Author: FindHeart Counselling

Wholehearted Living

Nowadays, we hear a lot about ‘wholehearted’ living — about vulnerable connection and living an authentic life. But you may be asking yourself: what does that actually mean? Let’s look to one of the leading experts on vulnerability and wholehearted living — Brené Brown (PhD, LMSW) — for some answers.

I read The Gifts of Imperfection: Your Guide to a Wholehearted Life a few years ago, and I have referenced it many times since. What I love about Brown’s writing is that it is grounded in research and brings clarity to topics that are often not spoken about such as shame and vulnerability. And she does it with humour and kindness.

Wholehearted Living Defined

Brown defines wholehearted living as:

Engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, ‘No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough’. It’s going to bed at night thinking, ‘Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging’.

Brown noticed something in her research around wholehearted living: those research subjects who felt a deep sense of love and belonging were the ones who believed in their worthiness for love and belonging. These people embraced who they are, rather than hustling for worthiness through performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving. But how do we embrace our authentic selves, imperfect as we are? First, let’s look at what gets in the way of us living and loving with our whole hearts.

The Pain of Shame

Brown suggests that shame is the fear of being unlovable — the ‘total opposite’ of owning our story and feeling worthy. She defines it as ‘the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging’. I love this quote: ‘shame needs three things to grow out of control in our lives: secrecy, silence, and judgement’. Brown describes three different strategies people use to deal with shame:

    1. Moving away. Withdrawing, hiding, silencing ourselves, and keeping secrets.
    2. Moving toward. Seeking to appease and please.
    3. Moving against. Trying to gain power over others by being aggressive and using shame to fight shame.

Maybe you identify with a couple or all of the strategies above. I want to offer a gentle reminder here that we do the best with the information we have; as we learn more, we do better. Please be kind to yourself as you learn about shame and how you have dealt with those painful feelings in the past or present. Let’s take a minute to reflect on Brown’s words: ‘Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging’. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how to cultivate shame resilience.

Cultivating Shame Resilience

Brown noticed four common elements for those people who have high levels of shame resilience:

    1. They understand shame and recognize what messages and expectations trigger shame for them.
    2. They practice critical awareness by reality-checking the messages and expectations that tell us that being imperfect means being inadequate.
    3. They reach out and share their stories with people they trust.
    4. They speak shame — they use the word shame, they talk about how they’re feeling, and they ask for what they need.

Brown invites us to kick-start our shame resilience and story-claiming by asking ourselves these questions when feeling shame:

    1. Who do you become when you’re backed into that shame corner?
    2. How do you protect yourself?
    3. Who do you call to work through the mean-nasties (attack) or the cry-n-hides (hide) or the people-pleasing (pretend)?
    4. What’s the most courageous thing you could do for yourself when you feel small and hurt?

Authenticity & Self-Compassion

Brown’s book lays out 10 ‘guideposts’ that help us cultivate a wholehearted life. These are the common themes she discovered when interviewing people living wholehearted lives. For brevity sake, I am going to share the first two: authenticity and self-compassion.

Brown defines authenticity as ‘the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are’. She argues that being vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection — to ourselves and to others.

How do we choose authenticity? Brown suggests we:

  • cultivate the courage to be imperfect, to set boundaries, and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable.
  • exercise the compassion that comes from knowing that we are all made of strength and struggle.
  • nurture the connection and sense of belonging that can only happen when we believe we are enough.

Brown shares the three elements of self-compassion:

    1. Self-kindness. Being warm and understanding towards ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism.
    2. Common humanity. Recognizes that suffering and feelings of personal inadequacy are part of the shared human experience — something we all go through rather than something that happens to ‘me’ alone.
    3. Mindfulness. Taking a balanced approach to negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time. Mindfulness requires that we not ‘over identify’ with thoughts and feelings, so that we are caught up and swept away be negativity.

That our common humanity is an element of Brown’s definition for self-compassion really resonates for me. Indeed, being imperfect and making mistakes is part and parcel of being human. When I really let that sink in, I feel a sense of comfort and peace. It helps me to claim my story — the good parts, and the hard parts.

I hope you learned something new in this blog post — perhaps some tools to cultivate your shame resilience, or how to choose authenticity and practice self-compassion. How does it feel to contemplate being enough? Being worthy of love and connection? As Brown says ‘No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough’.

Want to Learn More?

I highly recommend checking out Brené Brown’s website and her book The Gifts of Imperfection: Your Guide to a Wholehearted Life.

Reference

Brown, B. (2010). The Gifts of Imperfection: Your Guide to a Wholehearted Life. Hazelden Publishing.

Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

The Highly Sensitive Person

Dr. Aron’s Research

Dr. Elaine Aron (MA Clinical Psychology, PhD Clinical Depth Psychology) began researching high sensitivity in 1991 and continues her research today. The term Highly Sensitive Person (HSP for short, also known as Sensory-Processing Sensitivity) was coined by Dr. Aron in the 90s, and is now part of our common vernacular. Did you know that the famous singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette is an HSP?

Below are some questions, cited from Dr. Aron’s website, to help you determine if you might be an HSP. You can also find her more in-depth self-test here.

  • Are you easily overwhelmed by such things as bright lights, strong smells, coarse fabrics, or sirens nearby?
  • Do you get rattled when you have a lot to do in a short amount of time?
  • Do you make a point of avoiding violent movies and TV shows?
  • Do you need to withdraw during busy days, into bed or a darkened room or some other place where you can have privacy and relief from the situation?
  • Do you make it a high priority to arrange your life to avoid upsetting or overwhelming situations?
  • Do you notice or enjoy delicate or fine scents, tastes, sounds, or works of art?
  • Do you have a rich and complex inner life?
  • When you were a child, did your parents or teachers see you as sensitive or shy?

Dr. Aron emphasizes that:

  • Your trait is normal. It is found in 15 to 20% of the population — too many to be a disorder, but not enough to be well understood by the majority of those around you.
  • It is innate. In fact, biologists have found it in over 100 species (and probably there are many more) from fruit flies, birds, and fish to dogs, cats, horses, and primates. This trait reflects a certain type of survival strategy, being observant before acting. The brains of HSPs actually work a little differently than others’.
  • You are more aware than others of subtleties. This is mainly because your brain processes information and reflects on it more deeply. So even if you wear glasses, for example, you see more than others by noticing more.
  • You are also more easily overwhelmed. If you notice everything, you are naturally going to be overstimulated when things are too intense, complex, chaotic, or novel for a long time.
  • This trait is not a new discovery, but it has been misunderstood. Because HSPs prefer to look before entering new situations, they are often called ‘shy’. But shyness is learned, not innate. In fact, 30% of HSPs are extroverts, although the trait is often mislabeled as introversion. It has also been called inhibitedness, fearfulness, or neuroticism. Some HSPs behave in these ways, but it is not innate to do so and not the basic trait.
  • Sensitivity is valued differently in different cultures. In cultures where it is not valued, HSPs tend to have low self-esteem. They are told “don’t be so sensitive” so that they feel abnormal.

Identifying as an HSP

Maybe you’re reading this and thinking ‘that’s me!’ and feel a sense of relief and validation. Or maybe you’re thinking ‘great — I’m different — now what?’ Speaking as someone who identifies as an HSP, I can relate to the mixed feelings of discovering you’re an HSP. On the one hand, I was so relieved to read about a trait that perfectly summarized what I had experienced since childhood. I didn’t feel so alone anymore; indeed there were others like me (15 to 20% of the population in fact). I also admit I felt somewhat vindicated after a lifetime of being told that my sensitivities were a character flaw or something I was making up.

On the other hand, I also felt feelings of sadness and resignation because this innate, genetic trait was not likely to change — and, believe me, there were many times I wished I was just ‘normal’. But I had to ask myself: am I going to accept this trait and learn to make the best of it, or am I going to wish I was different and miss the opportunity to learn about myself? I’d like to say I went for the first option, but the truth is I’ve danced between the two. I realize now that that is part of the journey towards self-acceptance. Like most things in life, it’s anything but a linear process!

Learning to Make Empowered Choices

I’d like to share with you some of the most profound learnings I’ve gathered along my journey as an HSP. Though I may not be able to change my highly sensitive nature, I can make empowered choices around:

  • Caring for myself. I used to expend a lot of energy fighting my sensitive nature or pushing through overstimulation. Nowadays, I use that energy to honour my boundaries/needs and rest. I am more attuned to those early signs of overwhelm or overstimulation — busy or foggy mind, a buzzing feeling in my body, feeling easily agitated — and I seek the earliest opportunity to tend to myself. This helps modulate the cycle of overstimulation followed by crashing, which was the norm for me for decades.
  • Sharing my sensitive nature. There are countless gifts of being an HSP. For me, personally, it has meant a life rich in reflection and learning; a knack for organizing and creating systems; a deep appreciation for music and art; and deeply empathic relationships both personally and professionally. Part of my journey as an HSP has been to find and discern the right people and environments to share these qualities with. Though I can say from personal experience that not every person or organization embraces the HSP, there are some who do and they are worth searching for!
  • How I view myself and my sensitivity. When you’re wired a little differently and need more downtime to ground and rest, others might make assumptions that you are antisocial, boring, lazy, or selfish. Indeed, the HSP is often misunderstood. When we hear this kind of messaging growing up, it is hard to not internalize it and play it back to ourselves. It is not an easy process to identify and challenge these negative labels, but it is an essential step towards self-acceptance and reclaiming our self-image. What has helped me to reclaim my self-image is learning more about the HSP and normalizing this trait in myself; talking to trusted friends, family, and practitioners about my experience; and making a continual effort to notice the positive aspects of being an HSP.

