Brave New Kitty

For non-sentient beings, plants do a lot of wise things. They’re quiet, unassuming, and pleasant to be around. They mind their own business and quietly tend to their own self-interest. They brighten up any environment you put them in. We could take a lesson or two from the plant kingdom.

One thing plants do naturally that humans almost never do is move toward the light. Granted, for plants it’s like breathing is for us and they don’t have much of a choice about it, but even still, sometimes I wish they didn’t make it look so easy.

Because it’s not easy at all for humans. Most of us are pessimists by nature and must actively seek to learn positive thinking; nobody’s writing books about how to be less optimistic or how to tone down your excitement about life. We want to be optimists, and we know we should be (as evidenced by the number of books sold on the subject), but we struggle with it. We see all the darkness in the world (and there is a lot), all the pain, suffering, hunger, violence, disease, and tragedy, and we find little to feel optimistic about. And we tell ourselves we’re not pessimists, we’re realists. If you’re not outraged, as the bumper sticker says, you’re not paying attention.

Furthermore, we’re all going to get old and sick (unless we get sick when we’re still young), and we’re all going to die. Doesn’t get much darker than this simple truth.

Ironically, it is this morose fact of life—the inevitability of death—in which we can find the greatest impetus to move toward the light. The finite nature of life is itself the reason to make the most of it while you’re here. Think about this: When you’re old and looking back on your life (if you’re fortunate enough to reach that point), what do you want to see? Someone stuck in negativity, or someone who made the most of the time allotted?

That’s really all moving toward the light is about: making the most of your time in whatever way you choose. Believing that life is a personal creation. Knowing that all the pain and tragedy in the world is real, not to mention the pain and tragedy in your own life, and choosing to move toward the light anyway.

This isn’t a new idea by any means. Popular culture is full of sentiments urging us to make the most of our allotted time. But it’s hard to actually do. Like all things worth having, effort is involved. It’s easy to be a critic, a naysayer, a pessimist. It’s not so easy to put yourself on the front line and battle for truth, justice, and your heart’s desire. It’s easy to stay stuck in obligation and responsibility. It’s not so easy to build foundations under your dreams.

Some may argue that it is not right to place your own fulfillment above trying to fix the world’s suffering, that enjoying good things is somehow insensitive to the plight of the world; selfish. But that is exactly backward. The difference between narcissistic selfishness and enlightened self-interest is like the difference between a candle and the sun. Carving out our own fulfillment is the only way we can make a true difference. This is because changing our self is the only thing we have any real control over. Becoming a whole person to the best of our ability is how we make the world a better place. Not only is it the best route, it’s the only route.

It’s not that larger causes aren’t important. A sense of connection to your community is important, as is having values that hold social justice to be important. But for almost every cause you engage in, someone, or something, is going to suffer. If you fight against oil companies so animals can live, then people are going to lose jobs. If you fight to feed the starving people in Africa, then farmers’ livelihoods may suffer. If you use paper instead of plastic, you’re saying no to hydrocarbons, but you’re saying yes to the nasty chlorinated by-products of the paper-making process, which are produced in far larger quantities than the pollutants produced in hydrocarbon manufacturing. It’s rare to give in one place without taking away somewhere else. So you must understand that causes are largely just moving the suffering around. Study almost any social, environmental, or political issue and you will find this to be the case.

But with your own personal growth it is not the case. Moving toward the light makes the world a better place. Raising the consciousness of your own little corner contributes to the higher consciousness of the whole planet. It’s more powerful than anything else you can do for a person; it’s teaching someone to farm rather than handing them a bag of groceries. Moving toward the light is the most authentic act any of us can engage in, and the whole world, including your own soul, is aching for such authenticity. Thus, when you nourish your soul, you light up the planet. And when you don’t, darkness prevails.

So dare to move toward the light. Dare to follow your bliss. Dare to make your life an adventure of authenticity and non-stop transformation. Delve inward, and find your truest self. Ultimately, it’s really the only choice that matters. And be grateful you’re not a plant, because plants don’t get to choose.

Anxiety is kind of a dirty word. No one likes to feel it. Anxiety is so unpleasant, in fact, that thousands of products and medications exist to alleviate it, with new ones going on the market daily. Books, bubble baths, scented candles, drugs, and therapy techniques are just a few of the weapons available in our war against anxiety. And don’t forget the self-medication market: alcohol, marijuana, and the rest. Anxiety alleviation is a huge industry.

