Sticks and stones may break my bones
But words shall never hurt me.

The rhyme is used as a defense against name-calling and verbal bullying, intended to increase resiliency, avoid physical retaliation and to remain calm.
~~[Wikipedia]

Whatever we may say, unkind words or even words that were not meant unkindly, can often hurt us.

Belonging, approval, and being part of a group or tribe is important to us because it enhances our survival (it is an evolutionary drive). Therefore, we feel good when we get approval from others and feel bad when we get their disapproval. Because of survival, our minds also have a negative bias.

The negative bias is our tendency not only to register negative stimuli more readily but also to dwell on these events. … In almost any interaction, we are more likely to notice negative things and later remember them more vividly.
~~[VeryWellMind]

To quote Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, “the bad stuff is easier to believe.”

The Bad Stuff Is Easier to Believe

When we hear speech, our mind processes it and categorizes it. From this comes our own perception of what is said. Our perception of what is said is colored by our past memories, learned habits, our current mood, and more. Based on this perception, one or more emotions may arise. We may feel happy at a compliment from a respected friend, or insulted by a perceived cruel remark from a foe.

My mother once told me this – “Your father does not love you and would abandon you to get what he wants.”

Obviously, this affected me greatly and caused me great emotional pain. It caused me great pain and sorrow then, and the memory of it continues to cause me pain, even though my mother has since passed away. Why is that and is there a way to release that continued pain and suffering?

As described previously, there are many causes and conditions that contribute to the arising of an emotion. Once an emotion arises, we have an opportunity to decide on our response. We can let that emotion control our subsequent action, or we can override the prescribed action of that emotion. Our natural state is to be in automatic mode, which is to say that we keep our messy emotions suppressed so that it doesn’t rise to consciousness. In this way, we unconsciously act according to our emotions. This can lead to unwanted consequences like the continuous pain and suffering from the memory of my mother.

A careless or inaccurate statement, if left unchallenged mentally, leads to inaccurate thoughts that cause difficult emotions to arise. This further leads to more inaccurate thoughts, which later become beliefs, that then lead to more difficult emotions and so on, until it snowballs into a lifetime of hurt as well as suffering.

“Your father does not love you and would abandon you to get what he wants,” leads to –

1. Belief that my father does not love me. ➞ Fear of being unloved and emotional pain.
2. Belief that my father could abandon me at any time. ➞ Fear of abandonment and emotional pain.
3. Why does my mother say these things? She must really dislike me. ➞ Belief that I must be a bad daughter or unworthy of her love. ➞ Belief that I am generally not worthy ➞ Fear of failure, being unloved, and emotional pain.
4. Why does my father not love me? ➞ Belief that I am not worthy of love. ➞ Fear of being unloved and emotional pain.
5. My mother is a terrible person for causing me all this pain. ➞ Fear of my mother.
6. What did I ever do to get such bad parents? ➞ Belief that I am not worthy ➞ Fear of failure and emotional pain.

Each thought generates more fear and pain, which generates more negative thoughts and so on. Soon, these thoughts harden into deep beliefs, which corrodes self-esteem and self-love. The process becomes habit and as more and more afflictive emotions arise, it affects our mood and we become hypersensitive to all things that others say. This makes us mistrust people in general, because people say hurtful words, cause painful emotions, and are therefore threats. We reject and withdraw from people, thereby actualizing our fears of being unloved and abandoned.

We feel isolated and very alone. However, no man is an island and we need others to survive. So fear now compels us to seek out support and company. This can sometimes lead to extreme people pleasing or approval seeking behavior.

In this way, our competing fears make us run around in circles. When we are with people, we feel pain and suffering from perceived verbal wounds and other fears that their words activate. To avoid this pain, we isolate ourselves from people and their words. When this occurs, we feel lonely and in need of support. The pain of isolation and abandonment ultimately leads us to seek out company and the cycle continues.

I Don’t Give A F*ck Coping Mechanism

Faced with this seemingly neverending cycle of fear, many of us resort to the “I Don’t Give A F*ck” coping mechanism, which is also known as blame and denial. In short, we blame others for making us feel bad, get angry with them, and then try to convince ourselves that we do not care what people say; but of course we still *do* care because that is how our minds work.

Our mind is designed to care because that is how it learns, by absorbing information. The learning capability of our mind is a superpower because it makes us highly adaptable to changing situations. However, it also makes us highly suggestive to learning the wrong things and thus falling prey to afflictive emotions that arise from distorted beliefs of reality.

Of course I care what my mother says. She is my mother and I depended on her for survival for much of my childhood. My evolutionary drive for survival compels me to care about what my mother says, what my boss says, and what others’ say. Denying that I care does not make it so, and more importantly, it does not address the root of the pain and fear.

However, just because my mother says it does not mean it is true. Just because my own mind thinks it in the moment, does not mean it is true either. Many of the things that people say are inaccurate and driven by their own fears, pains, and past. When my mother said my father did not love me and would abandon me, she was projecting her own pain of my father leaving her and not loving her anymore. She was likely also projecting pain from her own difficult childhood and losing her mother at a young age. It had very little to do with me. Yet, my mind created all these thoughts and stories around it.

My mistake was not that I cared what my mother said, but rather that I believed what she said at the surface level. If I had looked deeper, I would have seen what my mother was truly saying, and then I would feel compassion for her, instead of fear, pain, and suffering for my own false perception of unworthiness and abandonment. Now that I see it, I can deal with my own fears of unworthiness and abandonment, so that they have less control over me the next time someone says something that triggers it. This builds emotional resiliency and self-love.

Learning to Listen Deeply

Blame and anger are very tempting tools to use, especially in the midst of fear, because blame abdicates us from responsibility of failure (it is my mother’s fault, not mine) and anger gives us a semblance of control (to avoid suffering, all I need do is avoid my mother). However, blame and anger are maladaptive coping mechanisms because they lead us to avoid the pain and fear rather than face them head-on. By blaming my mother, I avoid facing my own fear of unworthiness and abandonment. By replacing fear with anger I take the wrong action, avoiding my mother, instead of facing my original fears. In this way, my old fears grow and I create new ones – fear of my mother and more generally, fear of verbal harm from everyone around me.

Overusing blame and anger will cause our fears to multiply.

The next time that someone says something hurtful to you, remind yourself that blame and anger are pointless and will only grow our fears. Instead, try to listen below the surface into the heart of the matter. Before believing a thought or an utterance, follow it back to its causes and conditions to see if it is true. You will quickly see that in most cases, hurtful utterances have more to do with the speaker than with you. Once you see this, the utterance and all the thoughts as well as emotions that come from it will lose their power over you.

Soothing Fear with Love

There was a period of almost 10 years where fear seemed to recede in my life. It started when I met my furry soul-mate Shania and ended soon after her death. Looking back, I now see that Shania was so special to me because somehow, without even knowing it, she answered my every fear with love.

The most effective antidote to fear (aversion or withdrawal) is love (engagement). This is why phobias (extreme fears) are effectively addressed with exposure (purposeful decision to engage with that which we fear).

When we learn to understand and love that which we fear, we will no longer fear it.

That happened with my mother. When I faced my fear of my mother, and learned to understand her and her motivations, I developed compassion for her, and for the first time, learned to forgive her. This helped to release a lot of the pain from childhood that has haunted me my whole life. Note that the compassion and forgiveness helped me deal with my issues and were not done for my mother, who had sadly passed away by then.

We truly love the poor, old, sick, and dying, only when we have dealt with our own core existential fears of poverty, aging, illness, and death. When we have faced these fears, then we will be truly free to love ourselves and others unconditionally.

Unfortunately, such fear motivated desires rarely lead to fulfillment. These desires are extreme, outcome based, uncompromising, intolerant, and not in-step with reality. As soon as we succeed, fear compels us to race toward the next goal, the next one after, and on and on it goes. Nothing is ever good enough and only constant perfection will do. Since our world is imperfect and ever changing, we will forever be racing about, always one step in front of fear, trying to achieve the impossible.

