about your life. Stay here as long as you like, knowing you can expand back out into this state whenever you like, to deepen your ability to access a more expansive perspective.

Light Meditation Reflection

When you emerge from the meditation, take some time to reflect on how you felt when experiencing yourself as light, space, or vastness. What color or form did the light take that was in and around you—e.g., bubble, opaque, translucent, bright, dim, pulsing? How spacious were you—as wide as your own body, the energy bubble, the house, the universe? Is there an emotion associated with this state? Or a sensation? In this state, if you could speak, how you would end the following sentence:

I am _________________ (e.g., light, space, open, peaceful, quiet, lost, empty, full, wise, loving, love, calm).

Complete the sentence as many times as you can with different words that match what you felt.

If you like, you may want to look for images of light, space, spirituality, colors, mandalas, shapes, or affirmations that match this experience and these words. You can add this emerging reflection of your Soul Self to your altar, completing the Circle of Resilience figures inside you, and you can use it in the following meditations and exercises as a source of wisdom and support.

For Julio, this light meditation became a daily practice that let him access peace and centeredness more readily, and it left him more secure in his ability to tap into a calm and connected space amidst a chaotic world. He found a picture of a light in the exact shade of amethyst that came to him in the meditation, and he would simply meditate on this color by gazing on it on his altar as a way to go more deeply into the Soul Self state.

Soul Self Meditation 2: Cave of the Heart

You may listen to the full version of this guided meditation at www.anjulisherinmft.com.

We are going on a journey to awaken your Soul Self, which lives within the cave of your heart. For the next few breaths you take, imagine yourself entering your heart as if it was a chamber or a cave. You are visiting not so much your physical heart as your heart center. Begin to focus on a light at the center of your heart that pulses and glows with every breath you take. The light feels safe and warm, and slowly it begins to grow, illuminating the cave of your heart. Take a look around, slowly getting to see and know this sanctuary that is an ever-present place within yourself.

You may walk around or spot a place where you might want to sit and simply be for a while. Take time to be alone in this safe and sacred space, knowing it is here just for you. When and if you are ready, you may ask for or open to the presence of a soul guide or guides who may accompany you here. Begin to see, sense, feel, or perceive such a guide in the form of a light, a spiritual teacher, or even an energy of peace and stillness in this space. They are here just for you and will withdraw at any time you choose. Guides are always loving and peaceful, and their presence and messages are completely respectful of your free will. You may spend time with them or continue to explore this space.

Eventually your exploration brings you to an opening in the cave that leads to a ledge. From here you find yourself at a great height overlooking a broad, majestic landscape. Let yourself stand or sit for a while, breathing deeply, and taking in this view of the vast terrain. What do you see? Forests, lakes, rivers, the ocean, mountains that give way to the sea? What does the sky look like? What scents are in the air? Is it nighttime or day? Get to know your landscape. Most importantly, the longer you stay there, what positive impact does this place have on your emotional state? Stay especially open to any experience of awe, hope, inspiration, positivity, or peace.

This entire landscape—the cave, the light, the sense of awe or peace or pause you are experiencing here—is a cultivation of a connection with your Soul Self, that part of you that can be still and rest into the unfolding of life and what is yet unknown. We can benefit from this state with any amount of experiencing it, although the longer you stay in this place and the more frequently you return, the deeper your connection will grow, and the stronger its positive impact will be.

When you are ready, let yourself think of any situation you may be having a difficult time with or need a different perspective on. Bring this question to mind. As you do, look down at your hands or across from you, where the problem you’ve been having will show itself as a form—perhaps a ball of tangled yarn, a light, a shape, or something else. Next, ask that you be given some guidance or a different perspective on this situation. Relax after you ask the question. You’re not expecting yourself to do or experience anything, other than to breathe and look out at the landscape and the view. Let its peace and beauty enter you. Stay open to any thoughts that may come in answer to your question. The answer may even come from the guide you encountered earlier in the cave, or from an animal or guide that now emerges from the landscape. Or, you may simply begin to hear an answer or response inside. Try not to get attached to a lengthy or even completely clear response. Especially at the beginning of this practice, the answers may come simply. You will know they are on the right track because they contain a sense of peace, loving detachment, and good intention.

When you have received your answer—and if no answer comes, know that you may return again or that the answer may show up in everyday life after the meditation—let yourself take in your landscape one last time. This is a terrain you can return to and explore over repeated visits. It is an inner magical space where you can retreat, unwind, let go, imagine, create, and ask for all you need, and return grounded and peaceful.

Embodying the Soul Self

Living embodiments of Soul Self resilience can be found in the annals of social justice, spiritual leadership, and great fortitude in the face of unimaginable suffering. These beings act as inspirational examples of Gandhi’s famous saying: “We must be the change we want to see in the world.” Their connection to the Soul Self results in a profound contribution to making the world a safer and better place for us all.

Three such embodiments of the Soul Self are Nelson Mandela, Patrisse Cullors, and Viktor Frankl. Mandela, the first Black president of South Africa and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, found himself sentenced to life in prison at age forty-six for his antiapartheid activities. Yet he was renowned for his warm, cheerful demeanor and for his remarkably compassionate and forgiving perspective that encompassed the persecutor and the persecuted in his desire for freedom from suffering for all. He famously said, “When I walked out of prison, that was my mission—to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both.” For him, the reason to embrace this mission was clear: “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”

This perspective, which is concerned with benefiting society as a whole, is a signature trait of the Soul Self. Mandela referred to the following Soul Self practices as his sources of resilience during his time in prison: connection to nature through gardening, and finding upliftment and awe through the beauty of flowers and the natural world; and learning lessons in perseverance and courage through awe-inspiring examples from literature, such as the great myths and histories of Greek heroes, that allowed him to perceive his own journey and that of the South African struggle through the broader lens of a heroic journey. In his darkest moments, rather than collapsing in despair he found renewed faith and a persistence of courage through a connection to his comrades and even a love for all the people of his land, Black and white, with a resolve and commitment to change the system of apartheid—and its core of racism—that had sown hatred and injustice instead of love.[20]

Another civil rights leader of our time, Patrisse Cullors—one of three founders of the #BlackLivesMatter movement—is another example of the embodied Soul Self and is widely admired as both a political leader and a spiritual one. When interviewed about the role of spirituality in Black Lives Matter and social justice work, she discussed her search for spiritual connection, first in the indigenous traditions of her family, which is connected to the Native American Choctaw and Blackfoot tribes, and then in the practice of Ifá, a spiritual tradition from Nigeria. This spiritual connection gave her a way to understand and give meaning and purpose to her own life circumstances and struggles, and it provided a wider perspective that viewed the fight for social justice as a “deeply spiritual fight,” as she puts it.

From this Soul Self viewpoint, self-care is a part of spiritual practice: feeding one’s mind, body, and spirit in ways that nourish it, and taking back the very dignity and sacredness of the self that oppressive conditions have otherwise stripped away. From this vantage point, our own well-being is intrinsically tied to that of others, and Cullors is modeling a spiritual love that views care for the self as directly connected with being of service to others—the opposite of self-neglect and burnout. One can hear the Soul Self speaking loud and clear as she states, “I come at all my work from a deep philosophical place that [asks], what does it take for humans to live in our full humanity and allow for others to live in their full dignity? I don’t believe spirit is this thing that lives outside of us dictating our lives, but rather our ability to be deeply connected to something that is bigger than us. I think that is what makes our work powerful.”[21]

Another striking example of Soul Self resilience in the face of suffering is Victor Frankl, who endured three years in Nazi concentration camps. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl shares his insights on surviving the most horrific conditions with his dignity and humanity intact by finding meaning in a purpose beyond himself. Frankl articulated a great truth about human resilience: when confronted with a hopeless situation, what matters most is to transform it into an experience that has meaning. “The experiences of camp life showed that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.” For Frankl, this ability was sourced in Soul Self practices, including focusing on memories that produced gratitude and connection, such as that of his beloved wife, and focusing on giving comfort to others. These practices allowed him to retain the most important of “human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”[22]

The human spirit is capable of acts of great atrocity and profound love and grace. It seems to be our greatest opportunity, and perhaps our biggest responsibility, to use our brief existence and its gift of consciousness in order to develop our capacity to live, act, and be the vibration of love and peace in the world—in short, to become our Soul Selves: the changemakers, trailblazers, and living embodiments of love in action.

Soul Self Practices

1. Complete meditations 1 and 2 to develop an inner connection to your Soul Self.

2. Look back at the ways one can connect to awe or gratitude, and choose one to three that you already practice or would like begin practicing, as a way to connect to the Soul Self.

3. Once you practice one of them intentionally, reflect on the impact it had on your physical, mental, and emotional state. Did you experience any of the characteristics associated with the Soul Self? Which ones? What did that state contribute to the rest of your day or even your interactions with other people?

4. Return to an issue your Vulnerable Self has been grappling with. It can be one you have already worked on in past chapters. See if you can respond to the problem using Tonglen, Mudita, or Forgiveness Practices, or from the Soul Self. What would the Soul Self say to the Vulnerable Self about this situation? What perspective do the meditations or the Soul Self offer that is helpful? What happens when you turn back to the situation after connecting with the Soul Self?

5. Find your inspiration for a living embodiment of the Soul Self. You may want to hang quotes, put up pictures on your altar, read books, or watch movies about this being to deepen your connection, and even imagine how they would respond to your Vulnerable Self and what perspective they might offer.

PART III

JOYOUS RESILIENCE

11

Practicing Joyous Resilience

Gaudete, gaudete! The music plays on the radio, and without knowing what the Latin words mean, my heart feels uplifted, and a surge of positive energy moves through me. Life is synchronistic, because days later when I was researching the etymology of the word joy, I learned that it comes from the Greek gau or gaudere—to rejoice! My body had responded to the lyrics of the song in just the manner the song wished to evoke: a sense of gladness and celebration.

I had felt shades of that sensation before: a buoyant excitement on neighborhood walks at the beginning of spring, at the sight of yellow daffodils dancing giddily in sidewalk gardens, heralding the warmer days to come; the exhilaration and release of being able to cry and rage as freely as I needed to in therapy, and the expansive space I felt inside for days after; a quiet contentment and warmth filling my heart and belly upon feeling the presence of loved ones around me and the sounds of laughter. It was the high, exuberant note punctuating a regular work day when a client made a breakthrough, or the sustained, low hum of blissful relaxation over a long vacation. I can slip into it in a moment, gazing up at the long, swaying branches of trees, or the ripe full moon and her stars. It wells up like a delicious giggle at getting to hold a soft baby, biting into a ripe piece of fruit, or singing out loud to a favorite song in the car. It is the rising tide of gladness in the midst of a kiss, in the heart of meditation, in the wash of colors at sunset or dawn.

Pleasure, bliss, sensuality, delight, happiness, rejoicing, and gladness are all part of the marvelous lexicon that makes up joyfulness. These words point to both the sensations of aliveness and many of the feelings and experiences that make us feel life is worth living. They add color to the necessary ingredients of a well-lived life—purpose, connection, creation, service—and allow each of these to shift from duty and obligation to feeling and acting from inspiration, joy, and well-being that sustains us over a long time. Yet, if you look at most texts on building resilience, or at the focus of most therapy, the reclamation of joy is rarely even at the sidelines, much less at the heart.

For me, years of intensive personal work ultimately led to a strong and ever-evolving healthy Circle of Resilience. I felt grateful, empowered, and much more peace in my life by having the skill sets of the Nurturer, Protector, and Soul Self at my disposal. The Nurturer had helped me have an affirming and attuned inner presence, and I felt more grounded and regulated as I took care of my daily needs well. The Protector had helped me set solid boundaries that protected my time and energy and helped me further my professional career. My Soul Self had provided access to a broader perspective and calm that brought me much peace and solace in life. And my Vulnerable Self was certainly all the more resilient for this. In a sense, I had arrived; and yet, I had a strong sense that what had I had gained was only the first half of this pivotal journey of regaining aliveness. I had built a solid platform that now provided a stage for more of my life energy to unfold. Yet, what more could there be? Wasn’t a healthy sense of self, a good life purpose, friendships, and having my resources fulfilled enough? When I felt down, couldn’t I simply turn to these things to help buoy me? The answer was yes, I could, because I had greatly enhanced my resilience. The answer was also that more could be added to it.

Faced with a mixture of restlessness, boredom, listlessness, and a mild despondency (the emotional signals of my Vulnerable Self), I turned to the tools of reflection, journaling, and meditation to start to lovingly and curiously ask this part what it was longing for. The answer was surprising, and on the face of it simple: she wanted to have fun.

Fun? My responses vacillated between thinking, Isn’t that frivolous? Shouldn’t I have a more worthy endeavor to focus on? and a more superficial response: Hm, well, how hard could that be? Maybe I could plan a vacation or a few outings. That helped relieve some of the intensity of feeling, but only so much, and I kept returning to the inquiry. As time went by I realized the Vulnerable Self was teaching me to ask questions and delve deeper into what made me feel alive and truly resilient. It turns out that even if you love your job, enjoy your friends, and feel like you are living a life of purpose, you still need to experience fun, pleasure, play, and creativity. And not only in our downtime; we need these experiences to be intentionally infused through every area of life.

I realized that although my years of therapy had helped me build better mental, emotional, and even physical health, and all of that had led to greater well-being, they had not focused on an essential question: why did I want that life? The answer was that I wanted to feel better, happier, more fulfilled, to love more; I wanted a feeling of vibrance and fulfillment that were encapsulated by the word joy. Nor had my years of work helped me explore the essential questions that would move me toward this experience: What would it take to infuse my life with that quality? How do I actively cultivate joy? What makes me feel joy? Am I allowed to feel joyous in a world filled with suffering? Wouldn’t that be selfish? Would putting joy at the center of my life mean I was not allowed to feel my other emotions?

What I thought would be an afternoon’s journal entry turned into years of reflection, deepening, and reclamation of what brought my inner self true happiness—an ongoing experiment in joy. The maxim “just take the first step” really held true in the case of this experiment, because following the first thought I had, to take a vacation, ultimately led me to a culture, place, and people that would break open the limiting ideas I had been shaping my life around.

Early in my exploration I had the chance to visit Bali with some friends and be guided by an inspirational Balinese host, Suma, who turned out to be an embodiment of and inspiration for a life of joyous resilience. In welcoming and introducing us to his beloved island, Suma graciously and generously allowed us an insight into the many threads of Balinese tradition, culture, and religion that wove the rich tapestry of his life.

My two friends and I, coming from the Bay Area, were used to a life where the high cost of living, the societal value placed upon business and career, and the burden of carrying everyday responsibilities on our own or within the small universe of a partner and a few friends resulted in constraints and decentering of pleasure, play, quality and frequency of connection, and loss of creativity in our lives. I had the benefit of my upbringing in Pakistan, and the continued influence of family and Pakistani peers, who had a stronger cultural bent toward collective help (Pakistani culture highly values family ties and connections), a slower pace of life, and a renowned creative and artistic tradition. My friends, artists in their own right, had many years behind them of struggling to balance the high cost of life and the demands of work with their own desire to have more time for creativity. None of us had lived in a culture or society that had centered and supported joy, pleasure, or creativity as essential to living. We were seriously considering what changes we needed to make to lead a more fulfilling life, and we were eager to learn from new perspectives.

It wasn’t long before our conversations with Suma focused on the quality of life he experienced on this beautiful island he was so proud to call home and its basis in a culture that emphasized a balance between the individual, the community, and a larger spiritual cosmos. According to one explanation of Balinese culture, “the individual, in the Balinese universe, is just one part of a greater whole. Individuals form a ‘microcosm’ (bhuwana alit), a part of the greater ‘macrocosm’ (bhuwana agung), which is encompassed by the Supreme God (Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa). To live as a Balinese is to strive to keep these three in equilibrium.”[1] The Balinese do so by creating and investing in a strong network of communal organizations underpinned by Hindu and ancestral religious practice and traditions, which in turn inform the ubiquitously expressed art, music, craft, and dance for which Balinese culture is renowned.

This triad was evident in the shape and structure of a typical day or week in Suma’s life. We watched his indefatigable energy tend to his work duties as our host and guide and then turn toward his role as head of his local banjar, an essential Balinese communal organization that “organizes Balinese society into small hamlets that help regulate and care for its members.”[2] Being head of the banjar is an important (and unpaid) role that put Suma in charge of handling a wide range of community needs, such as arranging for roads to be built, handling civil disputes, and administering marriages and divorces. The banjar is an element of the communal system of life that, along with religion, binds the Balinese people together as a whole.

Suma’s banjar, like all others, also had its temples with their multitudes of ceremonies, at which people would regularly present offerings—spiritual gifts in the form of artistic creations made from food, fruits, and flowers—to ancestors and deities. There would also be performances of dance, shadow puppetry, and music from the temple orchestra, called a gamelan. These activities were all led by members of the community, including Suma, who would spend evenings practicing his instrument in the gamelan while his wife prepared offerings to the ancestors. The temple ceremonies provided a place of spiritual worship; a regular space of gathering, celebration, and communion with others; and a wellspring for Balinese creative arts.

Many families practiced some form of creative art as a part of their everyday life or as a vocation. For Suma, his artistry came out in architecture and design, as he had built his home into a beautiful and elegant retreat. Beauty appeared resplendent everywhere, seeming like a celebration of life and a reflection of the natural beauty of the island: the colorful, freshly made spiritual offerings on the doorsteps of local homes each morning; the way local flowers and fruits adorned even the simplest plates of food; the colorful handmade fabrics worn for daily wear, and the more elaborate clothing for temple ceremonies and celebrations; the intricate carvings that covered the ubiquitous temples; the sounds of gamelan music playing each evening across the fields; and the vibrant dances and theater keeping history alive through story. In these ways, Suma and his family were a living example of one possibility for a balancing triad of individual, communal, and spiritual resilience. This triad of resilience fed the well-being of each person and the community as a whole through resilience practices that centered strong structures of support, interdependence, a connection to a larger perspective, and generative and joyous creative practices.

Not everyone had the chance to follow their creative urges to the full, due to familial or financial responsibilities. We all related and responded strongly to the example of one such person, Ini Warsa. He was our guide on a day when Suma had to attend to his communal duties, and he shared that he had spent the majority of his life unable to follow his dream of being an artist. At the age of forty, having never painted before, he made the decision to pick up a paintbrush and attempt his first painting. Ten years later, his talent had blossomed into work that was being appreciated internationally, and his children were following in his footsteps, becoming artists in their own right. His greatest happiness seemed to come less from the professional success of his creative talent than from the joy of allowing himself to explore and express his long-cherished dream.

Needless to say, Balinese culture, like the Pakistani heritage I was born into and the American one I was living in, came with its own set of complexities and challenges, compounded as always by factors like gender, disability, income, sexual orientation, and religious difference. Suma had rights and privileges as a Balinese heterosexual male that his wife did not, including the right to lead community organizations (banjars are led by males only). Balinese attitudes toward people with disabilities can be discriminatory and ostracizing; for example, at times community members with overt physical disabilities are not allowed to attend temple ceremonies because in Balinese religious tradition, physical ailment is considered a sign of spiritual imbalance[3]. The influx of tourism combined with a rise in the use of disposable materials like plastics has meant that Bali’s waters are being clogged with plastic, threatening the health of their marine life. A corresponding shift from agriculture to tourism housing has led to a significant decline in the rice fields that once formed the center of Balinese life, community, and landscape. And even positive values like having strong community ties and organizations can lead to the burden of having to attend ceremonies and participate in communal activities that a modern working life can make hard to balance.

Coming from a South Asian culture and heritage that has long been fetishized and commodified by Western cultures, with many cultural symbols, customs, and practices appropriated for commercial or personal use by the West, it felt imperative to learn from the culture and my time there without reducing the learnings or the people to easy tropes. The Balinese community and the intricate structure they belong to comes from centuries of integration of religion, creative heritage, land, and social networks; an accumulation of indigenous wisdom; and, like all societies, change and growth.

As a visitor in a different land, I felt it was paramount to remember that the slice of life I was exposed to, specifically from my vantage of socioeconomic privilege, was one tiny thread in a web of profound complexity. For example, the majority of my conversations ended up being with straight, cisgender, middle- or lower-middle-class, able-bodied Balinese men, which gave me a perspective steeped in these intersections and cut off from many others (such as women and queer, disabled, trans, and lower-income people). Acknowledging these limitations of viewpoint, what I did gain was exposure to a life and culture that centered beauty and creativity in its daily round of activity—an immensely important gift and perspective that my time in Bali, and the inspiration I drew from Suma and Ini Warsa, opened up to me. The experience left me questioning the shape and structure of my own days, and asking myself what I had centered in my life. It also led me to look at the sources of joy my culture of origin had offered me and the ways in which cultures around the world and within America advanced joy in ways that were not rooted in capitalism and its compulsive behest to push people to produce, consume, and achieve. What if I centered a way of living as the why of living, rather than focusing on what I was accomplishing, doing, or buying in my life? What did the Ini Warsa inside of me still dream of?

My journaling entries became much richer. I started to hear a voice that had been buried long ago in the institutional halls of formal schooling, where I’d been told to choose the right major ever since I was a freshman in high school, with the only goal of education being to push me toward college and then on to a profession. In the meantime, it seemed my task was to push aside my creative interests and even my intellectual curiosity in pursuit of building a career. This long-dormant voice within reminded me of the roads I had never followed. I remembered how I’d loved to sing as a child; my fascination with languages, as I had grown up in a bilingual household; and even a childhood dream of learning to play the piano that had to be deferred, because purchasing one had been too expensive, not to mention paying for lessons.

There had been so many things I had been interested in—history, astronomy, science, drama, literature—that I had cast aside so I could focus on gaining the necessary prerequisites, requirements, trainings, and certifications—which I also enjoyed—as part of building my skills as a clinician. In that learning journey, there had been no room to try new hobbies, turn to new interests, or learn a skill without the pressure of having to be proficient, if not excellent. I could hear the voice inside longing to be allowed to explore her desires without any need to be good at them or make a long-term commitment to them. This voice reminded me that part of the joy of discovery was to be allowed to dabble and simply explore new paths.

The other pieces of myself that came back through inquiry after that time in Bali was the need for more beauty, pleasure, and relaxation in my day-to-day life. I started asking questions in different ways: What did beauty mean to me? What would a pleasurable morning look like? How could I add more relaxation, even in the midst of a hectic work day? I came up with whimsical answers, like reading a novel at breakfast before work, or sitting outside in the sun or admiring the flowers in sidewalk gardens on my breaks, listening to uplifting music during the day, or having that evening chai break that for me epitomized my Pakistani culture’s resilience practice of slowing down and sipping life.

The hobbies began to sort themselves out, as I realized the ones that I wanted to keep were the ones that generated more joy in just the doing of them, with dancing becoming the most cherished one. This die-hard veteran of therapy and self-help realized that sometimes my body just needed to sweat and dance and come alive, as much as it needed to cry or talk it out in therapy. I needed the pleasure of exploring a new area to make me feel alive and hopeful as much as I needed to read a new self-help book or try a different healing modality. I needed to enjoy my life to feel fueled to do the work I loved, as much as I needed to remember the work was serious, and I needed to be able to hold its gravity.

In my early days as a psychotherapy intern in grad school, my supervisor would often speak about the phenomenon of the things a healer is dealing with in her own life being mirrored back to her by the content clients bring in. In this way, relationships act as mirrors, normalizing our process and providing insight into our own concerns as we see how others shift and move through similar themes. If my inquiry into mental health and resilience had a theme song, it would have been, “What’s Joy Got to Do with It?” My clients began to answer that song’s refrain, and I found special resonance and hope in the responses from clients who were survivors of childhood trauma. In sessions we would often talk about what it takes to survive times of unimaginable hardship and terror. We would look to their history to find not only the necessary responses of flight, fright, and freeze, but also the bright threads of practices that had been life-affirming in ways that preserved a through line to joy and resilience.

Despite many differences in people’s socioeconomic backgrounds and social locations, the examples fit into similar categories each time: our younger selves, and the elders who supported them, had unconsciously chosen ways to relieve the adrenaline, anxiety, depression, isolation, and hopelessness of their physical, emotional, and sexual traumas through music, movement, creativity, nature, spirituality, and connection. They ran track or played soccer out on the field or as late as they could in the street, finding release of pent-up adrenaline, fear, anger, and helplessness through the exertion of their bodies, and in claiming their body and its strength as their own. They turned their headphones up loud, singing and dancing furiously when they were home alone before their perpetrator might come home, getting to cry, shake, yell, and speak lyrics that affirmed their existence and helped them feel alive and well, even for a short while. They talked of pets whose comfort and play got them through living in domestically violent households; loving animal companions who made them laugh and remember to be silly, to hug and hold and enjoy the pleasure of touch in households where the pet was the only safe body.

Some who grew up rurally spent as much time as they could outdoors: climbing trees, playing by creeks, finding solace and retaining their ability to feel joy through the beauty of nature. Some drew, sketching out what terrified them and also their visions for a better life, comic-book superheroes battling villains, finding a way to craft stories on paper, in journals, or through play that helped them feel hope and power. Others spoke of the comfort of Grandma’s cooking, Granddad’s stories, playing with siblings, or retreating into imagination and reading, all providing ways to go to a different space despite being stuck in the cramped and dangerous confines of their home. We spoke of the power of even one loving elder, a teacher, a grandparent or neighbor, whose home or presence provided access to affirming connection; or spiritual or secular rituals, like collective dinners or communal prayers for hard times, or sharing time with family, sitting, laughing, and talking together, providing great solace even amid chronic sickness, death or loss of parents, or the ongoing stressors of poverty and community violence. Each story evoked in us a feeling of wonder at the power of these rituals to keep hope, pleasure, joy, and our very life force alive despite extreme suffering.

Many of the stories helped me remember my own childhood avenues of resilience that were a missing piece in the joy I was so craving in my life. I had forgotten about the hours I had spent playing badminton, biking, roller skating, and just being physically active on the streets until I was about twelve. This physical exertion had been a great outlet and release for all the pent-up tensions of growing up in a household that could be volatile at times, and it was also simply healthy for my growing body. Societal restrictions on girls being outdoors, and social control of young women’s bodies, meant that at puberty my ability to play outside, ride my bike, or even walk outside freely or play with my friends or on my own, were heavily curtailed.

Looking back, I could see the severe cost to my mental health as well as to the physical strength and agility of my developing body imposed by dramatically and abruptly restricting all my joy-giving activity. The very thing that had given me joy was now taken away, and the combination of puberty, gender restrictions, and loss of my resilience-boosting outlet added up to a persistent, erosive pressure on my mental and physical health. Like my clients, as I grew older, I lost track of the things I had done naturally as a child that gave me pleasure, forgetting over time my body’s source of joy. As I was forced to put more of my energy into homebound and mental activities, such as reading, I became cut off from the physical, sensory, and active sources of healing, resilience, and connection that had been a part of my identity.

The thing that adult therapy does not focus on, but that is at the heart of child therapy in particular and mental health in general, came to me in a sudden flash as an intrinsic piece of resilience: it is the ability to make meaning, regulate ourselves, return to connection, and endure duress through connection, play, and having fun. Children get back up from a fall so differently from adults, and they can often recover from a rupture—whether it’s relational, physical, or emotional—much more quickly. Perhaps my clients and I could draw on the inherent wisdom of children and on the worldwide repository of ancient and indigenous cultural practices that restore health and return to resilience through song, dance, drumming, play, creativity, silliness, spontaneity, laughter, and communal celebration or fun.

We can fall apart and be put back together through practices that lift us up as well as by those that bring our knees to the ground. There is a long history of people finding ways to do serious work that lightens the heart, unburdens the spirit, and makes us feel strong and powerful again because we are in something together. These practices are not the domain of the rich or the academics; nor do they require going beyond the wisdom of our own bodies or fixing or changing ourselves. Most importantly, they are not asking us to mask our feelings under a false smile or to ignore suffering. The drumming,[4] dancing, singing, music,[5] and art[6] used by indigenous cultures on every continent to ensure communal health are all proven by research to provide benefits that augment mental, emotional, social, and physical health and resilience. They invite folks to turn toward their grief and pain rather than away from it, but to do so in a way that releases and uplifts rather than overwhelms and isolates.

Such practices are reminders that we process suffering more resiliently when we know we are not alone in it, and that our bodies know the way back to wholeness when they are allowed to express what is inside not only through words but also through the fullness of movement, sound, and creative expression. This is the return to joy as aliveness in the body—as a connection to our whole selves.

Intentional Practice

My somatic coaching teacher, Richard Strozzi-Heckler, would say: we are what we practice, and we are always practicing something.[7] That principle applies well to joyous resilience. Joy and resilience are not one-time or random occurrences. Nothing we actively want to embody in our life—whether it’s strong relational ties, an active lifestyle, more education, financial freedom, or community involvement—comes without active, sustained, conscious investment.

So what does it take to intentionally cultivate resilience and practice joy in our lives? I’ve distilled what I’ve learned from my years of experimental research, honed in practice with my clients, into four key skills-building areas that are essential for embodying joyous resilience:

1. Foundational practices. Building up to joyous resilience is like building a house; it’s important to start with a strong foundation. In order to have a sound structure for joyous resilience, we must address basic needs such as rest, adequate nourishment, exercise, time in nature, and social engagement. In addition, research on trauma recovery has shown that access to even one of the following resources—at least one healthy relationship, creativity, and community—can have a profound impact on one’s sense of resilience and potential for positive outcomes later in life.

2. Relational practices. Whereas the foundational skills are generally more inwardly focused, and we often can build them on our own, relational skills begin to expand our energy outward and deal primarily with our interactions with others. The key skills covered in this category are often the hardest to practice; and yet, without them we are only ever scratching the surface or practicing Band-Aid resilience, rather than building the fundamental skill sets necessary for long-term wellness. This category includes boundary setting, making direct requests, emotional regulation, forgiveness accountability, and the roles of Nurturer and Protector, the parts of ourselves that are developed and strengthened through practicing these skills.