But anxiety isn’t necessarily something you ought automatically shy away from or go to war with. If you learn to understand and even embrace it, anxiety can be hugely beneficial to your personal growth. There is nothing like anxiety to jar us out of complacency and shove us in a new direction. If we can dictate what that direction will be, it can be very positive indeed.

I use a simple technique I call increasing your tolerance for anxiety. Basically, the more able you are to be present with your anxiety, the less power it has to control your behavior. That’s about all there is to it. The hardest part is probably changing your mindset about feeling anxious.

You must first get past the belief that anxiety is a disease that can be cured. Anxiety is part of life, from the fear of making friends in grade school to the inevitability of dealing with our own mortality. Everything in-between. “Curing” anxiety doesn’t work and will never work because one, it’s not a disease, and two, there’s a reason it’s there, and that reason can be ignored only to your own detriment.

Sometimes that’s obvious. If you’re anxious about a specific thing you’ve been putting off, doing the thing will alleviate the anxiety. Or if you’ve lost your job, gotten a divorce, or are going through any of the other standard life stressors, your anxiety is there for a sound, clear, logical reason. Of course you’re anxious. Anyone would be. You have one or two more drinks than you otherwise would, you vent to your friends, or you take a long weekend or two. You work through the feelings (mostly because there’s nothing else you can do) and you figure out how to move on.

Other times, though, the reasons are not so obvious. When anxiety of the generalized, existential type takes hold, the results can be hellish. Such anxiety can take many forms: phobias, compulsions, depression, avoidance, acting out; a rich broth of human behavior. This is the anxiety that sends you running for the prescription meds and therapy sessions, or abundant self-medication (and then the prescription meds and therapy). This anxiety has you thinking there’s something terribly wrong with you, and that medical science must have a cure for it. Nobody has to feel bad in this modern age, right?

I suppose technically that’s true, but not feeling bad typically involves an emotion-numbing drug that also prevents you from feeling good. Whether self-prescribed or physician-prescribed, such a drug merely postpones the conversation you must eventually have with your anxiety if you are to move past it. Because, existential or otherwise, your anxiety is trying to tell you something, and you would be wise to listen.

If you accept the premise that anxiety is part of life and that it might actually have a purpose, then you’re ready to start dealing with it. Start slowly, with a minor anxiety, and work your way up. When it strikes, instead of avoiding it, acknowledge it. Say “hello,” embrace it, and be still. Don’t worry about your external reaction; you’re not trying to do anything differently except notice. Notice the feelings and physical sensations that arise. You can even ask your anxiety what it wants and listen for an answer. (Whether you get one or not doesn’t really matter at this point; you’ll get one eventually.) Afterward, you may want to journal about the experience. How it felt, what you noticed, what you learned. The more you’re able to remember, and the more objective you’re able to be, the better.

After doing this for a while, you will discover something vitally important: that you have a choice. Your response to anxiety is not a foregone conclusion. You can acknowledge your anxiety and decide to react differently than you have in the past. This is a tremendous paradigm shift.

Once you know you have a choice, decide how you want to react. How do you want your behavior to change? Visualize it. Write it down if you want to. Then try to live it the next time you’re in that particular anxiety-producing situation. Even if you don’t succeed, give yourself a pat on the back, because it’s hard, and it might take awhile to get it right. But if you keep trying, you will.

After practicing this technique, I think you will learn, as I did, something very important: that increasing your tolerance for anxiety is a critical element of personal growth. The more able you are to stay present in situations that make you anxious, the more situations you are able to be in despite your anxiety. This means that you will have fewer and fewer self-imposed limitations. You have essentially taught yourself how to manage fear. Once you know how to do this, you can apply it to any situation. There is no wall.

Anxiety is such big business because it never goes away. As soon as you get past some of it, more will always crop up to take its place. It’s a chronic symptom of a condition called “life.” Learn to see anxiety as an opportunity rather than an obstacle, and life will become infinitely more adventurous.

Forgiveness is not a natural state of mind. It’s something you have to work at. Just as you must learn to read, ride a bike, and do math problems, you must learn how to forgive. And just like those other skills, you have to use it regularly if you want to become good at it and stay good at it. Forgiveness is a mental muscle that should be exercised often and effusively.

The most important person you must ever forgive is yourself. If you can’t forgive yourself, you’ll never be good at forgiving others. If you can’t forgive yourself as you forgive others, it means you see yourself as separate from the rest of humanity, and therefore you don’t understand your true nature very well. Self-forgiveness is a glimpse into our true nature, and by that measure, it is a critical part of personal growth.