What Is Wasting Time?

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
~~[Bertrand Russell]

What is wasting time? To answer this question we need to set up some kind of value system for our time. In essence, this would be a value system for our life and for ourselves. If we spend our time achieving our meaning of life goals, then we are not wasting time, and we are worthy.

Our current society’s value system is based on money (material possessions), power (influence over others), and fame (admiration from others). Of course history and experience has shown us that the rich, powerful, and famous, do not live more meaningful, happy, or peaceful lives than anybody else. In fact, research shows that those who prioritize such extrinsic goals are least likely to be happy.

Thoreau, Bertrand Russell, and others may perhaps argue that enjoyment is the true currency of life. Enjoying beauty (nature, literature, song) and enjoying the process of creation are often cited as two of the key reasons for living. Therefore, to not waste time we should try to experience as much beauty as we can and create as much as we can. However, when life turns and presents us with pain and suffering, do we lose our reasons for living? When we no longer enjoy or cannot enjoy anything, for example when deep in grief or chronic depression, how do we cope? As Frankl discussed in Man’s Search for Meaning, enjoyment alone is insufficient as a meaning of life.

So then what qualifies as a worthy enough purpose for our time and for our life?

Fear of Wasting Time

Our fear of wasting time comes from our love of life. Because we love life, we naturally fear death and fear not utilizing our limited time to the fullest. Feelings of fear are normal and will arise whenever we love. If we love, we will fear the loss of that which we love.

Many of us see fear as a terrible enemy that must be eradicated from our lives. However, fear only becomes a problem when we do not tend to it and try to suppress or reject it instead. By trying to eradicate fear, we feed it and make it stronger.

When we analyze our fear of wasting time, we will realize that it more accurately comes from a fear of unhappiness or feeling bad. We only have a limited amount of time so we do not want to waste it feeling bad, unhappy, or discontented. We may reason that money, fame, and power will make us happy and so consider the pursuit of these happiness substitutes to be *not* wasting time. Similarly we may reason that enjoyment brings us happiness and pursue that instead.

The problem with these direct pursuits is that they originate from fear. Fear motivated pursuits often become hyper-desires, which are unhealthy, unrealistic, outcome based, and extreme. Fear narrows our perspective so that avoiding a negative outcome takes on an outsized importance. This results in a hyper-desire to achieve a positive outcome no matter what. In this case, we are so afraid of wasting time or feeling bad that we develop a hyper-desire to feel good all of the time. Any time we feel a little bit bad, fear comes and we frantically go searching for something else, something special, that will make us feel good again. When we cannot match the happiness of previous experiences, we become discontented and then fearful. When we see someone else being more happy, we become discontented and then fearful. Anything short of perfect happiness becomes a waste of time.

Ultimately, fear causes us to withdraw from life because nothing in life is good enough. We start to ask ourselves, “is this all there is to life?”

Is This All There Is to Life?

Life is not perfect. Whenever we use perfection as our yardstick for success, we will surely fail. That failure will cause us more pain and suffering, which will lead to more self-doubt and self-pity, resulting in more suffering and so on. In this way, we may fall into chronic anxiety and depression.

The key to happiness is to recognize that engagement in life or a love of life is its own reward. We do not need to search for reasons to love life because engagement with life will bring its own special joy and happiness. In contrast, indulging in fear and withdrawing from life will bring unnecessary pain and suffering.

One of my most problematic core beliefs is that I am in control of my own life. I had a very unstable childhood with divorced and messed-up parents. When I was growing up, I found this belief of control to be extremely empowering and soothing. I told myself that as soon as I am able, I will leave home, make my own decisions, and take control of my own life. This worked for a while.

Unfortunately, this is not how life works. In reality, there are many things in life that I do not control. Most of the time, I am *NOT* in control of my thoughts, emotions, body sensations, external situation, the people around me, and life in general. I will get ill, I will get old, and I will die. This fact of very limited control smacked me in the face when I lost my furry soul-mate Shania.

Life is ever changing and full of dualities. There is love, but from love comes fear of loss. There is happiness and sadness, pleasure and pain, success and failure, fame and disrepute, victory and defeat, gain and loss. In life, we will experience all of these states and often a mix of them. We cannot only choose to experience one side of the duality and not the other. When we face pain, loss, failure, and defeat, our instinct will be to recoil or withdraw from life. It is in these moments of suffering that we must embrace ourselves the most and remind ourselves to stay engaged with life.

With the great power of mindfulness, we can become fully present to the unbearable beauty and the inevitable tragedy that makes up human life. We can honorably and fully experience this one and only life that we have been given, with all its ups and downs. In my own life, I try to remember the words many of us have heard from the Ojibway Indians: “Sometimes I go about pitying myself when all the while I’m being carried by great winds across the sky.”
~~[Jack Kornfield]

Engaging with Life

When going through the dark night of my soul, I established a very simple rule – to always face my fear. I believe that a love of life and therefore engagement in life is a natural state of being, and fear (aversion) is the main emotion that causes me to withdraw from life. Therefore, by facing fear I can overcome most unhealthy tendencies toward withdrawal.

Our worries about wasting time is an excuse that fear uses to get us to avoid our difficult feelings. We avoid burdensome internal growth by focusing on external goals such as money, fame, and power. We try to change the external world rather than trying to change ourselves. By avoiding personal change and growth, we may get some short-term comfort, but we will ultimately endure a lot more unnecessary suffering.

Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.
~~[Ramana Maharshi]

To face my fear of wasting time, I use mindfulness techniques to calm my mind, feel the emotions, and analyze them. The more I face the unhappy feelings, the more tolerance I build. The more I understand the source of these emotions, the better I can update any incorrect beliefs that lead to them.

Every time fear arises, it is a reminder to embrace her and to continue to stay engaged with life. Every time I face my fear, I am choosing engagement over withdrawal. When I am engaged in life (loving life), I am not wasting time. In this way, fear is a great ally for getting me not to waste time.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
~~[Ralph Waldo Emerson]

Why is happiness so hard to find? When we find happiness, why is it so hard to keep? When we so assiduously search for happiness, why do we find ourselves mired in anxiety and depression instead?

Life and Happiness

It is not too difficult to figure out that we get happiness by engaging with self and life. We become happy when we engage in or appreciate the beauty that is all around us, a glorious sunset, a poignant song, a majestic building, a kind neighbor, a playful puppy, a beautiful butterfly. We also get happiness through the process of creation and expression, writing a story, dancing to music, making art, interacting with loved ones, helping others. Happiness comes with embracing life through more passive enjoyment (appreciating) or more active participation (doing).

Each of us is different so the experiences that bring life happiness will also be different. The things we enjoy may change as we grow and mature, but that is also part of the beauty of life. As long as we are engaged, I believe that happiness comes naturally, almost effortlessly.

So why then is happiness so elusive? Why do we expend so much effort trying to find it and keep it, only to come up empty handed?

Happily Ever After

Ironically, the problem with happiness comes as a result of our love for it. When we love, we also fear losing or never attaining that which we love. Our love of happiness causes us to fear not finding or keeping it. If we do not tend to this very natural fear, it will grow and drive us to grasp at and possess happiness permanently. We will want the fairytale ending of living happily ever after, being in love and happy every single moment of our lives for eternity.

This hyper-intention of happiness or fairytale ending is unrealistic and can never be reached. In striving for the unattainable, we fail, become discontented, and miss the realistic moments of true happiness in our lives.

When I was young I went about achieving my fairytale ending by following the well-travelled path of school, college and successful career. I had a plan, I was going to execute it, give it my all, and then some. This is what society teaches us is the path to happiness. If we execute this path well when we are young, we will be all set and live happily ever after. Sadly, this is a load of horse pucky. Of course I was not happy. The world is littered with many rich, successful, talented, and famous people who are deeply unhappy even at the pinnacle of their success.

