Turning Sh*t Into Something Beautiful
I was walking with a close friend the other day; the new kind of walking with, where we speak to each other by phone while walking in our separate neighborhoods. The conversation started out typically enough, two friends catching up on the challenges of getting through a pandemic day: food shopping, toilet paper, tensions in the house, the usual. Then the dreaded moment comes, as it always does, where my friend reveals, “we had a Zoom cocktail party with some friends the other night ….” Pause. Notice. Feel. Heart sinking. Burning in my chest. Immediately, I thought to myself, Why don’t we have any Zoom friends? Sadness. Everyone else has Zoom friends! Envy. The Fear of Missing Out button has been pushed and the too familiar thoughts and feelings are off and running. Yes, I have FOMO, even when there is nothing, absolutely nothing, for me to miss out on.
Somehow, over the past few weeks, I have found multiple “non-event” events to trigger my FOMO, including drive-by celebrations (Why don’t I get invited to any?), Zoom cocktail parties (Nobody likes us!) and NETFLIX movie-watching parties (Nobody wants to hang out with us). It seems like any time there is a non-event, I find my way back to those familiar, repetitive inner voices, the ones I truly can’t recall living without.
I’m not really sure that these feelings technically meet the criteria for FOMO, since people are not out doing exciting and fun things like they used to. It’s also not exactly FOBLO, fear of being left out, as comes up for me when people are talking about getting together with friends I don’t even know. Since there didn’t seem to be a catchy acronym for my particular syndrome, I started referring to it as “My Sh*t.” This term seems to fit, since I feel like crap once the Story About How I Don’t Belong button gets pushed and my cycle of disparaging thoughts and feelings starts rolling.
Early into the lockdown period, I noted an almost giddy sense of relief that for once in my life, I would be safe from the frequent triggers for My Sh*t. Finally, I would not have to feel that dread in every conversation, that internal tension poised in waiting for the inevitable reporting of past or future social plans. Alas, it wasn’t long before the social beings that we humans are came up with diabolical plans like Zoom parties to unhinge my ease.
With life in slow motion and external distractions minimized, we’ve been given a very unique opportunity to spend some quality time with our inner world, to examine our habitual patterns of thought, emotion and behavior. This may seem like a terrifying, boring or unproductive endeavor to those who prefer to avoid the discomfort of self-reflection by numbing, distracting or checking out. However, by this point in isolation, most of us are probably ready to admit that our less than ideal habits have been surfacing. If we haven’t noticed them ourselves, it is likely that if we are living with other people, they might have pointed them out once or twice. In fact, it actually seems like during this quarantine phase, our Sh*t feels magnified, exposed in a way that it hadn’t when plans and activities distracted us from our internal chatter. Sh*t under a magnifying glass? Crap, this is going to be ugly!
For me, the pandemic magnifying glass revealed a deep source of my life-long sense of not belonging. With My Sh*t being activated even though there was nothing happening externally, I observed the repetitive thought-feeling cycles, in which the supporting actors and plot changed while my role remained the same, playing out the same theme again and again. Given the absence of events or stories to attach to, I gained enough distance to find a broader perspective of My Sh*t. In this quieter world, I was able to see more clearly that that the habitual patterns that have played out for me internally my whole life were more driven by my family history than by the stories I told myself about my own social belonging or by my own actual life experiences.
I saw my father, born in Poland, running for his life as a young child in a field while German planes shot at him and his older sister. I saw him running away from his childhood home and being taken by Polish soldiers to Russia with his mother and two sisters. I saw him being sent from Russia to Siberia, where he spent the remainder of his childhood in a work camp, hungry, cold and alone. He never told me how he felt during those days, how painful it was to be despised and rejected, to not speak the language of the country in which he lived. He never told me how it felt to grow up without a home, without food, without his father, without friends. He didn’t tell me, in his loud and harsh voice, that for his whole life, he carried that pain of not belonging. He didn’t have to tell me. In every cell of my body, I knew. With every cell of my body, I absorbed his pain of not belonging and it became my own, as I applied it to every social situation I encountered from the time I can remember. I did that over and over, until his pain of not belonging felt like it was mine, felt real.
Maybe you don’t relate to My Sh*t because it’s not your go-to pattern of reacting. Maybe you don’t have the sensitivity that I have regarding belonging in the social world. Maybe your itty bitty sh*tty committee doesn’t sound like mine. Even if you can’t identify specifically with My Sh*t, I’m guessing that each of us has at least one set of response-patterns that makes us feel crappy. Maybe your Sh*tty patterns involve food, body image, not being enough, not having enough, feeling unlovable, judging others, and/or feeling unimportant, to name just a few ways we make ourselves miserable. During this time we have alone, together, can we make use of this extraordinary life-in-slow-motion to get to know the habitual thought-feeling-behavior patterns that make our lives more difficult and transform them into something beautiful?