How do you learn to forgive yourself?

The movie “Good Will Hunting” is a story about a young man’s struggle with self-forgiveness. Matt Damon is superb as an anguished young man who transforms from bitter to hopeful through the process of forgiving himself. Watching (or re-watching) it would be a good place to start studying self-forgiveness.

In addition to watching Good Will Hunting, here are some other things that helped me learn how to forgive myself.

Visualization. Most of us have experienced anger, jealousy, or other negative feelings “lifted” out of us; one moment it was there, and the next it was gone, just dissolved away like smoke on a breeze. Try to remember a time when this happened to you. First remember how it felt when you were holding onto the negative emotion. Did you feel tense? Stuck? Small? Hopeless? How did your body feel? Were your teeth clenched? Your muscles? Did you have a stomachache or a headache? Did you feel heavy?

Now remember how you felt when the negative feeling dissolved. Were you happy, maybe even gleeful? Did you feel free? Light? Expansive? How did your body feel? Did the tension go away? Were you more energetic? Walking on air? Maybe even sunshine? Was there a warm glow in your chest or an all-over tingling? A rush of joy or pleasure?

The sensation of negative emotions being lifted away and disappearing is a first cousin to the experience of self-forgiveness. In some instances, they may be one and the same. In any case, this is a concrete experience of what self-forgiveness feels like. Qualifying the experience mentally makes it real. Visualizing and remembering the specific visceral feelings associated with the experience grounds it in reality. It’s also a powerful reminder of how good it feels to let go, and that feeling is more than just our ego experiencing happiness or relief; that good feeling is about tapping into a higher state of consciousness. It’s a “peek” experience, if you will, of a place some call Heaven.

If you can’t remember a specific experience like this, then think of one where you simply felt expansive and in love with all of humanity, or use the feeling you have while watching the scene in Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams hugs Matt Damon and keeps repeating “It wasn’t your fault” until you see the fight go out of him and he surrenders, his pain and anguish carried away in a river of tears.

The point is to soften your heart and open yourself to the possibility that you are good and worthy of forgiveness. Once you’ve quantified how that feels, you must get it deep down into your soul until it becomes as much a part of you as the color of your eyes or the scent of your skin. One way to do this is…

Affirmations. Affirmations are how we knead good things into our soul until we truly believe them. You might think affirmations are hokey, but they’re quite important for changing negative self-talk to positive. Whatever you want to change or achieve, positive affirmations can help. So if you’re squeamish about them, get over it. All successful people use positive affirmations in some form.

Just as Robin Williams repeated “it’s not your fault” in the movie until Matt believed it, you must create an affirmation for yourself and say it until you believe it. Something as simple as “I forgive myself” is good. Or, “I’m sorry I’ve been so angry and unforgiving, and I now forgive myself.” Whatever you choose (and you may use as many as you want), get into the habit of saying it (or them) to yourself regularly. Write them out and hang them where you will see them daily: the bathroom, your desk, your refrigerator, or all of the above. With affirmations, you really can’t overdo it.

Get into a routine of repeating the affirmation to yourself several times a day. In the morning before you get out of bed, at night before you go to sleep, while you’re brushing your teeth, and any other time you know you’ll be able to do the affirmation regularly. Additionally, get into the habit of using affirmations when you’re in stressful situations. They help calm your nerves and focus your attention.

Finally, when you’re saying or reading affirmations, try not to go on autopilot, because it’s easy to do. Think about the words as you’re saying them. Let their meaning sink deep inside, and feel them resonate in your head and heart. Allow a moment of gratitude for being on such a positive path before getting on with your day.

Metta/Resentment Work. Metta is the Buddhist practice of lovingkindness, in which you pray and meditate solely on sending other people love, good wishes, and good will. Resentment work is a 12 Step practice, strikingly similar to metta, in which you pray for a person you have a resentment towards every day until the resentment disappears. (It’s amazing how well this works.)

Although these practices are about forgiving others, they aid in self-forgiveness, too. Engaging in them is as much an act of self-love as it is an act of love for others. When we begin to understand our true nature, we realize that there is really no difference between ourselves and others, except that which exists in our minds.

Mentoring. Good Will Hunting showed the importance of mentoring. Matt’s childhood friends clearly loved him, but they didn’t understand his problem, so they couldn’t help him. The therapist, Robin Williams, understood his problem thoroughly. He was, in fact, an expert in such things, and he was able to bring Matt to a place where he was able to face and deal with it.