Whether you or someone you care about identifies as an HSP, I sincerely hope that this article has helped you to learn more about the unique gifts and challenges of being highly sensitive. As they say, knowledge is power. Knowing that sensitivity is a genetic, innate trait is a first and necessary step towards harnessing the gifts of being an HSP and setting oneself on the path to self-acceptance.

Want to Learn More?

I highly recommend checking out Dr. Elaine Aron’s website and her book The Highly Sensitive Person: How To Thrive When The World Overwhelms You.

Reference

Aron, Dr. Elaine. The Highly Sensitive Person. 2022. https://hsperson.com.

Photo by Elijah Hiett on Unsplash

Living with a Chronic Illness

What is Chronic Illness?

Before discussing the challenges of living with a chronic illness, let’s first define what a chronic illness is. The Government of Canada states that chronic illnesses “include, but are not limited to, long-term diseases such as Cancer, Crohn’s disease, Chronic pain, Diabetes, Epilepsy, Fibromyalgia, Lupus, Multiple sclerosis, and Rheumatoid arthritis” (1). According to the Government of Canada, chronic illness can manifest as:

  • Fatigue or limited physical tolerance. Some people can fatigue easily or have a low energy level for extended periods or during specific times of the day, due to fluctuations in the effects of the illness, or the presence of chronic pain. Those with limited physical tolerance may require frequent rests to compensate for the effects of everyday activities on their body.
  • Concentration and speed of information processing. A person’s concentration and speed of information processing which are required for reading, writing, speaking, or decision-making, may be reduced due to the illness or to side effects of medication. Diminished concentration and a slower speed of information processing can also result from fatigue or can occur before medication has taken effect.
  • Motor coordination or mobility. Nerve damage, tremors, inflammation of the joints, stiffness, or pain may limit gross motor or fine motor coordination, as well as, lack of muscle strength may affect mobility (1).

Is Chronic Illness a Disability?

The most widely accepted definition of disability is provided by the World Health Organization:

Disabilities is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. An impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations (2).

Indeed, chronic illness can impact all of the areas mentioned above: impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. It follows, then, that chronic illness can have debilitating effects on a chronically ill person’s life. Whether a chronically ill person identifies as having a disability — or not — is of course up to that person, but it does help to validate the at-times challenging and complex nature of living with a chronic illness.

Barriers to Participating in Society

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities notes that “long-term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments in interaction with various barriers may hinder a person’s full and effective participation in society” (3). These barriers can include attitudes, stigma, and prejudices. If you are a person living with a chronic illness, have you experienced social barriers to participating in society?

As a person with a chronic autoimmune illness, I have experienced social barriers related to education, employment, and social engagement. I believe two factors exacerbate this: that many chronic illnesses are ‘invisible’, and that there is still a great deal not understood about the cause and treatment of certain chronic/autoimmune illnesses.

Mental & Emotional Aspects of Chronic Illness

The Institute of Medicine studied Americans who reported living with disabilities related to arthritis. Their study states that a person with arthritis may have three consequences: “physical, such as chronic pain; mental, such as depression; and social, such as an inability to work” (4). From personal experience and conversations with other chronically ill people, I have come to realize just how impactful chronic illness is to our mental and emotional wellbeing.

If you live with a chronic illness have you experienced:

  • impacts to your mental health such as Depression, Generalized Anxiety, Health Anxiety, PTSD, or OCD?
  • feelings of loneliness, grief, overwhelm, hopelessness, frustration, anger, guilt, or shame?
  • being invalidated, minimized, misunderstood, or ignored by others?

I hope that this blog has helped to validate both the realness and the challenges of living with a chronic illness. I believe half the battle of living with a chronic illness is advocating to be seen, heard, validated, understood, and cared for. Though the prognosis of a chronic illness may be lifelong, we can find emotional and mental relief by finding safe, trustworthy, and empathetic allies who can help us work through the mental and emotional aspects of our experience. Walking the path of a chronically ill person is not easy, but I hope you know that you deserve to be cared for.

References

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash