My Soul Journey

My entire life I have been drawn to understanding who I am and why I am here. I have gone down parallel paths studying the workings of the human experience through my training as a psychiatrist, as well as my own spiritual seeking. I have always intuitively sensed that the two roads of exploration complemented one another, but I wasn’t sure what the bridge between the two of them was.

It has been only recently, as I have deepened my spiritual practices, which have also led me to deepen my understanding of mental health, that I can see more clearly how closely the two paths are intertwined. Spiritual seekers and seekers of mental health services are both trying to find a pathway out of the suffering of the human experience. As human beings, our mental and emotional bodies are the weakest components of our makeup. Our mental and emotional bodies are the traps that keep us spinning our wheels through the same cycles of suffering over and over again. Our mental and emotional bodies, when they are encumbered by negative patterns and habits, are what prevent us from accessing and maintaining more expansive states of consciousness and being. The progress we make in our spiritual development can only go so far as the degree to which we have mastered our mental and emotional bodies.

So that is why so many of my posts thus far have been around demonstrating how I work with de-conditioning and de-programming my habitual mental and emotional patterns. For a long time, we have been living our lives with our minds and thoughts and beliefs running the show over our hearts. The heart of a spiritual practice is learning how to open the heart and keeping it open. It is time to re-balance the dominance of the mind over the heart. The mind operates through fear. The heart works through love. Love is where spirituality and mental health meet.

I was talking to someone about how I was now approaching my life with less planning and he asked me, “What’s wrong with planning? It can be a good thing.” His question gave me pause for reflection. His point was valid. There is nothing inherently right or wrong with making plans for the future. In fact, I tout the benefits of setting goals and intentions and taking action towards them. So I had to ponder what exactly I was trying to convey about my new approach to life. What came up for me is that my tendency in the past has been to over-plan, and thus, my medicine to come back into greater balance and harmony within myself is to plan less. But for someone on the other end of the spectrum who has maybe avoided planning, or seen it as something unnecessary, their antidote might actually be to spend more time planning to turn their visions into reality.

When we can find our zero-point, that place of neutrality, balance, and harmony in ourselves, where we are not over or under-doing it in any one direction, then this will be our place of greatest power and clarity. This is where we can sync up to Source and find energy and inspiration moving freely and effortlessly through us. The behavioral and emotional habits and patterns that we have built up in our lives that keep us out of this balance within ourselves is what blocks our access to an infinite supply of energy and power.

The practice of continually finding my zero point has been a useful tool for me to examine what areas within myself still need balancing. Especially if I find myself getting triggered by someone else (annoyed by their actions, hurt by their words, judging their choices), I use this as an opportunity to reflect on my own distortions and vulnerabilities. Because if I was truly in my zero point, then there would be nothing in me to trigger. I would notice and observe, but I wouldn’t feel triggered, that feeling of personal attack, resistance, entitlement, or judgment. But obviously, this type of self-mastery is a continual work in progress. It’s like walking a tightrope with a pole in hand. If I notice myself swaying to one side, I try to re-find my balance before I fall off. When I inevitably do fall off, I just get right back up again and keep practicing. The Universe catches me and gives me another chance every time.

Happy New Year to you all! This is a New Year’s Day selfie I took at my cousin’s wedding last week. I love the New Year, that time of year closest to dawn, when everything begins anew again. I feel optimistic about this year. I can just faintly smell the promise of potential and possibility, even if I have no idea what form that will actually take.

The start of this year feels different to me than previous ones. This is the first time in my adult life that I don’t have everything planned out. As I recognize and admit this truth, I notice feelings of sadness, and even shame, about how meticulously organized I have led my life thus far. Planning everything out ahead of time has been my life-long modus operandi (MO) for “managing my anxiety.” But I now see that trying to maintain such order and control in my life requires an implicit agreement that I stay within certain boundaries. Venturing off of the beaten proscribed path will set off alarms. So this is where I feel proud of myself. Despite years of deep-rooted habits, patterns, and conditioned ways of living, I am breaking free from my own self-imposed limiting constructs. I am facing my anxiety head-on and telling her that she doesn’t scare me enough to make me turn around and go back to living my life the old way. As I befriend my anxiety, I learn that she also would prefer to find another way of being. Being anxious all the time, worrying about the future, making sure that everything will turn out, is an exhausting full-time job that doesn’t leave much room for play, pleasure, surprise, or joy.