3. Creativity, play, and pleasure practices. Most people would stop short at the two skill sets we’ve just covered and might never get to this section. If we continue with the metaphor of building our joyous resilience house, this area is generally considered decorative at best, and unnecessary, frivolous, or even wasteful at worst. For our purposes, these skills make the difference between having a functional yet drab existence, and having a joyous, life-affirming, and thriving self.

4. In this category, we claim the necessity of pleasure, and we assert that the undervaluing of creativity, play, and other “nonproductive” activities—activities that are simply enjoyable, rather than being focused on a so-called productive result—has contributed greatly to a pervasive joylessness and sense of something missing in our lives. We examine what constitutes creativity—such as music, art, cooking, gardening, craft, poetry, dance, or storytelling—and we clarify the essential difference between consumption culture and pleasure culture: the former is focused on acquiring items, while the latter is focused on quality of experience. It is through these skills that we reclaim our access to resilience literally at our fingertips, and through our own bodies and creations. These skills allow us to put a stop to the disconnection from our self that has resulted in being cut off from joy and believing that our happiness lies outside ourselves. This is where the adult Resilient Self returns to revel in play and finds access to wonder and awe again, which are the gateways to the Soul Self.

5. Community, civic, and social justice practices. This portion of skills building is akin to remembering that our house was not built alone, nor does it exist in isolation. All the materials, resources, and assistance involved in building it, including the neighborhood we live in, the relative safety and access to amenities in it, the nature of the air we breathe, and the environment we are a part of are all subject to larger societal aids or pressures. Community, civic, and social justice practices invite us to expand our skill set beyond our own selves and to extend ourselves toward allyship, advocacy, and transformative justice work that addresses a collective root cause of chronic stress, oppression, and dis-ease in society. Compelling data coming out of survivor accounts, trauma and recovery theory, and resilience literature shows that the difference between an event being traumatizing or resilience-building is the ability to take action to shift the situation. This highlights factors like volunteerism, activism, and political and social justice intervention as key contributors to our health. It also squarely redresses a pervasive error from the past century of psychological intervention, which has placed the onus of mental wellness on the individual, completely bypassing the fact that our healing has never been an individual matter and can no longer be regarded as such.

6. Societal and cultural change are partly based upon personal change, and vice versa. These changes do not occur by focusing solely on our life on an individual level. They require deliberately shifting our attention from our own life to the lives of loved ones, fellow beings, the earth, ancestors, and most especially to the generations ahead. Part of building resilience is having a strong sense of hope and the ability to dream a better future. By connecting ourselves to something larger than our own lives and being able to take action toward that in small yet viable steps, we are no longer just shifting our own nervous system; we are transforming the nervous system of our society and our children toward thriving. That is joyous resilience for all.

How do we move toward cultivating joyful resilience in each of these areas? Joy is within us, and the way back to joy is through practices that fuel resilience and elicit a sense of aliveness. These practices in turn generate a joyous life, until it becomes evident that our joyfulness has never been separate from our resilience, and joyful practices are not separate from our wholeness in life; rather, they are essential to it.

Let’s look together at the practical steps of setting a resilience-boosting intention, as well as successful goal setting and practices in each of these areas, all while using the four healthy roles we have developed, to motivate our shift toward resilience—and ultimately toward joy.

Intentions and Goal Setting

The clearest pathway to success in any area of life is to set a clear intention in line with what matters most to us; break it down into realistic, achievable, and relatively enjoyable goals; take regular action; and respond to any setbacks with adequate preparation, kindness, and assistance. You can implement the information I present here about intentional goal setting, and the process by which to set short- and long-term goals, because of the Circle of Resilience inside you. This is also what we will use to move into practicing building these resource states, by growing into the functional, relational, creative, and contributive skills that all make up a joyously Resilient Self.

The act of setting goals intentionally is itself greatly resilient. It is a positive action, initiated from within. It is different from the passive stance of the Vulnerable Self, who would wait around for something from the outside to propel change, or who thinks it will set goals when it feels motivated. Instead, we feed the Circle of Resilience by setting times (yearly, quarterly, monthly, etc.) when we check in with ourselves and use the information we have gathered about our emotional state, our needs and wants, and the areas we wish to grow in, and we translate them into goals and a step-by-step pathway that can help us move toward and embody what has heart and meaning.

A difference between goal setting from the Cycle of Suffering versus from the Circle of Resilience is the emotion and language driving the initiative. We can certainly set goals out of the toxic motivation—aka the criticism—of the Critic, such as, “You really need to lose twenty pounds before you can go to the beach.” Many people do this. However, research shows that criticism is unsuccessful in creating a mindset in which goals can be initiated; and even if the process begins, our progress is often undermined at the first setback. For example, after a week of watching one’s diet spurred by the Critic, a negative interaction at work sends us straight to the office doughnut stack. From there the barrage of negative commentary by the Critic—“You blew it. You are back to square one. What is the point of even trying to lose weight?”—leads us to crumble into helplessness and shame. Rather than being able to bounce back, we are left spiraling for days, weeks, or even months before the cycle begins again.

Furthermore, goal-setting research[8] has shown that tracking progress on goals through focusing on process rather than on a specific outcome helps increase success and satisfaction. This means having goals that are more process focused. For example, rather than focusing on a specific number of pounds to lose, from the Circle of Resilience we might set goals based on values like health, ease of body and mobility, boosting our mood, and feeling good about taking care of ourselves. All this may also lead to and even include a certain amount of weight loss to achieve our target health, yet it allows us to track for each of these things, to remind ourselves why this matters from a nurturing and self-affirming perspective—I want to feel healthy, be proud of myself, live longer, enjoy my life, feel strong, and enjoy nurturing food—and to feel real motivation to continue when things get hard.

The inner Nurturer and Protector look ahead and plan for setbacks as inevitable, instead of ignoring them or judging us for having them. For example, if I have a sweet tooth, it is nurturing to plan ahead and find a good sugar substitute that might be enjoyable and can be part of a healthy diet. Reminding ourselves of why things matter, issuing reminders that are loving and based on strong inner values, being kind to ourselves, treating setbacks as part of any goal-setting process, and making a plan to speak to someone else who is on our side and equally positive toward and supportive of our goals all lead to goal-setting success and are part of practicing becoming joyously resilient.

Starting to Set Personal Goals

To do this, we begin with an intention, defined as “a determination to act in a certain way,” or a significant resolve that “one intends to do or bring about.”[9] As we discussed earlier, it is the intention that draws on the emotional needs and values underpinning any desire for change, sets the stage for the goal, and gives us something of significance to hold on to when things get tough.

Take a moment now to reflect on any themes that have come up since parts I and II. Notice especially if there are particular needs that became apparent, for example, the need to rest, have better self-care, set better boundaries, or have closer connections. Write these down. Was there a particular feeling state you found yourself longing for through having these needs met? More peace, more connection, more pleasure, more playfulness, more strength?

Now, bring these together into a single vibrant statement of intention. For example, if the need that came up was for more time to myself, and the feeling I wanted was peace of mind, this would combine into a joyous resilience intention like this:

My intention is to have time to myself that feels restful and peaceful and to have my mind feel more and more quiet and at peace.

Let’s go into this process more deeply by looking at an intention stated by Sylvia, a seventy-year-old woman with health concerns, a tendency to be sedentary, and high blood pressure due to poor dietary and exercise habits: “My intention is to feel healthy, vital, and alive in my body and to know that every day I am doing my best to be alive, joyful, and a part of my children’s and grandchildren’s lives for as long as I can.”

This intention came out of sitting with her feelings about her current health condition, identifying her needs around it, and then asking each part of herself what positive desire was driving the change she was looking for. Receiving the perspective of the Nurturer (self-love), the Protector (self-preservation), the Resilient Self (wanting to experience joy, wellness, and connection), and the Soul Self (wanting to have made the most of this gift of life and time with loved ones) all contributed to this meaningful attention that brought tears to her eyes and an inner motivation from her heart.

After Sylvia set her intention, we broke it down into S.M.A.R.T. goals, an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Based.[10] For example, Sylvia translated her vibrant intention into: “By the end of three months, for six days a week I will be eating three well-balanced meals, walking for thirty minutes, and spending ten minutes in breathing meditation.” Setting the goal in this way gave Sylvia something concrete to work toward that supported her larger intention, and it gave her a time frame within which to achieve, correct course if needed, and derive ongoing satisfaction from the process.

The guidelines we followed to successfully set and joyfully achieve these goals over the next three months were:

1. 1. Stating the goal positively. Notice we did not frame the goal as: “Don’t sit around all day. Don’t eat sugar. Don’t do this, don’t do that.” That kind of phrasing follows in line with the old thinking of the Critic and is disheartening and demotivating. Instead, we use positive language—“I will achieve. I will do. I will accomplish. I look forward to feeling better.”—to lift the spirits and provide impetus to move forward.

2. 2. Clear objectives. The more precise we make a goal—for example, “I will mediate for ten minutes a day”—the easier it is to track and to feel satisfaction in achieving it. Try to steer clear of vague or broad goals. Rather than “I will exercise,” say “I will do a ten-minute cardio activity (running or Zumba) twice a week.” In addition, setting clear timelines and a clear end date add to the ability to track the activity through time, leading to ultimate success.

3. 3. Realistic objectives. This is very important, both in the task you set yourself and then how it is broken down. We can all set lofty goals; however, where things go awry is when the Perfectionist or the Neglector sets the goal, both of whom are out of touch with the real needs and abilities of the Vulnerable Self. For example, Sylvia could certainly have translated her goal of being healthy into a diet, exercise, and meditation regimen that was more stringent or that even required her to actualize her goal at the start of the three months instead of at the end, with the ultimate goal being to maintain the activities for three months. However, given her sedentary lifestyle and poor diet habits, this was an unrealistic goal and would have left her feeling overwhelmed and unable to meet the goal, after which she’d feel defeated and ashamed. Instead, allowing her to work up to this goal over a three-month period let her approach it in increments and build confidence and self-assurance along the way. This is a more realistic perspective.

4. 4. Accountability and connection. To help build in healthy accountability, it’s useful to write out your intentions and goals, calendar them in terms of weekly or daily action steps, and have a buddy with whom you can do regular check-ins to help keep you focused and to provide motivation in case you fall into old patterns or difficulties. For Sylvia, it was important to have her intentions and goals clearly written and taped on her refrigerator for daily viewing. She had a large wall calendar where her action steps were laid out weekly, along with the incremental increases in her activities. Finally, she checked in with me each week about her goals and how they were progressing, celebrating successes and work through any difficulties that may have arisen. A study from the Dominican University of California on the best strategies for achieving goals found that “accountability, commitment, and writing down one’s goals” were the strongest predictors of success.[11]

5. 5. Delight. This is likely the area that most folks miss when it comes to goal setting. We think the delight is supposed to come later, as a reward, such as the dessert at the end of the week’s healthy diet or a splurge on an item once you’ve met your savings goals. While treating ourselves can certainly add to the enjoyment of a goal, with joyful resilience we want the process to be as joyful as the outcome. With that in mind, I encourage folks to find ways to weave delight into the process. For Sylvia, we talked about what form of exercise would give her the most pleasure. We realized that she had a few walking trails near her home that wove through a forest. Stopping to enjoy the trees and the emerging wildflowers in all kinds of weather, looking at the gardens in her neighbors’ homes as she walked past, and focusing on how they changed as the months passed all added a sense of pleasure to the activity. What could have felt like a chore became an experience she looked forward to because she was engaging in it with all her senses. How could you lighten your goal or make it a pleasure? Lighting a candle, accompanying your task with music or a favorite cup of tea, doing it outdoors if possible, or simply brightening up your work desk with plants and family photos are all examples of adding a joyful element to the process of accomplishing your goal.

6. 6. Celebration. In line with focusing on the process rather than only focusing on the outcome, building in little and big celebrations to acknowledge your effort along the way is joyfully motivating and is its own resilience practice. Teaching ourselves that the attempt to make change is as important as the change itself helps keep us inspired and feeling good throughout our efforts; it allows us to build healthy pride and self-confidence; and it teaches us to be affirming and encouraging of others as well. For Sylvia, sharing with me and a close friend her weekly success at meeting her goal, and how good it made her feel in her body, allowed her to take in the value and worth of what she was doing, rather than dismissing it as just another item on a to-do list, or never taking it in at all. She built in a monthly dinner with her family where they would acknowledge and encourage her success, as well as a final celebration where she joined them on a favorite family walk and a picnic at a place she had been unable to go in the recent past due to poor health. All of this fueled joy and excitement, and it kept her fresh in her efforts as well as connected to others.

Don’t worry about setting a S.M.A.R.T goal yet. Once you know what feeling you want to have and which need you want to meet through your intention, it will be easier to go through the following skills-building chapters and identify which skill is good to practice and set as a goal that is in alignment with your joyous resilience intention.

For example, if we go back to the intention mentioned earlier, “to have time to myself that feels restful and peaceful and to have my mind feel more quiet and at peace,” that could translate into a foundational skills goal of building in nap time a few times a week and practicing meditation. Or it could translate into a relational skill goal of practicing saying no, letting people know you will be unavailable at certain times, and even turning your phone ringer off. It could also be a creative skill goal of taking pleasure in rest time by making it comfortable and enjoyable through such means as scented candles, open windows, lying in a hammock, or reading for pleasure while resting; and a communal skill goal such as tying your rest and peace of mind to the gift you can bring others from it, offering child care to a loved one so they can have space for rest, or donating to a scholarship fund that allows others to attend a meditation retreat.

In undertaking this process we are embodying resilience in action. We are slowing down long enough to get in touch with our real feelings and needs, and then translating them best as we can into life-affirming intentions, heartfelt goals, and step-by-step actions that allow us to move closer to living and loving fully as our joyous selves. All along we’re making it as fun, joyous, and satisfying a process as possible. Let’s practice!

12

Foundational Practices

Our bodies are our gardens to which our wills are gardeners.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

A famous Indian proverb describes each person as a house with four rooms: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. It goes on to say that while many of us will go through our life only occupying one or two rooms at a time, it is important for our health and development as a whole person to visit each one at least once a day and to cultivate each wholly through the course of our lifetime.[1]

Our bodies are a miracle. It usually works silently on our behalf as its forty trillion cells work behind the scenes to help us effortlessly take 8.5 million breaths in a year. The heart pumps 1.5 million barrels of blood in our lifetime, and the liver works endlessly to clean it. The body changes the composition of a mother’s breast milk to match exactly the nutrients and antibodies her baby needs, and it also allows the baby in the womb to send stem cells to the pregnant mother if her organs are damaged and need repair. Our brains continue to develop into our forties, and they remain the most powerful memory system on the planet. Our entire body regenerates itself fully every decade![2] Depending on our particular body and its range of abilities, the body is our medium to experience the world around us through our rich senses and by engaging in movement, expression, action, and creation. Thanks to this physical home that houses our consciousness, we awake each morning and have the gift of engaging with the world as human. Yet, somehow, this incredible resource that is our home for the entirety of our existence is most often cared for in a utilitarian way, if at all.

From the joyous being perspective, the body is a beloved friend that will grow with us throughout our lives and that acts as a marker for the peaks and valleys of passing time. At times the body is an exhilarating place of discovery, as when we first learn to walk, ride a bike, or race full speed ahead; at others it’s a place of overwhelm or confusion, when we experience a sharp rise of adrenaline and rapid heartbeat that mark a panic attack as the body reacts to a stressor we do not know how to manage. It will give us the unparalleled joy of experiencing the world through our senses: a burst of flavors on our tongue, the explosive release of an orgasm, the life form of our baby growing in our womb, the warm, pulsing waves of the sea against our bare limbs. It may also drive us to our knees when experiencing sensations like physical pain, loss that is felt as a racking in the body, fear that ties our belly in knots, and when life gets too hard, the remarkable feat of numbing out and dissociating from a threatening event in a bid to survive—our flight-fight-freeze mechanism.

It can feel like the body is both a friend working endlessly on our behalf and a foe who may turn against us as it responds in ways we find counterintuitive. This can happen when PTSD causes us to experience painful flashbacks of traumatic events long after they have ended; when our freeze response to danger makes it hard for us to speak or take action when faced with events that are stressful but not life threatening, like public speaking; when the body begins fighting against itself in the form of an autoimmune disease, causing ongoing pain and fatigue and becoming a source of deep concern, hopelessness, and redirection in our life. It is especially at these times that the Critic can come out full force in reaction against the body’s breakdown and its inability to perform as desired. The Critic launches an assault on the self to somehow get well or be pushed to do what it can’t, joined by the Neglector turning away from self-care when overwhelmed and distressed.

In her book The Alchemy of Illness, author Kat Duff writes, “We are not responsible for our illness, but we are responsible to it.”[3] In other words, it is not useful or necessary to point fingers in blame at ourselves or our body for these ups and downs. Instead, we must invoke our inner Nurturer, who reclaims the power that lies in taking responsibility for caring for this friend exactly where it is, which has nothing to do with a particular weight, size, physique, coloring, age, fitness or wellness level, or physical ability. These measures have been used to make most of us feel inadequate and ashamed, to reduce our bodies to an object that must meet arbitrary and impossible standards, and to train us to treat our bodies with harshness, perfectionism, or neglect (the Critic or the Neglector). We have a strong tendency to approach setting goals for ourselves with our critical mind: something needs fixing, and the fix is usually defined by an arbitrary outside standard. This is especially true in the arena of the body, where popular culture coaches us to apply weight or fitness goals to our body without always taking into account what our body actually needs. When following these external, superficial motivations, we find that the motivation only lasts a few weeks.

The breakdown between intention and execution points at two different parts of ourselves working at cross-purposes—in this case, the body and the mind, or in the Circle of Resilience model, the Vulnerable Self (the body) and the Neglector and the Critic (the mind). The body is being told what’s good for it because the mind decided it was time to do that, based on external messaging: it’s swimsuit season, my friend is on a new cleanse, I want to look more like this person or emulate this style. The mind’s (the Critic’s) agenda lasted for just so long before the body (the Vulnerable Self) could not meet the demands because they were unrealistic based on the person’s current state and ability. For example, an arbitrarily low calorie count may not provide enough energy to meet the demands of a regular day, and sudden changes in diet or exercise routine without time to adapt or ramp up may not last; people need time to learn how to shop for groceries differently, to prepare healthier meals, or to slowly prepare their body for more intensive workouts.

The mind’s assertion over the body can also backfire when the behavior change we are asking of ourselves is not accompanied by understanding and care for the need that the old behavior was meeting, such as when a smoking habit is a way to manage anxiety. We can’t expect ourselves to move away from a coping behavior without replacing it with new adaptive mechanisms, such as breathwork, journaling, meditation, walking, a nicotine patch or gum, or calling a friend. We’ll also need to put the right support systems in place, such as an accountability buddy or a support group for smoking cessation. Finally—and essentially, for joyous resilience—if our intention for change isn’t sourced in loving affirmation or positive regard for our well-being, such as wanting our lungs and body to feel strong, vibrant, and healthy into our later years, and wanting to care for and reduce our anxiety in ways that feel good for our whole being, even if we do achieve the goal that won’t address the insecurity and criticism that motivated the original behavior. For example, someone may feel awkward and insecure in new settings and may not know what to say. For them it can help to have a cigarette in hand when there is a pause in conversation or to feel like they’re a part of a group through smoking.

It’s important here to talk about disability, illness, and foundational resilience. Feeling resilient in our bodies, and finding joy in foundational practices such as healthy eating, movement, spending time outdoors, and rest, is vastly different and more difficult when living with a disability or chronic illness that causes us pain, limits our diet or appetite, prevents us from leaving our bed or home, causes us chronic fatigue, and limits our ability to move. Having to take care of our bodies as a full-time job in the face of pain, and with little mitigation of illness, or living a life with a body that is limited in some capacity is an all-too-real situation for millions. It is also a situation most of us will have to face to some extent as we age.

Our world heavily favors ableism. Our bodies must be well—strong, ageless, fit—and any signs of change, wearing down, or illness must be fixed as soon as possible. In reality, this is impossible. We age, get sick, and have our own limitations to deal with, such as headaches, muscle pain, acne, gluten and lactose intolerance, TMJ syndrome, colitis, ulcers, severe PMS, high blood pressure, arthiritis, diabetes, cancer, or heart disease. While we may do all we can to help our bodies thrive, for many of us the answer for our bodies is not change but learning to live with what is as well as we can on any given day.

This might look like allowing ourselves to grieve for not being able to enjoy the foods we once ate with such relish. It may look like patting ourselves on the back for moving at a slower pace in the smaller radius of our home or using our cane instead of trying to push our bodies faster and harder in ways that exacerbate our pain. We might turn our bedside table into a plant sanctuary to bring a bit of nature to us when we are unable to go outside. We may connect with others as best we can, even if it’s only by texting or just watching a movie together side by side when our bodies are too fatigued or ill to go out or engage verbally. It can look like mustering as much compassion as possible as we allow ourselves to feel envy, rage, and resentment at having to miss out on all the activities that healthier people are engaging in.

Whether we’re living in chronic illness, a survivor of trauma, grieving the loss of a child, working with generational trauma of racism and genocide, or simply aging and going through the changing cycles of our body, we always have the right to decide what dignity, meaning, and purpose we wish to bring to these events that are a part of life and suffering on this planet. We shift the narrative that frames “normal” as a body and life that conforms to one perfect way—trauma free, oppression free, able-bodied, death- and loss-denying—and instead actively make room for and validate the nonlinear, broken open, vulnerable, tragic, meaning-defying parts of life. We take back our power over our ability to name how they shaped us, and our ability to see what we make of that impact.

We all can deepen and mature our role of Nurturer through caring for the body from a loving and appreciative stance instead of a critical, burdened, obligatory, or neglectful one. Although you may be practicing some of the foundational aspects of self-care, such as nutrition, exercise, time in nature, or connection with others, what makes them different in terms of joyous resilience is the intention you bring to them. You are no longer treating physical care as a checklist item, a path to fixing or perfection, or a chore. Instead, you are consciously deciding to engage your Nurturer in treating your body as a dear and beloved companion, leading you to engage in self-care practices as a way to practice greater self-nurturance, love, and commitment to your well-being. Gradually you will notice how giving and receiving this nurturance reawakens and restores your inner reservoir of joy and resilience, manifesting as a buoyancy of spirit, an increase in energy, and a greater capacity and desire to express life energy through creativity, play, pleasure, and service.

The path toward nurturing ourselves lies in learning to communicate with our body as a part of the Vulnerable Self and beginning to trust its responses as having wisdom and instruction for a sustainable and joyful way forward. This process takes patience and a leap of faith because we have been taught to ignore our inner voice, mistrust our own instincts, and make decisions based on what works for others. I like to approach this process as a respectful conversation with the part of ourselves that most wants our nurturing attention. We are learning to move away from the position of telling ourselves what to do (the Critic and Perfectionist) and toward listening and facilitating (the Nurturer), a change that brings us joy based in respect, love, and understanding.

Here’s an example of what it looks like put into action. Tina was in her late twenties when she came to me because her general practitioner had prescribed her an antianxiety medication and had suggested she might want to attend therapy for symptoms of anxiety and depression (insomnia, poor appetite, excessive worry and rumination, low mood, and lack of energy and interest in daily life). Tina is a successful immigration rights attorney and is extremely driven in her work. Her parents are Filipino immigrants who migrated to the United States from Hong Kong when Tina was five. Tina’s parents worked throughout her life in the restaurant and domestic care professions. Their struggle to keep their family afloat under the combined stressors of excessively low wages, long and erratic work hours, and difficult work conditions meant they had to leave Tina and her four siblings alone at home from a very young age, with Tina, as the eldest, being in charge of taking care of the young ones.

At the age of ten, Tina was not only at home after school caring for a one-year-old sibling; she was also keeping the house clean and taking charge of feeding, bathing, helping with school work, and watching over her siblings aged three, six, and eight years old to the best of her ability. She vented the stress, loneliness, frustration, and fear of this time in regular bouts of yelling and control directed at her siblings when they wouldn’t listen to her instructions or when the baby was hard to console. Sometimes she directed those feelings inward when she felt upset with herself for not being able to keep the house clean or the children looking well-tended, or not keeping her school work up to par when the long day was done. She would channel this combination of hard work, frustration, and anxiety about being inadequate into an intense work ethic and ambition. Tina became the first in her family to go to college and then on to law school, becoming an attorney so she could fight for the rights of immigrants like her parents—and also as a way out of the cycle of poverty and struggle her family had endured.

Tina became an excellent immigration rights attorney. A few years prior she had relocated from Miami, where her family lived, to work at a highly influential law firm in San Francisco. Although she was thrilled at the adventure of this relocation, and the impact and prestige of her new job, the first year hit her surprisingly hard with a combination of long work hours and the adjustment to living away from her close-knit circle of family. Now, at the start of her third year in San Francisco, Tina found she had hit her stride at work, yet in her personal life she felt lost and unable to shake her anxiety and worry. Having been so used to high stress levels and worry since she was young, she initially found it hard to seek help because she had not recognized her symptoms as a cause of a concern. She wrote off her low mood, irritability, and sleeplessness as simply stress at work. Remarks by her family and friends in Florida that she seemed down only added to this stress, and she felt guilty and ashamed for not being more upbeat despite all her financial and career success.

The loop that ran through her head quickly came out in therapy. She would run through her own personal Cycle of Suffering, with the Critic asking her: Shouldn’t she be counting her blessings and living the high life like other people her age? Hadn’t she been waiting for this moment? What did she have to feel bad about anyway? Her parents had had it a lot worse, and look at them; they never complained. The Neglector responded with its best solutions: she just needed to get over it and start being grateful for what she had. Maybe she should start dating. But then again, who had time to date? She just needed to get through this next major client case at work, and then she’d feel better. This sent her back to the vague sense of uneasiness, stress, worry, short temper, and disinterestedness that ran through her busy days and kept her awake in the middle of the night (the Vulnerable Self).

When Tina and I walked through the meditation included at the end of this chapter, it was a journey into uncharted territory for her: the territory of listening to the part of herself that felt untended (the Vulnerable Self), rather than running from it or being ashamed of it, with the eyes, ears, and loving attunement of her newly cultivated inner Nurturer. Tina discovered her inner ten-year-old, so eager to do well in school and be with her friends, whose life had changed overnight when her grandmother—who had provided childcare for her and siblings—died, leaving Tina in charge of the household while her parents were at work. Suddenly she not only lost the comforting routine and care of this central attachment figure; she also had no chance to process the grief or loss as she was thrust into a role far beyond the capabilities of her age, and she became overwhelmed, lonely, frightened, and cut off from her schoolmates.

Tina saw that she had tried to be poised, confident, and in control in order to cover this vulnerability with a toughness and drive that helped her get through the day and get ahead. My family needs me, she told herself. I have to be in charge. Mom said I am the eldest and I have to take care of the little ones. If they don’t listen, Dad will get mad at me. I have to do it. Trying to cobble together a routine for herself and her siblings was an impossible task, and the attempt kept her from seeing the parts of herself that longed for the care, companionship, and balance that an adult caretaker could provide.

Tina’s Critic and Neglector had been squelching this Vulnerable Self part out of a need to protect her parents from further burden, and out of self-preservation; that’s why she judged it and hid it from her loved ones and herself as weak, young, and needy. She wanted them to see her as strong, brave, and helpful, and the solution had been to shove her own needs and feelings aside, and simply push on. Now, at the end of the long haul of caring for her siblings, striving for academic success, getting through law school, and landing a successful job, she was for the first time in her life living on her own, with time and space for herself. It was no wonder that once the constant slog of responsibility diminished, and she was physically distant from her family, that she could finally feel the chronic anxiety and depression that had been with her all along.

Through the meditation Tina heard her Vulnerable Self share its own sense of what was needed to heal this anxiety and depression. Its knowing came from listening deeply, without dismissal, to the sources of the pain she had been feeling, even if they initially seemed childish, too far in the past, or too simple. Tina’s Vulnerable Self was reminding her that the anxiety and depression she felt in her new home and life were built upon the fear, grief, and helplessness she had felt as a young child when her grandmother died and she lost all semblance of a consistent routine and home environment. Not only did her inner little one finally need space to have her grief named, honored as valid, and felt; she also needed to name her longings for the comforting of her grandmother’s home-cooked meals, the loving arms and warm attentiveness her grandmother provided, the freedom to play with siblings and friends instead of taking care of them, and to be able to rest at the end of day, being physically and emotionally cared for by her grandmother. All of these needs and longings had been buried under the necessity of caretaking; and along with them went Tina’s inner sense of the routine of rest, play, nourishment, learning, and connection that her body and being needed to thrive.

Over the course of several months, the Vulnerable Self Tina had shunned became the teacher and guide to thriving in ways she had so long needed. Tina was learning the pathway to joyful resilience: listening to her feelings as essential guidance, uncoupling legitimate needs for self-care routines from the idea that she was being needy, and making foundational changes in her life based on inner inquiry and reflection. In this way, she was creating a life steeped in loving attunement to herself, which had been impossible for generations of her family to receive.

Let’s take a deeper look at the foundational resilience practices that Tina walked through and how you can intentionally practice them in ways that are joyfully nurturing.

Joyful eating. Most of us are well aware of the fact that healthy nutrition encompasses a diet that is healthy for our bodies, focuses on real produce, and is presented in portions that are sized correctly for our activity level, age, and body size. Healthy nutrition also involves staying well hydrated. Commitment to a healthy diet often looks like an effort to simply get in three meals a day with the requisite greens and vitamins. For many, making the commitment to eating healthily in these ways is already a big stretch. Often, this stretch is about shifting our attention from solely focusing on what we are eating to also be aware of how (mindful versus distracted) and why (intentional) we eat.

Joyful eating means putting food back in the realm of mindful, pleasurable, sensory, connective, ritual, and sacred gratitude space. Simple practices from traditions around the world include saying thanks before partaking in the meal for the land that gave us the food, the people who harvested it, and those who prepared it. Other practices include eating silently and without any electronics, playing music while preparing food, making food that can be shared with others, and singing a song or saying a prayer as a particular item is made, to infuse it with positive energy. Joyful eating can also mean having more home-cooked meals, knowing where our food is coming from (e.g., local growers who use sustainable practices), and consuming it mindfully by taking time to savor our meal and pause to eat it rather than eating on the go or while working. We can also make a point to share at least one or two meals during the week with family or friends.

