Embracing Your Villain Era

by Abby Birk, LMFT

My favorite trend gaining some notable notoriety amongst social media users is the call to embrace your "Villain Era". The "Villain Era" represents unleashing and embracing less acceptable parts of yourself that go against typical social messaging other or people pleasing. Full-heartedly supporting any movement to reclaim "socially unacceptable" parts of ourselves, I wrote this post so that you can make a plan for how to embrace your own parts that others have deemed villainous to their own oppressive agendas.

The movement calls into question exactly what we are villainizing. Selfishness? Clear expectations? Boundaries? These are all important ingredients for healthy relationships and wellbeing. Unfortunately, patriarchy, traditional gender norms, white supremacy, and racism have dictated what are favorable ways to act and be in society -- ways that perpetuate disempowerment of certain groups while perpetuating the power structures of other groups. This post serves to join the call to unleash your inner villain, all while questioning: is it really that villainous to take care of myself by setting boundaries??

This post is for those of you who find themselves falling into the trap of people pleasing and over-accommodating others at the expense of themselves. Allow yourself to explore what your villainous alter ego can offer and how you can use it to better your life with increased wellbeing.

People Pleasing & The Fawn Response

It's worth diving a bit into why we often revert to people pleasing as a way to navigate relationships and workplaces. People pleasing is a learned response to stress or activation that we often learn as children with our families of origin. We may learn to please as a survival mechanism to receive love, affection, connection -- striving to be "good children" and receive that all-coveted adult praise and attention.

As adults, we've learned that in stressful situations, we can "neutralize" the threat by befriending it or being pleasing to the threat (aka our boss, demanding co-worker, judgy friend, angry stranger, etc.). Many call this the "Fawn" response, an add-on to other well-known stress responses: Flight, Fight, & Freeze. At its core, it's not such a terrible strategy in the sense that it usually works to neutralize the threat and get us what we want in the end -- praise & attention vs. punishment & shame, and even survival vs. death or violence.

The catch with the Fawn response, is that if used chronically, it can cost us more than it's worth. Instead of addressing the stressor -- the toxic  boss, workplace, or friend, or relationship we need to leave--we learn to manage the stress by losing ourselves to please the stressor. This may work in the short-term, but in the long-term there can be increased levels of chronic stress, deteriorated mental health, increased anxiety, fatigue/exhaustion, or low sense of self-esteem and self-worth. When we consistently sacrifice our selves, our integrity, our internal knowing in order to simply survive, there are often negative consequences we must deal with, however unintended they might be.

How to Embrace Your Villain Era

If you are someone who struggles with people pleasing and "fawning" in the presence of others when stressed or activated, then the Villain Era is for you. While it might feel like an extreme departure from the way you're used to behaving in certain contexts, embracing attitudes and actions that larger society villainizes gives you a chance to play with some alternative behaviors that could open up possibilities for how to navigate some common situations.

Here are some signs that you are embracing your Villain Era:

• Setting AND enforcing boundaries

• Choosing yourself

• Honoring your limitations

• Prioritizing pleasure

• Taking instead of giving

• Walking away from what no longer serves you

• Speaking up for yourself

• Saying no

• Not taking on more just to be a "team player"

You might find all or most of these daunting in the sense of ... okay, well how do I do that? Or you might know these things are important and are already working on how to show up differently in your relationships. Wherever you find yourself on the spectrum, it's important to know that no one is perfectly good at all these things all of the time.

And--you don't have to do all of these things all of the time. For example, there are situations where it does make sense to say yes and be accommodating! In order to discern what action or choice is going to best serve you in each moment, we need to practice what doesn't come naturally so that we have options. 

Remember, there's always room to grow and learn and unlearn. There are many ways to incorporate these actions in your life. Here are a few suggestions for the most common contexts we find ourselves in: workplace, intimate relationships, and family relationships. Most of these suggestions come from my work with clients and the most common challenging situations they face.

Embracing Your "Villain Era" at Work

For you "fawners" out there, the villainous trait to lean into at work is saying "no." There are a variety of reasons saying no to your boss or co-worker or client/customer feels wrong (or may not even be possible). It is important to examine the reasons why "no" may not feel appropriate (or be appropriate) for any given situation.