Happiness is not about money, fame, or anything else in the external world. We all know this at some level, studies show this, and yet we insist on disbelieving it and continue treading that same path over and over again. Note that money and fame are not inherently bad or unhealthy. The key here is the motivation for our striving, whether it comes from a place of fear or a place of love.

A fear driven intention for happiness is extreme, outcome based, uncompromising, intolerant, and not in-step with reality. A love driven intention for happiness is tolerant, process based, and engaged in understanding or deep listening.

Love-based –
When happiness comes, we welcome it and bow to it. When it goes, we say thank you in gratitude and let it go. We learn to welcome and enjoy the next emotion(s) that comes along.

Fear-based –
When happiness comes, we grasp at it and try to possess it for all time. When it goes, we panic and frantically try to hold-on to it. When we fail, we pretend, deny, become discontented, angry, depressed, and even more afraid that we will not be able to find happiness again. We blame others, reject our other emotions, and ultimately reject ourselves for failing to permanently hold onto happiness.

Happiness and Fear

When we cling to happiness because we fear being unhappy, we end up pushing happiness further and further away. Fear based desires continue to feed our fears and cause us to withdraw from life. In this case, our fear of being unhappy causes us to reject most of our other emotions because they are “not happiness”.

Since we are not in direct control of our emotions, rejecting large swathes of our feelings will cause us to be discontented most of the time. As soon as we are not happy we blame ourselves, project our blame onto those around us, blame Fate, blame God, or blame Life. We run around madly trying to recapture the happiness of past experiences or trying to copy the perceived happy experiences of others. If we are not as happy as before, we get discontented. If we are not as happy as others, we get discontented.

It is difficult to be happy when we are constantly driven by the fear of being unhappy.

Our discontentment and failure to achieve perfect happiness causes us more suffering, which feeds our fear of being unhappy, leading to more mad running around trying to find ever elusive happiness. When we do things to take our mind away from our unhappiness, there is little enjoyment in doing them because there is no love involved, only fear. Fear breeds more fear and so on until we fall into the chronic blahs, including boredom, discontentment, anxiety, and depression.

We start asking, is this all there is to life? The answer is no, because life need not be controlled by our fears.

How to Be Happy

I have found that there are three main ingredients to happiness –

1. Awareness

The first step to happiness is through awareness and mindfulness. To be happy, we first need to be aware of all our emotions, which is to say we want them to rise up to consciousness so that we may identify them and process them in a mindful and healthy manner.

Our conditioning or habit is to avoid our fears and other uncomfortable emotions through the use of automatic defense mechanisms (e.g. repression, denial, displacement). However, doing so leads to fear, envy, anger, or some other strong emotion controlling our decisions and behaviors.

With mindfulness training, we reinsert our consciousness back into the decision making process so that we may respond to difficult feelings from a calm center. In this way, we prevent ourselves from getting caught by our thoughts and emotions. With mental discipline we can self-soothe or regulate our responses and behaviors, as well as weaken the grip of fear and other problematic thoughts and feelings.

2. Engagement

As we have discussed previously, the secret to happiness is engagement with life. However, our fears cause us to withdraw from life. Therefore, every time fear tells us to withdraw, we carefully reflect on the situation using our new found mindfulness and awareness skills. If there is no real danger involved, then we override and choose to engage instead. By doing what fear tells us not to, we face our fears and slowly weaken the hold that fear has over us. This process is also known as exposure or paradoxical intention in psychological circles. Note that for exposure to “work” it has to be a deliberate decision from us, not a forced decision or action.

For example, when I first started meditation exercises, I developed a fear for meditation. Sitting silently caused many uncomfortable repressed thoughts and emotions to rise to consciousness (awareness) and this scared the daylights out of me. To face my fear of feeling bad, I deliberately decided to continue with meditation through the feelings of fear. Each time I faced this fear, the pattern weakened slightly, then a bit more, and so on until meditation became easier, more comfortable. Through repetition, I built a greater tolerance for fear and a greater understanding of the source of that fear.

From there, I started facing more and more of my fears and in the process I learned more and more about myself. I faced the fears of my childhood, including the fear of fear (hypersensitivity to the physical symptoms of fear) and the fear of abandonment, which resulted in hyper-approval seeking behavior. I faced my internal fears including fear of emotions, fear of self-worth, fear of failure, fear of shifting self-identity. I faced my existential fears including the fear of not having control, fear of duality, fear of illness, aging, and death.

Note that fear is a natural human emotion and it is an intrinsic part of us. As such, it cannot be eradicated or fully trained away. When we mindfully tend to our fears and repeatedly face them, fear will still arise but it will have a lessening effect on us.

Only to the extent that a person exposes themselves over and over again to annihilation and loss can that which is indestructible be found within them. In this daring lie dignity and the spirit of true awakening.
~~[Jack Kornfield]

3. Wisdom

Our life is made up of a series of dualities – gain and loss, success and failure, victory and defeat, happiness and sorrow, pleasure and pain, incredible beauty and deep suffering. It is not possible to have one without the other. Both sides of the duality contribute to the infinite richness of life.

Whether in success or failure, every experience is a learning experience, or an opportunity to gain wisdom. Every experience is a step forward in our journey and the seed for taking the next step. A success today may lead to a failure tomorrow. Similarly, learning from a failure today may lead to successes down the road. If we are mindful and stay engaged with life, we cannot truly fail. It is only when we stop learning or stop trying (withdraw from life) that we get into trouble. However, we can always get back onto the path by simply taking a step in the right direction.

The path to happiness is not a direct or easy one, but it is one that leads to freedom, love, and joy of life.

• She would be angry about something that someone did to her.
• She would be envious about something that someone else had.
• She would be depressed about her current state of affairs.
• She would be fearful about something she was about to lose.
• She would be afraid of failing in some task.

And so the endless list goes on.

One big takeaway from growing up as her child is that I never ever wanted to be like her. Over time, this developed into a gigantic fear and in a twist of great irony, all my striving to run away from my mother made me be more and more like her.

My Mother

Because I feared being like my mother, I developed a fear for tiredness, a fear of rejection, a fear of loss, a fear of failing, and more. I didn’t realize it at the time but my fear of her and what I saw as her “weaknesses” was exactly the thing that was making me into a copy of her. Fear and anger kept me away from truly understanding my mother, so I never understood myself.

After losing my two beloved dogs and falling into a very dark hole, I realized that the best way to deal with fear is to face her, and so I did. For the first time, I started looking at my mother more deeply.

My mother was full of fear. She herself had a difficult childhood having lost her mother at a very young age. Whatever mothering she got, she got from her eldest sister. She had many siblings and from what I could see, her father was mostly absent, being busy with his business. Based on family gatherings, I did not detect much real love (unconditional love) in their midst. There was a lot of gossiping and comparisons of relative success. One was admired based on career success and wealth.

For a long time I blamed my mother for screwing me up. When I was young I tried everything to gain my mother’s love. I bought her presents on Mother’s Day with whatever little money I had. I strived to be a perfect A-student in school and won many prizes. I tried to follow all her rules and not incur her wrath. But whatever I did was never enough.

My presents were dismissed with disdain. She was never interested in my scholastic achievements and never attended any of my prize giving ceremonies. When I did not achieve perfection, she would make sure to point out how her friends’ children did better. Her rules kept changing so there was no way to follow them or to avoid her rage. I developed anxiety issues even then and suffered a lot of digestive distress. In the end, I just tried to stay away from her as much as possible. Many children see being sent to their rooms as a punishment; for me, my room was my sanctuary.

