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And for the really bad memories, the ones that can’t be turned into an anecdote or funny story, the ones we carry around like poison, well, those are the ones that connect us most deeply with others.
The more we suppress the stuff we want and do the stuff we don’t want to do, the less self-control we have later.
Taking the time to indulge in moments of pleasure is not selfish, it’s restorative.
Needing people yet being afraid of them is wearing me out. —Janice Galloway, The Trick Is to Keep Breathing
The author, Dr. Jean Baker Miller, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who provided groundbreaking insights into female relationships, proposed that women’s sense of self revolves around being able to make and maintain relationships. And that for many women the disruption of these connections is perceived not just as a loss of a relationship but as something closer to a total loss of self.
Further research has also found that as children, if we’re rejected when we reach out, that rejection is stored in our amygdala, the part of our brain that processes emotions, and we grow up associating the desire for connection with rejection.
According to Buddhist monk Pema Chödrön, “The only reason we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else’s eyes.”
We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all. —Eleanor Roosevelt
Blamers: “I am both worse and better than you thought.” —Sylvia Plath The sensitive and spirited ones of the family, blamers are the first at our side when we need them and the first to jump down our throats if they feel betrayed, slighted, or disrespected. Highly attuned to imbalances, they’re the dutiful daughters, mothers, and sisters who try their best but can’t stop showing their worst when something feels wrong or unfair. Even though they’re sweet people, they have an aggressive reputation for lashing out when hurt.
Placaters: “I didn’t know who the hell I was. I was whoever they wanted me to be.” —Natalie Wood Placaters are the neutral ones who deny their own feelings and needs by obsessing over everyone else’s. The ones in the family always trying to keep everyone happy and from fighting. By doing this, however, they not only delay the underlying tensions from breaking but also suppress their own emotions.
Like all blamers, I would rather lash out than be seen as anything less than perfect.
Like the high-maintenance girl who thinks she’s easygoing, I thought I had very high perceptual intelligence. I could sense when people were mad, upset, or uncomfortable, and I was quick to adjust my actions to make them happy. What I didn’t realize, however, were two vital things: It wasn’t my job to make everyone happy, and not everyone was always as uncomfortable or upset as I thought they were. As often as I was right, I was just projecting onto them and then creating my own discomfort.
Apologies are hard. When we feel hurt, misunderstood, or guilty, we tend to back away rather than confront our mistakes or our feelings. It’s our ability to own up to our mistakes, however, that determines whether our relationships fail or succeed.
Candace Pert was an American neuroscientist and pharmacologist known for her work on the unity of the body and mind. One of her most famous discoveries was the opiate receptor, the cellular binding site for endorphins in the brain. According to Pert, emotions are not solely the product of your brain, but are expressed, experienced, and stored in what she called your “bodymind.” All of our painful memories—failure, disappointments, suffering, loss—are hidden away or suppressed in our bodyminds, to be retrieved, reformed, and released, or ignored and left to fester, promoting physical ailments
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“The body,” said Martha Graham, “is a sacred garment. It’s your first and your last garment; it is what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honor.”
We refuse to admit we feel differently when we have our periods, because history has taught us that we won’t be taken seriously.
She owned it without any shame. This was her time of the month. Her dedication, her drive, was no match for the physical needs of her womanhood. In fact, her period was a designated stopping point for her, the break she’d learned to make herself take.
When we feel in flux, when there’s no set schedule, no order, no care with the edges, we become chaotic.
To take things easy, not to fight against the ebb and flow of life, but to give way to it—that was what was needed. It was this tension that was all wrong. —Katherine Mansfield, “At the Bay”
“Those who live lives of deep emotional intensity seem to have a more complex sense of themselves and lead lives that are more complicated than do those whose emotions are less strong.”
That’s where magic happens—in the space in between what we think we want and what we get.
It’s a universal rule that the moment you stop worrying and accept where you are and what you’re doing, everything changes. In the meantime, it’s your duty to keep the faith. To celebrate those around you whom the magic is happening to, all while remembering that your time will come again.
We cannot always place responsibility outside of ourselves, on parents, nations, the world, society, race, religion. Long ago it was the gods. If we accepted a part of this responsibility we would simultaneously discover our strength. —Anaïs Nin