Is it that your boss has been un-supportive of you in the past, is it that your workplace culture favors productivity and results over wellness of their employees and sustainable workload? Does it feel impossible because maybe you haven't really tried it before? The answer may impact how you respond and navigate the situation.

Often, at work in America, if you aren't taking care of you, no one else is going to. So you need to be the one to take stock of your own limitations, your mental and emotional energy and place boundaries around what you can and simply cannot do, taking a realistic approach. Taking on more work from a coworker in order to be seen as a "team player" might sound like a good idea at the moment, or you might even notice that people treat you differently when you say yes all the time, you might be more likely to be chosen for a promotion -- these are all reasons why we say yes and keep saying yes. But there are important reasons to say no, too. Protecting your humanness by protecting your mental health sometimes trumps wanting your desk-mate to like you.

I don't mean to simplify this challenge. Saying no at work is HARD because the workplace system is built so that saying no is not easy and so that we DO NOT prioritize our own wellbeing. By saying no sometimes to more work that isn't yours, a late work night, weekend work calls, mobile phone notifications, you are saying yes to something else : YOU, your needs, your time, your relationships, your hobbies, your activities, your peace, your rest, your humanness.

If this is something you would like to practice, I suggest finding a space where you're alone, thinking of a situation where you would like to say no and practicing the word "NO" out loud followed by some type of gesture (pushing away from your body, palms facing out, shaking your head from side to side, stomping your foot, or balling up your hands into fists). Giving ourselves permission to say no sometimes just takes practice.

Embracing Your "Villain Era" in your Partnerships:

Embracing the villain in your intimate partnerships can look like being selfish and taking/receiving. Something to practice if you are often the caregiver or over-functioner in the relationship is to assert your own needs and receive care from your partner(s) instead of resorting to your usual giving tendency. Now most relationships are flexible on which partner is giving or receiving over a variety of situations. I am talking about people who have the tendency to give first, who have difficulty letting go and receiving care for themselves, their body, their needs...whether those be emotional, physical, romantic, sexual or otherwise.

Play around with being the needy one, the selfish one. Be the one to ask for something you want or need. Try taking what your partner is offering you, instead of politely declining. Try asking directly for what you need, and letting your partner provide it. Hopefully, these suggestions inspire some of your own ideas on how you would like to show up embracing your villain for the purpose of challenging the limits and stories you put on yourself to not need or enjoy other people taking care of you.

Embracing Your "Villain Era" in Family Relationships:

Embracing boundary setting AND enforcing can be a powerful way to embrace your inner villain in family relationships. Here's what I mean by setting AND enforcing boundaries.

First, you must identify where you would like a boundary with a family member and why. This helps your conviction when communicating the boundary and commitment to enforcing the boundary whenever you face push-back. For example, several of my clients struggle with questions, topics, or comments made by various family members over the phone or during time spent together. Many of my clients start to notice feeling anger, resentment, discomfort, hurt, or irritation in response to their family members. These are important emotional responses to listen to, for they might be telling you exactly where a boundary needs to be placed. Boundaries feel villainous sometimes because of how we've been raised, typically our family of origin dynamics and the roles we play or have played in our family. But just because it feels wrong or bad, doesn't mean it is wrong or bad. Boundaries are a necessary ingredient for healthy, happy, secure, and safe relationships.

As Prentis Hemphill's definition of boundaries remind us: "boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously." A lot of family members would verbally agree that that's exactly what they want with you, even if they're unhappy or uncomfortable with what that means or takes on their part.

Depending on the relational, structural, cultural, racial, or ethnic context of your family relationships, the factors influencing if, how, and where you enact boundaries may be extremely complex and take more time and consideration before setting or enforcing any type of boundary. If this is the case, it may be helpful to explore options relating to your specific situation with a therapist who shares identities with you or is culturally-competent enough to facilitate an exploration of ways for you to show up authentically and with care in your family system. Here is a lovely list of examples for verbal boundary setting related to changing topics or responding to questions you do not want to answer (credit: Amanda E. White: Therapy for Women @therapyforwomen):

• "I'm not comfortable talking about that. Let's switch to a different topic."

• "I understand why you're curious. It's just not something I want to discuss."