Minnie Driver, who played Matt’s love interest from the right side of the tracks, was also able to help him because she intuitively understood what he needed from her. His love for her was the catalyst that finally got him to let go of his pain, grief, and anger.

Mentors help us recreate ourselves at new levels. They reach out to us and pull us up with their wisdom, their compassion, and their experience. We all need mentors to guide us and show us what’s possible. And while we’re learning from our mentors, their mentors are simultaneously pulling them up, while we are pulling up those looking to us for guidance. This chain of compassion and understanding extends downward and upward ad infinitum, moving us ever closer to Nirvana (Heaven).

True forgiveness is really, really difficult, and true self-forgiveness may be the hardest of all. Life isn’t like the movies; self-forgiveness isn’t a one-time occurrence. Such a transformation will occur many times over as you reach ever deeper levels of understanding and love. However, the first time you experience it will be monumental and life changing, setting you down a primrose path so sweet and wonderful, Matt Damon might even be envious.

If you’re single, Valentine’s Day can be lonely and depressing. I would like to change that, and I hope by sharing my views I can be of service to those of you who dread the coming of this day.

I have never celebrated Valentine’s Day. Not when I was single, and not when I was in a relationship. Sure, there have been times I’ve gotten—and given—cards or gifts, or gone out to a nice dinner, but I’ve never had any expectations. This is because I’ve never considered Valentine’s Day a real holiday.

Think about it. You don’t get any time off work, there are no religious ceremonies associated with it, and banks aren’t closed. There aren’t even any special holiday cartoons to watch. The only thing Valentine’s Day is about is spending money.

Really. All of our holidays are increasingly materialistic, but some holidays seem to have been created solely for the purpose of getting us to spend money. Have you noticed the pattern of jewelry store advertisements? It peaks in December, then again in early February, with a blip around Mother’s Day and a lull the rest of the year. If we really love our partner, the ads tell us, we will spend a lot of money on him or her. And the perfect occasion is just around the corner, so get moving!

That’s what Valentine’s Day is about: Selling. Spending. Consumerism. It’s a calculated plot to part us from our money and, if at all possible, go just a little bit more in debt than we can actually afford. For this reason, I refuse to acknowledge it.

There’s nothing wrong with getting into the Valentine’s Day spirit, but I don’t feel that I’ve missed anything by not doing so. If I want to buy my loved one a gift, I don’t need a manufactured holiday to goad me into it. I prefer to honor our love and commitment daily rather than annually, and it’s something I recommend highly. Besides, there’s nothing more fun than surprising your partner—or being surprised by your partner—on a day of the year of your own choosing. Love happens in the intimate sharing of two people, not in the marketing departments of retail corporations.

I realize this is an unsentimental attitude, but there’s a terrific upside to it: I’m never disappointed. I don’t suggest this approach for more meaningful things, but it works well for silly, superficial ones. If you can see the holiday for the consumer-boosting event that it is, it’s a lot easier to not feel sad and depressed when you don’t have a special someone to share it with. You’re free to bypass the whole thing, with no emotional energy spent whatsoever. What do you miss out on by doing this? Absolutely nothing of any lasting value.

(Truth be told, I feel this way about Christmas and birthdays too, and if I were a parent, I would feel the same about Mother’s Day. Both Jim and I find much more joy in celebrating life passages on our own schedule rather than on someone else’s.)

If you’re single and feeling sad about Valentine’s Day, and you feel an urge to acknowledge it in some fashion, then do so, but do so in the spirit of non-romantic love, and not in the spirit of self-pity, because the former will make you feel better, while the latter will make you feel much, much worse.

Here are some suggestions:

• Do something kind for someone anonymously.
• Volunteer at a homeless shelter, an animal shelter, or a nursing home.
• Call someone you haven’t spoken to in awhile and rekindle a friendship.

Finally, do something loving and Valentine dayish for yourself. Buy yourself a massage, or get together with friends and do something fun and silly, or do something you’ve been putting off for awhile that you’ve wanted to do. Take care of yourself and don’t feel bad for being single. Singlehood is what you make it, and you can make it fabulous and fulfilling.

I’d say have a happy Valentine’s Day, but that goes against my non-consumerist principles. Instead, I’ll say, “Have a happy rest of your life, starting now.”

Now get going.