Each of these practices reminds us that this activity is not mundane. It is a portal to self-care, pleasure, and the experience of joy through reverence for the ordinary magic and miracle of life and the life force that animates all things. By approaching our food more joyfully, visually, and playfully, we regain that sense of aliveness that comes from life lived through our senses. Eating joyfully puts joy at the tip of our tongues. We are also building bodily strength, keeping our joints lubricated, providing ourselves with the right nutrients and hydration to maintain our emotional equilibrium and mental focus, and building the basis for long-term health.

Preparing and eating food with others was a big part of Tina’s upbringing, and her Filipina grandmother and mother expressed love and enjoyment of life through preparing and sharing food. In the wake of her grandmother’s passing, regular home-cooked meals were replaced by fast food or prepared foods, as her parents had little time for cooking in between their jobs. Tina’s appetite dwindled due to her grief, and she often was the last to eat as she tried to prepare food for her siblings and feed them. Later in life, with the demands of college and law school, food would often be an afterthought as she crammed something down in between classes and assignments. When we tracked her symptoms—specifically her fatigue, irritability, repetitive thoughts, and feeling down—it became clear that some of these had to do with her blood sugar being low due to missed meals, as well as poor-quality nutrition.

When Tina began to remember her childhood memories of enjoying food prepared by her grandmother, or eating as a family with her siblings, she was guided by her inner self to reconnect with the joy of food by preparing meals at home and making plans to have more communal meal times. To this end, she started hosting biweekly dinner parties at her home, where she and friends would prepare a meal and enjoy it together. She also began to encourage a shared weekly meal time in her workplace, with the food catered from a local organic food provider. This meal time was a way to come together in community and build awareness around healthy eating.

Joyful movement. The benefits of exercise and movement are all too obvious, from greater mobility, dexterity, physical health, and longevity to the boost of serotonin and energy that lead to emotional vibrancy. In addition, an orientation toward joy shifts the focus in exercise from punishment, obligation, or self-critique to enjoyment and wanting to live a healthy, full life. In this case, finding an exercise that is both good for you and fun or connective can make all the difference, such as walking outside when possible instead of on a treadmill, exercising with a buddy and cheering each other on, or opting for dance, yoga, biking, swimming, or even running with your dog if these activities allow you to engage in heart-healthy movement while also lifting your spirits. We do this knowing that moving our bodies is akin to moving stale energy and generating vibrant aliveness, teaching ourselves we have strength, power, agency, and above all the ability to feel good in our bodies regardless of size, shape, or ability.

Before her grandmother died, Tina, like many of the children in her urban neighborhood, had played in the streets, enjoying running, playing tag, skipping, playing ball, and biking. Once she became the primary caretaker for her siblings, she had to watch them all the time, which meant her ability to play or be physically active became very restricted. When she was an adult, academic and work pursuits left little time to engage the physical aspect of her life; nor was it a big part of her familial upbringing, as the hard labor and long hours her parents put in left little time or energy for other pursuits.

Tina had always been fascinated with the ocean, especially, as a little girl growing up in the landlocked Midwest. She eventually chose swimming as her joyful movement activity because it reminded her of her time dreaming about the ocean in her younger years, when her grandmother told her all about the beautiful water and islands of the Phillipines. Getting in the water was both meditative and energizing for Tina, and she looked forward to this time as one of unwinding and letting go of her day. Giving herself the opportunity to exercise her body in a way that felt so enjoyable brought back a sense of play and joy so necessary for her upliftment. Over time, reconnecting with this part of herself let her play in other ways, such as seeking out more time by the ocean, incorporating nature walks by the water, and learning to snorkel and then dive as a part of her joyful exercise.

Nature. Even if you live in an urban environment, like most of the world’s population, if you make time to commune with nature through plants in your home, parks in your neighborhood, stopping to look at the changing colors of the sky, being with animals, working in your community garden, or plotting out specific time amid trees during your week, the effect of building and boosting resilience is prolific and well documented. Our access to the peace that comes from wide, open spaces, living in closer touch with the land, seeing its seasonal changes, and being aware of our ties to it for sustenance have been broadly depleted through the past couple of centuries, as humanity has moved from agrarian to urban spaces.

Stepping into nature allows us a way back into presence, openheartedness, wonder, and awe. It also teaches us what to prioritize when it comes to our joyous being. The remedies for resilience and well-being are often simple and more accessible than we might think. These are the best places to invest our time, energy, and power in the choices we make.

Tina’s connection to nature was fed naturally by her first two practices. Her return to cooking and desire to use fresh ingredients led her to farmers markets on weekends, where she learned about fruits and vegetables grown locally, and she started to eat seasonally. Her love of water, reignited by her daily swim, led her to seek lake walks near her home and to make regular visits to the beach, letting it become a place of spiritual reconnection and resourcing. Eventually she began volunteering her time at beach and lake cleanups around the Bay Area, taking her love of the ocean into service and environmental action. In these ways, nature did its work to become her most powerful antidote to anxiety, depression, and isolation.

Shelter. A house, a neighborhood, an environment: home means many different things to different people, from a simple roof over one’s head to a place where memories are made, a sound investment, or a sense of belonging. Ideally, our shelter does not simply protect us from the vicissitudes of our environment but is also a retreat, a refuge, and a restorative harbor for our hearts. Ideally, our shelter allows us to return to the world outside our door with refreshed spirits, or to pick up the burden we may have to carry for the day knowing that at least within these four walls we can put it down.

Depending on many socioeconomic and political factors, we may not have access to affordable and adequate housing, or neighborhoods and communities that feel physically safe as well as uplifting. What is important is knowing that whether our space is a bed and a drawer for our items, a room, or a house, our environment does matter, and taking whatever steps we can to bring safety, organization, cleanliness, and beauty to our home will have a profound impact on our sense of well-being and being cared for. This also includes, where possible, choosing to set healthy boundaries and have clear and conscious communication with whomever we may share our home with. Taking time to care for our environment and make it visually and physically comfortable for ourselves is a part of that nurturance. This practice lets us know we matter, adds to our ability to care for ourselves, and makes our shelter a source of strength.

Having a joyful home was a big deal for Tina. Having spent the majority of her life in cramped quarters and chaotic conditions, the transition to living alone for the first time had provided unprecedented space and relief, but it also confronted her with her lack of knowledge about how to create a comfortable, safe, and welcoming home for herself. So much of her healing journey was about becoming her own nurturer—creating a nourishing refuge within herself—and this, in turn, allowed her to translate what she was learning about herself and her needs into an apartment that reflected her inner self and fed her needs, a space where she could rest and recharge. Tina’s home became a reflection of her inner journey from an overwhelmed and lost child to a resilient person with an attuned, loving adult presence. As this transformation occurred, her home changed from blank walls and utilitarian furnishings to a warm, delightful, welcoming space that allowed her to cook, entertain, and be surrounded by pictures and mementos of her beloved family, her cultural upbringing, and her love of the ocean. All the colors and textures around her mirrored the happiness, well-being and joy she was feeling.

Relationships. We will focus more on healthy relationships and the skills and practices we might use in this domain in the next chapter. For now, it is important to note that having at least a few positive close relationships that form a network of support is imperative for our resilience. Many people think they need to have a large group of friends or acquaintances in order to meet their relational needs. The research says otherwise. A major predictor of living to a ripe old age is having even one or two people in your life with whom you are in authentic connection. In addition, spending time in social activities, such as social groups, community endeavors, or neighborhood events leads to a greater sense of engagement and aliveness. These are all ways we can address one of the greatest epidemics and threats to resilience of our times: loneliness.

The gift of Tina’s childhood was a deeply ingrained sense of loving family and friendship with her siblings. However, the limitations in her experience came from her relationships being dependent on caretaking and generally a product of family connection as opposed to friendships developed outside the home. Her healing journey lay in recognizing that although she was warm, loving, caring, and capable of strong connections, she would need to build the skill sets of reaching out to people to cultivate friendships, now that she lived away from home. She would also have to watch for and work with a strong conditioning to associate caretaking with connection, instead of mutuality in friendship.

She needed to allow herself to receive care and friendship for reasons like companionship, enjoyment, play, and pleasure rather than solely caregiving. This meant withstanding the vulnerability of reaching out for new friendships by going to events without knowing anyone, asking people on friend dates to see what might click, and opening up her home for biweekly dinner parties to create a more regular place to meet and deepen connections with like-minded people. Mostly, as she began to nurture herself, she also called upon and deliberately cultivated relationships with others who had nurturing and mutuality to offer her, and she began to form a life-long habit of investing in relationships as necessary for her joyful health.

Rest. We all know about the recommendation to get at least eight hours of sleep every night. For many of us, once we have children or work longer hours or multiple jobs to meet financial needs or the demands of our career, this is an elusive standard that is largely out of reach. Certain countries, like America or Japan, have a culture that devalues rest and lauds workaholism and busyness as signs of success, productivity, and accomplishment. There is a constant push, both overtly and implicitly, for each person to do more at the expense of their own body and quality of life, in order to be deemed worthy of respect, admiration, and belonging in the eyes of others. We are taught to work longer and harder, to make more money, to buy more goods, that are then supposed to make up for the lost time, energy, relationships, and sense of self-worth and joy that we could have developed otherwise.

To be clear, having a sense of purpose—whether that comes from our place of work, our personal motivations, or our role in family or community—is important and necessary for our wholeness. So is staying active and engaged in our lives. Things go awry when this activity occurs at a frenetic pace that is driven by anxiety and insecurity, fueled by the lie fed to us by capitalism that if we pause or rest or stop, we will lose our sense of worth and value. This same capitalistic society also fuels its extreme income inequality on the backs of millions of hard-working people working multiple jobs at less than a livable wage. Tina’s family fell into these ranks—people for whom basic human rights, like rest, along with adequate food, water, shelter, and safety, had been turned into an unaffordable luxury.

The path to reclaiming her right to rest required connecting to her anger and her grief at the collective experience of her family and millions like them, who were cheated out of this rest by an inequitable system. She started small, with taking little breaks to sit during the day, as she confronted memories of how rarely she had seen her parents sit down, busy as they were with the hundred tasks of work and caretaking. Each time she rested, she’d practice saying out loud or holding in her heart this message to her parents and her community: “I do this in honor of you. Thank you for helping me get to a place of rest. May my rest be yours. May we all rest now.” Her goal was to get to a point where she would take a full afternoon for rest each week and to include her parents and siblings on her next vacation, for a shared time of rest.

Rest and Resilience: Ali’s Story

Joy and resilience are so deeply vested in the ability to rest, and the modern obsession with busyness such a widespread disease, that it feels important to do a deeper dive into this skill. Let’s explore what we mean by rest and what it offers us through another real-life example. Ali’s story walks us through how rest has been misinterpreted and overlooked as a resource, and it shows us what reclaiming rest might actually mean for individual and collective joyous resilience.

Ali is an engineer and team leader at a large tech firm in Silicon Valley, here on a work visa from Pakistan for the past two years. He’s been having difficulty adjusting to the new culture and to the demands of his work environment. Despite pulling marathon fourteen-hour workdays, he finds that his productivity has been lessening as he experiences more incidents of forgetfulness, low motivation, and fatigue. The new role he was given requires inspiring his team members by encouraging and guiding the team effort, and it requires frequent redeye flights, time zone changes, and occasional all-nighters as he meets with team members in other states and countries. He has found himself being more frequently short or brusque with his colleagues, and he’s noticed that the morale and productivity of his team are dropping. His work review assessed him as needing to develop better leadership and team motivation skills, and needing to perform his tasks with fewer errors in a shorter time. His supervisor also pointed out how stressed and upset he has seemed, and Ali reached out to me on the recommendation that he might benefit from speaking with a counselor.

At first glance it would be easy enough to assume that a variety of factors might be causing his stress and irritability, including the high stress level of his job, the culture shock and adjustment to a new country and life, possible insecurity or anxiety about leading teams, or a lack of social or leadership skills, and certainly all of these were on the table during our initial sessions. As we walked through what his intentions might be for our work together, Ali was clear that he wanted to feel present, focused, and confident at work and successful at creating a positive atmosphere in his team.

But what goals would get him there? Did he need leadership training? Or to learn how to listen to and inspire his team better? Or to talk through his anxiety about the new culture he found himself in? Each of these would have provided some benefit, but there was an elephant in the room that needed to be addressed first.

I had noticed and flagged before our first meeting that his initial email asking to set up a consult was time-dated at two a.m. Many of his follow-up emails also came in during the late hours of the night or the very early morning. He had shown up to our first few meetings at least ten minutes late, and our session was often the first time he had sat down to focus on himself and get present in his body in a day that had begun several hours earlier. Often his mind would be preoccupied with what he had just completed or with the tasks to come after our meeting ended. When we first began to speak of his difficulties at work, the symptoms including irritation, making simple errors in his work, memory difficulties, and decreased creativity all were at the forefront. He also mentioned that in his personal life he was having difficulty meeting people to date, and although he wanted companionship, he felt he did not know how to make time for another person.

What seemed apparent to me, although it was difficult for him to take seriously at first, was that it was incongruous to think of doing work on leadership or social skills, or even unpacking all the big questions about culture shock and acculturation, without taking care of a basic physical need that was exacerbating or even causing much of his distress on the job: a simple lack of rest. One fundamental assessment I offered him was that he was excessively sleep deprived and profoundly fatigued. This state of sleep deprivation was not only thoroughly normalized in his work culture but was actually worn with a certain sense of pride. It was an emblem of success and productivity: “See how much I’m doing and how motivated I am.”

For Ali, this was an unquestioned part of the nature of his job, and one he had never thought to address. His strategy was to endure and then criticize himself for not being able to perform optimally despite the successive long days of work, barely a day off, nearly constant electronic stimulation, and a progressive decline in number of sleeping hours. His cycle of suffering swung from a Vulnerable Self that was red eyed, bleary, unfocused, irritated, and fuzzy headed, to the Critic’s inward berating and outward bad temper, and then the Neglector’s “support” in the form of extra caffeine, deciding to work even longer or wake up even earlier to make up for falling behind, or going to the bar late at night for drinks to unwind, which would provide a temporary relief of pressure and camaraderie but would result in more fatigue and exacerbated symptoms the next day.

It was hard for Ali to accept that perhaps one of the first goals toward realizing his intention of peace, focus, and being a better manager was simply to make rest a priority. There was nothing simple about it, however, as it would mean developing both a Nurturer and a Protector who could see rest as a necessity for thriving rather than as a weakness or a frivolous luxury. For Ali’s engineer brain, some hard facts were necessary to get him on board. We started with some contemporary research showing that sleep enables us to consolidate and store memories, process emotional experiences, replenish glucose (the brain’s fuel), and eliminate beta-amyloid, the waste product that builds up in Alzheimer’s patients and hinders cognition. The research also shows that insufficient sleep and fatigue are correlated with impaired judgment, reduced self-control, and lower creativity.

One research article that hit closest to home for Ali discussed the effect of sleep deprivation on managers and the secondary impact on their employees’ performance and quality of work experience. The findings were direct and incontrovertible: “When leaders show up for work unrested, they are more likely to lose patience with employees, act in abusive ways, and be seen as less charismatic. There is also a greater likelihood that their subordinates will themselves suffer from sleep deprivation—and even behave unethically.”[4] What Ali needed to see was that his lack of rest was spilling over and affecting the quality of work and life for his employees and was feeding into a culture of sleep deprivation and diminished productivity and satisfaction at work. Ideas about his overall quality of life improving if he slept more were too vague to be compelling, but what did grab his attention was this study showing the connection between sleep, performance, and management. This is what pushed him to rethink his prioritization of rest.

He started by turning off his phone at least twenty to thirty minutes before his bedtime; setting an earlier bedtime, even if this meant cutting into his socialization or TV viewing after work; giving himself a later start time for his day on Saturdays and Sundays; and agreeing to use at least five days of his vacation within the first three months of us working together. It wasn’t until he began to apply these changes over the course of the first month, and he noticed the differences in mood and performance on the days when he adhered to his goal as compared to those when he fell off, that the most crucial first step was fully taken. That’s when he began to understand and validate the true individual and relational cost of his fatigue.

As time went on, Ali shared what he’d learned with his team and even with his own manager, as a way to shift the culture at work around productivity and prioritizing rest. Team members read books like The Sleep Revolution by Arianna Huffington, which offers a counterintuitive lesson: we sacrifice sleep for productivity, yet those very lost hours of sleep add up to thousands of dollars in lost productivity and profit. Looking more deeply at the research on sleep, productivity, and management also led Ali to change his behavior and provide better modeling around rest at his job. He advocated for rest pods at work where people could take naps of ten to twenty minutes, backed by studies showing that having a brief time to lie down not only helped mitigate effects of insomnia or low sleep, but also improved focus and memory exponentially.[5]

Workers at Ali’s firm were encouraged to prioritize rest and recovery time, and managers modeled a rest-valuing culture by no longer sending late-night emails, not speaking of pulling all-nighters as a matter of pride, and incentivizing using one’s personal leave. Trainings were offered on the connection between down time and creativity, and these values were encouraged, talked about, and practiced across the board in how the team structured their time, paced their projects, ran staff meetings, and even how recovery time was built into work travel.

Over the coming months, Ali’s concept of rest expanded beyond sleep to include time for mental quiet, idle time, time to be offline, even the idea of embracing laziness as a place where rejuvenation and restoration can occur for our brains and psyches. Ali began reclaiming a sense of well-being that came from a feeling of restored vitality, energy, and wholeness in the body. This started at the physical level and rippled to every other aspect of his life. He was reclaiming from the inside out a sense of what actually produced well-being or happiness in his life. This included realizing how much happiness was being cheated away when work had been prioritized above all else and valued as the way to satisfaction.

Now he valued the simple joy of waking up refreshed, the laughter and camaraderie with his colleagues that came from being able to take a break, and knowing that down time and connection were restorative and part of the fullness of work, rather than taking away from it. He enjoyed the return of his adventurous self as he took time away for vacations and thought again of other dreams. There was a reduction in the anxiety and loneliness that had been fueled by comparison and online fatigue of endlessly scrolling on social media and looking for connections, replaced with an early night, connecting with a friend, or going on a date as he left work on time. He even had the chance to think of long-term plans and even goals during his idle time and then execute them when he turned back to his active day. All of this added up to a sense of purpose, satisfaction, pride in self, and sustained energy that became the backbone for all else to come—and a deep source of resilience.

We knew we were successfully on our way to Ali’s reclamation of his joyous being when he could state with humor, pride, and dignity that he prioritized his sleep and rest, and knew it made him act and feel better in all areas of his life.

I hope Ali’s and Tina’s stories fuel your own inspiration to see what else is possible when you embrace self-care. Now it’s your turn. Let’s do a brief meditative exercise to see what foundational practice would serve you best.

Meditation for Self-Care and Nurturance

A full version of this guided meditation is available at www.anjulisherinmft.com.

Let’s begin by going to your safe space that we cultivated in the chapter on nurturance. Once you are there, invite your nurturing self to be present, sitting in the attitude of the kind eyes, loving lap, and attuned presence that you have practiced before.

It is in this space and attitude of welcome that you will now invite your body or the part of you that most needs tending to show herself to you. Take a few breaths, letting this part show up. Notice its age, its appearance, its emotional state. Let her show you or tell you what aspects of tending she is most craving. Meet all of it with your loving attention and acceptance.

Next, ask her how she’d like to be tended to here and now. Perhaps she is tired and would simply like to lie down and rest amid the beauty of this space, or in a comforting bed, or in the arms of your nurturing self. If she is hungry, allow her to tell you what she would most like to eat, and imagine yourself preparing her the food and feeding her as an act of love. Provide her with the touch she needs, the caresses and the care, or the time to move and stretch or be in nature in any way she desires. Listen to and follow her, realizing in this moment that she is the teacher and guide and you her apprentice. You are here to serve her, and by doing so you are bringing this part of yourself back to life.

You may stay with her for as long as feels good, and before you complete, ask her if there is any way she would like to experience this care in your everyday life, and commit to making it a part of your routine if it feels right. As you spend time in this meditation, learning to ask for and provide the exact care you need, your ability to take in nourishment will exponentially increase, and you will have a clearer idea of what your body most wants, and how to provide it and follow through in ways that feel joyful, aligned, and connected to the wisdom and power of listening and following your own inner guidance.

You can use the information from this meditation and connection to your inner self to walk through the list of foundational practices on the next page and set your first intention and goal to boost joyful resilience in this area of your life. You may want to go back into the prior meditation and ask your inner self the following questions in the meditative state to elicit the deepest answers.

Your Foundational Practice: Deepening the Nurturer

1. What is your intention? You may want to refer to the area of self-care that your inner self pointed to in the meditation.
For example, “I intend to nourish my joyous resilience through having more high-quality rest.”

2. 2. Why does your intention matter?
For example, “If I am deeply rested, I know I will bring better energy to my loved ones and more focus at work, and I will feel a greater sense of emotional well-being.”

3. How will you practice this intention? What S.M.A.R.T goal you will set?
For example, “I will go to bed by ten p.m. six nights a week and will turn off all electronics an hour before bedtime. I will find an empty room at work, or create a welcoming space in my car, where I can lie down for twenty minutes during the workday. Sundays beginning at two p.m. will be entirely devoted to restful activities in nature with my family, and I will plan to take my full vacation days each year. I will implement this over the next six months.”

4. What obstacles may come up if you practice this? List them all.
For example, “I have a hard time getting off social media at night,” or “I am not sure we will get all our tasks at home done if we are just resting on Sundays.”

5. What strategies can your Nurturer, Protector, or Soul Self offer you to deal with these obstacles? Do you need to get more help from a therapist, counselor, friend, or supervisor to handle them?
For example, “I will use a social media blocking app to make it harder for me to access social media after nine p.m. I will speak with my supervisor to make sure they know I am taking breaks to optimize my performance. I will plan my family chore and errand schedule with my spouse so things can be handled before our down time on Sundays.”

6. What will your resilience and joy look like once this foundational practice becomes a part of your life?
For example, “I will feel refreshed and energized more of the time. I will have more energy not only for work, but also to have fun and to bring to personal projects. I will feel like my time is used more wisely and well, and I will feel proud of myself. I will feel accomplished and have greater hope that I can build other skills. I will be able to encourage others to take care of themselves. I will make great memories with my family as we enjoy our weekends and our long-awaited vacation.”

13

Relational Practices

We matter to each other.

—PAUL GREINER

The characteristics of healthy [relationships] include self-respect; nontolerance of abuse or disrespect; responsibility for exploring and nurturing personal potential; two-way communication of wants, needs, and feelings; expectations of reciprocity; and sharing responsibility and power.

—LAURA BUCHANAN

Amid the deep blue of the Aegean Sea lies the Greek island Ikaria, known since ancient times for having inhabitants who live to great old age. Along with the island of Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia’s Nuoro province, the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, and the Seventh-Day Adventist population in Loma Linda, California, Ikaria is one of the rare places in the world where people live significantly longer lives than everyone else. Researchers studying these communities have identified a confluence of factors explaining their longevity, including foundational elements like quality of food, rest, and movement, which we covered in the previous chapter. However, they identified another factor that might outweigh them all: social structure and relationships.[1]

It turns out that healthy relationships matter a great deal to our quality and length of life. They are tied intimately to our lifelong resilience, whether it’s our immunity to depression and anxiety or strengthening our actual physical immune system. Positive connections help us recover from illness faster, provide us with a necessary sense of purpose and engagement, and give us up to a 50 percent better chance of experiencing a higher quality of life and greater longevity.[2] They also help us establish healthy habits, as we tend to mimic our closest relationships in a phenomenon called “positive social contagion.”

At their best, our relationships help us feel more connected, have greater self-esteem, and develop empathy and cooperation skills, which in turn bolster our ability to create and deepen our network of support, which strengthens our sense of purpose, inner confidence, self-trust, and relational trust. In resilience terms, our inner and outer relational net is much more capable of catching us and lifting us back up when we fall. We can survive great hardship, and experience great joy and fulfillment, because of our connection with significant others in our lives.

If there is an unheralded silent killer in society today, it would be loneliness. Growing at an alarming rate in societies like the United States and United Kingdom, the lack of social connectedness has resulted in close to one in four people reporting that they did not have a close friend to confide in. The impact of loneliness is considered “the equivalent of smoking fifteen cigarettes a day, taking off about eight years of one’s life” and is a higher risk to our overall health than obesity, smoking, and high blood pressure.[3]

What is loneliness? It’s the subjective feeling of being separate and disconnected from others. We can be physically isolated from others and yet feel connected and secure within ourselves, or we can carry a sense of connection to loved ones who are far away. Loneliness and isolation, however, do often go hand in hand. It can be exacerbated by illness that leaves us homebound, caretaking for a loved one, depression that leaves us with little energy or inclination to engage, not having communities around us that feel safe or welcoming based on our socioeconomic identity, or not having safe and accessible communal spaces that encourage engagement. Or we can be surrounded by others and still experience feeling separate and unseen. What this means is that healing loneliness is only partly about connection with others, and only partly dependent on our own efforts. It has to be grounded in a consistent connection to ourselves, and supported by community, culture, and society.

The good news is that the level of social connectivity required for boosting resilience and longevity does not depend on large numbers but rather on quality of contact. We can gain great benefit from having even a couple of close and positive relationships. What do those connections have to provide to be fulfilling? A poignant study done by the UK Campaign to End Loneliness[4] showed that what lonely people missed was usually the simple presence of another and getting to do things like laughing with someone, going for walks, sharing meals, or being hugged. If you find yourself getting overwhelmed at the idea of building connections or understanding what you might need or want in a friendship, breaking it down into these simple yet highly satisfying experiences can be a great place to start. Often, folks think a lifelong friendship or a connection that is a match on multiple levels (intellectual, emotional, spiritual, or values-driven) will be required to feel connected. Fortunately, as the research showed, simpler things like enjoying a shared activity, bonding over a particular cause or purpose, or simply being in the presence of others who are like-minded can be enough to start to fill up our resilience reservoir.

Additionally, in a world that prioritizes achieving and doing over relating and being, it is necessary to underscore the message that while having a sense of purpose through our work is inherent to joyous resilience, there is a whole other nonnegotiable source of purpose and fulfillment that comes from creating time and space for relating, and through feeling tied into and enjoying the pleasures of intimacy and connectivity in our home, work, neighborhood, and communities. Making time for this aspect of our health by prioritizing our inner circle of friends and family, engaging with a wider network through places of social or spiritual engagement, blending purpose and connection through acts of service, or continuing to foster a strong, loving connection within ourselves all weave that buoyant, supple, wide net that extends the very length and breadth of our lives.

Connection Practices

So how do we go about building our capacity for connection and foster ties that actually boost resilience? We employ a few key relational skills that are likely to have the highest correlation with sustained relational joy. These are often the hardest skills to practice, and yet without them we are only scratching the surface of connection, rather than building the fundamental skill sets necessary for long-term, generative relationship. These skills include emotional regulation, boundary setting, making direct requests, forgiveness, and accountability. We built the foundation for these skills in earlier chapters, as each is tied to specific roles in the Circle of Resilience. For example, we looked at emotional regulation as part of the Nurturer and Resilient Self roles, clarifying our boundaries as part of the Protector role, and practicing forgiveness as a part of the Soul Self. While each of these require long-term skills building, practice, and inquiry, we make a start in this chapter by naming them, recognizing their importance, and setting our intention and goals to cultivate at least one of them where we are now.

Perhaps one of our biggest internal conflicts is between wanting the connection that comes from being in relationship and fearing the harm or hurt (such as loss, engulfment, or control) that might occur if we are close to another. Sometimes such harm can be egregious, such as physical, sexual, or emotional violence. At other times it comes in the form of smaller acts of emotional or physical misconduct that add up to a rupture in trust. These acts can look like boundary crossing; using guilt, obligation, or shame to coerce others into doing what we want; holding on to resentment or grudges instead of directly addressing a situation; microaggressions (acts of indignity fueled by prejudice); breaking our promises and not taking accountability; ghosting or flaking out on people and commitments; or responding to differences of opinion or values with judgment and intolerance.

These ways of being are unfortunately quite common in relationship, stemming from a lack of learning about our inner life and how to regulate ourselves in relationship. So we tend to take out anxiety, frustration, and judgments on ourselves and others. We suffer big and little indignities every day, and we take recourse in isolating, attempting to appease the behavior, or becoming a tyrant ourselves.

This is why the first relational practice we must engage in is actually an inner one, and it is the premise of this entire book: we must get in touch with our feelings, needs, and desires, and take charge of our physical, emotional, and mental life. This is why the foundational practices of self-care preceded relational practices. First we needed to deepen into the role of the Nurturer by taking responsibility for our baseline health, so that when we come to others, we bring a more nourished self. Next, to resolve the dilemma of connection versus separation, we have to establish safety in connection—safety that is not sourced from disconnection or aggression and instead comes from a love that has room for boundaries; a love where our voice can be heard and we are free to be authentic to ourselves; where we have the ability to reach out and ask for what we need and want; free to access help, get support, learn, grow, and know that we do not have to do any of it alone. These abilities lie in the domain of the Protector. To understand them better, let’s return to Sandra’s story (from the Protector chapter) to see how she built her relational skills (specifically boundary setting and clear communication) to boost her resilience.

Boundaries and Direct Communication

When we last left Sandra, she was a few months into therapy and developing a powerful inner Protector voice to help her counteract the inner Critic that had reared its head strongly during the process of exiting a romantic relationship where she had experienced domestic violence. After recently moving in with a new housemate, she was waking up to the necessity of clarifying her needs, wants, and boundaries in her home, and she was learning that this same ability to connect with herself and give voice to what mattered to her also applied to her freelance work as an artist and how she engaged with clients commissioning her work. Her intention in therapy was to regain confidence and trust in herself by becoming more self-aware and inwardly compassionate while also asserting herself in personal and professional relationships by setting clear boundaries that affirmed her experience and underscored her worth and value as a person.