• "I would prefer not to answer that."

• "I'd prefer if you didn't bring that topic up again, unless I bring it up first."

• "I've told you that I'm not comfortable answering this/talking about this, please don't bring it up again."

• "It really negatively impacts me when you continue to ask me about this/talk about this after I've asked you not to."

• "Asking that question puts a lot of pressure on me. I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, but I would prefer not to answer that."

Now comes the enforcement. Boundaries are just talk, unless we are prepared to DO something when they are violated or crossed. Enforcing a boundary is about what YOU will do if the boundary is not honored. This is an important and sometimes tricky step.

• "I do not want to discuss this topic with you. So you can't bring it up or I'm going to yell at you..." is not usually the most constructive or helpful enforcement of a boundary.

• "I do not want to discuss this topic with you and if you continue to bring it up, I will need to take some space from our conversation...." can be a better way to enact self-agency and enforce boundaries.

Remember, enforcing boundaries is not meant as a punishment but a natural consequence for not honoring a boundary. It is about what YOU will do IF/WHEN this boundary is crossed. With time and maybe some help from others, you will learn to fine tune this skill across the various relationships in your life so that you can create safety and security with others while honoring yourself.

I hope this post just whets your appetite for all the myriad ways there are to lean into this alter ego of sorts, the parts of yourself that you've learned to exile, the parts you're afraid to let run the show. Practicing flexibility with yourself and how you show up at work or in relationships can promote beneficial outcomes for your physical health, mental health, and overall wellbeing.

The Riverbank therapists would love to support you and any work you would like to do around this or other related topics such as boundaries, family of origin, intimate relationships, sense of self, self-worth, asserting needs, self care, etc. We have therapists in-person in Seattle and who provide virtual therapy across the state of Washington. Click here to book a free consultation with one of our therapists today!

Good luck to all of you embracing your "Villain Era" out there!

A Tool For Finding Comfort in Chaos

by Kelsi Davis, LICSWA

What is a Snapshot practice?

A snapshot is a journaling activity that aims to create or recreate a memory to ground yourself in the present moment. This activity can be utilized when you feel stressed, anxious, or frustrated. It is easy to get wrapped up in these strong emotions and feel stuck with them. The snapshot helps bring your focus to the present and allows time for reflection. This activity is not only grounding but can create a space for self-care.

This journaling activity is named after a quick informal photograph taken to capture a moment in time. Much like its name, this activity is done informally. You can take as little as five minutes or spend a whole hour writing out your snapshot. You can write one every day or write one when emotions are heightened. This is a personal and individualized practice.

How to Make Time?

There are not enough hours in the day to get everything done, and there is often a never-ending list of things to finish, so self-care needs to be intentionally set aside. Let’s set the scene for this journaling activity. Create a workspace that allows you to get into the mindset of self- compassion and emotional flexibility. This may look like deep breaths, going for a walk, yoga, etc.

The goal is to be comfortable in your environment. Be intentional with your time and create a space for yourself to feel. Then you can sit down and start to write or type (I like to put pen to paper). You may listen to music while you reflect or write in silence.

Why do this?

This practice may sound challenging to do when you are in a heightened place of emotion. If this is something that can’t be done in the moment of these heightened emotions, then you can set the intention to write a snapshot when you are in a good headspace. Then you can reflect on a finished journal entry when you are stressed or anxious. I suggest reading it out loud to yourself and using it as a tool to ground. It is like going to a happy place. This “happy place” can be hard to visualize, so writing can help ground your thoughts in a safe space of self-care and understanding. I often struggle to find time to fit this practice into my day. I set an intention to use this practice to remind myself to come back to it when I need it.

This is my guidance: celebrate the small moments. Self-care starts by creating space for yourself. Small things can bring joy, and we can relish in these moments.

What to Write About?

There are three paths (use one or all three!):

1. Create a new memory. Take a walk, get outside, sit with your feelings, eat your favorite food, and then write about your experience. Again, this practice is personal.

2. Think back to a memory and write about it in detail to help visualize the memory. An example of this: The first day you got a pet, your wedding day, a childhood memory that sticks out to you.

3. Reflection: ground yourself in your environment and take time to notice and reflect on something soothing in your current space.