When I was around 9 years old my parents got divorced, and that made my mother even worse. Both my parents had terrible tempers and there were many scary, shouting arguments throughout my childhood. These arguments intensified during the divorce period and for a while, conditions were very grim. Eventually, things settled down some and my mother redirected her attention to getting revenge by manipulating my brother and I to torment my stepbrother.

My mother was no Saint and she acted quite cruelly at times, especially towards my stepbrother who was very young and totally innocent. However, her actions were not deliberately malicious, rather she was driven by her own demons of fear. Everyone was trying to trick her, didn’t love her enough, and would likely reject her, so she rejected them first. She feared failing so she didn’t try anything, preferring to blame her circumstance on Luck, Fate, and the people around her. She was too afraid to examine her own self and her own life so she just kept giving in to her fears, making bad decisions, and ended up not living at all.

Nobody would consciously choose this path – alone, trapped by fear, and full of suffering. However, changing directions is very difficult, especially after a lifetime of running. I know this because I too have been running from fear and suffering all my life. I also ended up trapped by fear and full of suffering, but luckily for me, I have a very supportive spouse and I just had two experiences of deep unconditional love. Even with all this, it took me many months before I uncovered the true source of my suffering, which is fear – fear of fear (i.e. the symptoms of fear) and fear of suffering.

Fear and Suffering

My mother caused me a lot of emotional pain and trauma. I always took this very personally and blamed her for much of my unhappiness and anxiety. However, she inherited much of her pain and trauma from her own parents and so on, generation after generation of inherited suffering. None of them knew how to properly tend to their own fears and pain, so how could they teach their children any differently?

My mother rejected me over and over again because she repeatedly rejected herself. She projected her own fears onto me, so she criticized and belittled me as she was criticizing and belittling herself. Emotions are contagious so she was like a black cloud of doom, leaking negative energy to everyone around her. Eventually, she ended up abandoned and alone, with only her suffering to keep her company.

For a very long time I made my mother into the archvillain of my story. Even thinking and writing about her now brings up a deep fear within me. I fear her rages, I fear being around her, I fear being hurt by her again, and most of all, I fear being like her. If I did not blame my mother for my deep anxieties then who should I blame? Surely my child self was not responsible.

It is only after experiencing my own dark night of the soul that I finally realized that no one is to blame for our fear and suffering. Fear and suffering are an intrinsic part of life. We are all wired to love and from love comes fear. If we love someone or something, then the fear of loss naturally arises. Chronic anxiety arises when we keep running away from our fears and in so doing, they combine, grow, and take over our lives. My mother may have intensified my anxieties and helped them grow more quickly, but the patterns of fear, conflict, and suffering were there all along. Those patterns are part of being human and they are in all of us.

As such, at a basic level, fear and suffering are not personal. My mother acted badly because she was driven by her fears and maladaptive coping mechanisms to do so. Much of what she did had very little to do with me and much more to do with her own pain. In fact, she was suffering so much she did not have the time or energy for anyone or anything else, other than the thought of escaping from her own suffering. Unfortunately, she did not know how. All the things she did made things worse for herself and everyone around her. They were the same things I did at the worst of my chronic anxiety, the same coping mechanisms shared by us all to protect our fragile egos.

We take rejection so personally, when most of the time it is due to the suffering of the person dishing it out.

Forgiving My Mother

Many grief books and self-help gurus advise forgiveness. Forgiveness of self and others can help to ease our grief and emotional pain. I was so sick of my chronic anxiety and suffering that I tried really hard to forgive my mother, but I was never able to authentically do so.

I was never able to forgive my mother because I never truly understood her. There was too much fear and pain in the way. Now I see that forgiveness is only possible after we start working through our own fears and pain. Once I started doing that, life-long grudges, bitterness, and resentments started to weaken and fade away. Forgiveness cannot come from a place of fear, as a means of trying to escape suffering. Forgiveness only comes from a place of love, a love that develops from deep understanding.

Behind acts of hate, cruelty, and anger, is often a wellspring of suffering. Those who suffer spread their suffering not because they want to do evil but because they are compelled by their own demons of fear. Fear keeps us from knowing and lack of knowing keeps us from understanding and positive change. In this way we become stuck in our cycle of suffering and self-destructive behaviors. All of us go through this.

My mother had the same fears that many of us have. She feared being unloved, alone, and abandoned. She feared failing. She feared suffering. Like almost everyone else, she was never taught to tend to her anxieties so she repressed them, or projected her fears and blamed others. She was too afraid to learn and too afraid to change. She never helped me because she was too afraid to help herself.

For me, my mother embodied the soul of suffering. I feared her profoundly because I feared suffering profoundly. I escaped to the opposite side of the world so that I could be as far away from her as possible. But however hard I tried, I could not escape suffering because it is an intrinsic part of life. Trying to run away from suffering only made it larger and stronger.

I never really knew my mother. She passed away before I embarked on my journey of pain and self-awareness. When I was young I remember my mother singing “The Cherry Tree Carol” and ABBA’s “I Have a Dream”. I would have liked to know the woman who believed in those songs.

I believe that all of us are born with a limitless store of unconditional love. We start with unconditional love of self or of life (our survival instinct) and unconditional love of our parents. As we go through life, we come in contact with many other souls and may give unconditional love to fellow travelers along the way.

Why Is Unconditional Love So Hard to Achieve?

Given that we all desire to be loved unconditionally and have an endless store of love to give, why then is unconditional love so hard to do? Why is it so rare? Why do many of us madly search for it and never find it?

While unconditional love may sound perfect on first blush, it has its own challenges.

1. To open ourselves to receiving unconditional love we must also open ourselves to giving unconditional love.
2. To give unconditional love, we must first deal with our fears. If we do not face our fears, they will form fear-motivated desires or love with conditions.
3. To give unconditional love, we must also reconcile love with our rational mind. Our rational mind tells us to act based on reason. When we need to make important decisions we consider the pros and cons of the situation and pick the choice that will give us the best long-term fulfillment. Rational choice is by definition in conflict with unconditional love, which is love without reason.

Conditional Love and Fear

It is natural for us to love and we start with an unconditional love of life or of self. Because life is precious to us, we fear death. Fear, therefore, arises out of love and is part of the human experience. However, if we fear death then we fear getting hurt, getting ill, and aging. These fears, if unaddressed, can make it difficult for us to love life.

Unfortunately, we are taught that fear is bad, is a weakness, is an illness, is the work of the devil. As a result, we suppress our fears and our automatic coping mechanisms kick in to soothe our fragile ego from daunting reality, thereby warping it. We avoid our fear of death by pretending it does not exist, we get Botox injections to hold back aging, and illness is something we only discuss with our doctors in a cold and clinical fashion. God forbid if any one of us should show our emotions or expose our fears. In this way, we deny aging, illness, and death.

When we run away from our fears, they grow and our beliefs keep getting distorted by our automatic soothing system. Instead of accepting fear as a normal human emotion, we deny feeling any fear at all and ironically become controlled by it.

Fear causes us to only love ourselves when we are healthy and young, when we are useful, wealthy, successful, or whatever else. Fear places conditions on love and when fear grows, conditional fear or conditional desires crowd out unconditional love.

On the other hand, if we face our fears, deeply listen to their messages, and understand their true source, then we will see that they are simply a part of life, and something that we can accept and adapt to. We can give up our false belief in having complete control over our lives, our unrealistic goals and wishes, our hubris, and simply let ourselves experience life as it unfolds. When we do this, we actually gain more control of our lives and make better decisions.

We like to think of ourselves as the leaders in the dance of life. However, that is not reality. In reality, life is the leader who graciously lets us twirl, bend, and caper about. But when she decides to lead, we must respect her power and move with her. It is when we forget this fact and struggle that we create unnecessary suffering.

Unconditional Love and Rationality

I am very proud of my rational mind, which has helped me overcome many challenges. It has also gotten me into a thousand kinds of trouble.