Once we had established the template for her inner Protector, we talked about the further development of this part by building skills in four areas to be discussed below.

Practice: Think of all the areas in your life where your inner Protector is responsible for establishing limits, such as: body (consent around touch, sexuality, choice of attire), mind (what information you consume, how you speak to yourself, the beliefs you feed), emotions (having healthy ways to express our feelings), space (your home or shared spaces), finances (how you spend and save), time, spirituality, and relationships. Start with one area that you would like to focus on where you would like your inner Protector to grow in the four relational skills we are about to explore. Sandra did these processes first with her mind (her inner Critic/how she spoke to herself), and then with setting healthy boundaries around shared space with her housemate.

Boundary Setting

To develop boundaries for yourself, you have to know what you value and think and where you stand. This is not always easy to define, but it’s important to do in order to communicate your personal values clearly to yourself and others. Our Vulnerable Self and the people in our life are constantly reading our behavior and its consistency to get clear guidance on what we will and will not accept. Boundaries do not have to be rigid; however, the clearer you are and the more your inner Protector is capable of pausing, listening within, and knowing what your principles are, the easier it is to adjust them without compromising your core values.

In the aftermath of the work we did with building her inner Protector, Sandra’s standard around internal criticism was clear and well defined. For her, kindness was the bottom line of communication. Sandra identified a few of the ways her Critic would regularly undermine her, by saying “your art isn’t good enough,” “the abuse that happened was your own fault,” and “you’re weak.” She established that these declarations were no longer acceptable. And, she came up with a clear countering response from her Protector: “This language is disrespectful, and these claims are untrue. I will no longer be spoken to this way. Here is what I prefer to hear instead: My art is a part of me that deserves to be expressed and have time made for it. I am healing from the abuse that was not my fault. I am proud of how strong I am becoming and learning to protect and assert myself.”

With her housemate situation, Sandra identified cleanliness, timeliness in payment of shared rent, and having private time in the house without anyone present as her three needs. She came up with clear expectations around these needs, e.g., having dishes washed and counters cleaned each night, having rent be deposited automatically into the account by a certain date, and needing one evening a week to have the home to herself until seven p.m.

Practice: Make a list of what you expect for yourself in relation to the area in your life you chose to focus on. For example, if it was around your relationship with a partner, what are standards of communication you expect? Think about what you can and can’t live with; think through what matters most to you. Is it kind communication, respect, accountability? What are specific ways in which those can be expressed by this person? Writing it out can be helpful.

Clear Communication (Direct Requests and Clear Expectations)

Next, Sandra began to share her expectations with herself by pausing whenever she noticed the Critic start up and sharing her clear expectations and boundary by repeating the Protector statements she had come up with in the moment or as soon as she noticed. At first, she imagined her Protector templates (Frida or the tigress) speaking on her behalf; over time it became her own voice firmly making the new expectation known to the Critic.

She also practiced with me in session, and with a close friend, going over her expectations with her housemate. She then felt more confident to act as her own Protector and set a time to go over house agreements together. Her guidelines were to tell the person her clear expectations. For example, instead of saying, “I’d like the house to be clean,” which was vague and open to interpretation, she would say, “I would like the dishwasher to be loaded and run every day, and the kitchen counter to be wiped down every night.”

Sandra was also able to view her asking for a meeting to discuss needs with her housemate as a thoughtful and respectful gesture, rather than her Critic’s characterization that it was needy or caused trouble, or making her feel guilty for having needs in the first place. Bringing dignity to the event also allowed her to see it as a place that allowed both of them to discuss expectations and have time to think things over and come together from a sense of mutual agreement, or to decide to part ways as another way of honoring each person’s right to choose. Sandra and her housemate decided to try these new agreements over a three-month period and then to reconvene to see if any adjustments were needed, or to close out with a thirty-day notice. For Sandra, this was a liberating experience, teaching her that speaking clearly in this way was a way of respecting herself and others, and something to take pride in.

1. Practice: With the area you are working on, translate your needs into a direct request or guideline where possible. For example, if you want kind communication from your partner, what are three specific ways they can show up that would feel kind to you? Saying “be kind” is vague and harder to follow than saying “please give me a hug when I’m feeling sad, ask me how I am doing, and remind me that you are there for me and happy to listen.” Giving clear directives is a great service to others because it allows them to meet our needs more successfully and eliminates the pressure to guess or read minds.

Emotional Regulation (Keep Your Focus on Yourself)

Sandra was used to giving over her power to the voice in her head, and to the people she lived with. If her boyfriend or housemate was in a good mood, she would feel energized and well, and she would go about her daily activities. If there was a rift with the person she was close to, or they were simply having a hard day, her inner Critic would try to deal with her rising anxiety by telling her it might be her fault, thinking incessantly about what she might have done wrong, and making her look for ways she could neglect her own routine to try to caretake the partner. This was an indirect way of trying to assuage her own fear about their mood and the possibility of it turning into violence. The work of the inner Protector is to help you see that when someone close to you is acting in a way that crosses your boundary, or they are simply having a hard time, your power lies in first focusing on yourself. It’s that oxygen mask analogy: check and make sure you have your own on first, and then extend toward the person next to you.

The Protector is there to uphold the boundary of self-care, and the Nurturer is there to implement it. Rather than yo-yoing emotionally in response to someone else’s moods, we instead give them the gift of being centered and present with ourselves, which can look as basic as stepping away into the bathroom for a moment or going for a walk down the street, until we can calm our own anxiety and get clear about what we feel and need. The Protector helps the Vulnerable Self step away, and the Nurturer tends to the Vulnerable Self, helping it come back from being triggered and making sure that day’s tasks and personal responsibilities are handled. Keeping the focus on us gives the other the gift that we are no longer trying to control their behavior or make them change in order to make ourselves feel better. Instead, as we learn to give ourselves space to feel what we feel and work through it, we meet others with permission for that possibility inside them. We ask, rather than guess, if we have hurt them in any way or if they need something. We know that what all of us need at the end of the day is for the person across from us to tend to themselves and come toward us from as good a place of self-care as they can muster. The joyous being mantra in relationship is like the famous line from the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip: “I’ll take care of myself for you. You take care of yourself for me.”

1. Practice: Take some time now to identify how you can take care of yourself when stress arises in the area you are working on. In the example of wanting kindness from a partner during difficult times, what are some ways you can identify for your Nurturer or Protector to help you self-regulate and feel empowered, tended to, and more grounded when you get caught up in relationship distress? What would the Nurturer say or do for you? What would the Protector say or do for you? Would it help to take some time out for yourself with your journal, go exercise, or have a list of friends who make you feel calmer and more connected? How would turning to these resources benefit your relationship with your partner? Remind yourself that self-care is essential for the care of the relationship.

Apologizing and Making Amends

Healthy relationships contain within them the possibility of repair and restorative actions. The Protector knows that hurt is inevitable in any long-term relationship, and it offers a healing balm of real remorse and sincere amends as an alternative to the poison of defensiveness and shame. If a child on the playground pushes another in a fit of anger, the Protector parent asserts in a kind and firm manner that it is not okay to hit; makes sure the hurt child is okay, can share how they feel, and receives an apology; and helps the child who acted out in anger know what to do differently when they are upset. When both children walk away knowing they are still connected to a warm adult and can share and get help with their feelings, a new model of safety is established—one that is not polarized into “bad” or “good” children, or that uses shame and criticism to change behavior. Instead, they operate within a model of safety that focuses on behavior as separate from a person, encourages finding a way to make real amends, and holds out the possibility for growth and learning. This feeds lasting resilience.

For Sandra, this began with envisioning her Protector guiding her Critic to apologize for the verbal abuse it had subjected her to over the years. Rather than imagining the Critic being banished or pushed away, the healing came when Sandra recognized that this was a part of herself that had attempted to “serve” her by motivating her in the best way it knew how: making her feel anxious and ashamed so that she would try to fix herself and avoid harm from others. Now Sandra had a new template for protection and could imagine an apology and amends from her Critic, who stated: “I am so sorry I could not keep you safe in the last relationship. I am so sorry that I criticized you instead of protecting you. It was my attempt to keep you safe, and I was wrong. I am learning a new way, and I am committed to protecting you better now. I am proud of how far you have come.” Sandra no longer needed to fear her inner Critic; instead, by understanding it and receiving its sincere amends and apology, she could begin to befriend this part and have it become her true ally and defender.

Practice: Is there need for apology and accountability in the area you are working on? To yourself or to another? What would it free up for you if you got to give or receive an apology? What concrete steps could you or another take that would mean they were willing to take accountability for their actions and create a new possibility? In the partnership example, it might be important for both people or one partner to directly apologize for any ways they’ve shown up as unkind and to come up with a specific accountability plan, such as being willing to go to therapy to work on their unkind behavior, or taking a course on building relational skills.

Cultivating Connections

In order to cultivate relational skills, we have to practice them in relationship. When we’ve built a stronger sense of self-care and compassion through the work we’ve already done, we’re more willing and ready to deepen our relationships. Having the ability to set boundaries and clearly communicate our needs and receive those of others, as we have learned earlier, opens us up to say yes to relationships because we feel more safe and secure internally. We start where we are, as we are. We start where our relationships are, as they are. Here are some simple steps we can take to build and deepen connections and our relationship skills:

- Identify one or more current relationships you want to deepen. You don’t have to start to from scratch to find high-quality relationships in your life. Think of one or two people you would like to get to know better, or whom you have some affinity with, who are already present in your life. They could be a part of your inner circle, a sibling or close friend, or on the periphery of your life, for example, someone you see weekly at your yoga class or a colleague at work to whom you are drawn. If they show some of the characteristics of healthy relationships you want to work on—clear communication, warmth of spirit, good self-care, healthy boundaries, interest in personal growth—then they may be a good person to practice healthy relating with.

- Reach out. If we keep waiting for others to make the first move when it comes to connection or friendship, we might find ourselves locked into indefinite waiting, reinforcing a helpless posture. Instead, with the encouragement and support of our inner Nurturer and Protector, our Resilient Self learns to extend interest and warmth toward others in a way that feels connected to our own intentions and values (in this case, the desire to build intimate relationships) and to our dignity and self-respect (we honor boundaries and practice clear communication). This means we have identified folks we feel drawn toward based on the values in friendship we are seeking, and we are reaching out to make a connection as a way to take empowered action toward achieving our goal of friendship. We practice managing our disappointment if someone doesn’t want to meet up or if an initial meeting does not lead to further friendship. We also practice moving toward what we want by showing up as present, open, interested, and authentic in our interactions and with a commitment to extend the offer of friendship past the first meeting if that feels right. Finally, we look for mutual and authentic relating. Are our efforts at connecting returned? If so, we know we can deepen further.

- State intentions openly, and prioritize relationships. There is great power in declaring openly to ourselves, and to trusted others, what we intend to bring into our lives. When it comes to deepening relationships, sharing openly that we want to cultivate deeper friendships, authentic and mutual connections, intimacy in partnership, or stronger family ties will help us and those we are connecting with orient around what is desired. It also allows us to start to align our behaviors with this intention. For example, if Luke declares that he is committed to having a long-term partnership and a family, that means his work schedule, his self-care, his after-work activities, and his dating choices all have to reflect and dovetail with this intention. This entails choosing a work environment that is family friendly, prioritizing self-care so he feels emotionally available and present for relating, speaking up in his dates about what he desires so he can choose to deepen with folks who share his values and wants, and sharing with his close family and friends that he wants to move into this next chapter so they can also support this vision. The Vulnerable Self has learned that it is dangerous to share one’s intent openly for fear of judgment, ridicule, or disappointment, and therefore this self is often isolated and lonely. The Resilient Self is taught by the Nurturer and Protector that she will be internally affirmed for reaching out and will be protected through healthy boundaries and positive regard, so she is able to reach toward her dreams with a greater sense of security.

- Make connections through joy. Taking the time to build a deeper connection with our innermost self has likely led to a rediscovery of interests, hobbies, and curiosity about the world. Giving ourselves room to explore these new avenues is not only a way to reclaim the playful, curious, creative part of our spirit; it is also a chance to engage with others in a spirit of enjoyment. Although much of our healing work has focused on undoing habits of caretaking, perfectionism, or self-criticism, all of which corrode friendships and transform them into obligations and burdens, having a way to come together that has play as its sole purpose is tremendously rejuvenating for the soul. It is also something rare for adults to engage in, specially in cultures like the West, where adult play is often limited to substance use (going to a bar, drinking, or smoking as the main or primary peripheral activity) or passive activity like watching a movie. This is where the Vulnerable Self (and the next chapter of this book on pleasure, play, and creativity) will offer a lot of new avenues, as we may need to remember what we liked to do or were curious about as a child to begin cracking open this door. For those of us who did not have access to a lot of play even as children, the meditations and reflective questions for the Vulnerable Self included in this book, staying curious about any signs of interest in new activities as we are out in the world, or even just beginning to try a new hobby that is relational or can be done as part of a group are all ways to gently open an inquiry around joy and a new avenue for finding and building friendships.

- Connect through service. One of the most gratifying areas of deepening relational connectedness can occur through giving our time, attention, care, and skills in an act of service. This can happen with existing friends and family, or with a wider network through a cause, a community, or a larger purpose that has meaning for us. Resilience is fed by feeling valued, our lives being tied to some purpose, the knowledge that we are not alone in our vulnerability and difficulties and that we can have an impact, however small, to alleviate suffering. For all these reasons, volunteer work, acts of service, and activism can offer avenues of relating and purposefulness where we receive as much as we give, if not more.

- Make time for yourself. By this point, it may not feel strange to see time for yourself on a list of connection building practices. As we now know, when we deliberately step away from constant relating and drop into silence, quiet, beingness, and solitude, we restore our ability and desire to connect to others. Stepping away can be rather hard to practice, and our inner Nurturer and Protector may need to regularly remind us that for many people, it is a necessary, natural, and nonnegotiable part of healthy relating that creates the space from which we can align with our intentions in any area of our life. Being able to connect with ourselves, recalibrate, and give ourselves time to come into contact with our inner world through a nap, exercise, a solitary walk, making art, or journaling the afternoon away allows us to bring a more whole and functional self to others. When our pendulum has been swung heavily over to the side of overgiving and overextending our energy, it is often necessary to have a period of time where we are more solitary, have less to do, and have much more rest and downtime. This provides the necessary reset and restoration of our energy reserves, and it organically leads to greater bandwidth and desire to engage with others. If you have fallen into this camp, don’t be surprised if your pathway back to others might require ample time by and with yourself.

It bears repeating: taking care of ourselves is an act of love that extends to all those we are in contact with, because in this way we are keeping up our part in our biggest relational responsibility: bringing to others the best version of ourselves that we can.

We Need Each Other

We are wounded in relationship. We are healed in relationship. Our greatest joy and healing often occur in relationship. In fact, we are born into a cosmos that is an eternal dance of interbeing. Nothing exists on its own, and nothing thrives by itself. We need each other, and that interdependence extends beyond our fragile human ties to our relationship with the wondrous microorganisms that inhabit our bodies, to the plant and animal beings with whom we share the earth, and to the celestial bodies of the moon, sun, and stars shape the arc and tide of life and its seasons. When we are cut off from our own heartbeat and its intimate refrain in the heartbeat of every other creature—the universal pulse—when we shut down our reverence, awe, and reason that shows us how we are reliant on everything we are steward to—each other, the land, the waters, the sources of food, fresh air, and life—we are well on our way to extinguishing our own life force; on the way to extinction.

This may seem a long way from committing to practicing healthy relating, yet the biophysics of relating would state that when you practice responding kindly to another instead of shutting down or retaliating, you shift not only what is possible between the two of you; you also contribute to a larger shift of turning toward all of life instead of away from it. This is why we do this work: to take our place in a cosmic evolutionary dance that supports healthy relating with all of life; to treat each other and all that is with love. To become the love that creates worlds.

Your Relational Practice

1. What is your intention?
For example, “I intend to build my relational skills by stating clear boundaries in my relationship with my family and having greater authentic connection with them.”

2. Why does this matter?
For example, “I know that if I can speak my truth to my family about how often and in what capacity I can connect with them, then I can show up more relaxed and present for our interactions. I can also feel closer to them because doing what I need for myself helps me relieve resentment and the feeling of obligation.”

3. How will you practice this intention? What S.M.A.R.T goal you will set?
For example, “I will speak with my parents about setting a clear weekly date when we meet and about checking in with me over text instead of visiting unannounced. I will also make sure I begin to share at least one area of my life when I am with them instead of letting the entire conversation focus on their needs. I will implement this over the next six months.”

4. What obstacles may come up if you practice this? List them all.
For example, “I might feel guilty about setting a set date to visit with them. Shouldn’t they be able to spend as much time as they want with me? I might get irritated when they interrupt me as I begin to share about my life, and then have a hard time staying present in the conversation.”

5. What strategies can your Nurturer, Protector, or Soul Self offer you to deal with these obstacles? Do you need to get more help from a therapist, counselor, friend, or supervisor to handle them?
For example, “I will get support from two close friends to craft a clear message to my parents, and to debrief with and get support from them after I set the boundary. I will remind myself that my intention is to deepen into intimacy and enjoy my time with my parents, and that it is healthy to have time away from each other. I will put energy into the time I do carve out with my parents to make it memorable and pleasurable for all of us.”

6. What will your resilience and joy look like once this relational practice becomes a part of your life?
For example, “I will feel a sense of relief and spaciousness around my home and my time, and I will look forward to the time I do spend with my family, instead of dreading it or being overwhelmed by it. I will have more time and energy to devote to my own self-care and also to engage in other interests and activities and start to form more friendships.”

14

Creativity, Play, and Pleasure

In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: “When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence?”

—ANGELES ARRIEN

As I sit down to write this chapter, it is the end of summer, and the autumnal equinox is just around the corner, a marker since ancient times of the turning of the wheel of the year, and a time of harvesting the bounty of summer and storing it for the days of waning light, of turning inward, of more rest and reflection. Amid the workday responsibilities, the daily rituals, the creating and producing, this is a time and season to pause and give thanks, to have more time to be in creativity, pleasure, play, rest, and reflection. To refuel resilience through a celebration of life through all of our senses.

We have been taught to look outside ourselves for joy and fulfillment; to fix ourselves rather than to be restored and transformed; to believe someone else has the answers, rather than to connect with the guidance of our body and its innate desire to move toward what feels good. We have been given quick highs that create sharp lows, in place of sustained, nourishing fulfillment. Yet, not so very long ago, our ancestors were connected to innate means of finding meaning, tapping into joy, and moving through hardships and stressors in communal, creative, celebratory ways. And throughout the world, communities and cultures continue to nurture similar pathways as essential and life giving.

Imagine it: food is no longer considered simply as fuel for bodies; instead it is grown, harvested, and brought to the table in reverence expressed through slowing down, taking in the pleasure of taste, the gift of the season, and the grace of the earth. Meals are eaten together, and followed at times with song, story, crafting, dance, firelight, laughter, and friendship. Loving laps are available to curl into while gentle hands braid hair, offering touch, or the warm presence of home animals leavens the hard day’s work, the tribulations of our time, and the stressors of the unknown. Somewhere a fiddle will tune, or a drumbeat begin to thrum, or a playlist will fill the room with rhythmic sound. Toes tap, eyes light up, heads sway, and bodies move and find a profound joy in the dance. Looking around, you see in the bright faces, the flushed cheeks, the smiles and laughter how we have found our way back to contentment, meaning making, upliftment, connection, and hope through what was in us all along—through knowing what is necessary is to feed ourselves with what feeds our soul.

Before we began to live in such dense urban environments and the rhythm of our day was set to the demands of our jobs rather than our body and seasonal clocks, there was time and space every day to look at the horizon and its vastness. And, even now, whether caught amid the towering pillars of Manhattan’s skyline, heard while sitting in a pocket-sized neighborhood garden, or viewed through the telescope at a local space center or out in the dark of a regional park, there are those who continue to marvel at the colors of a sunset, to recognize the beauty of birdsong, to lie back and open to awe under the brilliance of stars. There are those who find some way to feel that they’re a part of the larger universe by feeling connected to the cycles of sun and moon, planting and harvest, light and dark at play all around and inside us.

As the years went on from my initial inquiry into joy, I found myself naturally wanting to slow down my life, and to intentionally make time for what brought me deep fulfillment. In doing so, I was entering another phase of letting fall away the voices of others (e.g., society, the Critic, capitalism) that prioritized things that did not feed and open my heart. I was learning to listen to what made me feel alive, and I committed to unlearning the idea that following what brought me joy was selfish. It was difficult to find that some of the close people in my life, who were mired in the same messages I was steeped in—self-abnegation, people pleasing, sacrifice—had a hard time accepting it when I made choices that took care of my health and heart, that did not please everyone else. It seemed like everywhere I looked, the choices swung between selfish entitlement (I will do what I want no matter the impact on others) or self-victimization (I will do what makes others happy, or I will suffer because others are suffering, because it isn’t okay to thrive). Once again the Cycle of Suffering had reared its head. We could only have connection by sacrificing ourselves or making ourselves bad.

When I was a child, I was lucky enough to have parents who, in conservative Pakistani society, gave me the opportunity to be highly physically active. As we’ve already discussed, I loved to play sports and bike around my neighborhood, but all this changed once I hit puberty and my parents started keeping me indoors. In Pakistani terms, my parents were considered liberal, but they were simply following normal cultural criteria to keep me safe from the rampant sexual harassment in Pakistan. They were also bowing to the cultural pressure on girls to meet gendered cultural and religious expectations of modesty or sexual innocence by being less visible in public spaces. While I still could play sports at school, these opportunities also diminished as I grew older because the funding and even opportunities for such activities were focused on boys.

My teenage years were hard for many reasons, with many bouts of depression and anger, in great part at the increasing gender-based control and suppression in my environment. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that this depression was compounded by my abrupt loss of activities that had been providing me joy and resilience in the form of actual endorphins, as well as the feeling of freedom, strength, and fun in having a body. Now my body had become the enemy; it was the reason why I was changing from girl to woman, subject to being kept indoors, and prey to the gaze or physical advances of men. In having my changing body tied to the restrictions on my freedom and activities, I felt like I was being punished for my existence and losing access to joy in and about my body.

Years later, on a study-abroad program in Brazil, I visited an island where the only means of transport was biking. Although it had been almost a decade since I had ridden a bike, I blithely jumped back on one—and was flat on my face in a ditch just a few minutes later. It was a stark reminder of how long it had been since my body had been free to make these motions. Later, as I got back on and began to navigate the island, I felt an exhilaration that I had completely forgotten: the incredible, inexplicable joy at being able to pedal freely, feel my body enveloped by the breeze, and the sheer fun and bliss the movement created in me. My face was all smiles, a young smile, and later that night it was wet with tears. I had truly forgotten what it felt like to bike, forgotten that I loved it, forgotten that I even enjoyed moving my body or being physically active in these ways.

I felt anger too, because of the loss of the years I had been denied this pleasure, and a keen horror at the many, many daily acts denied to me and so many of my global sisters: simply moving freely out in the world, able to go and do what we wanted, to drive, to attend school, to seek employment, to be employed without harassment, to live alone, to live and speak freely without threat of violence, to be free to dress or undress as we wanted, to be sexual without being shamed, to be sensual without it being tied to male desire, to travel alone, to be in mixed company, to lead, to connect with a spirituality of our own choice, to marry whom we wished or to not marry at all without censure, to have babies, to have abortions, to be childless without being shamed, to listen to music, to read books, to write, to dance, sing, create, vote, have a business, and have our own money—the freedom to feel and be all of who we are.

adrienne maree brown, author of Pleasure Activism, defines pleasure as a combination of happiness, joy, contentment, and satisfaction, stating, “it’s about pure aliveness and actually being present for the world around you.”[1] brown’s work says the reclamation of our individual pleasure, specifically in the aftermath of trauma and inside legacies of oppression and marginalization of certain bodies (e.g., Black, brown, fat, disabled, female, transgender), is actually an essential piece of recovery and healing work. That day on the bike, I felt a clear and unequivocal sense that all I wanted for this dear body that housed my soul was to feel that pure aliveness that was the essence of my spirit. To get to live in every sense of the word as a way to honor this one precious life I was given. To also live in every sense of the word to reclaim what patriarchy had systematically cheated the life force and existence of every woman out of: her right to be fully and freely alive. I knew that getting back on that bike mattered. It mattered to be seen as a brown, south Asian woman out biking in the world. It would have mattered to me when I was a little girl to see even one other woman out on the streets. It would have meant that I too might have fought for this possibility.

Fast-forward to 2018, and imagine my delight at finding this is the sentiment motivating the girls on bikes campaign begun by the Girls at Dhabas (traditional eating establishments) organization in Pakistan. This campaign aims to “promote female participation in public events, fight restrictions in public places, and increase awareness”[2] that women need to take up space in every aspect of society. Another Pakistani organization, Aahung, that is working for women’s sexual and reproductive health rights, shares how vital it is have women freely occupying public space: “Public spaces (transport, marketplaces, the street, institutions, occupations) are deeply gendered, and marginalize girls and women. This impacts their access to basic services like health, education, and livelihood and their voice in decision making and governance. Women’s access to public spaces is a rights issue and in order to build cities that are inclusive of girls, that respond to their needs and where women feel safe to move freely, conversation about public spaces must center around their priorities.”[3]

When they are not, we just teach little girls like myself that our bodies, our desires, even the simplest desires to move freely and be at ease in the public spaces of the world, are dangerous, shameful, and wrong. The rules that keep us in our homes and restrict our ability to live freely are rules that protect the harasser, the perpetrator, the male body and its gaze. These rules not only fail to put up a barrier against the victimization of women; they add the additional weight of blaming the victim (girls and women) for having been out and about in the first place. This is rape culture, the culture of violence against women, that blames women’s bodies and beings for the harm done by men.

adrienne maree brown reminds us that African Americans have been told, “‘You’re 3/5 of a person.’ If you don’t feel like you’re fully human, then where in that are you supposed to believe you have access? When your people are [living with the effects of genocide], as Indigenous people are, where are you supposed to find pleasure? For me it’s about reclaiming what I believe is our birthright.”[4] When women cannot participate fully in any aspect of society that is pivotal to their being, and when I was told I could not participate in the public space of playing outside unlike my male peers, I too was being taught that I was less of a person, with fewer rights then boys and men. Many years later, when I got back on the bike that society had pulled me off of, I was reclaiming my birthright to be free to move and experience the sheer exhilaration of being alive in the body I have. I was reclaiming the space I got to take up and all the different pieces of me that went along with access to my body.

In all these years of healing—asking myself, my partners, my loved ones, my clients, the questions “What brings you joy? How do you experience pleasure? What pleasure do you want to open to? How could life, work, relating, routines, learning, activism, movement, sex, play, being cared for, being ill, being in this body, be more joyous, more pleasurable, more fulfilling? What makes you happy?”—in asking and answering and practicing the answers to these questions, I, and all those who engaged in this inquiry, had been engaging in an act of personal and political liberation.

This act of opening to an inquiry into our own pleasure was inextricably linked with opening to the grief for and connection with all others who might also wish for this privilege and who had been denied this experience of knowing and following and living in—feeling good as feeling fully and freely into their own experience and expression—their bodies. Reclamation of joyous resilience could intentionally lead toward questions and inquiry of collective resilience. Or as maree brown says, we can’t “really feel for the collective if we can’t feel ourselves.” Our individual reclamation can lead to asking broader questions: “What does it look like on the collective level for us to feel like we all have access to lives that are fulfilling and satisfying?”[5]

Joy Culture versus Consumption Culture

Experiencing the world through taste, sight, sound, touch, and scent, and allowing ourselves meaningful time each day to connect with pleasure, play, fun, and creativity are necessary remedies of the soul. They are also in our own hands, in our power, to create and enrich our lives with. They belong to no one culture, no profession or institution, and perhaps most importantly, given predominant societal messaging, they do not belong to what we can buy or how much money we earn. They belong to our ability to be present in this moment, to our body, to our breath, to our inner life, and to the rich, wise traditions, housed in our bodies, imbued with the best of our heritage, which, when tapped into intentionally, contain the way back to our most Resilient Self. It is the necessity of pleasure and the joy of creativity for its own sake that we are tapping back into in this part of our resilience practice.

You may consider yourself incredibly fortunate if you come from a family, community, or culture that has not undervalued creativity, play, and other “nonproductive” activities—activities that are simply enjoyable, rather than being focused on a so-called productive result. You are fortunate because the designation of these activities as frivolity, luxury, or simply unnecessary has contributed greatly to the joylessness and sense of something missing in our lives. Duty, diligence, production, and achievement, unleavened by play, pleasure, and creativity can leave a gap that translates into a sense of weariness in our heart. Consumption culture or achievement culture step into this gap and offer goods, accolades, and achievements (house, car, marriage, children, degrees, awards, followers) as an answer. Although each of these may have value and merit and might be tied to real desires, they only provide external answers to a longing for an internal state.

A joy culture asks a different set of questions and offers a different possibility for answers. Can happiness only be sourced outside ourselves? Does joy only occur at the end of a rainbow that spans achievement? Can I only feel joy through something I buy? How do we get in touch with our life force and our enjoyment and aliveness in ways that feed us again and again? In ways that are at our fingertips, in our beings, tied to our own heart’s beat? Also, are we supposed to only be fulfilled by our daily round of activity and work, no matter how tied to our purpose it might be? Are we allowed to have more than goals to achieve or dreams to accomplish? Are we allowed to have pleasure, play, and delight as a part of our life’s purpose? Do we remember how to play anymore? Can we play without always needing to dissociate from our bodies through substances? What would it take to learn how to create that for ourselves?

The essential difference between consumption culture and joy culture is a shift in focus from acquisition to felt experience, and a resultant rise in the experience of resilience versus a pervasive gap in health. If we look to the Angeles Arrien quote at the start of this chapter as our tool for diagnosing our own health or the health of our society, how would we answer? That is the powerful shift we must make to include these parts of our experience, to bring them in from the fringes and out of distortion into our lives as lived celebration. To have little and big joys punctuate the seasons of our life. To leaven our daily tread.