Example One (creating a new memory)

It was cool outside, about forty degrees. It was a quiet evening. There is always something running through my mind as I tend to overthink. Life is always happening around me. My mind, as I write this, is full of day-to-day stressors. As I stand outside, I think about money, bills, and my obligations as a professional, friend, and dysfunctional family member. I think about the never-ending appointments and meetings and responsibility. As I am standing outside, I dig my bare feet into the ground and feel the dirt between my toes. I stare into the sky illuminated by streetlights and breathe in crisp cool air. I often feel like my life is nothing but things that need to be done. I am nothing but a machine. Well, the societal expectation is always to be productive.

It can be hard to enjoy the moments I do have. To stand outside in the cool evening and I ground. I hear cars in the faint background and the pattering of tiny feet from what I can only assume to be a family of raccoons. After some time in the quiet, I sat on the cool, damp grass. I was not thrilled to have gotten my pajama bottoms wet. However, it did not seem to bother me. I just ended up laughing at myself. The goal at this moment was to fully indulge in my natural setting, even when surrounded by the city. Sitting on the damp grass, I felt raindrops hit my face as I gazed into the sky. The cold drips of rain continued to hit my skin, making me feel present in my moment. I created a space where I had no obligations except to care for myself for a few minutes. To be present, to feel one with the world around me, and live in that moment.

Example Two (memory)

It was snowing hard outside. I was visiting my parents for the holidays. A time of year that is honestly hard. I was trying to enjoy the time with my parents, but I needed some time alone and fresh air. I stepped outside. My skin was warm, so it melted quickly when the snowflakes fell on me. I felt calm amidst the chaos of holiday bickering. I walked down the large stairway in front of my parent’s home and looked at the large pine trees in their front yard. The snow glistened. It glowed in the starlight. All I could hear was the snow falling until I heard what sounded like a baby crying. I looked everywhere to find what was making these sounds. I circle the property and return to the front yard, where I had been looking at the trees. I looked down, and I saw a small black and white kitten. His eyes were not open, and he was ice cold but very much alive. I took him in. This moment led to many sleepless nights of caring for this kitten. That was six years ago. One day can change your life, and the day I found Cecil changed mine.

Example Three (reflection)

I have a small plant cohabitating in my small urban apartment. I enjoy watering it and ensuring it gets everything it needs to thrive. It made me think how all people need different things to thrive, just like plants have different needs. Learning what we need and making time to care for ourselves are discussed often in popular media. However, it is often passed over about how to incorporate the practice of self-nourishment into our day-to-day.

Putting this into Practice

As you can see in the three examples, the journaling activity can be long or short. It is a practice to make your own. It can be utilized in the heat of the moment, after a stressful event, in the middle of feeling anxious, on good days or bad days. It is a practice that can be implemented at any time. I have written them on my phone to use while waiting for a doctor’s appointment or for when I’m stressed at work. The key is to return to these snapshots and embrace the emotions presented in the exercise. This activity allows us to remember the small moments and find joy in the mundane or simple. This activity may be best utilized by those who enjoy journaling. However, this may also provide a structure to try a new way to cope with heightened emotions, so I challenge anyone to give it a shot. You might find a new strategy that you love to use!

“To experience peace does not mean that your life is always blissful. It means that you are capable of tapping into a blissful state of mind amidst the normal chaos of a hectic life.” -Jill Bolte Taylor

We have several therapists with openings in their schedules right now. If you’d like to work with a Riverbank therapist, click here to fill out our contact form and our intake coordinator will help you get placed with the best fit!

5 Tools to Deal with Avoidance

By: Abby Lombardo, LMFT

An issue cropping up a lot in my work with folks in this season of the pandemic is avoidance.

Not wanting to do something, procrastinating on this thing, stressing over that thing, completely forgetting the other thing, until we are back at the beginning or something bad happens…like…a consequence for not getting this something done on time or …at all.

I’m not only talking about avoidance that shows up in our work or because of our daunting, never-ending to-do lists, but also the avoidance that results from wanting to push away emotional discomfort. Sometimes the two are deeply linked, more than we often think. This post will give you some tools for when it’s time to look yourself in the mirror and face what you’ve been avoiding, whatever that may be.

Here are some ideas inspired by my work with clients on the topic of avoidance:

1)      Explore what contributes to your desire to avoid.

It might be ironic, that in order to help your avoidance, you must stop avoiding the reason you are avoiding in the first place. Avoidance is often a coping skill, a strategy we use in the face of overwhelm, threat, insecurity, perfectionism, pressure, fear, etc.

It might be helpful to break down your experience to the simplest feeling word you can find. For example, I am afraid of what my boss will think of me if I send this email with an error. Therefore, I am avoiding sending this email until it feels perfect. Once you whittle it down to a basic emotion, it’s a bit easier to deal with than the layers and layers your thoughts and feelings about your feelings have added or even distracted from your original experience.

Discomfort is a common reason I’ve found amongst by own clients for why they avoid certain situations or tasks or conversations. The icky feeling they get deep down that something is not okay can often be a trigger for our nervous system’s stress response: fight, flight, flee, even fawn (neutralizing a threat by befriending it). When we avoid, we are often fleeing to get away from a stressor or threat. Our ancient evolutionary biological systems cannot often distinguish a true threat to our survival from a stressful experience.

For the average person in 2022, our day-to-day modern-day stressors do not usually include life or death situations. They mostly include chronic stressors that have to do with our jobs, our relationships, or our sense of self. If we can pinpoint how our avoidance is trying to serve us, as in, get us as far away from our stressor as possible, then we can learn to relabel these threats and recalibrate our response system. We can learn to soothe our nervous systems with mindful movement or self-care, teaching our brains that this task will not hurt me, this person’s opinion of me may sting yet it does not change who I am, this conversation is challenging, yet it is survivable.

Try asking yourself:

What am I truly avoiding?

Why am I avoiding that thing?

How is avoidance trying to serve me? Am I fleeing because my nervous system is activated and stressed?

Am I avoiding something because it makes me feel uncomfortable? Or another emotion?

What can I do with that emotion instead of avoiding it?

How can I soothe, self-care, or move my body to remind it I am safe and okay even if I am uncomfortable or stressed?

2)      Create a simulation in your mind.

This idea comes from the practice of exposure therapy for anxieties and phobias, as well as trauma. The idea is that you practice simulating in your mind the very thing you have a strong avoidance towards. If you are avoiding household chores that have gone neglected too long, you might imagine yourself taking the first step to get up and collect all the dishes to place them in the kitchen or collecting all the laundry needing to be done. The idea is that step-by-step your brain is getting used to the very thing it has been blocking out via avoidance.

The simulations work two-fold, 1) your brain literally practices the task even in your imagination, which makes it a bit easier to do the task in real life and helps you anticipate some difficulties you might have along the way 2) you are breaking down tasks into accessible steps, which makes the whole thing a little less daunting by the time you actually decide to approach the task in real life.

3)      Break down tasks

When we are overwhelmed, it is usually because we are feeling many things about one or several other things at the same time. My clients who live with ADD/ADHD have to make common use of the skill of breaking down tasks in order to make tasks more accessible to their brains. A helpful question my clients and I have landed on: What is the most accessible thing I can do right now that could help? Then do that. Doesn’t matter how small or ridiculous. For some, it’s standing up, collecting necessary materials, opening the computer, starting the document/email, writing down next steps…

4)      Color code tasks

Along with this idea of breaking down tasks, it can be helpful to have a system to code tasks or steps of tasks into green, yellow, red. Green, accessible now. Yellow, it’s doable but maybe a bit challenging for one reason or another. Red, feels very challenging at the moment. The idea is to start with the green tasks to build momentum and confidence. Then, if you still don’t feel up to the yellow or red tasks at a later time, you can learn to further break those down into green-coded tasks until those tasks feel more accessible.

5)      Organize/prioritize tasks

Great! You’ve learned why you’re avoiding something; you’ve imagined in your mind how to do the thing; you have the accessible steps all listed out. But wait, you have about 10 other tasks you need to repeat this process for, where do you even start in tackling them all? In comes the skill for organizing and prioritizing tasks. For my folks with ADD/ADHD, this is an important skill to learn to externally structure what their pre-frontal cortex (the area of executive functioning) does not. It is important to find a system that works and is intuitive for you, if you don’t like the process or the system you’re using, you won’t use it. Ultimately, find a system that helps you lay out everything you’re expecting of yourself to be done so you can catch early if it is an unrealistic expectation and also so you can prioritize which tasks to do first or in order. Think big picture first, then move into the details of each task once you’ve identified it as a task worth working on at this moment in time. Too often, we get sucked into the minutiae of the tasks that we forget to gain perspective on is this really what I need to be working on right now?