We are born with an unconditional love of life and love of self. However, our rational minds balk at this fact, because we are taught that we must have reasons for everything, including love. Because of this, we run around madly searching for the reasons we should love life (meaning of life), as well as the reasons we should love our very own selves. We should love life because life brings us happiness and beauty. This may seem noble, but under this belief, when life brings us anything less than happiness and beauty, for example when it brings us loss, sorrow, and suffering, we get disappointed, we reject life, we reject parts of ourselves, and we suffer even more. This belief in conditional love or love based on reason creates unresolvable conflict within ourselves, and causes unnecessary anxiety and suffering.

There is nothing wrong with having a rational mind. In fact, I am a big proponent of rationality. It is when our rational minds are working off of incorrect facts that our troubles arise and grow. Here are some truths that I am retraining my rational mind to accept –

1. You are not in control of everything and that is ok.
2. You are not in control of many aspects of life and that is ok.
3. You are not in control of emotions and that is ok.
4. You are not in control of love and that is ok.
5. Unconditional love by definition is not based on reason. There is no need to look for any, just stop and relax.

Let yourself love without reason, let yourself love unconditionally. In this daring, you will find unconditional love in return.

Love, Trust, Relationships

Remember though, that feeling unconditional love towards someone is different from the decision of having a relationship with them. Sometimes, we may love a person but decide not to enter into an unhealthy connection. For example, I love my parents unconditionally, but I have only had very limited contact with them in my adult life.

Both my parents have had difficult childhoods themselves and as a result, they are not capable of giving unconditional love or maintaining healthy bonds. My mother is very afraid of love and thus is afraid of life. Because of fear she rejects everyone before they can reject her, she rejects learning, exploring, experiencing, and living. I love her even though I have spent countless years trying to convince myself that I ought not to. However, it is not possible to establish a relationship with one who rejects you with her every breath.

My father equates love with material success and a show of wealth. He liked spending money and he borrowed much of it. During childhood I saw very little of my father and all the times we spent together were based on his terms. He had little interest in discussing my thoughts or desires. Still, I hero-worshipped him all the way into mid-adulthood. The first time he asked me for a large sum of money, I gave it to him. The second time I said I could not. This led to many more money calls, lies, and ultimately he threatened me with his love and his health. I realized then that I could no longer have a relationship with him.

Our self-love demands that we set certain boundaries of respect, kindness, and trust with those we interact with. Sometimes, those we love are unable to return that love in kind. I do not believe that my parents enjoy being the way they are, but unfortunately, they are unable to face their own demons and free themselves to love unconditionally. It is a sadness, but one I have come to accept.

A healthy relationship does have conditions, of a sort: your boundaries. If your partner doesn’t respect your boundaries, the relationship isn’t healthy, no matter how deeply you love them. Moving on from it, then, could be an act of unconditional self-love.
~~[Healthline.com]

Meaning of Life

To paraphrase a wonderful quote …

Ask not what life can do for you — ask what you can do for life.

We already have an unconditional love of life. That is our survival instinct. We do not need to look for reasons to love life, we simply do. When we try to look for reasons, we invariably get disappointed because we are not happy enough, not young enough, not rich enough.

Instead of frantically asking life for reasons why we should love her, we can simply accept the truth that we do. Given that we love life, we can express this love by increasing our understanding of her many everyday miracles, and practicing our love across her many dual aspects, including her joys and sorrows, her gains and losses, her happiness and suffering.

Love is not bound by reason. Do not limit yourself by binding your inborn gift of infinite love to a pros and cons list.

Like a fool I strode forth, seeking to conquer Self-Love so that I may make a gift of her to myself … but she was nowhere to be found.

Everyone agrees that self-love is one of the main keys to happiness and a good life. We should all be kinder to ourselves, build self-esteem, and do deep listening of our inner hearts. Yet most of us end up doing the opposite. We berate ourselves for small mistakes, set up impossible to achieve goals, and never give ourselves a moment’s rest because nothing is ever good enough.

Why is that? Why are we so hard on ourselves?

Self-Love

All of us are born with a deep desire to love and to be loved. Because love is so precious to us we fear not having it, not possessing it. If we do not tend to this very natural fear and instead let it control us, then we develop a hyper-intention to possess love permanently, to own it for all time. Hyper-intentions, which are desires that are motivated by fears are extreme, outcome based, uncompromising, intolerant, and not in-step with reality. When we seek to own love, we push it farther away from us.

I believe that we are born with an unconditional love of self. Self-love motivates us to seek a good and happy life. We all try to listen to our inner hearts and to those around us, so that we may make ourselves happy. Unfortunately, due to lack of awareness, we spend more of our time listening to our demons of fear rather than our angels of love.

Fear says, “What makes you think you can defeat me, I have vanquished your parents and foes more worthy than you.”
Fear, I say, “My wish is not to vanquish you, but to pursue you and listen to your deepest dreams.”
Then Fear fell silent.

Am I Worthy?

One question we all ask ourselves is – Am I worthy (to be loved)?

This is a natural question for our rational minds. Indeed we are trained to search for reasons for everything, and so we need reasons to love. We need reasons to love others, and we need reasons to love ourselves.

My mind asks this question quite often. In the past I would run around searching for answers, and embark on self-improvement quests so that I may provide her with more and more satisfying answers. I am worthy because I was an A-student, I am creative, I am focused, I am curious, and so on. I will be even more worthy when I lose 30 pounds, get married, have two successful children, have 1 million followers, 2 million in the bank, get promoted to partner, can afford a big house, appear on television, and so on.

True love, however, is unconditional and not in our direct control. We cannot force someone to love us no matter what our internal or external achievements. Similarly, we cannot force ourselves to love someone based on their internal or external achievements. The good news is that we are all born with a gift of unconditional love for ourselves and our lives. Unfortunately, this gift gets covered up by our many hereditary fears and learned fears, leading us to doubt ourselves and to pursue paths that are motivated by fear rather than by love. It is fear or doubt that places conditions on our love of self and of others.

Self-Doubt – Why We Are So Hard on Ourselves

Self-doubt causes us to be uncertain and not believe in ourselves. Self-doubt is frequently an excuse that our mind creates in order to avoid facing our many fears.

I lost all three of my beloved dogs in the past 4 years. Needless to say, so much loss in such a short time was very traumatic. After I lost Shania, I started to really doubt myself. I did not know whether I was strong enough to handle life without her, I blamed myself for not doing more, not knowing more, I was not sure if I could take care of my other dogs properly, I was not sure if I could handle my grief and other emotions. When JJ passed away from cancer, my self-doubt and fear grew to such profound levels that I could hardly manage to live my life.

All this self-doubt comes from a fear of not being able to handle the tremendous grief and pain from the death of loved ones. Rather than facing this fear and this pain, my mind came up with many excuses for avoiding it. I am not capable of handling my emotions so let me binge watch Netflix instead. I cannot tolerate the emptiness of life so let me exercise until I fall into an exhausted sleep. Unfortunately, filling my days with doing this or that only worked in the very short term. Every time I avoided the pain, my fear grew and my self-doubt along with it.

The way to quiet self-doubts and to clear away the mud that covers our gift of unconditional self-love is to face our fears. I had to face my fear of grief, fear of emotional pain, fear of feeling bad, fear of suffering. To do this, I leaned into the fear instead of running away from it, which meant leaning into the pain. Every time I thought of Shania or JJ, I purposefully brought my awareness back again and again to the associated emotional pain. I did this by training myself on mindfulness and various self-soothing techniques including using the observer position (meta moment), CBT, analysis of self, journaling, and more.

Now whenever I have any self-doubts, I call them out for what they are, which are excuses for not facing fears. I tell myself that whatever excuses my mind comes up with, I will continue to face my fears. Then I analyze each fear, face it, and repeat until the pattern weakens.