Sheldon Kopp’s last item on his Eschatological Laundry List is, “Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again.” I think all the agains say it best: it’s important to forgive yourself.

In our culture, we tend toward the opposite. We tend to hold things against ourselves (and others), forgiving only after much struggle and anguish, if at all. We tend to see only shortcomings and dwell on mistakes. If you doubt this, then try this little exercise: name five things you don’t like about yourself, and five things you do. Which is easier?

I thought so.

It’s probably not just our culture, it’s every culture. The reason is simple. As with most worthy things in life, forgiving is harder than not forgiving. Just like it’s easier to be fat than fit and it’s easier to be complacent than take action, it’s easier to hold a grudge than let go of it. Because letting go is harder, it’s less understood. So before you can forgive yourself again and again and again, you have to understand why it’s important.

Forgiveness is an advanced spiritual principle and the basis of many religions, myths, and philosophies. Christianity provides perhaps the most interesting allegory on forgiveness. Jesus died for the sins of the world, allowing fallen mankind a way into heaven merely by believing in His sacrifice and His willingness to forgive us. All we have to do is soften our hearts and ask for forgiveness, and we receive it instantaneously. God does not keep score, he does not make exceptions, and he does not need to think about whether we deserve forgiveness. If we ask, it’s given. God’s forgiveness is immediate, unconditional, and earnest. It is also the only way into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Whether you see the crucifixion literally or metaphorically, few can argue that the point of it is God’s forgiveness of man. But if you see it metaphorically, as a window into the human condition, it paints a much more interesting picture. Jesus represents humanity, and if we want to recreate ourselves at a higher level (become born again), we must sacrifice our current life. That sacrifice is painful (the crucifixion), but necessary if we want to grow. Sacrifice brings rebirth and salvation; salvation happens through God’s (our own) forgiveness.

Metaphorically (which I believe is the most sophisticated and useful biblical interpretation), the crucifixion story is about the difficulty and necessity of personal growth. It is not something that happens once and forever changes us; it is a mythical representation of the ongoing process of dying and being reborn as we gain more awareness and wisdom about who we are and what our purpose is. Without a softened heart, a heart willing to forgive, a heart earnest and desirous of change, this process is not possible.

This softening of the heart is the key to all growth and change. This is why the New Testament was a revolutionary change for the better over the Old Testament. The Old Testament provided laws for behavior and worship, which were necessary, but not sufficient, for true personal change. A person can obey laws for his entire life without once having a spiritual experience, awareness of higher states, or any understanding of his own internal longings and possibilities. Laws, by their nature, do not address such issues. So Jesus came along and provided a way for us to see beyond law, to see into our own true nature. His story exemplifies spiritual growth, and this makes Him one of the most important figures in all of mythology. Not because he died for our sins, but because he showed us the way out of our own hard-hearted hells.

This way out is not easy. Achieving true forgiveness is often as mentally and emotionally painful as the crucifixion depicts. Becoming a truly forgiving person is one of the most difficult undertakings imaginable, but also one of the most necessary for, well, for everything. Not the least of which is your own serenity and capacity to love.

Salvation is what happens when you forgive yourself. Forgiveness frees us from the fetters of our old ways and bears us into a higher state of consciousness, which the Bible calls Heaven. A literal interpretation has us believing Heaven and Hell are otherworldly places we go after we die, but the metaphorical view shows us that hell is what happens when we don’t soften our hearts, and heaven is what happens when we do.

To understand all is to forgive all. If you don’t yet believe this, keep pondering it. You will.

My therapist used to tell me, “Feelings are never wrong.” He would usually say this in response to my discussing some big emotional reaction that I was feeling shameful about. For a long time, I didn’t understand the statement at all. I thought it was just a platitude to help me feel better, and I rarely let it sink in, because I knew my feelings were wrong. If they weren’t wrong, then they wouldn’t cause me all the trouble they did. Right?

Wrong. After a lot of work, I finally understood what he meant, and that it was my beliefs that were wrong, not my feelings, no matter how big, messy, or embarrassing they might be. This was a significant factor in my ability to love and forgive myself in the way I deserve—that is, in the way we all deserve.

“Feelings are never wrong” is really pretty simple (as simple as it sounds, I suppose). We can lie in our heads, but not in our feelings. Like guileless children, feelings are innocent and reliable indicators of what’s going on with us, and it’s important to pay attention to them, because they always have something to tell us.