For my visual and tactile clients, I often suggest the use of a dry-erase board or sticky notes. Writing out your items for the day and then placing the one you are currently working on in the center of your workspace/visual field as a practical way to manage focus and keep up with real time prioritization. The other sticky notes can be swapped out at any time to be your “main focus sticky note,” so it is flexible often like our attention and daily demands. Steps can be written on the front of the sticky note or on the back to help with traction towards a bigger item or goal.

Don’t forget a done pile! I encourage clients to have a moment of celebrating the doneness of a task, before skipping right to the next thing. This is an opportunity to “complete the stress cycle” by saying to yourself: you know that thing I was wildly stressed about before? I did what it took to complete this task. Yay me! I did it! It is an opportunity to build confidence and competence for future challenges, as well.

I hope this practical guide for how to work with your own avoidance feels accessible and applicable to what you find yourself avoiding, if not, stay tuned for Part 2 of this post. Remember that you’re in good company, which is why I felt inclined to write this post in the first place!

Take a moment to also remind yourself that you’re doing the best you can with what you’ve got at this moment in time. If you feel that you might need more personalized help with your avoidance or notice your avoidance significantly impacting your functioning in different areas of your life: work, school, home, relationships, etc., then reach out to us and we will match you with a therapist available to help you address your avoidance more specifically.

5 More Tips for Times of Transition

By: Abby Lombardo, LMFT

If you missed part one of this post, head here to read it now! 

6. It’s OK to not be OK.

       The phrase “It’s OK to not be OK” is meant to normalize your experience, whatever the not okayness may be or may stem from. It is sad to me that we need these reminders, because the society we live in, in most of America, subscribes to this toxic positivity, good vibes only, put your best foot forward at all times, filtered social media persona… The messiness of our humanity is often experienced behind closed doors. And when that is the case, we often isolate ourselves further because of the lack of representation or the belief that no one else has moments like these, struggles like these. What I mean when I say it’s okay, is that it is NORMAL. It is part of the range of human experiences. Shit happens. Life happens. It is not a personal failing. You are not failing at life. When things become significantly distressing and cause bigger issues in our life, that’s a sign to address and work on some things, maybe with a therapist. Still, most of my sessions, despite the issue or diagnosis of the client, is about reminding people that what they are experiencing is valid, it makes sense, and it is a normal experience within the realm of human experiences. We often have to start there before we can get anywhere else.

What it’s OK to not be OK looks like:

Being sad.

Grieving.

Crying.

Hugging yourself.

Telling a friend how you’re truly doing.

Being vulnerable with your partner about your needs in the relationship.

Being messy.

Having a bad day.

Not feeling generous towards people.

Not wanting to say yes to things, people, events, invites…

Not wanting to smile.

Not forcing yourself to smile.

Taking a mental health/sick/self care day off from work.

Not liking yourself or how you look.

Feeling anxious

Feeling depressed.

7. Know when to take control and when to let go.

This is a common struggle I can highlight in my own life and the life of most of my clients: the struggle to know when to take control and when to just let a thing go. They are two very important skills. One, feeling empowered in your sense of agency and sense of self control in the world. Two, feeling the peace of knowing you’ve done all you can and it is now time to switch course, pivot, regroup, and proceed differently. The third skill is knowing how to discern when the situation calls for one or the other. So, how do you know when it’s time to take control and empower yourself to push through or to relinquish control and graciously surrender?

What taking control and letting go can look like:

Asking yourself:

What is my goal here?

Am I afraid of something happening if I let go of control?

       What do I have the ability to impact in this situation?

       What would accepting the situation do for me?

Realizing the limits of your own control.

Surrendering to the unknown mystery of life that cannot be controlled.

Practicing meditation.

Move your body, which can help regulate your nervous system and the intensity of the situation.

8. Connect with yourself.

The world is raging around you. Sometimes, you have nowhere else to go but inward. I encourage you to make a home within yourself. A retreat. A place where you can rest, gain insight, sit with what is, explore a new place through visualization, imagination, reading, curiosity. Cultivate connection with yourself in a way that becomes your best resource when everything around you feels too much or too out of control. In order to do this, we often have to shine a light on all the shadowy corners of our selves we’d really rather not have to face. These are the most important places we can go in order to befriend ourselves. When we can engage the parts of ourselves we deem unworthy, shameful, or unacceptable with curiosity, compassion, and gentleness then we can learn to inhabit ourselves more fully. Embodied people learn to be grateful for their shadows, because they have much to teach us about ourselves.

What connecting with our selves can look like:

Journaling.

Being vulnerable.

Identifying areas where you carry shame.

Identifying parts of yourself you often reject or find intolerable in others.

Sitting with yourself in silence.

Bringing curiosity to your experiences and behaviors.

Validating your own feelings.

Offer yourself compassion, care, and kindness.

Imagine interacting with a younger version of yourself, what would you say or do for the is younger you, that maybe you needed then?

9. Remember your values.

When I feel adrift in session with a client, it’s usually because I don’t know what guides them, what matters to them, what they value most. Sometimes they aren’t even aware themselves! Values ground us and transcend us, they give our actions purpose and meaning. They make this existence matter. When we live into our values, we feel aligned and purposeful. We feel satisfied and fulfilled. When we walk away from our values, we often feel dissonance between the person we want to be and the person we are behaving like. The easiest way to close that gap is to 1) be aware of what your values are 2) Find small actionable steps that lead in the direction of your value. We can never “accomplish” a value. Living into a value is never done, it is something we continually must choose to step towards. No one lives into their values 100% of the time. Yet the more mindful we are about our choices lining up with our values, the more direction, purpose, and meaning we derive from life.

What remembering your values can look like:

Complete a “Values Sort Exercise” by reading through a list online and organizing the words that stand out to you most.

Investigate past positive experiences where you felt you had a strong sense of self, direction, satisfaction, fulfillment, purpose, or meaning and mine those experiences for clues as to what you might have been valuing or living into at those times.

Break down small, actionable, realistic steps for living into one of your identified values.

Offer yourself compassion for making mistakes or not living up to your goals/values.

Surround yourself with people who share similar values or inspire you to move towards your goals and values.

Be curious about your values, where they originate, how they feel to you, is there a socio-cultural narrative that impacts these values (positively or negatively)?

Make conscious choices about the things you choose to value and how you show you value them.

10.  Prioritize what’s most important.

In times of transition, and in general, we only have so much energy. While it is a renewable resource, our energy is also limited per day. Our world is so full of distractions and non-stop media grabbing for our time and attention – also precious resources. We seek entertainment and distraction to soothe our overwhelmed and overstimulated nervous systems, thereby re-starting the whole cycle. Prioritizing what’s important is a skill that helps us cut through the static, narrow our focus, and direct our energy where it matters most. It takes conscious effort and mindful awareness to choose where our energy, time, and attention is invested. But that’s exactly what is happening, no matter what we are doing we are investing it somewhere. We invest it in entertainment and media, we invest it in work for money to live off of, we invest it in our relationships to maintain and enjoy them, we invest it in ourselves to learn and grow. Or you could say: Wherever you spend your time and energy, there your heart and treasure lie also. So be wise with where you allocate your most precious of resources. Ensure that you are investing in the things that truly matter to you, that truly are important.

What prioritizing what’s most important can look like:

Taking stock of your daily routine/agenda

Clarifying your needs and goals for a day/week.

Identifying what is important in your life and ways you show that to yourself and others

Being honest about areas in your life that are important yet have been neglected in terms of “investment” of your time, energy, and attention

Look for small, actionable steps for re-investing in neglected areas

Make a schedule/create a routine/set a reminder in order to continually and intentionally prioritize what’s important

Remember that these are only suggestions of things to possibly try, things that might help. Please trust yourself to navigate your needs in this time of transition. And when you feel like it’s too hard or you can’t do it much more on your own, please know that we at Riverbank Therapy would love to partner with you in your journey and come alongside to support you.