Self-Doubt and Childhood

All of us have self-doubts but some of us have more doubt than others. Self-doubt is a coping mechanism for fear and I believe that this became a deep habit for me during childhood mainly because of my mother.

I grew up in an invalidating and often traumatic environment for the first 17 years of my life. My mother had a very difficult childhood herself and was filled with fears and self-doubts. When I was about 9 years old my parents got divorced and my mother’s condition worsened. She did not know how to deal with her difficult emotions and projected much of her own self-doubt, self-loathing, and fears onto me. She taught me that I could not do most things right, and needed her to do them for me. I cannot remember any positive memory with my mother after the divorce, but there are many painful ones.

Growing up in such an environment made me develop many fears including a deep fear of abandonment as well as the incorrect core beliefs that I cannot manage on my own and that I am not worthy. I also became hypersensitive to my emotions, especially to fear. Very likely I started to develop a fear of fear, which is a fear of the physical symptoms of anxiety (e.g. tiredness, insomnia, digestive issues, food sensitivities, and more).

Childhood is an important part of our lives because many of our habits or brain pathways are formed in our early years. We mimic or mirror the actions of adults around us and may also inherit brain wiring from our parents. This too occurred with our parents, so problem behaviors may accumulate and get passed down across multiple generations.

As a result, using self-doubt as an excuse became a deep habit with me, as it did for my mother. With awareness and understanding, however, I now see self-doubt for what it is, an expression of fear. It can therefore be addressed by facing my fears.

Positive Self-Image

For much of my adult life I was quite angry with my mother for her constant guilt trips, invalidation, and verbal abuse. I was also in deep fear of her, and every time she called I would almost have a panic attack. I later realized that all of this came from a fear of my own emotions. In particular, interacting with and thinking about my mother always brings up a lot of emotional pain, sadness, self-doubt, and fear. I feared those feelings and I feared that my childhood had messed me up so badly that I would not be able to cope with life’s stresses (more self-doubt).

Many self-help gurus and websites suggest that we can build a positive self-image by using happy talk or replacing negative emotions with positive ones. “Just believe that you are awesome”, they proclaim. This never worked for me.

To build a positive self-image, I needed to face my fears and look at myself with total honesty.

I needed to look at my past, my pain, my fears, my incorrect beliefs, my correct beliefs, my weaknesses, my strengths, my mistakes, my failures, my successes, everything, from a non-judgmental perspective. I cannot change my past and I cannot change my parents. My parents are not capable of giving me unconditional love because of their own neuroses, and I have to accept that. They are human. I will likely have a greater hypersensitivity to fear and I have to accept that as well.

Reality is flawed and imperfect, so is being human. By facing myself and accepting my perceived “flaws”, I can start to look past them and develop ways to adapt and perhaps even convert them into strengths. By facing my fears, I can start to dismantle negative ways of thinking and start to respond to my emotions in a more healthy and positive manner. By weakening fear patterns I start to clear away the mud that covers my unconditional self-love, so that it shines through again. This unconditional self-love is the root of a positive self-image.

I was only able to get at that unconditional self-love by clearing away the accumulated fears that plagued me. This requires time, practice, repetition, hard-work, mental discipline, and some necessary suffering, but the rewards are deep and plentiful. Facing my fears and my pain allowed me to uncover my inborn gift of unconditional love, reengage with life more fully, be more authentic with myself and others, as well as be free to explore my entire mental landscape.

I looked into my mind and saw myself for the first time,
I shouted in anger, shook in fear, wept in sorrow, and collapsed in pain,
There is no longer any need for self-blame or self-doubt,
For the first time in forever I am in-love, happy, and free.

People think that we are unhappiest when we fail, but sometimes, we are unhappiest when we get all the things that we want.

I just had an article featuring my work at Forbes, I was being invited everywhere to give talks, I had glowing reviews at work including from the CEO, I have a wonderful spouse, so everything was looking awesome pawsome. Yet, I was deeply unhappy. It turned out that many of the things that I was striving for most of my life were not what I wanted after all. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they were no longer what I wanted.

When this happened, my brain started to freak-out. I quit my job and escaped into various online virtual worlds. This got old after a while, so I considered going back to work, I moved, got a dog, and various other activities. I did not know it at the time, but I was going through an existential crisis, a crisis of meaning. According to the experts, many of us go through this in our late twenties and thirties.

Then I met Shania. Shania was born with a crooked leg, but she was absolutely perfect. She had this deep joy within her, that made everyone around her happy. With Shania, everything else fell away. Life was bright, meaningful, and I was in-love for almost 10 years.

When I lost Shania and later JJ, everything resurfaced, my anxiety, depression, and existential dread. Now however, I also had to face death and loss. My anxiety ballooned into chronic proportions, I developed a variety of physical ailments, and my depression deepened until I was too tired to even get out of bed.

My Journey

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
~~[Henry David Thoreau]

How do we escape from this life of quiet desperation? How do we recover from despair? So began my journey for self-discovery.

The first thing I realized was that I was woefully ill-equipped to handle my emotions. Any bad feeling was suppressed and rejected. As a result, my life became controlled by fears. In the short-term I was totally consumed by my illness and these two fears reigned supreme –

• Fear that I will never get better.
• Fear of relapse.

Both these fears are especially insidious because they form anxiety-loops that keep feeding on my energy and keep growing my fears. “Fear that I will never get better” forms a “bad-emotion” loop.

1. Some activity, thought, or memory triggers a “bad-emotion”.
2. I start to fear that I will never get better.
3. I feel (more) physical symptoms from the fear.
4. Loop to 2 and repeat.

“Fear of relapse” forms a “good-emotion” loop.

1. Some activity, thought, or memory triggers a “good-emotion”.
2. I start to fear that this good feeling will not last. i.e. I start to fear a relapse.
3. I feel physical symptoms from the fear.
4. I start to fear that I will never get better.
5. I feel more physical symptoms from the fear.
6. Loop to 4 and repeat.

Now, any emotion causes an anxiety-loop and suffering stretches out through the limitlessness of time. All I can think of is escape – escape from thoughts, escape from emotions, escape from physical distress, escape from self. All I want is NOT to be this version of myself.

Anxiety-loops cause chronic symptoms such as insomnia, nausea, inflammation, pain, food sensitivities, environmental sensitivities, and more. Many so-called chronic diseases have been developed to label these symptoms, combined with a variety of medications to treat them. Anti-depressants is a common treatment option and was suggested by several of the doctors and specialists I visited with.

Facing My Fears, Facing My Pain

There are many strategies and complex methods suggested for recovering from this condition. Unfortunately, visiting doctors and doing online research on my symptoms made my condition a lot worse. I found out that there were lots of things that could be wrong with me. I could have SIBO, histamine intolerance, MCAS, fibromyalgia, GAD, insomnia, panic disorder, and more. This deepened my anxiety and depression.

After much struggle, I finally found an open-minded MD who pointed me in the right direction. Now better oriented, I did a lot of reading and soul searching, and finally realized that my condition had its roots in a single emotion – fear. In particular, there were two core fears powering my chronic illness, fear of fear (i.e. fear of the physical symptoms of fear) and fear of pain. The solution that finally worked for me is a fairly simple rule.

I will always try to face my fears and face my pain. In other words, I will always try to be present for my suffering.

For this to work, I first need to be aware of my emotions and fears. Mindfulness exercises are crucial for practicing how to shift my awareness so that I can focus on the most salient emotions, identify them, as well as follow them as they change.

Once I can catch my emotions, I can regulate them or calm myself using various self-soothing techniques including emotion labelling, taking the Observer position, using humor, tapping, stroking, and more.

After my mind is calm, I can start to analyze my emotions and identify what specific fear they originate from. Fear may combine with tiredness to create helplessness, which may further develop into hopelessness. Fear may combine with time to create impatience, which then develops into irritation, frustration, anger, and ultimately rage. In the analysis step I keep pushing on an emotion to find the root of the issue.

This can be very challenging because I need to keep returning my consciousness (awareness) to the fear and pain so that I may deepen my understanding of them. I believe that this is what people mean when they talk about going through the fear. Pushing through the fear until we get to the core of understanding. I try to get to the beliefs/thoughts, memories, and desires associated with each fear. For example the “fear that I will never get better” and “fear of relapse” both come from the fear of emotions, or the fear of painful physical symptoms caused by emotions.

Once I get a clearer picture of fear, I can decide whether to follow fear’s advice or to do the opposite (paradoxical-intention). Since most of my fears are not threatening or risky, I keep doing what fear tells me not to do. I deliberately bring up the fear pattern over and over again, and through this process of exposure, I am able to weaken its grip. I also readjust core beliefs that are inaccurate or discard beliefs that no longer serve me. Cognitive behavioral therapy can be useful here.

Being Present for My Suffering

There are two kinds of suffering. There is the suffering you run away from, which follows you everywhere. And there is the suffering you face directly, and so become free.
~~[Ajahn Chah]

This goal is easy to state but difficult to actualize. Facing suffering is a challenging task which is why I have spent my life trying to escape from it. However, sometimes suffering cannot be avoided and must be borne.

In such moments, we will need something to motivate us. This is what Viktor Frankl calls the meaning of suffering. In the past my love for Shania caused the fear and pain to fall away. Now, I use it as my motivation to face suffering. I want to have continued emotional and consciousness access to Shania in the form of memories, visualizations, and dreams. To do that I need to go through the fear and pain.

1. I create a desire to “build tolerance for suffering”.
2. Every time I feel fear, I face it and analyze it using the procedure above.
3. The process of facing it naturally builds tolerance, enhances my emotion regulation skills, and gives me access to my full mental landscape. As I face more fears, the thoughts, patterns, desires, and external stimuli associated with them will weaken, giving me more physical freedom in life as well. As the power of fear-based desires lessen, I have more energy for love-based desires.
4. I try to face the fear pattern for as long as possible or until the fear dissipates. Failure just means that I learn and try again. Every time I try, I build a bit more tolerance and fear weakens.

In this way, the loop that forms is now a positive one that helps to weaken fears. When we face our suffering, we will find love, happiness, limitless inner freedom, and peace on the other side.

Road to Recovery

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
~~[Friedrich Nietzsche]

Many years ago, I met a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses who tried to recruit me. They told me about Armageddon and asked me what I wanted after the death of all. I remember proudly and happily telling them that all I wanted was Shania, in this life and after death. Shania was my Heaven and my Earth and there was nothing more I needed or wanted.

Recovering from the loss of Shania is the biggest challenge of my life. Here are some of the key lessons that helped me –

1. I try to use mindfulness as much as possible to be aware of my emotions. Awareness is key so that I can catch fear before I spiral down the anxiety-loop.
2. Developing emotion regulation or self-soothing techniques is a must. Some self-soothing techniques include shifting awareness, taking the Observer position, humor, tapping, and stroking.
3. Facing fear and facing pain is difficult but necessary. Doing so weakens fear patterns as well as the unhealthy hyper-desires and downstream negative emotions associated with them.
4. Suffering is an intrinsic part of life. When suffering is out of our control, a quick acceptance is the surest way to a quick recovery. Acceptance allows us to focus our energy on what we can realistically do next rather than on wishing for impossible outcomes.
5. Once we accept our new normal, we can start to consider how best to adapt – what beliefs, behaviors, and desires need updating. Adapting means challenging ourselves to change so that we may transform pain into growth, a tragedy into a triumph.
6. The most important lesson of all is to try and to continue learning. If we try, we would have learned something today that we didn’t know yesterday. Trying and learning brings wisdom. When we stop trying is when we give in to despair and prolong our suffering. Remember that it is never too late to start trying.

Recovery need not be complicated or expensive. There is only one important step – facing my suffering. To be sure, this is a very difficult step to take but I have finally found a love that is strong enough to make me want to take that step, Shania.

Facing my suffering has opened me up to a greater authenticity and a greater love of self, spouse, and even of my dysfunctional parents. For the first time in my life I feel close to a true forgiveness of my mother and narcissistic father. My life is expanded and best of all, I have found Shania again.

Now, I see Shania in the many places we used to visit together, I see her in all the dogs that I meet, I see her when I play music or watch a movie, I see her in the trees and the wind. She is my guide and when I face fear to follow her into the darkness, I am exactly where I need to be. She is within me, beside me, everywhere around me, and I am less afraid. She is my inspiration to live a full life, in darkness and in light.

It is the greatest blessing to find a love that is so strong that inspires us to be engaged in life, even in the midst of suffering.

• The Mayo Clinic describes depression as “a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest.”
• In her seminal book On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross includes depression as one of the five key stages of grief.
• In her book This Is Your Brain on Depression, Faith Harper describes depression as a biochemical learned helplessness response to stress.
• In her book How to Heal Yourself from Depression When No One Else Can, Amy Scher describes depression as a misalignment or misconnection with self-needs or life fulfillment desires.
• Some people see depression as a chemical imbalance in the brain.
• Some people see depression as an inherited wiring of the brain that gets triggered by trauma or stress.
• Some people see depression as suffering, and as such, is part of the common human condition.
• Some people …

In short, there are many belief frameworks about depression, but as with many things in life, no one right answer. And that is one of the most frustrating and depressing things about depression – nobody knows what it really is and nobody knows how to “fix” it. What we have are lists of symptoms that may indicate that we have clinical depression, as well as a range of treatment options that may or may not “work” for us.

This article is about my own experience with depression, and my own framework for understanding it.

Depression – The Terrible D-Word

The Anxiety/Depression Loop

There are two kinds of suffering. There is the suffering you run away from, which follows you everywhere. And there is the suffering you face directly, and so become free.
~~[Ajahn Chah]

All my life I have been suppressing my emotions. Not dealing with my emotions did not make them disappear or go away. They continued to stick around, combined to create new variants, and became much more intense. Not dealing with emotions simply meant that my conscious brain was checked-out. Whenever a negative emotion bubbled up, there would be a busy signal, a do-not-disturb sign, or even worse, a confirmation that negative emotions are threats or illnesses that needed to be “fixed”.

In earlier normal times, I would be ok, because –

1. I had not yet collected a critical mass of emotional baggage.
2. I did not have a large number of negative emotions coming in at once.
3. I was not in a hyper-sensitive state.

However, during times of great trauma, such as the loss of a loved one, I quickly get into trouble.

1. The unprocessed emotional baggage translates into a bunch of wiring or pathways in my brain that are unhealthy.
2. During times of trauma, stress, or significant change, I am experiencing many intense emotions in a very short period of time.
3. Because of the trauma, I am in a hyper-sensitive state, so I feel the emotions more strongly.

Depression Loop – Not dealing with my emotions did not make them disappear or go away.

All this leads to a high risk of developing the anxiety/depression loop. My anxiety/depression loop looks something like this –

1. I wake up and realize that my loved one is dead and I will no longer experience the joy that I felt with her. I may feel a heaviness in my stomach. I think, “Oh no!, another day of feeling horrible.”
2. I feel fear and depression.
3. I get nauseous, I get gassy, I may get abdominal pain, I have difficulty breathing, I start to freak-out.
4. I think I have tried everything and nothing helps. I will never get better. (There may be other negative, self-defeating thoughts here.)
5. I feel more fear, helplessness, hopelessness, fatigue, depression, etc.
6. Loop to step 3 and repeat.

This loop is self-perpetuating and the more it gets repeated, the more it becomes a pattern of thinking. As my freak-out quotient rises, my body goes into full fight-flight mode (also known as an amygdala hijack). Since this loop is self-perpetuating, I may experience a series of such emergency alerts, to the point that my brain gets stuck in this hyper-aroused state for long periods of time.