I am observing that anxiety is a state of mind that I can consciously choose to stay in, or get out of. It’s not always so easy to get out of, especially when an anxious state of mind has been my default mode for many years. But I gain confidence and momentum every time I notice that I can command my thoughts and emotions. First, I allow myself to feel anxious rather than deny or suppress it. Second, I inquire with compassion about what is making me feel anxious, but then….I don’t allow myself to stay stuck there. This is a big change. I used to spin my wheels ruminating over my anxiety, beating myself up for it, feeling bad about it, trying to figure it out so that I could get rid of it. But that doesn’t work. It just perpetuates the anxiety cycle and digs me into a deeper hole that reinforces those already ingrained neural pathways. So now when I notice that I am feeling anxious about something, I honor it, and then move on. Example: Yes, I am feeling anxious about money now that I have left my contract job and don’t have a guaranteed paycheck coming in. Old MO: Freak out, crunch some numbers, worry some more, and feel generally crummy. New MO: Go walk the dog, listen to the birds, look up at the expansive sky, and trust in myself and the universe. At the very least, my new MO makes me feel better, and I guess I’ll let you know how this year pans out!

Earlier this spring, my higher guidance sent me the message that it was time to get off Zoloft. I had been taking it off and on (mostly on) for the past 6 years. It really helped soothe my anxiety during some demanding times of medical training and motherhood. I had tried to taper off of it before, admittedly due to feelings of stigma associated with having to take medications, and wanting to be able to handle things “on my own, without meds.” But each time I tried to stop Zoloft in the past, I (and my husband) noticed myself becoming more easily irritable and snappy at everything. It was uncomfortable to feel that way (and to be on the receiving end of it). It made everyone’s life “easier” just for me to get back on my meds. Now this post is not about being pro-meds or anti-meds. It’s just me sharing my personal experience.

Unlike previous attempts, the desire I felt to get off Zoloft this time felt different. I had made significant changes in my work-life balance, I had a wellness routine to support me, and most importantly, I wanted to feel the full range of my emotions again. Even though I was only on a low dose (50mg), I experienced some pretty intense withdrawal side effects, most notably nausea, for over a month. The irritability also came back, but I was more spacious with it this time. I became curious about it rather than condemning of it. Why was I so irritable? I didn’t want to just blame it on anxious nerves. Irritability and anxiety didn’t seem like my true natural state. I continued to observe my emotional experiences without suppressing them. It was a welcome relief to feel my tears return. I was reminded of how easily tears came to me as a young girl, not necessarily with just any one particular emotion. I was (and still am) easily moved to tears by any strong emotion, whether it is happiness, love, sadness, anger, frustration, or loneliness. I realized how Zoloft had kept my tears away.

So for the last 6 months, I have been allowing myself to feel whatever emotion wants to pass through me. Even though it physically aches (for me it primarily shows up in in my heart and throat chakra) to feel sad or hurt or lonely or confused, I am developing a growing intimacy with my own emotional life. I am learning how to tend to my emotions with the tenderness it has always needed. If I’m feeling something intensely, being outside in nature or taking a bath are two of the best ways I can take care of myself. I am also practicing patience with my emotions. Yes, a part of me still questions how long I have to surrender to this process before I can graduate to the land of the “emotionally stable.” But then I remind myself that I am someone who has always had delicate and tender emotions, and that I have suppressed them for so long. I don’t know exactly how this journey will unfold. I just know that it feels right to keep letting myself feel whatever I feel, even when it doesn’t feel good.

One year ago, as part of an exercise for a group program I was participating in, I was invited to pick a time one year into the future and describe a day in my life. I was asked to visualize how I wanted to see and experience myself, what would I be doing, how I was feeling. I let my highest desired timeline and imagination take over and wrote that on the winter solstice of 2018 I wanted to be hiking in nature, alongside a stream of water. I wanted to feel free, light and strong in my body. I wanted to honor the work I had done in the last year and to further release those things that no longer served me. I released that vision of myself into the universe.

Fast forward a year. As I flip the calendar into December I notice that the winter solstice falls on a Friday, a day I usually work in my private practice. I debate whether to work that day or not. I already have a few clients scheduled, and I’m taking the next 2 weeks off. My ego (what I call that aspect of my personality that wants me to keep doing everything the way I’ve been doing it, to maintain the status quo) tells me that it would be irresponsible of me to reschedule my clients and forgo that income to take a day off to walk in the woods? But then I recall that vision of myself that my higher self (that aspect of me that knows my soul purpose in this lifetime) had so beautifully gifted me with a year prior. Now the decision becomes easier to make. I clear my schedule, to honor myself and to honor the vision of myself.