If we turn towards these patterns and observe them with honesty and openness, I truly believe we can reorganize our firmly entrenched belief systems—the sh*t we believe is real, the stories we tell ourselves—into pathways for deeper connection with the more vulnerable and unique aspects of ourselves. It is through this portal of vulnerability that we learn to see and know our whole, human selves, without the mask we present to the world. In that space of genuine connection, we belong. When we reveal ourselves to others from that place of openness and vulnerability, of true belonging, we are able to be seen, felt, heard, and ultimately, to deeply and authentically connect.
AWARENESS - CHOICES - LIFESTYLE
In this section, I offer suggestions for applying the themes discussed above to your life. The more aware we are of our thought, emotion and behavior patterns, the better able we are to make choices that will enhance our health - physical, mental, emotional, relational and spiritual - and happiness. As we make more life-enhancing choices, we create a lifestyle that optimizes our well-being.
Let’s apply the My Sh*t theme to your Sh*t, for example, the thought, feeling and behavior cycles that arise when you overeat after an argument with your spouse.
AWARENESS:
Take time every day to sit quietly in a room without distraction. Close your eyes and simply notice what comes up for you. What thoughts are you thinking? What feelings are you feeling? If you do this practice daily, you may begin to notice repeating patterns of thought and feeling.
When you find yourself in a difficult moment during the day, pause for long enough to notice the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that you are experiencing. I understand the temptation to blame your feelings on another person, but just for today, take some time to notice exactly what is happening for you. What are you thinking? Feeling? Doing? Tomorrow, try the same thing. If a challenging moment comes up, notice your thoughts, feelings and behaviors in the situation. Over time, day by day, you may start to observe your own pattern of reacting to others and events (including, in my case, non-events.)
Example: After working a long day at home, you’ve just had an argument with your spouse about the schedule for home-schooling your children the next day. You leave the room and head to the pantry, where you quickly eat several chocolate chips cookies. After you overeat, you may notice that you shift from being angry at your spouse to thinking you’re a failure, that you have no will power. You may become aware of feeling frustrated, disappointed and angry with yourself. You may notice that you then reach for the ice cream to soothe the emotional discomfort you feel after you’ve berated yourself. If we observe this pattern following different conflicts with different people, we start to realize that the cycle is within us and not about the other person or the food.
Approach your Sh*t with tenderness and curiosity, rather than judgment and frustration. Take your time, explore the nuances of your patterns. Most likely, they have been around for many years and keep replaying out of your awareness. Since life is moving more slowly now and we have more space, become curious about how your specific patterns started, evolved and are reinforced.
Example: In what situations, other than when you overeat after arguing with your spouse, do you believe you’re a failure or feel frustrated, disappointed or angry with yourself? Do you remember feeling this way five years ago? ten years ago? as a child? Gently, with curiosity, explore the history of your relationship with that particular set of feelings. Specifically, what is your relationship with conflict? Did your parents argue a lot? Did you learn to resolve conflict as a child or did your parents leave things unsettled? How and when did you start using food to soothe uncomfortable and unresolved emotions? Once we start breaking down the patterns and understanding their origin, we become less reactive to our external environments, in this case, our spouse, and our internal experiences, in this case, feelings of anger, disappointment and frustration with ourselves. We then have the opportunity to respond with compassion and mindfulness to a challenging moment.
CHOICES:
Read, listen to, watch anything by Brene' Brown, the shame and vulnerability researcher. Her stories, language suggestions and perspectives on human connection are relatable and research-based.
Meditation and mindfulness practices teach us to become objective observers of our inner experience. We learn to sit quietly and notice the sensations that arise in our bodies, the thoughts that arise in our minds. These practices help us when done regularly, consistently, over time. During these quieter days, allow yourself time for meditation, mindfulness or breath practices. Free meditation apps like Insight Timer are a great place to start.
It can feel scary when we decide to reveal the more vulnerable aspects of ourselves. It’s important to come out of your comfort zone in a way that feels safe. Start asking yourself who in your life might be open to listening when you decide to share something personal and vulnerable. If there isn’t anyone in your life who you feel safe opening up to, it might help to work with a therapist to explore how this happened and how to create a supportive network.
LIFESTYLE:
A healthy lifestyle is a balanced lifestyle, including alone time and time spent with others. Let’s make the time we have on this earth richer and sweeter by deepening our connections, first with ourselves and then with others.