We might not like our feelings. Or we might not want to deal with them. We might have learned early in life that our feelings are to be “toughed out” or ignored. Maybe we’re afraid of succumbing to them because we were shamed for our big feelings as children and don’t want to relive that as adults (it was awful enough the first time around).

But our feelings are the essence of who we are. More than any other aspect, they define us. If we deny them, we diminish ourselves. It’s like cutting off a limb and pretending we’re whole, then wondering why we aren’t better swimmers.

Being out of touch with your feelings is pretty much a recipe for a miserable life, whether you’re a stoic, repressed Protestant or a hot-tempered drama queen who dumps her disowned anxiety on the most convenient victim. However unacknowledged feelings manifest themselves, they are always an indication that we do not love, accept, and honor ourselves as we are. There is perhaps nothing sadder.

This is not to say that feelings should control our behavior. It’s not okay to always act how our feelings dictate, to “let it all hang out,” just because they’re there to hang out. Paradoxically, when people do this, it’s usually because they are out of touch with their feelings, and not the other way around. Being emotionally out of control is strong evidence that a person’s shadow has taken over, and that she is probably unaware of what’s behind the feeling motivating the behavior.

I realize this might sound like I’m saying that feelings are, indeed, wrong at times, but that’s not what this means at all. All feelings happen for a valid reason. If the feeling seems bigger than the situation calls for, we tend to dismiss it as wrong. But it’s not wrong. In fact, these are the feelings that have the most to teach us. These are the feelings to really pay attention to if you want to discover what’s going on in the deep dark recesses of your shadow.

(Note: I don’t use the term “overreaction” in the above paragraph because I believe it is pejorative: a big reaction requires self-discipline, so as not to dump it on the person at the other end, but it also requires gentleness and a willingness to look more deeply into the underlying causes of the behavior. Calling a big feeling an “overreaction” often leads us to chastise ourselves [or others] and write it off to having a bad day or something equally unrelated. When we do this, we forfeit the opportunity to dig deeper into who we really are.)

Why do our big reactions have so much to teach us? Because they’re almost always an indication of unfinished business from our past. Usually, they’re rooted in fear, and they’re very old, and they’ve probably been causing problems—or really, different versions of the same problem—for our whole life. Getting to the bottom of them is the only way to heal, and healing from our old wounds is necessary to becoming whole; self-actualization is not possible without doing so.

So the next time you find yourself having a big reaction that doesn’t fit the situation, try to step away from it and assess what’s going on. You may need to own the reaction and apologize, but after taking care of this, go inward and try to find the source. Here are some things to consider:

• What was the exact feeling? (Fear, grief, or anger)
• What did this incident remind me of?
• When did I feel this way earlier in my life? What was I able to do about it then?
• What can I do about it now?

You may be able to come up with a specific incident or two that are often indicative of a pattern that occurred throughout your childhood; probably a painful one that you would rather not remember (which is why you repressed it in the first place). For example, I have a friend who, when he was five years old, committed some minor indiscretion, like having a messy room, and his mother told him she was going to leave him because of it. She proceeded to pull out a suitcase and start packing, ignoring him as he cried and tugged at her arm, begging her not to go. She left the house with a full suitcase before she finally capitulated and he knew she wasn’t really going to leave. But the thought of her leaving terrified him, particularly since he thought it was his fault. Because of this (and probably more importantly, a general pattern of emotional distance by his mother), he has abandonment issues to this day.

Being able to identify this incident and own how painful it was for him was key to working through it. While he may always have some form of abandonment issues, an awareness of their origins makes it possible to act and react with an appropriate amount of emotion, own his big feelings as his own, and not make others responsible for them. The resulting self-awareness has vastly improved his capacity for honesty and intimacy. Had he not dealt with this issue, he would most likely have had a lifetime of unsatisfying relationships, either because he was too shut down to risk closeness, or because he continually held others accountable for his big feelings, eventually driving them away.

Recognizing and working through issues doesn’t always mean total resolution. Sometimes our wounds stay with us for a lifetime in some form or other. And that’s just fine, because our wounds often make us more sensitive, more compassionate, and more empathetic people. While working through them is not fun, I wouldn’t trade the work for anything. It’s some of the most rewarding and self-affirming growth work we can do, and the payoff is huge: greater self-awareness always leads us to greater self-love, greater ability to love others, better relationships, and better understanding of the world at large.

We must learn to recognize our feelings for what they are and why they’re there. If we don’t, they control us, and self-awareness remains forever out of reach.