How to Practice Self-Compassion

What is self-compassion?

Self-compassion is very similar to compassion for others, but directed towards yourself. It is noticing that you are suffering, and meeting yourself with kindness and warmth in the midst of that pain. It is caring for yourself in moments where you’re hurting. My favorite way to think about self-compassion is to treat yourself in that moment like you would a close friend.

Kristin Neff (self-compassion.org) breaks down self-compassion into three components:

Self-kindness (instead of self-judgement). This means that you meet yourself with warmth and kindness, rather than criticism and judgement.

Common humanity (instead of isolation). This means recognizing that pain is part of the human experience and that you are not alone in suffering (knowing that your specific pain is unique to you).

Mindfulness (instead of overidentification). This means feeling and observing our emotions without getting overly sucked in by them, or overly identifying with them. Nervous system regulation skills really help here.

“With self-compassion we mindfully accept that the moment is painful, and embrace ourselves with kindness and care in response, remembering that imperfection is part of the shared human experience. This allows us to hold ourselves in love and connection, giving ourselves the support and comfort needed to bear the pain, while providing the optimal conditions for growth and transformation.” -Kristin Neff

How do I practice self-compassion?

There are a few ways. They all start with noticing when and how you are judging, criticizing or being mean to yourself. Just bringing awareness to this pattern will likely start to create a desire to be kinder to yourself (kind of like the light in the fridge; it changes just by virtue of being observed).

Once you’ve noticed self-criticism, my personal favorite way to practice self-compassion is to ask myself what I would say to a friend. I wouldn’t say “you piece of shit, get over it.” Instead, I might say, “this really hurts right now, what do you need?” and then try to meet that need. Giving this to yourself is, to me, the essence of self-compassion.

Other ways you can practice:

-name what you’re feeling, ask what you need, and meet that need;

-make a mantra like “pain is human, I am allowed to feel this”

-place your hand on your heart and take a few breaths;

-head to self-compassion.org to download Neff’s “self-compassion break” meditation and other guided practices;

-practice lovingkindness meditation.

Why is self-compassion so difficult?

Most of us are critical of ourselves. We have a front row seat to all of our flaws and weaknesses. It’s far easier to be critical of yourself than others, partially because you know your soft spots better than others. It’s also easier because being mean to yourself often happens internally, so others don’t see it and call you out on it. When you’re mean to others, it gets noticed. With self-criticism, you can fly under the radar.

Self-compassion is possible to cultivate, even if you hate yourself. It takes practice. You don’t have to believe it at first; keep practicing. Right now, you’ve got a superhighway of self-criticism, and an overgrown neglected path of self-compassion. It takes time and consistency to cut a new path, and turn the self-compassion path into the highway default.

I feel guilty when I’m kind to myself. How do I deal with that?

This is a common reaction to self-compassion. Remind yourself that you deserve kindness and compassion. Always.

Questions to reflect on:

Where did you learn that you don’t deserve kindness?

Where did you learn that criticism is the best path to motivation and success?

Do you believe that criticism is working for you?

Self-compassion feels like an excuse. How can I do this and still be accountable?

Accountability is part of self-compassion. Accountability and shame are different. Calling yourself bad or shaming yourself for doing something wrong is very different than actually holding yourself accountable. Shame does not promote behavior change. Compassionate accountability does. Self-compassion can be softness and gentleness, and it can also be calling yourself on your shit.

I like to think about self-compassion as talking to yourself the way you'd talk to a friend. And sometimes, a good friend will kindly (or with tough love) tell you when you're wrong and need to do better.

Accountability with self-compassion means holding yourself to your values and how you want to show up in the world, while not calling yourself bad or awful for making a mistake. Accountability and self-compassion are similar to self-care.

Self-care is not always a spa day. Sometimes self-care is hard stuff, like setting that boundary, buckling down and doing the task you've been putting off, etc.

Self-compassion is not letting yourself off the hook. It's being kind to yourself, and, at times, that kindness means telling yourself that you did something outside of your value system and committing to doing better.

Self-compassion is a key skill for mental and emotional well-being. I highly recommend diving into this work, with a therapist if you’re able!

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