Our limits are our portals
Workshop alert! Healing Your Inner Critic, $25, 8pmET, this Sunday (err, aka tonight). Lifetime replay provided. Tix here. If you struggle with your inner critic, and you're also intrigued by the concept of inner child work, I invite you this gentle workshop. Part teaching, part live self-discovery and journaling exercises, part ceremony and ritual, this workshop will guide you into an entirely different way of experiencing and relating to your inner critic, that will allow you to step into self-gentleness and self-trust. All you'll need to bring is a journal and pen or pencil, as well as a goal you've been struggling with due to your inner critic. See ya there!
Happy Sunday, Soothers. I'm still easing back into this newsletter writing thing after my summer break. It feels a bit creaky, getting back into the creative flow. I think perhaps some folks have the mistaken concept that I have a very professional content calendar, with perfectly timed topics and resonant ideas, that always align with courses I'm also marketing or topics I've been thinking deeply on.
But here's the reality of how it goes 99% of the time: I sit down on a Monday morning, open my Evernote parking lot of possible Sunday Soother ideas (which often includes half-written sentences that make no literal sense by the time I am reading them, for example, one I scrolled past today was, "You're a hot mess and that's the point," to which I'm both like, "Thank you, past Catherine, uh... for that, ah, nugget which you apparently thought was potentially worthy of a whole newsletter," and also I'm like, "Yeah that's also very true and the reality of life, she probably was onto something"). Once I scroll around in this wild garden of a document (it has literally zero structure and is about 8 pages long), an idea will often "ping" a bit. So I grab it, sit down with it, pour myself a decaf coffee, and me and the idea get to talking.
Today though, no idea was pinging. I'm sleepy, it's a foggy, humid tropical sort of September day here in D.C., and for some reason, the coffee shop I'm at is playing Usher's "Yeah!" over and over again. Take that, rewind it back, indeed. It's just a day that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. And so it goes.
So instead of a coherent topic or deep dive into one concept, as the lyrics of "Usher got the voice to make your booty go" play melodically over my head and burrow themselves into my brain, let's dive into a few random things I've been thinking about.
"Our limits are our portals." Nicole Sachs is a therapist and expert in chronic pain conditions, particularly Tension Myositis Syndrome, or mind-body chronic conditions, that posit that many of our chronic pain conditions (migraines, IBS, back pain, fibro, others) are in fact a result of repressed emotions and past trauma. (For anybody who knows of Dr. John Sarno and his work around back pain, she was a student of his.) Her podcast, The Cure for Chronic Pain, is a gentle and insightful listen, and in particular, a recent episode on the very unimportant and tiny topic of uh, our mortality, I thought was a beautiful listen. In there somewhere, she uttered the sentence, "Our limits are our portals" and it struck me deeply, because to me, it's so true. The thing we are naming as limiting ourselves is the path towards our next level of growth, of change, of the thing we seek. I also like it because it transforms something that we are identifying as holding us back into the actual key, the literal path, to move forward. It offers us hope and optimism and the possibility for change, in the things that we're currently believing are our jailers. What is a limit you are facing or that you perhaps over-identify with? And how does it also hold the seed to your growth?
During instead of before. So often in my coaching work I see a client believe they need to figure out HOW to become a thing (a mother, a person who can be in a successful romantic relationship, a business owner, somebody who actually likes themselves), and THEN, and only then, once they've figured that out, they can then do that thing. My people. No. For example. You don't heal romantically BEFORE you get into a romantic relationship. You heal in the process of being IN a romantic relationship. You don't become an entrepreneur and THEN start a business. You become an entrepreneur along the messy path to building your business. I don't announce, "I am a runner" before I've gone on a single run. I become a runner as I gasp and stumble and sweat on my runs that increase in length and stamina little by little over time. Where are you telling yourself that you have to become or have figured out something before you start it? And where can you start to shift your brain to understand that it's all about the process in which you learn to do the thing your soul is desiring to become?
The ball of string and our phones. In a recent Cup of Jo comment section I read this and it hit hard: 'Years ago I read a story about a little boy who had a magical ball of string – every time you pulled it, time would fast forward so he could fast forward through boring, uncomfy, or tricky times in his life. Well he got to the end of the string and he was old and was questioning where his life had gone. I realized last week that my phone is like that ball of string – I take it out when I’m bored or anxious or wanting to escape from real life and when I look up time has flown by and I have nothing really to show for it except for having passed that time in that “fugue” state as you so aptly call it." Dayum.
The relationship between guilt and self-esteem. This one might actually have a full newsletter's worth of exploring for me to do. But here's what I've realized recently: I knew my self esteem was increasing when I started to feel guilt less frequently. Because of past conditioning, past trauma, and a good dollop of Puritanical beliefs, we so often feel we need to punish ourselves for being bad, and all too often, guilt is that punishment. If you believe you are essentially good (flawed, but good), the need to use guilt in your life decreases substantially. Guilt used to be such a steady stream in my life that it was the water I swam in, the air I breathed. Now, I practice noticing where guilt still stealthily arises, and do my work to connect it to a belief I might have about my badness. Then, I know it's time to do work to shed that shame story.
Magic isn't what we've been taught. I'm a fervent believer in, practitioner of, teacher of, and beneficiary of magic. Yes, it's real. Yes, it "works." But it simply doesn't look like the Harry Potter version of magic we've learned. Remember these spells: Being intentional is a magic spell. Creating space is a magic spell. Inner child work is a magic spell. Boundaries are a magic spell. Saying an authentic no or an authentic yes is a magic spell. Naming out loud your vulnerable, tender desires, is a magic spell. Magic is all around us, and it starts with you. Stay tuned... I want to teach magic more intentionally in the coming year, at least my approach to it.
My favorite quote of all time, from Liz Gilbert, which I return to time and time again whenever I'm stuck in a place because I need the medicine of these words over and over again: "I've never seen any life transformation that didn't begin with the person in question finally getting sick of their own bullshit." Where can you (lovingly, tenderly, slowly) call yourself on your own bullshit? When you face it, you can own it, and then you can transform it. And I wish that for each and every one of you.