There is a case to be made that focusing on pleasure is what has gotten our society addicted to food, alcohol, substances, television, and the internet. Our desires have run amok, leading to a rapacious consumption of resources that is wrecking our planet and promulgating disease. It is a symptom of our times that when we hear the word pleasure, we think of addiction, which is the way we escape our own felt experience in order to attain some measure of “peace.” Having to leave our selves by using a substance can provide temporary relief, ranging from a benign coping strategy to a devastating and life-crippling dependence. We are seeking some measure of relief; however, what we are seeking requires us to reconnect with ourselves first. This reconnection, the basis of joyous resilience, is what shifts us out of addiction into moderation. When we can slow down enough to be with ourselves (the Nurturer) and listen to our actual needs, desires, and longings (the Resilient Self), we are able to explore and engage what brings us pleasure within healthy, self-regulated boundaries (the Protector) that take care of us and are rooted in our connection with others (the Soul Self).

Our grounding in self-regulation and healthy boundaries allows us to bring reverence and mindfulness to our pleasure activities. We can revel in our bodies, and we can do so while also knowing we are not harming ourselves or others. It is when cultures or societies make pleasure taboo or repress it that it emerges anyway as an irrepressible part of our life force, yet without the consciousness and tools to work with it. This is where it can run to extremes, from licentiousness to puritanical fundamentalism. Joyous resilience brings to any path we choose the practice of honoring the desire for pleasure and play and meeting it with inner nurturance, boundaries, and retaining a connection to our spirit and communal well-being.

In this chapter, we step into the reminders and practices that can fuel our resilience and fill the days of our life with the sensory play and pleasure that are a return to our wise and joyous being.

Creativity, Play, and Pleasure Reflection

What are your favorite ways to restore and reset your energy that involve your senses?

What do joy and pleasure taste like? Cold ice cream with hot fudge, warm rain, a lover’s kiss, sweet tea steeped in the sun, the crunch of a sweet pea picked off the vine, the first sip of cool water at the end of a long fast, your mother’s soft, steaming tamales.

What do pleasure and creativity smell like? Wet paint on a fresh canvas, jasmine in the sultry night air, the warm, sweet scent of pie baking in the oven, fresh black ink on paper, sweat on the dance floor, spicy, loamy earth on your fingertips.

What do pleasure and creativity sound like? Music pulsing through your earbuds, or the scratchy, nostalgic sound of a record played on a phonograph. The hush of an audience before the theater curtains part. The click, click of your fingers on the typewriter. Bursts of laughter and sighs of fulfillment at an open mic. The moan of pleasure when someone rubs your tired shoulders at the end of the day. The exuberant cry of an orgasm. The gentle crooning of a lullaby. The full-belly giggle of your child when you play hide and seek.

What do pleasure and creativity move like? Swimming, thrusting, painting, jumping, biking, swinging, digging, twirling, weeding, dancing, fists pumping, sex, waving, sculpting, stretching, knitting, kneading, crafting, trampolining, running.

What do pleasure and creativity look like? Feel like under your touch? A clay pot softly undulating under your fingers, the vivid colors of flowers arranged in a vase, a troupe of actors, acrobats, dancers, and musicians performing a cabaret, the smooth wood of your knitting needles, the funky haircut you just gave a new, satisfied client.

Whether you are drawing on experience or exploring this for the first time, what would you choose to experience in the realm of creativity and pleasure in your life, as way to reconnect with your senses and fuel joyful resilience?

Reclaiming Time to Get Hands-On with Joy

What constitutes creativity and pleasure? While our answers are unique to us, there are certainly some time-honored categories they fall into. Creativity and experiencing pleasure in our bodies through our senses runs the gamut of activities: song, music, art, cooking, gardening, craft, poetry, dance, and storytelling, to name a few. The defining factor is experiencing some of these salient features: a sense of losing time or being in the flow, a satisfaction from the process as much as the outcome, and a reconnection to ourselves or a landing back in our body.

A key area I want to highlight in the era of the internet and online culture is the sensory pleasure that comes from embodied activities (full-body or hands-on creation). One of the things I have been fascinated with as a resilience- and joy-focused practitioner is the hidden cost of living in a technologically focused age, with all of its “time-saving” and “efficient” devices taking over tasks that humans engaged in by hand over centuries. Many of these technological advancements have provided enormous benefits in every arena of life, but they have also inadvertently relegated to the “lost” pile certain vital mental, physical, and relational benefits—most importantly the creative satisfaction and sensory joy that can only be derived from living a hands-on life.

We are normally no more than a foot away from our phones, tablets, televisions, or computers. This is a symptom of the FOMO (fear of missing out) and always-online culture that our Vulnerable Self falls prey to: fearing missing out on the next email, text, invite, or post, and not being seen as productive, busy, with it, relevant, or even getting in trouble with our bosses, coworkers, friends, or followers for being slower to respond. Americans spend about fifty hours per week on devices,[6] with a large portion of that time—about four hours each day—spent watching movies and other shows. Our devices are the primary way to unwind and relax in American culture, where exhaustion from overwork, little time for leisure at the end of the workday, the burden of raising families even in a two-parent household (but especially for single parents), the lack of easily accessible community spaces and activities (local parks, central squares with green spaces, community events), and long commute times make reaching for an easily accessible device at the end of the day feel like the easiest, most readily available option for pleasure.

At this point, most of us know the dangers of this drug we are hooked on and are feeling its cost. We feel time-poor and joy-scarce, caught somewhere between the utility of technology, its many benefits (information, online communities, business, accessibility), and the very real toll it takes in the form of every minute of our down time we allocate toward picking up a screen versus choosing another generative path towards pleasure. If you are like me, committing to putting that screen down might be the most critical move you make to reclaim and repurpose whatever limited time you have for friendships, hobbies, nature, romance, sex, spirituality, rest, service, and other cherished projects that fill us up in ways that our neurobiology can never receive from our easily accessible yet ultimately draining devices.

This reclamation starts by recognizing the drain. Then tracking how much time you’re actually spending on your device and what level of enjoyment and joy you receive. The truth is, I love films and media, so there is a portion of time I know I want to devote to watching my favorite shows because there is pleasurable fulfillment I receive from it. The power lies in knowing exactly how much time gives me satisfaction before I am simply in a habit of turning on the screen to unwind, and entering a zone where I will end up feeling drained, exhausted, or like I lost time rather than being fed.

This brings us back to the notion of checking in with our selves and our bodies so we can feel into our knowing about what feels good. We’re watching our own sensations and recognizing where aliveness, stimulation, or pleasure drop into dullness and lethargy or spike into being frazzled, wired, or overstimulated. You might discover, like I did, that an hour of a show I love at the end of a work day is a pleasure I look forward to; yet doing this every night after work felt isolating and left me with a sense of lack and disconnection. I didn’t need a set time away from the TV; I just needed a set number of hours for the week that I could use as I chose. Others, might love the idea of taking an evening or even a twenty-four-hour period off from technology, as internet pioneer and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain describes in her book 24/6.[7] Shlain describes how her family has practiced taking a day off from technology for the past decade. Drawing from the ancient Jewish ritual of Shabbat and worldwide traditions that incorporated a day of rest, her “technology Shabbat” became a resilience practice for the whole family, providing a weekly space that restored them by dropping into presence, connection, and activities that centered joy.

Once we get our hands off our devices, we can begin to get hands-on with joy. We can now turn to the questions and ideas ahead as ways to reconnect with options for pleasure, play, creativity, and unwinding that go beyond the screen. Getting reconnected to a variety of options and purposefully choosing to move toward them is what allows us to explore, practice, and ultimately rewire ourselves toward what feels good, so that ultimately we can choose so much more of what brings us life-giving pleasure.

Carrie Baron, author of The Creativity Cure: How to Build Happiness with Your Own Two Hands, writes eloquently about the ways in which “hands-on work satisfies our primal need to make things and could also be an antidote for our cultural malaise. . . . Making things . . . is important for happiness because when we make, repair, or create things we feel vital and effective.”[8]

Kelly Lambert, a neuroscientist at the University of Richmond who explores the relationship between hand use, cultural habits, and mood, has shown that hands-on “creative, domestic or practical endeavors . . . are useful for decreasing stress, relieving anxiety, and modifying depression.” Additionally, engaging in repetitive action not only allows us to relax and access a peaceful mental state; it can also put us into a flow state that allows for “spontaneous joyful, creative thought.”[9]

From a psychological standpoint, what is immensely healing and corrective about all of these activities is the emphasis on the process of doing and creating rather than accomplishing or competing. Finding satisfaction in the process of creation and accessing these simple connections to pleasure and satisfaction helps create new neural pathways for feeling self-esteem, confidence, and resilience. When we try a new recipe for the pleasure of exploring different flavors or to surprise our loved ones with an unexpected, tasty treat; or we spend an hour with a magnifying glass, exploring the insects in our backyard with our little one, each of us enthralled by the tiny wonders that make up our world; or we sit and assemble a puzzle of a beautiful scene in nature, alternately soothed and stimulated by the activity, we are partaking in creative activities that drop us into the moment and allow us to enjoy it for its own sake. We learn that we can find happiness in the moment from exploration, making, looking, and playing. The feeling of contentment and fulfillment we all long for is only one such activity away. What a relief to know we can bring ourselves into such resilient states from simple, repeatable activities that bring us pleasure.

These creative activities also help our brains grow in resilient ways. Responding to new threats and challenges with adaptive and inventive solutions is how the human brain problem-solves its way beyond those threats and challenges in order to thrive. Face it: if we only encountered the same old threats and challenges, they wouldn’t really be threats and challenges; we’d already have formulas in place for managing them. But when we’re confronted with the unfamiliar, the unthinkable, the unimaginable, we have nothing to fall back on but our ability to innovate and improvise.

An uplifting example of this kind of creative thinking is the response of some communities while in lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020. The crisis found countries worldwide faced with the realization that a crisis of this magnitude and scale would require a creative and unprecedented response by countries, governments, communities, and individuals that would help slow the spread of the disease. While on a structural level this brought to light grave deficits in existing infrastructure—such as the lack of basic universal income, free and universal health care, and paid sick leave—to support low-income people, service providers, the elderly, and other vulnerable populations, it also called upon folks suddenly thrown into social isolation and quarantine to find innovative and creative ways to connect and stay resilient during this time.

Here is where technology can be used for its best purposes, with folks setting up group Zoom calls to connect with friends and family through virtual dinner parties, movie watching, or game nights—finding a way to stay connected and resilient while stuck in their homes. Many came up with innovative ways to homeschool children; many also spent time reading, crafting, cooking, praying, singing, working on household projects, focusing on hands-on hobbies, checking in on elderly neighbors and friends, or simply being out in nature more as regular work and travel came to a halt. I remember watching the viral videos of communities in Italy, on lockdown in their apartments, deciding to innovate connection by singing, playing music, and dancing on their separate patios and rooftops. They had found a way to stay connected; to uplift each other through song, dance, and music; and to bring their nervous systems back into harmony and hope, through a return to pleasure, play, and creativity. They reminded us all of how to engage an extreme circumstance in a novel way that honored the seriousness, and they helped us ride it out with our creative agility and capacity for staying connected to joy to help us stay strong.

How do we take all this information and use it to begin practicing creative and sensory joy for ourselves? We do it through any creative practice that engages your body and lets you feel pleasure. To get you started, here are five simple, gratifying ways we can return to more hands-on activities and help our brains and bodies build resilience and experience joy through a sensory-rich life.

1. 1. Eat with your hands.
Cooking is high on the list of pleasure and creativity practices. However, whether you make the meal yourself or not, your hands can help you find your way to a more fulfilling and healthier meal. I come from an Eastern culture where eating with our hands is the norm. Moving to the West and learning that this simple, primal act has become so disconnected from people’s eating habits that people look down upon it or think of it as dirty or unhygienic was distressing. Although not all foods are created equally when it comes to hands-only eating—think slippery noodles or marinara sauce!—most are designed to be savored with all of our senses. Imagine mango juice dripping down your chin or a morsel of naan filled with curry, and you may feel the automatic urge to to lick every finger!

That urge is a part of your body’s instinctual wisdom. Eating with our hands encourages more mindful eating habits, knowing when we are full, and eating healthier amounts because our fingers and fingertips are actually extensions of our digestive systems. Feeling our food signals our brain to prepare the stomach for the digestive act. Next, millions of nerve endings relay further messages like temperature and spiciness, allowing for the release of enzymes and acids that facilitate better digestion.[10] You are not only in the moment, engaging with your food through your senses; you are also more connected to the act and able to derive more pleasure from it.

2. 2. Get your hands in the dirt.
The other amazing place where microorganisms are hanging out ready to interact with your fingertips and produce a shot of that feel-good high is your nearest patch of soil. For thousands of years our interaction with our environment was drastically more extensive than it is now. Although many of us intuitively know that being out in nature or interacting with plants makes us feel calmer, more present, and happier, the science further backs those impressions: “Gardening or getting our hands in the soil increases the release and metabolism of serotonin in parts of the brain that control cognitive function and mood—much like serotonin-boosting antidepressant drugs do.”[11] Research shows that this is due to interaction with bacteria like M. vaccae, whom the human species evolved alongside. A lack of exposure to bacteria like this, due to urban living and being cut off from nature, has negative impacts on our health, including inflammation and weakened immune system function. Reconnecting with bacteria like this through hands-on reconnection with soil can begin to address and reverse these ills. Not only do we begin to reconnect with the creative cycle of our planet, finding joy, pleasure, and possible psychospiritual lessons in stewarding plant life; we are also literally building our physical and emotional resilience.

3. 3. Cooking, cleaning, and crafts.
Who knew that doing household work could be boost our resilience? Bear with me. Anything repetitive and rhythmic, like washing dishes, folding laundry, ironing clothes, or sweeping can be a way to soothe the mind and relax the body, while also allowing the mind to drift into a dreamlike state where creative thinking, inspiration, and integration can happen. If you have ever started your day by making your bed, or felt your anxiety lessen once you tidied your desk or living space, you know that cleaning can actually lead to greater joy and can inspire a sense of establishing greater order in our environment, creating a better external environment to help soothe the internal. Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up became a worldwide cultural phenomenon for a reason, because it fed two important needs of our time: naming and coming out of the overwhelm caused by massive consumption, hoarding, and drowning in a sea of stuff that capitalism tell us we need in order to be and have enough; and learning how to choose what we need and want to keep by asking, and answering, that now world-famous question: “Does this spark joy?”

Do you like crafting or being creative, or do you want to get away from simply being on the internet or TV for entertainment? Find inspiration in the crafting ways of our ancestors and the beauty and enjoyment they derived from the firelit hours. You can gain the same benefits of calm, relaxation, and flow state from activities like knitting, doing puzzles, painting, baking, and collage. When we’re being creative, our brains release dopamine, a natural antidepressant. Creativity that requires concentration is a nonmedicinal way of getting a feel-good high and helping to alleviate depression. One theory for how this works is that it calls on parts of the brain that are being used less often in our world of modern conveniences. MRI scans evaluated by neuroscientist Kelly Lambert, the author of Lifting Depression, suggest a strong connection between physical work and feeling good.[12]

I want to name here that the arena of domestic work can be a complicated and fraught place to center joy because throughout history and up to the present time, women have been forced into domestic work, which has been made invisible or devalued as “not really” work, has not been compensated economically, or has been compensated at an unlivable low wage. In addition, domestic work has been a site of forced labor and exploitation for people of many lineages. This means that if we belong to any of these intersections of social location, we may have a complex connection with domestic work, whether it is in our own household or as our vocation in the world. For me, coming from a culture where cooking and cleaning were always framed as women’s work, I felt an active resistance and anger at having to learn these tasks as an obligation and duty rather than a choice, an individual responsibility, or a responsibility shared with men. I could commiserate with female friends who still lived at home or were in relationships where household work continued to be their responsibility without feeling recognized in it. As such, the task was mired in resentment, frustration, and boredom.

Finding our way back to joy in this domain included accepting our feelings where they were, speaking up about our frustration and anger, asking for assistance, hiring help if possible (more on that in a minute), and finally reclaiming the activity by adding pleasure to it (making phone calls while cleaning, playing music in the background, adding a dance break) or relaxing into the pleasure it offered (being present in the task, allowing our minds to rest and dream, taking satisfaction in our accomplishment) as our own revolutionary act of reclaiming how we felt within what occupied our time.

It also means that if we employ domestic workers in any capacity to perform these tasks, it is important to consider how this work can be honored economically and supported in ways that feed the resilience and rights of the workers, such as paying a fair, livable wage, providing cleaning equipment or paying for high-grade cleaning supplies that are good for the environment and better for the health of the workers, honoring breaks during work, or supporting organizations like the National Domestic Workers Alliance that fight for protections and rights of domestic workers.

4. 4. Writing or drawing by hand.
In the age of typing, taking the time to keep a handwritten journal or writing down notes or assignments by hand is rare, even though research shows that the most effective way to study and retain new information is to write your notes by hand. That’s because putting ink to paper stimulates a part of the brain called the reticular activating system (RAS). According to lifehacker.com, “The RAS acts as a filter for everything your brain needs to process, giving more importance to the stuff that you’re actively focusing on that moment—something that the physical act of writing brings to the forefront.”[13]

I will often assign clients a task of writing out difficult emotions as a letter that can be burnt. The words are important, but the physical act of moving one’s hands and letting the energy of the emotion come out through the gesture is intensely relieving and a big part of the release. The same goes for drawing, doodling, or painting difficult emotions or releasing wordless energies. The value of using our hands to release emotion and to clarify our thoughts is tremendous. In the same way, taking time to write down our appreciations and describe positive moments in our life in sensory detail is a way to enhance and drop into the experience of pleasure and also engage our creative brain by describing in detail what brings us joy. It is the difference between jotting down a list of appreciations (such as saying I am grateful for having a roof over my head or having my job or a kind partner) and slowing down and savoring this joy that lets us actually fill up with it. I am grateful for the warmth of the candlelight in my home, and how I sit in my favorite chair with a steaming mug of tea and my favorite book, and a quiet and peace descend over me. As you can see, by expounding on the theme you let yourself take it in more deeply when it happens again, and you extend its impact further.

5. 5. Hands-on healing.
Then of course there is the age-old belief that touch heals, whether it be the touch of our caregivers that is necessary for us to thrive as babies, the therapeutic power of hands-on healing in releasing feel-good hormones and reducing pain, or the pleasure and stress relief of consensual sensual and sexual touch.

What’s the science behind why a squeeze of the hand, a big bear hug, a kneading massage, Reiki healing touch, kissing, masturbation, and sex can be such good mind-body medicine? Touch lowers blood pressure and heart rate, boosts immune function, and relieves pain. Giving or receiving touch makes us healthier, not to mention happier and less anxious. The act of embracing floods our bodies with oxytocin, a “bonding hormone” that makes people feel secure and trusting toward each other, lowers cortisol levels, and reduces stress. People who get more hugs from their partners, engage in even ten or fifteen minutes of self-pleasuring or sexual activity, or simply have their hands held have higher levels of oxytocin and lower blood pressure and heart rates.

Researchers measured immune function in healthy adults who got either a forty-five-minute Swedish massage or forty-five minutes of lighter touch. The massaged group had substantially more white blood cells—including natural killer cells, which help the body fight viruses and other pathogens—and fewer types of inflammatory cytokines associated with autoimmune diseases.[14] We can learn from high-touch cultures, like mine in Pakistan, or Latin American and southern European countries, where contact including therapeutic touch can often be given by family members. I grew up watching parents oil and massage babies; having my hair oiled, brushed, and braided by caregivers; or simply being able to cuddle into the lap of a grown-up. We can benefit from thinking about ways to add caring touch to our interactions with friends and family. Learning how to do Reiki for ourselves, doing self-massage with our favorite oil, prioritizing self-pleasuring, making time for sensual touch and sexual pleasure as a part of our health and happiness in relationship, or booking massages and acupuncture sessions at low-cost community clinics as part of our self-care routine are all ways to return our nervous systems to health and connection and to reclaim our access to pleasure.

As you think about what practices you might choose to engage in, let’s look at Zoya’s example to inspire you.

Pleasure, Play, and Creativity: Zoya’s Story

Zoya is a thirty-five-year-old Latina who works as an addiction counselor in San Francisco. She began her career in her early twenties, and she devoted the next thirteen years to education, training, and growth in her field. When she came to see me, she had covered so much ground already in her life and felt generally strong and confident in herself and good at her job. So what brought her to therapy? After years spent focusing on her career, she found satisfaction in her work, enjoyed good relationships with her colleagues, and had a loving relationship with her long-term girlfriend; yet recently she felt that life had become routine and lackluster. She felt nagged by a sense of something being missing, and guilty for feeling this way, given her great work life and relationships. It was this sense of something missing that had led her to sign up for my Joyous Being circle and helped her identify that the lack of inspiration she was feeling was tied to a lack of pleasure, play, and creativity. She needed a way to explore and express a side of herself that had nothing to do with her job, nothing to do with her romantic partnership or having to provide for others or be excellent. The first step was to get curious about what brought her to life outside of her work and relationships.

Things really became clear, and a poignant and pivotal moment occurred, when she listened to the archetypal and sensory meditation provided later in this chapter. The experience opened her up to a possibility for wonder, pleasure, awe, and creativity. She emerged from the meditation with wet eyes and a heart reopened, and she described her experience as a remembering rather than an awakening. She had reconnected to a memory of being a young girl and listening to her tia (aunt) singing as she cooked Zoya’s favorite foods. The memory of the songs and the particular lilt of the words in Spanish was soothing, nostalgic, and joy producing. Zoya remembered spending hours happily crooning as a child, and how she loved listening to new songs in Spanish and could memorize them rapidly. Once she hit high school and the pressure of going to college kicked in and the subsequent focus on her career, her joy in singing fell away, as did her love for learning about her heritage. It all came back to her so viscerally through the meditation. Her delight in singing, in the intricacies of language, and how her whole body would literally buzz with gladness after she sang. It would have been easy enough to take her intense career and work stance and apply it to this reawakening of her creative impulse. Instead, I encouraged Zoya to start slowly and engage with this part of herself in gentler ways initially, instead of making it a new assignment.

Zoya agreed and began by simply listening to music more often as she got dressed or drove to work. The memories of songs came flooding back, and conversations at home took on a fun tenor as she reminisced with her mother, aunt, and siblings about her tia’s songs. She even found herself teaching some to her young nieces and nephews. Singing reminded her of other things she liked, such as learning to cook dishes at home and dancing for no reason, and she eventually joined a singing group for fun. Her inquiry into feeling dispirited had unlocked such a rich, full vein of new and unexpected experiences and expression, allowing her to feel joyfully fulfilled in her life.

Take some time now to engage in this meditation yourself to discover which areas of pleasure, play, and creativity your psyche might want you to connect with most.

Archetypal and Sensory Meditation

You can find a full version of this guided meditation at www.anjulisherinmft.com.

Close your eyes and breathe deeply for five to ten breaths. You are about to go on a journey to an archetypal time and place to connect with the pleasure and joy of your senses.

The next breath you take, you find yourself on a path somewhere out in nature. You are perfectly safe and relaxed as you begin this journey. In the distance you can hear the sounds of a community gathering for a festival or celebration. You hear strains of music, muffled drumbeats, and laugher, and as you get closer you can even smell the delicious scents of food being prepared. As you arrive at the gathering, a warm and friendly member of the community greets you, letting you know you are most welcome at their harvest celebration, and they are here to guide you.

You are ushered to a special seat in the communal circle around the fire, and you see warm smiles and hear cheerful greetings as you look around at who’s present. Soon, your guide brings you prepared foods, fruits, and tasty drinks that have been lovingly prepared and were grown and harvested by the community. You can see the pride and joy in the eyes of the farmers, cooks, and feasters at the bounty of their land, the stories they tell about the planting season, and the pleasure they take in preparing the food and displaying the beauty of the produce at the feast. Every item is full of flavor, has vibrant colors, and brings a flush of warmth and happiness to all who taste it. Slowing down to taste, celebrate, and appreciate the fruits of their work and the bounty of the land is exactly what this celebration is about. You slow down and savor all the varying tastes, spices, and aromas, filling up with a satisfaction that is about all these things as much as the actual meal.

Your guide invites you to walk around the community, to witness and even participate in the many creative and playful activities that they engage in as a celebration. You walk by the large cooking tent, where folks are chopping, peeling, and preparing delicious foods and trying out new and traditional recipes. Some are leading groups out to the farms and communal gardens where fruits and vegetables are being freshly harvested and gathered for the season and the feast. You see folks clapping and singing in a circle, preparing songs to be sung later by the fire. Others are gathered to play music that accompanies pairs or groups of dancers. There is an area dedicated to the town craftspeople and artisans, where weavers, woodworkers, potters, herbalists, candlemakers, metalsmiths, and jewelers showcase their talents and teach newcomers the beauty of their craft.

A group of people walk by you carrying paints and paintbrushes, and you follow them to find that they are painting some of the community buildings with bright and colorful murals, filling the town with beauty and artistry to be enjoyed by all. One of the buildings they are painting hosts an indoor theater where community members are working on a play to be performed that night. Everywhere are opportunities to play, learn, and participate, and for expressions that are about creativity, pleasure, beauty, and fun. Your guide encourages you to participate in any activity you might like, reminding you that you get to show up and take part just as you are. Take time to see what draws you and to let yourself take part in any way that feels good.

After a while, you find yourself back in the circle by the fire. As the entertainments for the evening are performed for everyone’s enjoyment, you laugh, sing, clap, dance, cry, and find yourself moved, grateful, and exhilarated along with everyone else. As time passes, you see children curl into the laps of elders, animals lying nearby, people holding hands, lovers kissing, and folks taking time to massage a neighbor’s back or simply offering the comfort and warmth of bodies sitting side by side. You lean into this embrace in whatever way feels comfortable for you, letting yourself enjoy the comfort and pleasure and connection that comes through close proximity and consensual touch.

Eventually, as the fire begins to die out, the stars are at their brightest in the night sky. Someone puts a blanket over you as you lie back and simply marvel at the beauty and grandeur above you. Letting yourself take in the pleasure of that vast space, you begin to feel into your body, noticing what it feels like in your body now that you’ve experienced all that has occurred at the celebration.

Take some time to reflect on this meditation:

1. What did this meditation touch in you?

2. What sensations are you aware of?

3. What senses were most lit up?

4. What imagery did you respond to?

5. Did it evoke any memory or longing?

6. What part of the meditation reminds you of what truly brings you pleasure and joy?

7. What part of the meditation would you like to reconnect with in your everyday life?

The meditation depicts an archetypal, idyllic time, so it’s totally normal if the meditation creates longing for certain kinds of connection and expression that feel out of reach and inaccessible. After all, who among us today lives in close-knit surroundings, deeply connected to where our food comes from, and with community, creative outlets, and spiritual centers that weave our lives into a resilient whole? We long for it, and in fact, this book and particularly this chapter aim to remind us that these longings, this vision, these lived experiences are within our DNA. They’re part of the fabric of our ancestors, and they’re calling us now to find a way to reclaim them and create lives that bring them back from the margins and into the center.

To this end, I encourage you to explore any activity that brings you that surge of joy or sensory pleasure, or that allows you to express your creative inspiration, that the meditation evoked within you. Through the years I’ve seen folks derive so much pleasure from letting themselves play and connect in big and little ways: taking road trips, having a picnic at local parks, watching movies, reading books, listening to music, or preparing and trying foods that opened up their minds and hearts to worlds outside their own. This can also look like decorating homes with bright fabrics or homemade crafts, making cards, writing letters, arranging flowers, adopting a pet or volunteering to play with shelter animals, playing board games, making food, acting in a play, writing out one’s fantasies, dancing for no reason, participating in a healing circle, picking up an instrument or a coloring book, making collages, walking by the water, stopping for more sunsets, taking photographs of simple, treasured moments, singing loudly in the shower, or reading children’s stories out loud.

Many of these activities require little or no money, most can occur within your home, and many can be enhanced by access (where available) to public services like libraries, parks, senior centers, local community colleges, free days at museums, or meet-up groups. All of them are windows into a world where what is good for the soul is to know that it need not perform. It can simply express itself and experience release. When we know we can feel good in our bodies and we have the ways and means at our disposal, we turn there more and more for nourishment. We know it is nourishment because we are filled when we engage in it, and we leave it feeling more whole than when we came in. That is the true test of whatever pleasure or creative practice you choose to take up.

Acclaimed author and Jungian analyst Jean Shinoda Bolen famously said, “When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life.”[15] I’d add that when you do so, you bring our world back from the bleakness or darkness of dis-ease, hatred, and violence bred from joylessness and disconnection. The ancient ones were right all along. We must play ourselves whole again and use our joy to reengage with purpose in the world.

Your Creative/Play/Pleasure Practice

Having gone through the meditation in this chapter and reading the examples of possible practices to engage in, choose the area you feel most drawn to exploring as a creative, playful, or pleasure-focused practice.

1. What is your intention?
For example, “I intend to increase my connection to creativity and pleasure by learning to garden” (this can be with indoor plants, a window box, a small patio garden, or a yard).

2. 2. Why does this matter?
For example, “I know that spending time in nature makes me happy, and I have been wanting to feel more connected to the earth, more present in my body, and more deeply connected to plants and flowers. When I imagine spending time tending to a plant, I feel such pleasure in imagining getting my hands in the dirt, sitting amid greenery, and enjoying time away from work. I also find my creative juices flowing when I start to imagine designing a little indoor plant area/outdoor garden for myself and choosing what plants will go in it. I know it will be such a source of joy for me.”

3. How will you practice this intention? In other words, what is the S.M.A.R.T goal you will set?
For example, “I will watch five YouTube videos on indoor plants that require minimal care, and I will make an appointment with my local community garden to see what indoor plants they might have available for donation or sale. I will make a budget for the plants I want to get, and based on that I will get one to five plants for my home that I can care for once a week. At the end of three months, I will have a little area set up with my plants that brings peace, natural beauty, and grounding to my home.”

Or, “I will take one gardening class at the local community college this season. I plan on designing and planting a small patio garden over the next six months, allotting one full day a week, and one afternoon or evening per week, to tending and working on this project. At the end of the six months I will host a celebration party to share my creation with friends and family.”

4. What obstacles may come up if you practice this?
For example, “I might get overwhelmed by choices or put other people or tasks ahead of the garden, since it is just for me. I might get frustrated if the design is not right or if the plants do not thrive, and I might feel like giving up. The garden may become a chore, and I may not enjoy doing it.” List them all.

5. What strategies can your Nurturer, Protector, or Soul Self offer you to deal with these obstacles? Do you need to get more help from a therapist, counselor, friend, or supervisor to handle them?
For example, “I will block out on my calendar the days I will be in the garden so I am sure not to book over them (Protector and boundaries). I will only book over the time if I can find another date and time to complete my garden commitment. I will speak with my gardening teacher to see if I can get a consultation once every month to get help with optimizing my garden design and plant choice (Nurturer and asking for help). I will make time each week to savor my garden without working in it; for example, I will have my morning tea there, create a reading nook amid flowers, and meditate (Resilient Self, Nurturer, and Soul Self).”

6. What will your resilience and joy look like once this relational practice becomes a part of your life?
For example, “I will feel such a sense of peace, enjoyment, and tranquility, and I will benefit from the fresh air and beauty that the plants bring into my home. I will feel proud of my ability to care for these beings and more connected to the Earth.”

Or, “I will feel enduring wonder and delight as the garden continues to change and grow with the seasons, teaching me new things. I will feel fulfillment of my creative impulses, I’ll create a string of pleasurable memories, and I’ll relish having a place to keep coming back to that buoys my sense of resilience and finding pleasure in the present.”

15

Creating a Joyously Resilient World

If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

—LIAL WATSON, ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIAN ARTIST AND ACTIVIST

I am six years old and living in Pakistan, playing in a neighborhood park. I often hang over the park wall laugh and talk with the children on the other side, who live across the street in the tiny cottages allotted by the government to train workers. This little park my mother brings me to every day is situated between the government homes and the homes of the middle-class (my family’s class) and upper-middle-class families who populate most of the neighborhood. Children from all the neighboring families used to share the park, until the wealthier families began to use their political power to block the train workers’ children from accessing the playground.

In a country where poverty and wealth sit cheek by jowl, great disparities in pain and privilege are all too familiar and are often deliberately perpetuated by those in power, as in the case of this park. On this evening, I was blissfully unaware of these power dynamics, but I did know that the children on the other side of the park wall had friendly smiles, bright eyes, and the same desire to play that I did. None of us knew why we couldn’t all just play together. Something was wrong. I felt the sting of unfairness, the rising sense of discomfort and guilt. I could play here, and they could not. Yet, weren’t we all the same? Weren’t we all children deserving equitable access and support? My mom said yes, that was true, and perhaps she would speak with the neighbors to see if she could change their minds.

In hindsight, I understand that the possibility of her even taking such an action was steeped in the privilege of her class, education, and background (she was the daughter-in-law of a long-standing, important member of the community), which gave her the benefit of being able to speak up and believe her voice would be taken seriously, without harmful repercussions. For the younger me, it was important to see her make an effort, as it showed me that action was possible; and it was the first of many disheartening blows when the days went on and, despite her attempts, the neighborhood never opened the park to the train workers’ children.

As years went by, memories like these stacked up. Pakistan is a country where child labor is still legal, and this meant that throughout my life as I went to school, attended creative and social activities, and began to move forward on my educational and vocational path, I saw children my own age begging on the streets, working as errand boys, tending animals, working in factories, or babysitting and raising wealthier children. As a twelve-year-old, I attended a family member’s wedding and found myself befriending a little girl my own age who had been hired by a family as a caretaker for their children. The now-familiar sensation of pain grew into a fierce anger and a dull, weighted sensation I would later recall as guilt as I realized that she was watching with fascinated and hungry eyes as I read. Her whole being so desperately wanted to learn. Yet we both knew that her life, along with millions of children like her, held no such access to education, much less the health care, legal protection, economic freedoms, and access to basic shelter, food, clothing, and clean drinking water that my life had.

In the six years that had passed since my days on the playground, I also had a word for the one difference between us: class. The class we were born into, and the automatic privileges or disenfranchisement that came with it, held immense consequence for the rest of our lives. The sources of such disparity took many other forms in my country of origin, as they do throughout the world, spanning much of what we covered earlier in the book: race, gender, religion, sexuality, and other factors. While I was lucky enough to be raised by parents who reminded me that these gaps were created by society, not innate to the person—meaning that the little girl who could not go to school was worth no less than I—it was not something we were actively working to change, and there were many who ignored the realities of the lives of these children. Such people believed that those not born into power or wealth did not deserve it, were somehow less, or—back to the myth of meritocracy—if they only worked harder they would be able to achieve the same things as others.

The wall dividing me from the train workers’ children, and the few feet of distance between myself and the little girl who wanted to read, was far stronger a divider and far vaster a chasm than could be bridged by their effort alone. It had been reinforced a million times over by laws and systems, both legal and corrupt, that made it difficult or impossible for these children to have the nutrition needed to aid brain development, the access to high-quality education, the ability for their families to survive and have food or shelter without their children working, the health care to help them survive normal childhood ailments and avoid contracting life-threatening diseases, the financial support and backing to be able to pursue higher education, the mentorship and networks to access jobs outside their class, and the legal protection from the corruption, nepotism, and violence (specifically for vulnerable populations like women, gay people, or trans folks) if they chose paths that their families or communities might disagree with, such as working outside the home, family planning, or gender change.

Each of our lives had been stamped from the outset by societal systems that bolstered or severely compromised our ability to thrive from the very outset. I was grateful to know that it had nothing to do with merit, and yet I was left with an overwhelming and unresolved grief and outrage at the inequality and suffering that plagued lives so similar to my own. The spoken and unspoken message around me seemed to be: This is the way the world has always been, and the best we can do is give charitably and be kind to others when we can. Was this all that could be done? Accept, give back, move on? It worked to numb the pain. And once I moved to the more cordoned-off reality of living in America, where the inequalities existed but were not always so clearly visible in the streets (depending on where one lived), the pain, guilt, and even the numbness got more easily lost under the piling busyness of life.

Many years later, while I was deeply immersed in my own therapy and in training, I would often hear the expression: If we do our own personal work, it will lead to a better world. It seemed like this process was linear, straightforward, and automatic; at least, that’s how I interpreted it. It was a relief in some ways. I was becoming a better person in how I behaved toward myself and others, and I was taking steps to transform my inner life. I could see how this allowed me to show up in better ways relationally, and I was certainly experiencing more peace inside. Yet, when it came to the world and its complexities, I was in no way closer to facing into my feelings, nor to identifying and taking action in the world. In fact, as my inner world’s voices became kinder and calmer, and my relational life and personal goals were closer to being achieved, the combination of new demands on my time and the greater well-being I experienced made it even easier to focus on my own life and feel empathy for the difficulties in the world but not necessarily to give them greater heed.

This stance was also supported by the majority of the psychological and social culture I was a part of, which prioritized personal transformation and made no connection between inner development and greater civic and political action. Once again, the difficulties of the world seemed to be the norm, and the way forward was very much in line with my earlier learnings: feel empathy, take charitable action, and then simply refocus on living your best life. Change the world from within. It’s enough, they told me, and I told myself. What else can we do?

But was it enough? Was it really true that doing our own inner work was enough to change our world?

The answer came a few years later as I encountered new teachings through my training with generative somatics, an organization focused on the necessary intersection and interdependence of personal healing and social activism. The answer, simple in hindsight, but revolutionary in practice, was: It depends. We change the world through doing our inner work, only if and when we deliberately take those greater skill sets and resilience and use them in action for social, political, and environmental change and liberation.

If we want change at any level to occur, we have to make a deliberate investment in it. In the same way, while our hearts may certainly become more empathetic toward others by during our inner work, the leap we have to make from there to compassion—love in action—requires learning to use our ability to protect, nurture, and be resilient in allyship with others on behalf of a more just, equitable, and sustainable world. We have to make an active and deliberate commitment to become joyous, resilient, and loving agents of change.

Where there is love there is no separation. The truth is that we cannot separate from parts of ourselves and feel whole. Just as cutting ourselves off from our difficult feelings resulted in a numbness and incapacity to feel wholehearted joy and ease, so cutting ourselves off from parts of society and systems that are in pain or dysfunctional can only occur by cutting ourselves off from our own connection to others, at a cost to our collective resilience and humanity. When we cut ourselves off from certain populations because we are able to bypass the difficulties they encounter, we are still suffering. It shows up in us as numbness, dissatisfaction, loneliness, disconnection, the constant hum of low-grade anxiety, or inescapable overwhelm. Turning on the television or scrolling through social media, we may hear of gun violence in schools, homes lost to fires, a massive exodus from war-torn nations, the multiplying death of Black folks at the hands of police, or the burning of the Amazon rainforest. If things are going well in our own life, we might feel guilty for being happy and having what others don’t, and that guilt can paralyze us. We become bogged down in hopelessness, no longer feeling our own joy wholeheartedly, and we are consumed by the suffering. What ails us is overwhelming powerlessness. The cure for this, whether we’re feeling it due to personal tragedy or an existential threat, is compassion in action: feeling into our emotions, allowing them, and moving them into positive action.

Under the daily onslaught of news this past decade, shifting rapidly between environmental, economic, and political disasters, I found other questions that needed to be answered: In the face of such crises, what does it take to help an individual and a community to be resilient? Are mental health services really the best stepping stone toward personal resilience?

When you pose these questions to social scientists, first responders, and those effected by such crises, the answer to the second one is a resounding no. Resilience is built on a bedrock of systems of support that catch us at every pivotal juncture of life, from birth to the end. Predictors of resilience are deeply rooted in factors such as maternal health, nutrition in early childhood, access to education and vocation, a financial safety net, affordable health care, and safe and dignified shelter. When we look at predictors of someone bouncing back after a crisis, whether it’s a large-scale one like a global pandemic, or loss of an entire town due to a natural disaster, or everyday events, like loss of a job or being unable to work due to a serious illness, many of these same factors remain crucial in helping an individual or community have the greatest chance of being able to recover and thrive.

For poorer families, who are often one health care emergency or missed paycheck away from plummeting into financial ruin and homelessness, access to an income source that is dependable in between jobs (a universal income), knowing that health care costs will never exceed their available income, having assured access to safe shelter, and assistance in finding new jobs are the most significant factors in recovering from the situation and going on to thrive. This is not just an issue for lower-income families; in America, one of the largest factors in many middle-class families filing for bankruptcy is a health care crisis that puts them under such financial strain that they find themselves unable to recover, bearing the impact into their elder years. On a global scale, as I type these words and as you read them, there are one billion people on this planet without adequate food, shelter, medicine, or safety. One billion people at death’s door for reasons that are preventable. One billion people at death’s door for reasons created by political and corporate decisions that put profit above life.

Take our neighbor Haiti, for instance: ravaged to the point of famine by a history of oppressive forces such as the French colonizers who had Haitians pay them for their independence. An exorbitant and ultimately devastating sum for Haiti, that was meant to compensate France for the revenues lost to slavery. To this date France has not made reparations for this abominable extortion of money. Further blows came from investors like the World Bank, which charged exorbitant interest on loans, to embargoes placed by the United States that made it impossible for them to grow and sell rice, leaving Haiti unable to feed its population and direly dependent on exports its population could ill afford. In her moving autobiographical account of Haiti, author Margaret Trost[1] writes of a community in Haiti led by a priest named Father Gerry, who uplifts each person in these devastating circumstances, keeping hope and resilience alive through many of the means we have covered in this book: song, art, prayer, dance, relationships, and faith.

Two things stand out in Trost’s account of Haitian resilience: one, although their fight for resilience in the community is supported by creative and spiritual tools that are essential to keep them going, what they are fighting for is to have basic needs met—food, shelter, housing, health care, education, a legal voice, and safety. The data also undeniably show that the resilience of each individual and what the community requires would be best served by economic reparation, lifting of sanctions, and financial infusions and growth free of extortive interest, in order to create a societal safety net that would meet these basic needs, rather than psychological assistance. What is true of Haiti remains true of what is happening down my own street in the Bay Area, where the growing number of tents of homeless people lacking any amenities or a place to turn to are beginning to resemble the dwellings and poverty-stricken communities of developing countries. The cause is the same: economic greed. The solution is the same too. They are being failed by systems that fail to protect their basic needs and cannot be saved by individual efforts alone. Systemic failures require systemic changes. This is the Vulnerable Self dying in the streets, and we are being given the choice to respond or to turn away, to become one with the abuser (even if simply by being complicit) or to embody the Nurturer and the Protector. To say, yes, this matters, and there has been enough suffering.

Cutting ourselves off from our environment and our intricate, interdependent dance with nature can only go on for so long before there is a massive backlash in the form of rising global temperatures, concurrent natural disasters, loss of property, severe strain on food, water, and energy resources, and loss of life. We are there now. If anything serves as a global reminder of our shared vulnerability and shared crisis, it is the environmental crisis at all of our doorsteps. Faced with melting glaciers, pandemics rooted in environmental degradation, rising sea levels, massive flooding, severe hurricanes, long-term droughts, deforestation, and forest fires from the Amazon to California, we are in a historic moment that is on the brink of human extinction—or the last possible chance to turn the tide toward a way of life that can sustain our children and grandchildren. Perhaps the one silver lining in this increasingly perilous time is that it forces more of us to wake up to a clear and impending call to action. Tough times and painful situations can jolt us out of obliviousness, numbness, and the status quo. Just as true in our personal healing, hitting bottom is often necessary for us to give up on our self- sabotaging survival strategies and head forward and up.

What is the remedy for this situation? How do we stay resilient when we are affected—no, assaulted—by these inequities every day? If resilience is not limited to self-help and instead is a community-oriented, societal endeavor, where do we individuals go to do our part? Let’s look at some ways to become joyous agents of change.

Joyous Activism

Whether we look to real-life accounts of overcoming adverse circumstances, trauma and recovery theory, or scientific research on what it takes to shift an event from being traumatizing or resilience-building for either bystanders or victims, the ability to take some action to shift the situation is crucial.

As we undo the past century of psychological and cultural education that places the onus of mental wellness on the individual, and we recognize that healing has never been—and can no longer be conceptualized as—an individual matter, we look to resilience-producing actions in the face of goliaths like systemic injustice and political and environmental crisis. We also move beyond looking for the helpers and enter the realm of becoming the helper. We become joyous activists.

Joyous activism refers to any activity that attempts to make changes in society to advance social, political, economic, or environmental reform, with the aim of enhancing joy and resilience for all. It can include participating in rallies or marches to defund the police, support Black lives, or oppose climate change; petitioning by writing or calling our political representatives to address topics of concern; creating art such as murals, film, dance, or poetry that brings awareness to the pressing issues of our times; economic activism, i.e., being strategic about where we invest our money; starting or joining a mutual-aid group to share skills and resources and address needs within our communities without having to wait on large-scale external assistance; volunteering our time and skills to address issues of broader change, such getting people to register to vote as a part of a get-out-the-vote campaign, as well as becoming part of a movement—that is, taking part in collective action that is purposeful, organized, and strategic over time, such as the racial justice movement or the climate change movement.[2]

The joy in joyous activism, as in joyous resilience, is an aliveness that comes from being connected to our full spectrum of sensations and emotions, and the ability to translate them into collective change. As we practiced earlier in the development of our Soul Self, we are on an active, engaged path to staying alive to the suffering in the world. We know that our individual and collective resilience depends upon not turning away from the pain, even when our circumstances might make it easy enough to do so. Instead we need to intentionally let the pain touch us and keep our hearts open and our breath present to the need in the world. All that we have built inside of us so far, that Circle of Resilience, has prepared us for a purpose greater than our own, giving us the strength, self-care, compassion, boundaries, inner peace, and emotional regulation that can provide the tools and bandwidth allowing us to feel our sorrow, grief, outrage, and anger at the daily injustices surrounding us and to have them serve as the source of our passion for social change action, instead of acting as a burden that collapses us.

Crucially, this action moves us out of the role of bystander and away from the historical model of “help” that is driven by a savior figure: the party offering assistance is seen as more knowledgeable and powerful, while the one receiving assistance is characterized as weak or inferior. This leads to the offer of assistance being dictated by the giver, such as wealthy funders donating money to underresourced communities and deciding where the money will go or what solutions would be best for the community, rather than consulting with the community or inviting their leaders to direct the nature and scope of intervention.

While staying awake to the perils of helping in any way that detracts from the agency, power, wisdom, and leadership of any community in need, joyous activism also deliberately seeks to move from solely working on symptoms of inequity—donating to food banks, volunteering at shelters, planting trees—to educating ourselves about the systems that continue to perpetuate inequality, oppression, and environmental crisis, and working to counteract and dismantle these systems. We recognize that it is not enough to keep performing triage on a ceaseless array of wounds inflicted by systems like capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, which, left unchecked, will continue until they annihilate the rights, dignity, and very existence of most of the world—and may in fact leave us without a viable planet on which to survive.

Tackling all this is a monumental and understandably daunting task. Still, to demystify the process, it may be easiest to think of it in three steps:

1. Education

2. Individual action

3. Collective action through organized movements

These three steps take us from expanding our awareness, to making changes in the realm of our own lives wherever we can, to dismantling the sources of inequity at large through actions toward collective resilience. This last step is how large groups of people “express and expect solidarity and cohesion, and thereby coordinate and draw upon collective sources of support and other practical resources adaptively to deal with adversity.”[3]

For example, if you are a home owner and landlord in an urban area with high costs of living, expensive and limited rental housing, and soaring rates of homelessness, you may decide to use your class and resource privilege (which might also overlap with race/gender/ability privilege) to consult organizations that have a strong social justice/intersectional analysis so you can start learning about issues of housing justice, such as gentrification, eliminating evictions, reducing homelessness, and creating more affordable housing for all. You might take action as a landlord in line with housing justice, such as making sure your in-law cottage is on the rental market instead of being used as an Airbnb, which severely limits rental housing availability. You could keep your rental rate at an affordable level rather than charging high prices because the market allows for it, in light of your own wealth, resources, and access that give you the privilege of having the in-law cottage help you pay your mortgage, rather than being a source of additional profit. You may consider renting to folks from communities that have had been hard hit by the housing crisis, and you might make adjustments to the home that make it more accessible, such as adding a ramp for wheelchair usage or railings for accessible showers, knowing that these adjustments are rarely provided by landlords, creating a vast deficit in accessible houses for folks with disabilities.

Although taking individual action is a great way to have immediate impact on an issue that truly matters, to truly change the face of housing inequity, a bigger shift in housing laws and policies has to occur. To this end, you may decide to participate in an organization working toward housing justice that unites renters and advocates for tenant rights and affordable and just housing. Through this organization you could start to lobby, vote, raise awareness, and fight for bills to be passed that prioritize safe and accessible housing for all.

It is also important to note that what differentiates joyous or resilient activism is an intentional commitment to self-care rather than self-neglect and associated burnout. Our work earlier on moving out of Neglector and into Nurturer, practicing healthy boundaries as a Protector, and tapping into our Soul Self for long-range perspective, hope, and keeping ourselves resilient underpins this commitment. We care for ourselves and for others in a way that fosters our ability to give back over the long haul. Social change is a long-term arc, one that we will hopefully commit to for the remainder of our lifetime, without always knowing or seeing the results in full fruition before our own passing. We must use all the skills we have acquired on this journey toward joyous being, and specially the capacity for play, fun, creativity, and awe, to weather the inevitable overwhelm, disappointment, and frustration that are part of long-term change.

This is where the final part of joyous activism is key: knowing we are not in this effort alone. It is carried by millions like us. So, as we do our best with the drop we bring to the ocean of need and pain, we know that when we go to refill our cup by pausing for rest, making sure we tend to our bodies, taking breaks from being online or on the phone, setting healthy boundaries that take care of our physical, mental, and emotional health, or we admit we are unable to meet every need, we do so because we must. Unless we step out and sit down sometimes, we will not be able to keep stepping in, and the collective will lose us. If we don’t step out and sit down sometimes, we are unable to step back in and give others that same permission. The long-term work of change requires us to take shifts, take turns, rest, pause, play, participate, push forward, join forces, and then, to step back, pause, and rest again. This is the cycle of a day, the cycle of a life, and the cycle of an activism that stays sustainable.

Being the Change We Need in the World

Here are some fundamental steps we can take toward building collective resilience. I hope you will be inspired by one or more of these to take greater action in the world. To that end, I have included additional resources in the back of the book that can help you deepen into the work of the great organizations, groups, social justice teachers, leaders, and movements mentioned here.

Education

Dismantling societal inequity and learning to work to undo the ways in which we have been blinded by our privilege—or have wittingly or unwittingly been supported by it—is first a task of educating ourselves. This education, difficult as it might be, is a brave and important societal change endeavor. We take the onus upon ourselves to learn about and begin to shift the ways in which society has shaped us, and then we learn to apply ourselves to shift it back.

Think back to chapter 5, where we examined intersectionality, oppression, and collective trauma. This would be a good place to look at your own intersection of power, privilege, and oppression to see the areas in which you might want to deepen your understanding. One example is to look for literature, organizations, and support groups that discuss unlearning white privilege and undoing systemic racism, such as Showing Up For Racial Justice.[4] Groups of this kind lead workshops and trainings to shift culture (the underlying beliefs folks have about people and the world) in a way that undermines support for white supremacy. Similarly, organizations like Resource Generation[5] “assist people who come from moneyed backgrounds to begin to think about and actively work to utilize their economic privilege in ways that are of benefit to the greater good.” This education is its own powerful action in the face of overwhelm against racism or inequity, a place from which we can feel more empowered to take action in our own lives and shift our choices at work, socially, and at home when it comes to systemic issues. Action like this is necessary to inform the next two vital steps of sacred activism: voting and joining a movement for collective change.

Black author and educator Joy DeGruy recounts a story about a time she went shopping with her sister-in-law, who happens to be light-skinned and often “passes” as a white woman. While DeGruy endured a blatant instance of discrimination from a suspicious store clerk, her sister-in-law stepped forward and confronted the clerk. In other words, she went beyond simply recognizing her own white privilege, and in this case, she used it to call out an act of discrimination and highlight the injustice for onlookers.[6]

Author Peggy McIntosh did not simply write about white privilege to name it; she wrote about it as a call to action. First she wanted white people to reflect on the invisible benefits they receive due to their race; second she wanted them to ask themselves what they will do about this invisible set of privileges. How will you give up some of that cultural power? How can you tackle racial injustice? White privilege is a call to action to actively join antiracism. This means not expecting minorities to become more like white people, but thinking about how to change the system and elevate power, potential, comfort, inclusion, leadership, safety, and justice for people of color.

We do this by actively and intentionally making space for, inviting, engaging, hiring, including, opening, and highlighting diverse and marginalized perspectives in all the spaces we occupy. Who’s on the podcasts you listen to, the shows you watch, the teaching panels you host? Who are the people you hire at home or at work? Who writes the books on your bedside table, owns the local businesses you support, grows the produce you eat, leads the causes you rally around, champions the issues you pay attention to, coins the hashtags you use? Who are the politicians you vote for and the leaders you support? When we look beyond the labels we’re comfortable with and instead view all possible intersecting identities, we see the multitude of people who might be decentered, and this lets us participate in a much more interesting, diverse, and multifaceted space.

For example, when you want to invite more women to your work team, you can recognize that this might require centering more women of color, women with disabilities, undocumented women, or trans women. This broadens the lens of what inclusion of women can look like beyond one privileged frame: able-bodied, cisgendered, white, citizen. When you choose to go wine tasting, to buy food from local farmers, to hire your next realtor, lawyer, massage therapist, or PR firm, you can deliberately buy from Black, brown, and native businesses.

For educators, healers, teachers, parents, medical workers, human resources professionals, and for managers, supervisors, leaders, and workers in any area or profession, there is a double duty to educate ourselves in intersectionality and equity as they apply to our places of work or where our children are affected, to make sure that we provide care and services through a broad, justice-focused lens. We are responsible for more than ourselves, so there is more of an onus to educate, train, and update outdated models to intersectional and equitable ones. It is imperative that we look at our students, clients, staff, colleagues, and their presenting symptoms within a framework of the systems that have affected them. It is crucial that we look for the gaps in our curriculums, treatment models, assessment methods, and management styles that are steeped in an unconscious bias toward a mythical norm. We cannot continue to treat people, whether in the therapy room, the doctor’s office, the classroom, or the work space, without taking into account the impact of classism, racism, xenophobia, ageism, ableism, and transphobia on their presenting situation.

This can look like acknowledging and helping our clients feel, grieve, and be recognized in the reality of oppression and its impact on physical and mental health; honoring our client’s religious, spiritual, and cultural background and the fact that they may have native sources of wisdom and resilience that are better suited to their healing than a one-size-fits-all Western model; pushing for and teaching curriculum in classrooms that centers Black, brown, and indigenous history and decenters narratives of white supremacy; making sure learning materials meet the accessibility needs of students; making workspaces accessible for folks with different needs, including breastfeeding mothers who might need a private room to pump milk, childcare on site, or provisions to work from home; or providing workplace parameters that can be modified for disabilities, such as computers that can take dictation, or flexible telework hours for folks who may benefit from working at home.

Volunteering

There is a reason why the literature on depression and isolation strongly recommends participating in a cause or community larger than ourselves as a way to bounce back. When we feel low or our own troubles preoccupy us, if we have the attention and resources to spare, it can be life-giving to see how our hands and hearts can be of use to another. This practice is also the bricks and mortar of how change is created daily in communities around the world. If you are overwhelmed by any issue in the world, a simple way to handle it is to break it down into its smallest part—your own household, and then your own business environment, neighborhood, community, or city. Moving from the individual level to the local or national allows you to begin to address the systems driving this issue while also doing something tangible that you can control right now.

For example, are you devastated upon seeing the amount of plastic being put into the ocean? Do you love sea creatures? Join your local drive to eliminate plastics, ask your neighborhood grocery store to switch to compostable bags for produce, clean up your local beach or forest trail, tell your corporation to switch to compostable items for their staff lunches, and join the drives to petition your city to eliminate plastics (a systemic change effort). This is where you, the individual, volunteering to make changes in your own life, start tying into the greater whole of your community and the environment. Our admiration for environmental leaders like Jane Goodall, Greta Thunberg, and Vandana Shiva transforms into our joining their ranks as committed participants, recognizing that it takes many small local groups to make their global vision effective. Your joyous activism may consist of making volunteering a part of your weekly or monthly activity.

As a bonus step, see if you can engage your creative or play practices as part of your volunteering. Use your singing abilities to participate in a concert for environmental change, write an article for your local paper in the opinions section on a cause close to your heart, teach others to paint in local communities that might want to brighten their neighborhood through murals, or bake something beautiful and nutritious for the next local organizing effort.

Environmental Justice

Environmental anxiety is a real concern of our times. Climate change is real, and it is affecting folks all around the world across income, class, and societal barriers. Those who are the most disenfranchised are also the least able to withstand the onslaught of rising temperatures and the resultant hurricanes, drought, extreme temperatures, and loss of clean drinking water. We are affected by it in the very air we breathe, losing months of summer to the choking fumes from forest fires and the much scarier loss of property or life. On a day-to-day basis, flights get canceled, neighborhoods are flooded, and across the world or nearer at hand we see loss of life and property and people fleeing from areas in environmental crisis.

Scientists have long been a semaphore for the impending disaster awaiting us if we do not address this issue, and now we know that we are a few years away from irreversible change. Is it any wonder that we might feel an existential anxiety or worry about the state of the world for our children, or even find ourselves wanting to distance from what is occurring by burying our head in the daily grind? With this situation as a backdrop, there are a number of ways we can take action. The best care for our environmental anxiety and concern is to treat it as legitimate, allow ourselves to speak about it and grieve, and then turn toward stories, organizations, and collective actions that remind us we are not alone in perhaps the most important fight of this century: the fight to keep our planet alive and our species continuing.

With this in mind, we may take more individual action to conserve and limit our spending, reuse items, switch to compostable products, learn about our food and where it comes from, buy more local produce, reduce or eliminate meat and dairy where possible to greatly reduce our carbon footprint, join in community or urban gardens, grow our own food if possible in window boxes, patio gardens, and yards, and once again tie our efforts to a larger system by joining organizations that do environmental education, lobbying, or change work on these issues in our area or nationally. Each of these actions has layered resilience-boosting impact: allowing us to connect with like-minded others (relational resilience), change our consumption, eating, and financial habits (foundational resilience), and start to feel a connection to the life of the planet and our ability to effect change (societal and political resilience). The realization that the choices we make where we are have impact across the globe—specially, the environmental policies enacted by the politicians we vote in—allows us to look beyond our backyards and care for those of our neighbors across the world as well.

Ethical Spending, Donations, and Philanthropy

Wherever we might be in terms of our income and expenditures, how and where we choose to spend our money has profound impact. It can be as simple as shopping locally with small business owners to support local business, and asking them to make certain changes, such as selling more local produce or no longer using plastic bags as part of increasing impact in their neighborhood. We may decide we would rather buy our books from a local bookstore than from Amazon, once again to boost local business. We can divest from chains whose practices are bad for the environment, racist, sexist, ableist, or homophobic, and we can support certain institutions because they are working hard to be socially responsible. When banking, we can take our money to local credit unions so our money is used to support local causes, and we can do business with institutions that are invested in lending and supporting a broader socioeconomic range. Reducing our spending on certain items also wields power, such as choosing to not buy GMO products or to consume less meat as a way to reduce the demand for products that are inhumane or bad for the environment. Donating to causes that mean something to us, even a little bit at a time, can make such a difference.