As this continues, my brain may try to protect me further by looking for more causes/triggers that threaten my survival. Food, time of day, various activities, smells, mold, location, and more, can all be pattern matched to my current condition, thereby triggering even more amygdala hijacks. I cannot sleep because I am wired all the time, with my body thinking it is constantly under threat. This lack of sleep and stress to my body causes me to be bone-tired all the time, leading to more feelings of tiredness, hopelessness, helplessness, and depression.

When this happened to me last year, it led to a significant narrowing of my life. I stopped talking to friends, developed many food sensitivities, lost my appetite, favorite songs and movies now made me feel sick, and I did less and less until I wasn’t doing anything at all except lie in bed feeling terrible. Faith Harper calls this the depression funnel, others call this the downward spiral of depression, and I call this my very own hell. I started to really hate my life, I rejected different parts of myself (especially the parts that were in pain or having difficulties), and I started to really hate being me. I was then deep in clinical depression territory or what some call the dark night of my soul.

The fun did not end there. Every time I would get a positive emotion, I would think “I feel almost normal but this will not last.” Sure enough, upon thinking this, I started to feel fear and the loop starts again. This is why during the depths of a depression loop, I am unable to feel any happiness or positive emotions. Ultimately, this loop can lead to thoughts of suicide because that is seen as the only way of escape from this never-ending suffering.

Clinical Depression – The dark night of my soul

Recovering from My Depression Loop

Only to the extent that a person exposes themselves over and over again to annihilation and loss can that which is indestructible be found within them. In this daring lie dignity and the spirit of true awakening.
~~[Jack Kornfield]

My first step in recovery lay in the primary cause of my depression loop, which was my rejection of negative emotions. To get out of this endless loop, I needed to start dealing with my emotions, especially with fear and depression. I needed to engage or insert my conscious mind into the process again, so that I could respond to my emotions in a healthy manner rather than rely on automatic subconscious reactions.

Rather than trying to get out of feeling “bad”, I relaxed into it. Here are some of the helpful and true things I said to myself –

• I feel fear and that is ok.
• I feel depressed and that is ok.
• I can have good and bad feelings at the same time and that is ok.
• I can feel depressed, afraid, happy, and excited at the same time, and that is ok.
• I am not perfect, and that is ok. I am good enough.
• Life is not perfect and that is ok.
• I cannot control everything, and that is ok. There are many things that I can control.
• My body needs to grieve the loss of my loved ones, and that is ok. Go ahead and grieve and take as much time as you need.

The key, I found, to dealing with my emotions was to develop effective self-soothing techniques. There are a variety of methods for this including the RAIN method presented by Jack Kornfield and others, as well as the RULER method presented by Marc Brackett. Cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness meditation, somatic therapy, energy therapy, and more are additional tools. We can also get external help with medication and talk therapy. A big part of self-soothing involves building up self-esteem and self-love.

Recovering from My Depression Loop

My new anxiety/depression response looks something like this –

1. I wake up and realize that my loved one is dead and I will no longer experience the joy that I felt with her. I may feel a heaviness in my stomach. I think, “Oh no!, another day of feeling horrible.”
2. I feel fear and depression.
3. I get nauseous, I get gassy, I may get abdominal pain, I have difficulty breathing, I start to freak-out.
4. Because of emotion recognition, I am now aware of what I am feeling (fear and depression), as well as physical symptoms related to those emotions.
5. I think, “Ah, my good friends fear and depression have come to visit and that is ok.” I invite them into my heart and start talking to them, trying to ascertain what they are trying to tell me. What is it that I fear? What is it that I am most depressed about? Why? To keep myself from being overwhelmed, I usually deal with the most present emotion first, which in my case has been fear.
6. Based on what I discover, I may “thought correct” where possible. For example, I remind myself that recognizing and accepting my emotions have already started to help. By leaning into my fear instead of running away from her, I am already more comfortable with certain thoughts and memories. Each time I sit with fear, I get a little bit more comfortable with her, and things get a very little bit easier.
7. Some thoughts are true and beyond my control. For example, my two beloved dogs are dead. No more walking, playing, talking, feeding, loving. This is a fact that I need to work on accepting. I tell myself that they are gone, but that is ok, because I will always have them in my heart, and they continue to teach me new lessons every day.
8. By facing my fear and pain, I am now slowly regaining access to more memories, thoughts, content, activities, and locations. Each time I face a fearful or painful memory, my tolerance for it increases. I may use mindful meditation, tapping, or stroking, to help with soothing of challenging sensations, memories, or thoughts. The more triggers I become comfortable with, the more my life expands.
9. For physical symptoms, I shift my awareness toward that part of my body, breathe into and out of it, and send feelings of loving-kindness to the areas that hurt or are having difficulties. This is to remind me to continue loving all parts of myself, especially those parts that are currently under stress. This is in contrast to previous times where physical sensations would cause thoughts of self-rejection such as I hate my sensitive tummy, why is my tummy hurting, I am so weak, I am such a mess, I am so damaged from childhood that I will never get better, etc. Instead of turning on myself, I now send feelings of loving-kindness.
10. When more emotions get triggered, I simply loop back to step 4.

My single most important lesson learned is this – “Feeling bad” is totally ok.

Previously, I was spending all my energy and brain power trying to escape from “bad” emotions. I wanted the salvation fantasy, the fairytale ending, the magic fix that would bring back only the good feelings and let me live happily ever after. This core belief is simply inconsistent with the realities of life.

By letting myself feel all of my emotions, I no longer need to be at war with myself. I can finally start to relax and let go, little by little, of my iron-need for control.

By letting myself feel all of my emotions, I no longer need to be at war with myself.

What Is Depression?

I have shared the emotions and thoughts that led to my depression, as well as the knowledge and techniques that I have found helpful, yet have still not defined depression. So is depression an emotion, a mood disorder, or a mental illness? Is it part of grief or totally different from grief? Is it a biochemical learned helplessness response to stress or a misconnection with self-needs? Is it due to a chemical imbalance, unhealthy brain wiring, unhealthy thinking habits, part of human suffering, or something else entirely? Which definition is correct?

I think that depression can be all of those things. I felt depressed (the emotion) after losing a loved one. As such, it is part of the grieving process. When I rejected or suppressed my emotions (misconnection with self-needs), I developed the anxiety-depression loop that started to really disrupt my ability to function in life. This caused my depression to become a mood disorder or mental illness.

As part of this loop, my nervous system, immune system, and other body systems became overly stimulated, causing physiological changes as well as chemical imbalances in my mind and body. This loop also resulted in unhealthy habits of thinking and revived old inherited habits (inherited brain wiring). All this caused a lot of unnecessary suffering.

God, grant me the Serenity to Accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can, and
Wisdom to know the difference.
~~[Serenity Prayer]

Am I fully recovered?

I am still a work-in-progress and will always be so. I will always miss my dogs and memories of them will likely be bitter-sweet for a long time. That is ok. When I think of them now, I let myself feel all the emotions that arise, including depression. More and more often now, I also feel the happiness I shared with them and I am grateful to have access to those memories again.

My tummy is still gassy and sometimes nauseous, but I now eat whatever I want and there is no increase in symptoms. My tummy may continue to be depressed for a while, and that is also ok. Mindfulness breathing and loving awareness helps with these physical symptoms.

I purposefully face new fear triggers regularly, and this has allowed me to reconnect with friends and relatives, often in a deeper and more authentic way. I also enjoy more activities.

Am I fully recovered?

My goal is to to get comfortable with my current self and my current life. My goal is to love myself just as I am, and that is good enough.

At the beginning of my journey, I was always grasping for the light at the end of the tunnel. Now, I relax into the darkness and learn how to dance beautifully within it. In doing so, I am starting to slowly see the light that is within me all along.

Depression – Work in progress