We can also participate in social justice philanthropy that focuses on the root causes of social, racial, economic, and environmental injustices. Social justice philanthropy is also sometimes called social change philanthropy, social movement philanthropy, and community-based philanthropy. This kind of philanthropy strives to include the people who are affected by those injustices as decision-makers. It also aims to make the field of philanthropy more accessible and diverse. In social justice philanthropy, foundations are accountable, transparent, and responsive in their grantmaking. Donors and foundations act as allies to social justice movements by contributing not only monetary resources but also their time, knowledge, skills, and access. One of the most powerful things we can do right now is invest in organizations that are fighting for love and justice. For those of us with access to wealth, this is the moment to thoughtfully and boldly leverage our resources to fund movements resisting policies and governance that appeal to bigotry and fear to benefit the wealthy.[7] We remember the power of numbers and how far one dollar can go.

Mutual Aid

One of the amazing sources of community resilience that came to the forefront worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic was the emergence of many more “mutual aid” communities. These groups were founded by the people, for the people, to meet each other’s “ basic survival needs with a shared understanding that the systems we live under are not going to meet our needs and we can do it together RIGHT NOW! Mutual aid projects are a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions, not just through symbolic acts or putting pressure on their representatives in government, but by actually building new social relations that are more survivable.”[8]

Mutual aid often occurs in times of major disaster or crisis, like environmental disasters, or is formed around a particular issue, like members of a community banding together to share in providing childcare or resources as single parents, creating a fund for starting microbusinesses within a community, or being part of an informal neighborhood skills share. These are all innovative ways communities may join together to pool their skills, resources, time, and energy to meet needs and make change in their community without having to kowtow to external assistance in the form of charity that comes with strings attached (the donor dictates the community’s needs instead of the community deciding) or for nonexistent or delayed governmental assistance.

Community-resilience-boosting examples of mutual aid abound in the time of COVID-19, such as the Sunset Neighborhood Help Group, which connected residents with elderly, at-risk neighbors and transformed from a Facebook post into a well-organized mutual aid support system in less than two weeks. The community, made up of 850 volunteers from diverse backgrounds, made sure all the elderly folks in the neighborhood knew about and could access the group by printing out flyers in the different native tongues (the Mandarin and Cantonese dialects of the Chinese language) of the many residents. The flyers gave phone numbers for a mutual aid hotline and case management system set up by a volunteer who had a background in tech. The group knew that a phone hotline would be necessary because many of the elderly did not have access to Facebook or other online services. Once the flyers were ready, volunteers distributed them to households in the area.

The group has led to the formation of new friendships, strong relationships between volunteers and the elderly, and people being assisted usually within a few hours of a need being posted. The assistance given includes picking up household supplies, delivering groceries, checking up on elderly residents, and helping single mothers. In perhaps the best quote for community resilience, a volunteer said, “This is the beauty of this huge volunteer network: there’s always going to be somebody who can help.”

When we draw upon the power of neighbors and numbers, we can do so much more, and there can be more than enough to go around.[9]

Economic Justice and Economic Reform

Although shifting our personal economic habits is certainly an important step in financial accountability and meeting immediate needs in our environment, the crucial shift is working toward economic justice by fighting for leaders and laws that support all people having reliable and sufficient access to food, housing, medical care, clean water, equitable pay, living wages, basic universal income, equitable and free access to education, mental health care, affordable childcare, paid time off, adequate paid sick leave, adequate and accessible disability leave and pay, clean air, worker rights, and other legal protections. We need to fight for economic justice models that directly address issues of race, gender, disability, and immigration justice alongside economic reform.

The financial fallout of the coronavirus for small businesses, service workers, low-income families, the elderly and disabled, those on the front lines, the millions of Americans with less than four hundred dollars as a financial buffer, and Black, brown, and native people was a stark reminder that for the vast majority of Americans there was a gaping hole where there needed to be a net of assistance.

While America found trillions to bail out Wall Street within the first months of the crisis, it was unable to provide its citizens with more than a one-time payment for $1,200 that didn’t reach people until weeks or months after they had been unemployed.[10] In the meantime, the scramble by federal, state, and local authorities, as well as private corporations, to allow options for teleworking (where possible), to allow for sick leave with pay for those affected by virus, for free access to testing for everyone, for unemployment benefits for the self-employed and gig workers, for housing for the homeless, for rent freezes for folks out of a job, for better wages and working conditions for those on the front lines (like grocery workers), for free or affordable childcare assistance, and for deferment of student loan payments all made the point that these needs were prevalent long before the virus and would be necessary protections in the time after. What would it take to build a society that began to put the needs of its people ahead of profit?

Scandinavian countries have long led the way in economies that do just this, espousing a model of democratic socialism that prioritizes economic reform. This model was an important part of the campaign platform of US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in the 2016 and 2020 elections. In the midst of the gross inequities revealed by the impact of the pandemic, it became apparent just how badly such policies were needed. In the meantime, leaders from Iceland, Scotland, and New Zealand have all pivoted toward prioritizing the well-being of citizens and protection of the environment over the unbridled economic growth, urging governments to shift towards a different economic model. Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir of Iceland describes it as “an alternative future based on well-being and inclusive growth.”[11]

In Amsterdam, a new model was initiated in response to the first few months of the pandemic, based on economist Kate Raworth’s bestselling book Doughnut Economics, described as “a breakthrough alternative to growth economics.” The basic premise balances the need of people and communities to thrive with care of the planet and its resources. In the model, the inner ring of the doughnut consists of the minimum requirements for each person to lead a good life, including “equality of race and gender, income and political voice.” The outer ring stands for the delicate balance of interacting with and using our natural environment, which needs to be treated as a boundary or a ceiling because crossing it damages soil, water, ecosystems, biodiversity, and the ozone layer. People who lack access to the minimum standards are in the doughnut’s hole. The goal of the model is for society to aim for economic growth decisions that allow each person’s needs to be adequately met without exceeding the bounds that cause damage to the environement.[12] As Raworth stated, “When suddenly we have to care about climate, health, and jobs and housing and care and communities, is there a framework around that can help us with all of that? . . . Yes there is, and it is ready to go.”

As we can see, the leadership of a community, state, or country sets the tone for which issues get centered. This leads us to our next pivotal action.

Vote Run Lead

Vote Run Lead is an organization that trains women to run for political office. It is the largest and most diverse campaign and leadership program in the country. Vote Run Lead was founded to meet the urgent need for a more inclusive and diverse US government. “A 2014 study found that of over 42,000 elected officials nationwide, from president to the county level, 90% are white, in a country that is 37% people of color. Additionally, 71% of elected officials are male, even though men comprise only 49% of the population of the US.”[13]

Vote Run Lead responded with a clear agenda: to recruit and train thirty thousand women to run for political office. Whether or not you want to run for office, joyous activism awakens us to the power and responsibility in exercising our civic right to vote and becoming politically engaged by using the power of the vote to help determine who our political leaders are at the local and national levels. Joyous activism beckons people to shift the tenor of their neighborhoods, to affect policies being enacted, and to become a voice for those who most need representation and the societal causes that have the greatest meaning to them by stepping into leadership positions and running for political office.

We are invited to become politically educated, learn about the systems that affect us—e.g., the public parks (or lack of them) in our neighborhood, big industries coming in, our education system, how much of our taxes go to funding police versus social systems, health care costs and coverage, rent-control policies—and start to become involved politically through voting, supporting candidates running for office that protect and support the rights and dignity of our community, and even using our skills, talents, and voice to run for political office at the city, state, or national level. By doing so we change the face, quality, and impact of power and leadership on every level of our society and put the elements in place for long-lasting change.

Organized Movements for Change

Throughout history, the most powerful way to shift society toward greater justice for all has been to add our individual effort to that of a collective, cohesive, and strategic movement committed to sweeping social change that is codified into laws that protect and give equitable rights to marginalized portions of society. Examples include the women’s suffrage movement that fought for and won women’s voting rights in England and the United States in the 1920s (although Black women [and men] continued to face discrimination against their right to vote); the nonviolent civil rights movement that culminated in the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act (which eliminated legal restrictions on voting for Blacks) and was modeled on the successful nonviolent movement led by Gandhi to free the Indian subcontinent from centuries of colonial rule; movements for LGBTQI rights or the environmental movement, which continue to pave the way, protecting and promulgating laws that ensure the dignity, existence, and thriving of planet and people.

In recent times, the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements have made tremendous strides in bringing to light the violence done to trans, female, Black, and brown bodies, as well as pushing for protest and organizing action for protection against sexual harassment at work and for justice for those killed by police officers and for an end to police violence in Black communities. Thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a tremendous shift in awareness in the political and public consciousness with regard to racial inequality in the United States. According to the Washington Post, “60 percent of Americans think the country needs to change to address racial inequality. Today 53 percent of whites believe changes must be made, compared to just 39 percent in 2014.”[14] In addition, towns and cities nationwide have adopted police conduct reforms, including “community oversight, limited use of force, independent review boards, body cameras, de-escalation training, ending abusive revenue generating practices, and prohibiting police departments from using military weapons.”[15] In addition, major political campaigns have been pushed to develop robust proposals on racial justice, grants and funding for racial justice projects have proliferated, and large unions like the Service Employees International Union are speaking about the intersectional connections between labor rights movements and racial justice movements.

If we want to look for inspiration and hope to sustain us during hard times, movements give us those things at every turn. We are tremendously fortunate to be living at a time when we can use our energy, resources, and skill sets to support movements that are making great strides in standing up against and transforming the forces that have felt insurmountable for so long. We can look to the National Domestic Workers Alliance, an organization bringing together and training domestic workers, nannies, and care providers, to organize, lobby, and fight for their legal and financial rights. In 2015, alliance members won the right to a minimum wage and overtime pay for home care workers, and in 2019 they introduced the National Domestic Workers Bill of rights, which “would ensure rights and dignity for all domestic workers across the country.”[16]

Perhaps you are interested in joining the movement to advance a Green New Deal, a ten-year plan to shift every aspect of American society to 100 percent clean, renewable energy, with a living wage for all and a just transition for workers and communities. Maybe you believe in single-payer health care, a health care model where everyone in society is covered, and care is provided based on need, not the ability to pay. Perhaps you want a true democratic voting system in the United States, which would mean electoral reform and eradication of the Electoral College, superdelegates, and corporate super-PAC funding for candidates. We do not have to be bystanders in the monumental march toward justice. We get to join any movement that works on a cause close to our heart, to work toward the greater change that is necessary to shift policies and systems, and to be part of creating a better world for all.

Moving Forward

So where do we go from here? As we become aware of the intersecting systems that have been at play in the creation of our lives and those of our loved ones, neighbors, others in the country where we live, and beyond, it takes a lot of love to address these painful realities. This is why the love we have opened to in this book is not simply self-love, wonderful and powerful as that is. We are developing something deeper, more akin to the “radical self-love” that Sonya Renee Taylor writes about so beautifully.

If self-love is unconditionally loving oneself, with deep acceptance and compassion for our strengths and flaws; if it means a commitment to support ourselves in thriving in every aspect of our lives, and treating ourselves as worthy of respect, happiness, and freedom of self-expression; if it is putting an end to self-criticism and neglect and replacing them with empowerment and nurturance, then radical self-love simply means we begin to see how this love that will fill us up and make our lives so much easier and fulfilling cannot stop within our own hearts or the hearts of those who look like us. Radical self-love is the birthright of each beautiful being (plant, animal, human) on this planet. It means loving ourselves so well that we begin to love others and strive for them to have the same opportunities and freedom we want for ourselves. We do more than wish for it; we are active. We are love activists, determined to look at our world, see where there is any Vulnerable Self being subjected to the Critic or the Neglector, and bring in protection, championing, allyship, and nurturance instead. Our resilience is bound with that of the planet, its extraordinary life forms, and each other. We know this, and we begin to see ourselves as a part of it all.

The good news is that throughout history, asking questions about these conditions, identifying them, and pushing back against them has led to the revolutionizing of civil rights and a shift toward equity, dignity, and freedom for people across the spectrum. These are important battles to be fought for the well-being of all, and they require long-term, sustained effort and a will that is not worn down by opposition. Instead, the fight for justice requires a will that can bend, flow, and rise again. Together, we feed ourselves the good food of deep, rich, true self-love. We purposefully find what nurtures us, and equally purposefully we begin to recognize and release that which has been toxic. We find our way back to our own truth and knowing, our inner guidance and compass (based on how we feel), which lets us know what truly makes us joyous. We know that having this reservoir inside and learning to share it and fuel it in our communities gives us the necessary resilience to put our energies toward our own greater liberation and that of others.

As we forge ahead, we have reconnected with what may be forgotten but is never lost: dignity, boundaries, support, purpose—the radical joyous self within. We have found it and set it free to do its loving work in our world of building resilience, a strong sense of hope, and the ability to dream a better future. By connecting ourselves to something larger than our own lives and taking action to support that in small yet viable steps, we are no longer just shifting our own nervous system; we are transforming the nervous system of our society and our children toward thriving. That is resilience.

Joyful Activism Reflection

- When you look at our world today, what areas do you find most compelling, or where do you feel change is most important? (e.g., racial justice, climate change, income inequality, affordable health care, immigration, etc.)

- Pick one or two of these areas, and list how you see them affecting you or others in your life.

- From the joyful activism options listed in this chapter, what are you already doing to make a change in these areas, or what could you be doing?

- What do you think you would experience if you became more active in this area?

- What impact do you think you and others could make by becoming active in this area?

- What power or privilege do you have in this area that could be leveraged?

- How could you be an ally instead of coming in as savior?

- How would you like to commit to this area in a way that is nurturing, honors your boundaries, and makes you feel buoyant and resilient?

- Rabindranath Tagore said, “Wise is the person who plants trees under whose shade they will never sit.” Who else will benefit in your lifetime and beyond from the effort you make?

Appendix: Recommended Resources

Topics

- Body positivity: The Body Is Not an Apology, Sonya Renee Taylor

- Boundary setting: Emotional Blackmail, Susan Forward

- Chronic illness, disability, and caregiving:

- How to Be Sick, Toni Bernhard

- The Alchemy of Illness, Kat Duff

- Disability Visibility, Alice Wong

- Compassion: Compassion Cultivation Training, Compassion Institute, www.compassioninstitute.com

- Ecological activism and indigenous spirituality: Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer

- Emotions: Healing through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair, Miriam Greenspan

- Forgiveness and accountability: The Book of Forgiveness, Archbishop Desmond Tutu

- Healing shame: Daring Greatly, Brené Brown

- Mudita guided meditation: https://mindfulnessexercises.com/downloads/guided-mudita-meditation

- Nonviolent communication: Nonviolent Communication: A Langauge of Life, Marshall Rosenberg

- Politicized healing and resilience: The Politics of Trauma, Staci K. Haines

- Racialized and intergenerational trauma: My Grandmother’s Hands, Resmaa Menakem

- Self-compassion: The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook, Kristin Neff

- Sex and pleasure positivity: Pleasure Activism, adrienne maree brown

- Somatics and healing: The Anatomy of Change, Richard Strozzi-Heckler

- Tonglen: “How to Practice Tonglen,” Pema Chödrön, www.lionsroar.com/how-to-practice-tonglen

- Trauma-informed meditation: Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing, David Treleaven

- Trauma-informed yoga: Course taught by Zahabiya Yamasaki, www.zabieyamasaki.com

Organizations

- Sunrise Movement for Climate Revolution: www.sunrisemovement.org

- Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity: www.boldorganizing.org

- National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA): https://www.domesticworkers.org

- Resource Generation: https://resourcegeneration.org

- Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ): https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org

- Vote Run Lead: https://www.domesticworkers.org

- generative somatics: http://generativesomatics.org

Mental Health Resources for People of Color

- Therapy for Latinx: https://www.therapyforlatinx.com

- Native American Health Center: http://www.nativehealth.org

- Inclusive Therapists database: https://www.inclusivetherapists.com

- Loveland Foundation: https://thelovelandfoundation.org

- The National Queer and Trans Therapist of Color Network https://www.nqttcn.com

- Therapy for Black Girls (Instagram): @therapyforblackgirls

- Therapy for Black Men Organization: https://therapyforblackmen.org

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been written without the tremendous love, support, and feedback of so many wonderful people. Thank you to David T. for giving me the opportunity to share my book proposal with exceptional publishers, and for being a model of how community lifts each other up. Thanks to NAB for taking a chance on a brand-new author, my editors Shayna and Chandika for all the developmental edits that turned this idea into a realized form, and the wonderful production, publicity, and marketing team. To my wise, warm, and generous reading circle—Palwasha, Sheba, Mariama, Courtney, Tina, Jen, and Kristina—for taking the time to read the first drafts and giving me what every writer needs: encouragement, really great assessments, home-cooked food, hugs, and time away to play. To Lisa, for introducing me to the VT and putting me on this path of healing in the first place. To everyone who let me hole up and write at home, on weekends, vacations, before officiating a wedding!, on family trips, all so I could stay connected, have a life, and birth this book. To Richard, David, Zahabiya, Amy, and Lakiba for the gift of reading the draft and sharing your thoughtful appreciation. To all the healers and teachers who helped me achieve and return to my joyous resilience. And to my clients, for their honesty, inspiration, and wisdom. You are all my true Circle of Resilience.

Notes

Chapter 2: The Neglector

[1] Buddha quotes, BrainyQuote.com, accessed July 9, 2020, www.brainyquote.com/quotes/buddha_164946.

[2] Ann Aguirre, Aftermath(New York: Ace, 2011).

[3] Anaïs Nin quotes, Goodreads.com, accessed July 9, 2020, www.goodreads.com/quotes/65997-she-lacks-confidence-she-craves-admiration-insatiably-she-lives-on.

[4] Larry Michael Dredla quotes, Goodreads.com, accessed July 9, 2020, www.goodreads.com/quotes/438824-not-feeling-is-no-replacement-for-reality-your-problems-today.

[5] MetLife Mature Market Group, National Alliance for Caregiving, and the University of Pittsburgh Institute on Aging, The MetLife Study of Working Caregivers and Employer Health Costs: Double Jeopardy for Baby Boomers Caring for their Parents (Westport: MetLife, 2010).

[6] Calculation based on estimates of women caregivers as a percentage of all caregivers ranging from 59 percent to 75 percent. Findings from: P. S. Arno, “The Economic Value of Informal Caregiving, U.S., 2000” (presentation, annual meeting of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, Florida, February 2002).

[7] MetLife Mature Market Group, National Alliance for Caregiving, and the University of Pittsburgh Institute on Aging, The MetLife Study of Working Caregivers and Employer Health Costs: Double Jeopardy for Baby Boomers Caring for their Parents (Westport: MetLife, June 2011).

[8] American Journal of Public Health, “Reverberations of Family Illness: A Longitudinal Assessment of Informal Caregiving and Mental Health Status in the Nurses’ Health Study,” press release, 2002.

[9] S. Whittier, D. Coon, and J. Aaker, Caregiver Support Interventions, Research Brief No. 10 (Washington, DC: National Association of State Units on Aging, 2002).

[10] Jessie Daniels, “This Holiday Season, Resist the Unbearable Whiteness of Wellness,” December 2018, www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-wellness-holidays-trump-gwyneth-paltrow-goop_us_.

Chapter 3: The Critic

[1] Theodore A. Powers et al., “Self-Criticism, Motivation, and Goal Progress of Athletes and Musicians: A Prospective Study,” Personality and Individual Differences 47, no. 4 (2009): 279–83.

[2] Brené Brown, “Shame vs. Guilt,” TED, September 21, 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqGFrId-IQg.

[3] G. Shahar, “Criticism in the Self, Brain, Social Relations and Social Structure: Implications to Psychodynamic Psychiatry,” Psychodynamic Psychiatry 44, no. 3 (2016): 395–421.

[4] Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes, “The Impostor Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention,” Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice 15, no. 3 (1978): 1.

[5] Anna Parkman, “The Imposter Phenomenon in Higher Education: Incidence and Impact,” Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice 16 (2016): 51–60.

[6] Adrienne Green, “The Cost of Balancing Academia and Racism,” The Atlantic, January 2016, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/01/balancing-academia-racism/424887.

[7] Ebony O. McGee and David Stovall, “Black Students and Mental Health: An Emerging Unseen Crisis,” Insight into Diversity, August 17, 2016, www.insightintodiversity.com/black-students-and-mental-health-an-emerging-unseen-crisis.

Chapter 4: The Vulnerable Self

[1] Carrol E. Izzard, “Basic Emotions, Natural Kinds, Emotion Schemas, and a New Paradigm,” Association for Psychological Science 2, no. 3 (September 1, 2007): 260–80.

[2] Heini Saarimäki et al., “Discrete Neural Signatures of Basic Emotions,” Cerebral Cortex 26, no. 6 (June 2016): 2563–73, https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhv086.

[3] Clifton B. Parker, “Stanford Research: People from Different Cultures Express Sympathy Differently,” Stanford News, March 25, 2015, https://news.stanford.edu/2015/03/25/cultural-differences-sympathy-032525.

[4] L. Nummenmaa et al., “Bodily Maps of Emotions,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111, no. 2 (2014): 646–51.

[5] Alexander Lowen quotes, Goodreads.com, accessed July 9, 2020, www.goodreads.com/quotes/354100-it-is-a-grave-injustice-to-a-child-or-adult.

[6] Chris Moody, “Most Brown and Black Americans Are Exposing Themselves to Coronavirus for a Paycheck,” Vice, March 23, 2020, www.vice.com/en_us/article/xgqpyq/most-brown-and-black-americans-are-exposing-themselves-to-coronavirus-for-a-paycheck.

[7] Biswas Soutik, “Coronavirus: India’s Pandemic Lockdown Turns into a Human Tragedy,” BBC News India, March 30, 2020, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52086274.

[8] Reed Jordan, “Poverty’s Toll on Mental Health,” Urban Wire, November 25, 2013, www.urban.org/urban-wire/povertys-toll-mental-health.

[9] Emily Badger, “How Poverty Taxes the Brain,” CityLab, August 29, 2013, www.citylab.com/life/2013/08/how-poverty-taxes-brain/6716.

Chapter 5: Intersectionality and the Cycle of Suffering

[1] Hugh Crethar and Manivong Ratts, “Why Social Justice Is a Counseling Concern,” Counseling Today (June 2008): 21–25.

[2] Rita Mae Brown, Sudden Death (New York; Bantam Press, 1984).

[3] “What Is Social Location in Sociology?” Reference.com, www.reference.com/world-view/social-location-sociology-1fb47cb88c26f059c7.

[4] Merriam-Webster, s.v. “intersectionality,” accessed July 9, 2020, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intersectionality.

[5] Columbia Law School, “Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality, More Than Two Decades Later,” Columbia Law School Stories and News, June 8, 2017, www.law.columbia.edu/pt-br/news/2017/06/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality.

[6] “Publications,” Women and Gender Studies, George Mason University, accessed July 29, 2020, https://wmst.gmu.edu/center/publications.

[7] Ashley Crossman, “What Is Social Oppression?” ThoughtCo, January 28, 2019, www.thoughtco.com/social-oppression-3026593.

[8] Ernest Osas Ugiagbe and Helen E. Eweka, “Systemic Oppression and Rights of the Minorities: Discourse of the Reflections on Nigerian Society,” Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 5, no. 4 (March 2014), 516–26.

[9] Laura Smith, Pamela F. Foley, and Michael P. Chaney, “Addressing Classism, Ableism, and Heterosexism in Counselor Education,” Journal of Counseling & Development 86 (summer 2008): 303–9.

[10] Paige Leskin, “Amazon Minimum Wage Timeline Coming under Fire,” Business Insider, October 3, 2018, www.businessinsider.com/amazon-minimum-wage-timeline-coming-under-fire-pay-workers-2018-10.

[11] Erin DeJesus, “Whole Foods CEO Suggests Employees Donate Sick Days to Each Other as Way to Get through Coronavirus Outbreak,” The Eater, March 13, 2020, www.eater.com/2020/3/13/21179075/amazon-whole-foods-want-employees-to-donate-sick-days-amid-coronavirus-pandemic.

[12] Eric Spitznagel, “Inside the Hellish Workday of an Amazon Warehouse Employee,” New York Post, July 13, 2019, https://nypost.com/2019/07/13/inside-the-hellish-workday-of-an-amazon-warehouse-employee.

[13] Judy Atkinson, Trauma Trails, Recreating Songlines: The Transgenerational Effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia (North Greelong: Spinifex Press, 2012).

[14] Matt Saccaro, “This is What Modern Day Discrimination against Native Americans Looks Like,” Mic, October 20, 2014, www.mic.com/articles/101804/this-is-what-modern-day-discrimination-against-native-americans-looks-like.

[15] Saccaro, “Modern Day Discrimination.”

[16] Kate Whiting, “7 Surprising and Outrageous Stats about Gender Inequality,” World Economic Forum, March 8, 2019, www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/surprising-stats-about-gender-inequality.

[17] “Criminal Justice Fact Sheet,” NAACP, accessed July 9, 2020, www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet.

[18] Jacob Bor et al., “Police Killings and Their Spillover Effects on the Mental Health of Black Americans: A Population-Based, Quasi-Experimental Study,” The Lancet, June 21, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31130-9.

[19] Michael Pearson, “LGBT Rights: The National Battle of the Bathroom,” CNN, August 23, 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/us/transgender-bathroom-policies/index.html.

[20] Associated Press, “New Alabama Law Lets Adoption Groups Turn Away Same-Sex Couples,” NBC News, May 4, 2017, www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/new-alabama-law-lets-adoption-groups-turn-away-same-sex-n754691.

[21] Katherine Schrieber, “Why Are Suicide Rates Higher among LGBTQ Youth?” Psychology Today, October 12, 2017, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-truth-about-exercise-addiction/201710/why-are-suicide-rates-higher-among-lgbtq-youth.

[22] “What Is Privilege?” National Conference for Community and Justice, accessed July 9, 2020, www.nccj.org/what-privilege.

[23] Whiting, “Surprising and Outrageous Stats.”

[24] Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack,” National Consortium of Interpreter Education Centers, 1989, www.interpretereducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/white-privilege-by-Peggy-McIntosh.compressed.pdf.

[25] Phoenix Calida, “Privilege 101,” Anarres Project for Alternative Futures, accessed July 9, 2020, www.anarresproject.org/privilege-101.

[26] “Fact Sheet: Familiy Separation at the U.S.-Mexico Border,” National Immigration Forum, updated July 27, 2018, https://immigrationforum.org/article/factsheet-family-separation-at-the-u-s-mexico-border.

[27] Michael S. Kimmel and Abby L. Ferber, eds., Privilege: A Reader, 4th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2016), 1–11.

[28] Raymond Daw, “Welcome to Takini’s Historical Trauma,” accessed July 9, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20140517094521/http://historicaltrauma.com.

[29] Karen Menzies, “Understanding the Australian Aboriginal Experience of Collective, Historical and Intergenerational Trauma,” International Social Work (2019), https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872819870585.

[30] “Social Justice Report 2008: Chapter 4: Beyond the Apology - an Agenda for Healing,” Australian Human Rights Commission, 2008, https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/chapter-4-beyond-apology-agenda-healing-social-justice-report-2008.

[31] Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies (Las Vegas: Central Recovery Press, 2017).

[32] Joy Degruy, “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome,” accessed July 9, 2020, www.joydegruy.com/post-traumatic-slave-syndrome.

[33] Michelle Sotero, “A Conceptual Model of Historical Trauma: Implications for Public Health Practice and Research,” Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice 1, no. 1 (2006): 93–108.

[34] Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology (Oakland: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2018).

Chapter 6: Introducing the Circle of Resilience

[1] Kent Hoffman, Glen Cooper, and Bert Powell, Raising a Secure Child: How Circle of Security Parenting Can Help You Nurture Your Child’s Attachment, Emotional Resilience, and Freedom to Explore (New York: Guillford Press, 2016).

[2] AlleyDog.com, “Attunement,” accessed July 9, 2020, www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Attunement.

[3] Gudrun Zomerland, “H.A.L.T. Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired: A Self Care Tool,” Healthy Psych, June 7, 2014, https://healthypsych.com/h-a-l-t-hungry-angry-lonely-and-tired-a-self-care-tool.

[4] Lori Ennis, “How Attachment Parenting Helps Raise Resilient Children,” Mothering, February 7, 2019, www.mothering.com/articles/how-attachment-parenting-helps-raise-resilient-children.

[5] Jessica Jones, “Ikea Asks People to Bully This Plant for 30 Days to See What Happens,” Bored Panda, 2019, www.boredpanda.com/ikea-experiment-bully-a-plant-jessica-ones.

[6] Mary Oliver, “The Journey,” www.best-poems.net/mary_oliver/the_journey.html.

[7] Nicole Bayes-Fleming, “The Remarkable Brains of Long-Term Meditators,” Mindful, September 14, 2018, www.mindful.org/the-remarkable-brains-of-high-level-meditators.

[8] BrainyQuote.com, accessed July 9, 2020, www.brainyquote.com/quotes/pierre_teilhard_de_chardi_160888.

Chapter 7: The Nurturer

[1] Merriam-Webster, s.v. “loving-kindness,”accessed July 9, 2020, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/loving-kindness.

[2] Anne Kingston, “The World Is Broken and Human Kindness Is the Only Solution,” Maclean’s, June 19, 2019, www.macleans.ca/society/the-world-is-broken-and-human-kindness-is-the-only-solution.

[3] Kristin Neff, “Why Self-Compassion Trumps Self-Esteem,” Greater Good, May 27, 2011, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/try_selfcompassion.

[4] D. Benoit, “Infant-Parent Attachment: Definition, Types, Antecedents, Measurement and Outcome,” Paediatrics & Child Health 9, no. 8 (2004): 541–45.

[5] Mary Sykes Wylie and Lynne Turner, “The Attuned Therapist: Does Attachment Theory Really Matter?” accessed July 9, 2020, www.drdansiegel.com/uploads/The-attunded-therapist.pdf.

[6] Nora Samaran, “The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture,” February 11, 2016, https://norasamaran.com/2016/02/11/the-opposite-of-rape-culture-is-nurturance-culture-2.

Chapter 8: The Protector

[1] Merriam-Webster, s.v. “boundary,” accessed July 9, 2020, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/boundary.

[2] “Resilience,” Center on the Developing Child, accessed July 9, 2020, https://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/key-concepts/resilience.

[3] HeartMath Institute, “The Energetic Heart Is Unfolding,” July 2010, www.heartmath.org/articles-of-the-heart/science-of-the-heart/the-energetic-heart-is-unfolding.

Chapter 9: The Resilient Self

[1] “Resilience,” Center on the Developing Child, accessed July 9, 2020, https://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/key-concepts/resilience.

[2] Paul Smirl, “Build Your Confidence, Achieve Greater Success at Work,” Wisconsin School of Business, April 2018, https://wsb.wisc.edu/programs-degrees/mba/blog/2018/04/17/build-your-confidence-achieve-greater-success-at-work.

[3] Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day,” in New and Selected Poems (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992).

[4] A. H. Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (London: Arkana/Penguin Books, 1971).

[5] A. H. Maslow, #xad;text>Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences (London: Penguin Books Limited, 1964).

[6] Stanley Krippner, “The Plateau Experience: A. H. Maslow and Others,” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 4, no. 2 (1972): 107–120.

[7] Michael Ungar, Change Your World: The Science of Resilience and the True Path to Success (Toronto: Sutherland House, 2019).

Chapter 10: The Soul Self

[1] P. T. P. Wong, “From Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy to the Four Defining Characteristics of Self-Transcendence” (presentation at the research working group meeting for the Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life Project, Columbia, SC, December 2016).

[2] HeartMath Institute, “Energetic Communication,” chapter 6 in Science of the Heart: Study of the Role of the Heart in Human Performance, accessed July 9, 2020, www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/energetic-communication.

[3] Greater Good Science Center, “The Science of Awe,” September 2018, https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/images/uploads/GGSC-JTF_White_Paper-Awe_FINAL.pdf.

[4] Dictionary.com, s.v. “awe,” accessed July 9, 2020, www.dictionary.com/browse/awe.

[5] Tamara Lechner, “Uncovering the Benefits of Awe,” Chopra Center, March 2017, https://chopra.com/articles/uncovering-the-benefits-of-awe.

[6] J. E. Stellar et al., “Awe and Humility,” Open Science Framework, August 3, 2017, https://osf.io/4pfg9.

[7] Kori D. Miller, “14 Health Benefits of Practicing Gratitude according to Science,” Positive Psychology, March 2019, https://positivepsychology.com/benefits-of-gratitude.

[8] Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCollough, “Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life,” Journal of Personality and Psychology 84, no. 2 (2003): 377–89, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/images/application_uploads/Emmons-CountingBlessings.pdf.

[9] O. C. Tanner, “The Psychological Effects of Workplace Appreciation and Gratitude,” Emergenetics International, www.emergenetics.com/blog/workplace-appreciation-gratitude.

[10] Holli-Anne Passmore and Mark D. Holder, “Noticing Nature: Individual and Social Benefits of a Two-Week Intervention, Journal of Positive Psychology 12, no. 6 (2017): 537–46.

[11] Hugh Delahanty, “The Science of Meditation,” Mindfulness Research, December 13, 2017, www.mindful.org/meditators-under-the-microscope.

[12] Luna Greenstein, “The Mental Health Benefits of Religion and Spirituality,” National Alliance on Mental Illness, December 2016, www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/December-2016/The-Mental-Health-Benefits-of-Religion-Spiritual.

[13] Insight State, “How to Practice Tonglen Meditation—A Key for Awakening the Compassion,” October 27, 2019, www.insightstate.com/spirituality/tonglen-meditation-practice.

[14] Barbara O’Brien, “Mudita: The Buddhist Practice of Sympathetic Joy,” Learn Religions, February 11, 2020, https://learnreligions.com/mudita-sympathetic-joy-449704.

[15] “Mudita: Guided Practice,” Insight Meditation Houston, https://imhouston.wordpress.com/dharma-talks/ginger-clarkson/brahma-vahara-practices/mudita-guided-practice.

[16] Toni Bernhard, How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers (Somerville: Wisdom Publications, 2010), 48.

[17] Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu, The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World (San Francisco: Harper One, 2014).

[18] Fania E. Davis and Sarah van Gelder, “Can America Heal after Ferguson?” Moyers on Democracy, June 2, 2015, https://billmoyers.com/2015/06/02/can-america-heal-ferguson-asked-desmond-tutu-daughter.

[19] Carole Duff, “Life Does Not Always Give Us What We Expect,” Notes from Vanaprastha, October 1, 2018, https://caroleduff.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/life-doesnt-always-give-us-what-we-expect.

[20] Cam Taylor, “Secrets to Nelson Mandela Surviving 27 Years in Prison,” December 7, 2013, https://camtaylor.net/2013/12/07/secrets-to-nelson-mandela-surviving-27-year-in-prison.

[21] Hebah H. Farrag, “The Spirituality of Resilience,” On Being, February 2016, https://onbeing.org/blog/hebah-farrag-the-spirituality-of-resilience.

[22] Carol D. Ryff, “Self-Realisation and Meaning Making in the Face of Adversity: A Eudaimonic Approach to Human Resilience,” Journal of Psychology in Africa 24, no. 1 (2014): 1–12.

Chapter 11: Practicing Joyous Resilience

[1] Paula Saalfeld, “Understanding Balinese Culture and Lifestyle,” Culturally Yours, February 8, 2020, www.culturallyours.com/2020/02/08/understanding-balinese-culture-and-lifestyle.

[2] Clifford Geertz, “Form and Variation in Balinese Village Structure,” American Anthropologist 61, no. 6 (1959): 991–1012.

[3] Janene Byrne, “Disability in Indonesia,” Inside Indonesia, July 27, 2007, www.insideindonesia.org/disability-in-indonesia.

[4] D. Fancourt et al., “Effects of Group Drumming Interventions on Anxiety, Depression, Social Resilience and Inflammatory Immune Response among Mental Health Service Users,” PLoS ONE 11, no. 3 (2016): c01c51e016, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151136.

[5] Molly Warren, “The Impact of Music Therapy on Mental Health,” National Alliance on Mental Illness, December 19, 2016, www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/December-2016/The-Impact-of-Music-Therapy-on-Mental-Health.

[6] H. L. Stuckey and J. Nobel, “The Connection between Art, Healing, and Public Health: A Review of Current Literature,” American Journal of Public Health 100, no. 2 (2010): 254–63.

[7] Wikipedia, s.v. “Richard Strozzi Heckler,” last modified April 12, 2020, 15:47, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Strozzi-Heckler.

[8] Nadia Goodman, “The Science of Setting Goals,” TED Ideas, December 2014, https://ideas.ted.com/the-science-of-setting-goals.

[9] Merriam-Webster, s.v. “intention,” accessed July 9, 2020, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intention.

[10] G. T. Doran, “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. Way to Write Management’s Goals and Objectives,” Management Review 70, no. 11 (1981): 35–36.

[11] Gail Matthews, “Study Focuses on Strategies for Achieving Goals and Resolutions,” Dominican University, www.dominican.edu/dominicannews/study-highlights-strategies-for-achieving-goals.

Chapter 12: Foundational Practices

[1] Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1989).

[2] Tony Hayes, “Extraordinary Facts about Human Body Functions Everyone Should Know!” Unbelievable, accessed July 10, 2020, https://unbelievable-facts.com/2015/02/facts-about-the-human-body.html/3.

[3] Kat Duff, The Alchemy of Illness (Danvers: Harmony Bell Tower Edition, 2000).

[4] Christoper M. Barnes, “Sleep Well, Lead Better,” Harvard Business Review, September-October 2018, https://hbr.org/2018/09/sleep-well-lead-better.

[5] Amber Brooks and Leon Lack, “A Brief Afternoon Nap following Nocturnal Sleep Restriction: Which Nap Duration Is Most Recuperative?” Sleep 29, no. 6 (June 2006): 831–40.

Chapter 13: Relational Practices

[1] Dan Buettner, “The Island Where People Forgot to Die,” New York Times Magazine, October 24, 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people-forget-to-die.html.

[2] E. Gerino et al., “Loneliness, Resilience, Mental Health, and Quality of Life in Old Age: A Structural Equation Model,” Frontiers in Psychology 8 (2017): 2003.

[3] “Risk to Health,” Campaign to End Loneliness, accessed July 10, 2020, www.campaigntoendloneliness.org/threat-to-health.

[4] “Have We Forgotten How to Make Friends?” Campaign to End Loneliness, accessed July 10, 2020, www.campaigntoendloneliness.org/press-release/have-we-forgotten-how-to-make-friends.

Chapter 14: Creativity, Play, and Pleasure

[1] adrienne maree brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (CITY OF Chico: AK Press, 2019).

[2] Girls at Dhabas, accessed July 10, 2020, https://girlsatdhabas.tumblr.com.

[3] Aahung, “Writer and founder of the feminist collective, Girls At Dhabas, Sadia Khatri talks to Aahung about what public spaces mean to girls and women,” Facebook, September 13, 2017, www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1753426164668239&id=207987805878757&_rd.

[4] Catherine Lizette Gonzalez, “In ‘Pleasure Activism’ Adrienne Maree Brown Dares Us to Get in Touch with Our Needs,” Colorlines, February 26, 2019, www.colorlines.com/articles/pleasure-activism-adrienne-maree-brown-dares-us-get-touch-our-needs.

[5] maree brown, “‘Pleasure Activism.’”

[6] Jacqueline Howard, “Americans Devote More Than 10 Hours a Day to Screen Time, and Growing,” CNN, July 29, 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/06/30/health/americans-screen-time-nielsen/index.html.

[7] Tiffany Shlain, 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week (New York: Gallery Books, 2019).

[8] Carrie Baron, “Creativity, Happiness and Your Own Two Hands,” Psychology Today, May 3, 2012, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-creativity-cure/201205/creativity-happiness-and-your-own-two-hands.

[9] Amy Wall, “How Busy Hands Can Alter Our Brain Chemistry,” CBS News, March 18, 2018, www.cbsnews.com/news/handiwork-how-busy-hands-can-alter-our-brain-chemistry.

[10] Umnia Shahid, “Five Reasons Why You Should Eat with Your Hands,” Express Tribune, February 18, 2015, https://tribune.com.pk/story/840277/five-reasons-why-you-should-eat-with-your-hands.

[11] Anne Harding, “Why Gardening Is Good for Your Health,” ecogreenlove, March 19, 2014, https://ecogreenlove.com/2014/03/19/why-gardening-is-good-for-your-health.

[12] Robin Shreeves, “Why Crafting Is Good for Mental Health,” Mother Nature Network, March 13, 2018, www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/blogs/why-crafting-is-good-for-mental-health.

[13] Melania Pinola, “Why You Learn More Effectively by Writing Than Typing,” lifehacker.com, January 1, 2011, https://lifehacker.com/why-you-learn-more-effectively-by-writing-than-by-typin-5738093.

[14] Noreen Dworkin McDaniel, “Touching Makes You Healthier,” CNN.com, January 5, 2018, www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/touching.makes.you.healthier.health/index.html.

[15] Jean Shinoda Bolen quotes, Goodreads.com, accessed July 10, 2020, www.goodreads.com/quotes/6953-when-you-recover-or-discover-something-that-nourishes-your-soul.

Chapter 15: Creating a Joyously Resilient World

[1] Margaret Trost, On That Day Everybody Ate: One Woman’s Story of Hope and Possibility in Haiti (Asheville: Chiron Publications, 2017).

[2] Jeff Goodwin and James Jasper, The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts, 2nd ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

[3] R. Williams and J. Drury, “Psychosocial Resilience and Its Influence on Managing Mass Emergencies and Disasters,” Psychiatry 8 (2009): 293–96.

[4] “SURJ’s Theory of Change,” Showing Up for Racial Justice, accessed July 10, 2020, www.showingupforracialjustice.org/theory-of-change.html.

[5] “What We Do,” Resource Generation, accessed July 10, 2020, https://resourcegeneration.org/what-we-do.

[6] World Trust, “The Power of White Privilege,” Sociological Cinema, 2011, www.thesociologicalcinema.com/videos/the-power-of-white-privilege.

[7] “What We Do,” Resource Generation.

[8] Big Door Brigade, accessed July 10, 2020, http://bigdoorbrigade.com.

[9] Meka Boyle, “Coronavirus Spurs Neighbors in San Francisco’s Sunset District to Form Mutual Aid Society,” San Francisco Public Press, March 26, 2020, https://sfpublicpress.org/news/2020-03/coronavirus-spurs-neighbors-in-sfs-sunset-district-to-create-mutual-aid-society.

[10] Ashik Siddique, “If $1.5 Trillion Exists to Bail Out Wall Street from Coronavirus, We Can Fund Actual Needs for All,” National Priorities Project, March 12, 2020, www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2020/03/12/trillion-wall-street-bailout-coronavirus-we-can-fund-all-actual-needs.

[11] Alana Ketler, “Prime Minister of Iceland Calls for Prioritizing ‘Well-Being’ of Citizens over GDP,” Collective Evolution, December 6, 2019, www.collective-evolution.com/2019/12/06/prime-minister-of-iceland-calls-for-prioritizing-well-being-of-citizens-over-gdp.

[12] Daniel Boffey, “Amsterdam to Embrace Doughnut Model to Mend Post-Coronavirus Economy,” The Guardian, April 8, 2020, www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/amsterdam-doughnut-model-mend-post-coronavirus-economy.

[13] “About Vote Run Lead,” Vote Run Lead, accessed July 10, 2020, www.voterunlead.org/about_voterunlead.

[14] Scott Clement, “A Year after Ferguson 6 in 10 Americans Say Changes Are Needed to Give Blacks and Whites Equal Rights,” Washington Post, August 5, 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/08/05/what-changed-since-ferguson-americans-are-far-more-worried-about-black-rights.

[15] Waleed Shahid, “How Is Black Lives Matter Winning?” Dissent, December 5, 2015, www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/black-lives-matter-minneapolis-symbolic-demands-winning.

[16] Katelyn Burns, “The National Domestic Workers Alliance Is Seeking a Federal Bill of Rights from Congress,” Teen Vogue, July 17, 2019, www.teenvogue.com/story/national-domestic-workers-alliance-seeking-federal-bill-of-rights-congress.

Index

Please note that index links to approximate location of each term.

A

Aahung, 301

ableism, 85, 95, 98, 100–101, 258, 338, 341

acceptance, 142, 206

activism, joyous, 332–36, 349–50

Addict, 38–40

ageism, 98, 338

Alder, Shannon L., 70

amends, making, 287–89

American Civil Liberties Union, 86

anger, 58, 73, 89, 91

apologizing, 287–89

Ardern, Jacinda, 86

Arrien, Angeles, 297, 304

Atkinson, Judy, 101–2

attachment styles, 125–27

attunement, 131–32, 158

awe, 209–13

B

Baron, Carrie, 308

Berne, Eric, 16

Bernhard, Toni, 219

#BlackLivesMatter movement, 85, 230, 346–47

body

as beloved friend, 257

communicating with, 259–63

mind and, 257–58

-mind relaxation exercise, 88–89

as miracle, 255–56

shame and, 301–2

wisdom of, 260

boundaries

crossed, 165–66

definition of, 165

direct communication and, 283–86

embodying, 175–76

emotional empowerment and, 169

healthy, 165

setting, 284–85

brahma viharas, 218, 219

Braveheart, Maria Yellow Horse, 112–13

brown, adrienne maree, 300, 302

Brown, Brené, 11, 60

Buchanan, Laura, 279

bullying, impacts of, 133–34

C

Calida, Phoenix, 107

calm, 90

caregiving, 43–46

cave of the heart meditation, 227–29

change

being, 229, 336

committing to, 329

organized movements for, 346–48

personal work and, 328–29

Chödrön, Pema, 215

Circle of Resilience. See also Nurturer; Protector; Resilient Self; Soul Self

diagram of, 128

goal setting from, 249

interaction of roles in, 137–39, 182–83

Joyous Being circles and, 128–31, 132

replacement of Cycle of Suffering by, 182–83

secure attachment and, 127

Civil Rights Act, 346

classism, 95, 98, 100, 326–27, 338

cleaning, 312–14

climate change, 5, 86, 95, 100, 333, 340–41, 349

Cohen, Alan, 181

Collins, Patricia Hill, 97

compassion, 143–45, 157–58

consumption culture vs. joy culture, 303–5

cooking, 312

coping strategies, positive vs. negative, 75–76

coronavirus pandemic, 1–2, 83–84, 309–10, 342–45

crafts, 312–13

creativity

archetypal and sensory meditation for, 318–21

example of, 316–17

healing and, 308–10

practices for, 321–23

reflection on, 305–6

Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams, 97, 98

Crethar, Hugh, 93

Critic

anger and, 58

in the Cycle of Suffering, 58–59

example of, 49–51, 62–65

as Fearmonger, 52–54

impostor syndrome and, 63

as Judge, 51–52

overview of, 22–23

as Perfectionist, 54–56

Protector and, 65, 163–64

reasons for speaking as, 56–58

self-reflection on, 65

shame and, 59–62

three faces of, 51–56

Cullors, Patrisse, 229, 230

Cycle of Suffering. See also Critic; Neglector; Vulnerable Self

alternative names for, 15

diagram of, 18

drama triangle and, 16

example of, 17–19

focus on individual and, 93–94

goal setting from, 249

interaction of roles in, 25–26

learning roles in, 25, 27

prevalence of, 26

replacement of, by Circle of Resilience, 182–83

resilience and, 15, 26

societal factors and, 94–96

D

Dalai Lama, 216–17

Daniels, Jessie, 45–46

DeGruy, Joy, 11, 115, 337

dial tool, 185–86, 187, 188, 189–90, 191–92, 200

donations, 341–42

drama triangle, 15, 16. See also Cycle of Suffering

drawing, by hand, 314–15

Duff, Kat, 256

E

eating

with hands, 310–11

joyful, 263–65

economic justice and economic reform, 343–45

education, 334, 336–39

ego-parts. See Cycle of Suffering

Electoral College, 347

Emmons, Robert, 210

emotional empowerment, 169

emotional literacy, 74

emotions. See also individual emotions

basic, 89–90

body/mind relaxation exercise and, 88–89

contagiousness of, 73

cultural influence on, 72

expressing, 78–80, 90–91

identifying, 87, 89

language of, 70–72

suppression of, 70, 71–72

thoughts and, 70–71, 72–73

universality of, 72

value of, 73

Vulnerable Self and, 67–68, 70, 74–76

working with, 79–80

energy healing, 212–13

environmental justice, 340–41

equanimity, 206

excitement, 90

F

fear, 90

Fearmonger, 52–54

feelings. See emotions

flexibility, 9–10

FOMO (fear of missing out), 306

forgiveness, 221–23

Frankl, Viktor, 229, 231

fun, 236–37

G

gamma brain wave, 137

Gandhi, Mahatma, 229, 346

gardening, 311–12

Generative Somatics, 11, 328

Girls at Dhabas, 301

goal setting, 248–54, 257–58

Goleman, Daniel, 137

Goodall, Jane, 339

Gordon, Amie, 210

gratitude, 209–13

Green New Deal, 85–86, 347

Greiner, Paul, 279

grief, 91

guilt, 90

H

Hafiz, 49

Haines, Staci K., 11

H.A.L.T. acronym, 132

happiness, 73, 90

healing

creativity and, 308–10

energy, 212–13

hands-on, 315–16

relationships and, 293

from trauma, 114–17, 118

helpers

becoming, 332

looking for, 85–86

Hemphill, Prentis, 163

home, 267–68

homophobia, 36, 95, 98, 100, 103, 341

Huffington, Arianna, 273

I

IKEA, 133–34

illness, 256–57, 258, 259

impostor syndrome, 63

individual, focus on, 93–94, 181–82, 198, 328

intention, 245, 248, 250–51, 257–58, 290–91

interdependence, 207

intersectionality. See also oppression; privilege

definition of, 97–98

examples of, 110–12

self-reflection on, 120

J

Jakobsdottir, Katrin, 344

joy. See also joyous resilience

accessing, 2, 3

aliveness and, 9, 235–45

choosing, 3

definition of, 90

importance of, 1

making connections through, 291

reclaiming time for, 306–16

as Soul Self superpower, 208–9

joy culture vs. consumption culture, 303–5

Joyous Being circles, 128–31, 132

joyous resilience

characteristics of, 138–39

community, civic, and social justice practices for, 247–48, 325–50

creativity, play, and pleasure practices for, 246–47, 297–323

definition of, 3

emergence of, 182–83

foundational practices for, 245–46, 255–77

intentions and, 245

relational practices for, 246, 279–95

Judge, 51–52

K

Kahlo, Frida, 173

Karpman, Stan, 11, 16

Kimmel, Michael, 109

kindness, acts of, 211–12

Kondo, Marie, 312

L

Lambert, Kelly, 308, 313

LeTonnerre, Nathaniel, 67

Levine, Peter, 11

light meditation, 226–27

limbic system, 73

loneliness, 90, 280–81

longevity, 279–80

love

as emotion, 90

radical self-, 117–20, 348

resilience and, 134

lovingkindness, 142–43, 211

Lowen, Alexander, 74

M

Mandela, Nelson, 229–30

Martyr, 32–35

matrix of domination, 98, 104

McCullough, Michael E., 210

McGee, Ebony, 63–64

McGraw, Dr. Phil, 169

McIntosh, Peggy, 106, 109, 337

meditation

archetypal and sensory, 318–21

benefits of, 211

brain waves and, 137

cave of the heart, 227–29

light, 226–27

Mudita, 218–21

for self-care and nurturance, 274–75

Tonglen, 215–18

trauma and, 221

Menakem, Resmaa, 11, 114–16

#MeToo movement, 85, 95, 346

Milroy, Helen, 113

mindfulness, 211, 221, 304

movement, joyful, 265–66

Mudita, 218–21

mutual aid, 342–43

N

National Domestic Workers Alliance, 314, 347

nature, being in, 211, 266

Neff, Kristin, 11, 158

Neglector

as Addict, 38–40

caregiving and, 43–46

in the Cycle of Suffering, 42–43

example of, 29–31, 40–42

inner monologue of, 19

as Martyr, 32–35

needs and, 31–32

Nurturer and, 46, 47

overview of, 19–22

payoffs for, 40–42

as People Pleaser, 35–38

recognizing, 42

self-reflection on, 46–47

three faces of, 32–40

women and, 21–22, 44

novelty, 212

Nurturer

attunement and, 131–32, 158

benefits of, 149

connecting with, 146–47, 151–57

deepening, 275–77

depictions of, 145–46

envisioning, 151–53

exercises for, 151–57

gestures and, 147–48

longing for love of, 141

misconceptions about, 149–50

Neglector and, 46, 47

overview of, 131–32

practices for, 159–62

responsibilities of, 149

superpowers of, 142–45

voice of, 148–49, 153–54

O

oppression, 98–103, 120

oxytocin, 157, 315

P

peace of mind, 208

people of color. See also racism

coronavirus pandemic and, 83–85

impostor syndrome and, 63

mental health and, 63–64

oppression and, 102–3

People Pleaser, 35–38

Perfectionist, 54–56

perspective, 206

philanthropy, 341–42

play. See creativity; fun; pleasure

pleasure

addiction and, 304

archetypal and sensory meditation for, 318–21

definition of, 300

example of, 316–17

practices for, 321–23

reclaiming, 300–301, 302

reflection on, 305–6

poverty, effects of, 84–85

pride, 90

privilege, 104–10, 120

Protector

becoming, 171–78

benefits of, 171

boundaries and, 165–66

Critic and, 65, 163–64

exercises for, 172–78

overview of, 132–33

practices for, 179–80

responsibilities of, 166, 171

safety and, 164–65, 167–68, 171

superpowers of, 167–69

visioning, 172–73

voice of, 170, 173–75

PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder), 75, 103, 209, 256

purpose, sense of, 269, 281

R

racism

effects of, 63, 64, 113–16, 259, 338

internalized, 95, 99, 115

intersectionality and, 97–98

need to address, 347

oppression and, 98, 99, 115

systemic, 5, 46, 62–64, 85–86, 99, 115, 336–37

victimhood and, 16

white privilege and, 107

radical self-love, 117–20, 348

RAS (reticular activating system), 314

Ratts, Manivong, 93

Raworth, Kate, 344–45

relationships

boundaries and, 283–86

characteristics of healthy, 279

connection practices for, 282–95

deepening, 289–90

emotional regulation and, 286–87

healing and, 293

importance of, 268, 279–80

prioritizing, 290–91

quality of, 281

repairing, 287–89

service and, 291–92

religion, 212–13

resilience. See also Circle of Resilience; joyous resilience

building collective, 329–32, 336–48

Cycle of Suffering and, 15, 26

definition of, 3

enemies of, 15

external support structures and, 182, 198–99

flexibility and, 9–10

importance of, 1

love and, 134

magic of, 1

memory of, 11

obstacles to building, 2, 3–4

Resilient Self

benefits of, 193

envisioning, 193–95

example of, 183–85

exercises for, 193–99

focus on the individual and, 181–82, 198

overview of, 133–35

practices for, 199–201

responsibilities of, 193

superpowers of, 185–92

voice of, 192–93, 197

Vulnerable Self and, 182, 183

resistance, effects of, 142

Resource Generation, 337

rest, 269–74

ritual, 212–13

Rogers, Fred, 85

Rosenberg, Marshall, 11

Rumi, 15, 206

S

sadness, 73, 90, 91

safe space visualization, 154–55

safety, 164–65, 167–68, 171

Salzberg, Sharon, 141

Samaran, Nora, 158–59

Sanders, Bernie, 344

secure attachment, 125–27

self-awareness, 185–86

self-confidence, 189–90

self-discipline, 167

self-protection, 187–88. See also Protector

self-regulation, 186–87

self-transcendence, 190–92, 204, 209

Service Employees International Union, 347

sexism, 95, 97, 98, 100

Shahar, Golan, 61

Shakespeare, William, 255

shame, 59–62, 90, 301–2

shelter, 267–68

Shiva, Vandana, 339

Shlain, Tiffany, 308

Showing Up For Racial Justice, 337

Simone, Nina, 29

sleep, 269–74

S.M.A.R.T. goals, 251, 254

social location, 97, 108–9

soil, reconnecting with, 311–12

Soul Self

accessing, 209–13

benefits of, 205

deepening, 213–23

embodying, 229–31

example of, 223–25

meditations for, 226–29

overview of, 135–37

practices for, 231–32

responsibilities of, 204–5

self reflection on, 225–26

special states for, 203–4

superpowers of, 205–9

transcendent experiences and, 136–37

voice of, 204

Southern Poverty Law Center, 86

spending, ethical, 341

spirituality, 212–13

Strozzi-Heckler, Richard, 11, 245

Strozzi Institute, 11

suffering. See Cycle of Suffering

Sunset Neighborhood Help Group, 343

T

Tagore, Rabindranath, 350

Taylor, Sonya Renee, 117, 348

technology, impacts of, 306–8, 310

thriving, 168

Thunberg, Greta, 339

time, reclaiming, for joy, 292, 306–16

Tolle, Eckhart, 135, 203

Tonglen, 215–18

Transactional Analysis, 16

transcendence, 136–37, 190–92, 204, 209

transphobia, 95, 100, 103, 338

trauma

collective, 75, 112–17, 118

healing from, 114–17, 118

historical, 25, 112–17

impacts of, 113

intergenerational, 101–2, 112–17, 118

meditation and mindfulness practices and, 221

single-episode, 75

Trost, Margaret, 331

trust, 178–79

Tutu, Desmond, 221

Tutu, Mpho, 221

U

Ungar, Michael, 197

V

victimhood, 16

victim triangle. See Cycle of Suffering

violence

culture of, 159, 302

intergenerational cycle of, 113–15

nurturance and, 158

volunteering, 339–40

Vote Run Lead, 345–46

Voting Rights Act, 346

vulnerability, definition of, 67

Vulnerable Self

age categories for, 76–78

in the Cycle of Suffering, 81–82

emotions and, 67–68, 70, 74–76

envisioning, 193–95

example of, 81–84

meeting, 68–70

overview of, 23–25

Resilient Self and, 182, 183

self-reflection on, 87–88

tag line of, 17

W

Walcott, Derek, 125

Watson, Lial, 325

well-being, collective, 207–8

white privilege, 106–7, 116, 336–37

women. See also sexism

as caregivers, 44–45

culture of violence against, 302

impostor syndrome and, 63

running for political office, 345–46

wonder, 90

writing, by hand, 314–15

About the Author

PHOTO BY ROBIN CLARK

Anjuli Sherin is a licensed marriage and family therapist specializing in somatic therapy, trauma healing, resilience building, and cultivating joy. She has spent her fifteen years in practice working specifically with immigrant, South Asian, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and LGBTQI populations. In addition to doing more than thirty thousand hours of individual and group work with clients, she has created programs of three different lengths (five days, twelve weeks, and ten months) on cultivating resilience, and a five-day residential retreat in Hawaii on embodying joy.

Anjuli has been widely recognized for her unique achievements in the mental health field, including winning the 2007 Emerging Leader Award from the E-women Network, a nationwide business network. She has been featured in O, the Oprah Magazine as a finalist in the O Magazine/White House Leadership Project.

In addition to her bachelor’s degree in sociology and anthropology from Mary Washington College and her master’s degree in integral counseling psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, she has received extensive training and mentorship from leading figures in the field of trauma recovery and energy psychology, including renowned author, teacher, and founder of Strozzi Somatics, Richard Strozzi-Heckler; the founder of generative somatics, Staci K. Haines; and the founder of ThetaHealing, Vianna Stibal.

As a Pakistani American clinician, Anjuli combines her intensive clinical expertise with first hand, in-depth knowledge of what it means to engage in personal transformation amid a global political epidemic of stress and dis-ease. She maintains an active private practice both in the San Francisco Bay Area and internationally.

About North Atlantic Books

North Atlantic Books (NAB) is an independent, nonprofit publisher committed to a bold exploration of the relationships between mind, body, spirit, and nature. Founded in 1974, NAB aims to nurture a holistic view of the arts, sciences, humanities, and healing. To make a donation or to learn more about our books, authors, events, and newsletter, please visit www.northatlanticbooks.com.

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