I don’t usually hike alone, but this time it feels right for me to spend the day in nature by myself, in conversation with my higher self. I find my way down the mountain to a river and feel called to formalize my intentions of the day into a simple solstice ritual. I pick three stones by the river’s edge, one to symbolize what I want to release, one to honor the present moment, and one to represent what I hope to create in the future. I have learned that ceremonies don’t have to be fancy or elaborate to hold sacred meaning for me. I choose a jagged stone buried in the mud to represent the old painful stories and patterns that I no longer want to perpetuate in my life. I select a round smooth stone that looks very peaceful and content to represent the perfection of the present moment. And finally I choose a beautiful, mysterious, large and heavy, teal-colored stone to represent the allure of the abundance that I wish to call into my life in the future. I take my time by the river’s edge honoring the past, present, and future before releasing the stones one by one into the rushing waters below. I kiss the stone representing the present moment before letting it go. I am mesmerized by the rumbling beauty of the water in constant motion before me and feel one with the powerful destruction and creation forces of nature. I thank the river and the elements all around me for the time we shared together.

I start hiking back to my car, aware that the everyday distractions of life will soon be awaiting me, but so grateful that I honored myself by carving out this time and space to enter into a sacred relationship with myself and nature. Sometime in the next few weeks, I will invite myself again to envision myself one year into the future, living a day of my life the way I want to, and I will let the power of that vision carry me closer to my true self. I invite you to do the same.

I had a total parenting meltdown the other night. It had been a long day at work, I was hungry and tired, dinner wasn’t made yet, my two kids were cranky and whiny. Everyone’s needs were not being met. When faced with a similar situation in the past, I would have turned on the TV for the kids and “gotten to work” on getting dinner started (there’s nothing wrong with this, I still do it). But that particular night I felt called to surrender to the moment rather than taking any action to fix it. I allowed myself to sit with my kids and really take in how they were feeling. I gave myself permission to feel whatever I was feeling. I felt overwhelmed, I didn’t know what to do, and I felt so ashamed that I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to scream and stomp my feet and bawl about how awful I felt. I gave the stage to that little girl in me that was also having a tantrum. When my husband walked in the door, I felt both relief that I no longer had to handle this on my own, as well as shame at what an incompetent mother I was. My ego started to chime in that I was a child psychiatrist for gods sake and that I, of all people, should know what to do. But I didn’t.

Bless my husband. He took over like a champ. I retreated to the bathtub to soak in my own relief and shame. Everyone was fine again by bedtime. But it wasn’t until a few days later when we processed the sequence of events, that I was better able to see how my experience of shame closes me off from letting in love and support, even if it is available to me. I realized how hard I try all the time to have it all together, to be strong and self-reliant so that I don’t need to depend on anyone else. Not asking for help is a defense against having to show my vulnerabilities and expose my shame. Shame is tricky. It hides you from others so you don’t have to show your vulnerabilities, but it also prevents the love and support you desperately want from being received. My shame around parenting is a huge part of my shadow that has deep ancestral roots. Bringing this shame out of the shadows and into the light where I can hold it with love and compassion is how I begin to release its hold on me.

During this time of year, in the last weeks and days of December, my intentions for the coming year start percolating in my consciousness.  Sometimes I choose a word to really hone in on what I want to manifest.  This year the word abundance keeps coming up for me as something I want to consciously cultivate and tend to in 2019.  I particularly want to focus on the inner experience of abundance that is available to me at all times, as something I choose.  I also want to expand my definition and experience of abundance.  Sometimes when we hear the word abundance, we might think narrowly in terms of money, or time, or resources, but abundance is a state of experiencing that you have so much available to you that there will always be more than enough.  

My desire to experience abundance is the medicine I need for the scarcity consciousness that has taken up a lot of room in my life.  Some of it is cultural, some of it is  generational, and some of it is personal, but it is sobering for me to acknowledge that I have experienced much of the world through the painfully unsatisfying lens of scarcity, of insufficiency, of “not enough” or “just enough if we plan carefully.”  The idea of an overflowing abundance of time, resources, love, attention, kindness, creativity, ideas, possibilities, and more, is foreign and intoxicating to me.  I want to live knowing, and trusting, in the abundance of the universe and its ability to provide for all of my needs, if I allow myself to open up to that reality.

Abundance isn’t about how much money I have in my bank account.  It’s about how I experience the flow of life force energy moving through me.  Some of you might be thinking, “That’s easy for you to say, you’re a doctor, and your husband is a doctor too.”  But I truly believe that the experience of abundance is our birthright, and is accessible to everyone, regardless of external circumstances.  In fact, being a busy doctor often gets in my way of being able to experience abundance.  Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The cost of a thing is the amount of life which is exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”  We spend a lot of time working for a paycheck, but how much of our lives, our experience of abundance, is being exchanged for it?  This is something I intend to examine more closely in my own life in 2019.  

A few years ago a friend was telling me about a book she was reading entitled “The Highly Sensitive Person.”  I had never heard the term before, but found myself curious about the topic.  I picked up the book, thinking that maybe it would help me better understand some of my clients.  The book started off with a quiz to help you determine if you are highly sensitive: https://hsperson.com/test/highly-sensitive-test/. I was shocked to discover that I answered yes to almost every one of the characteristics of the highly sensitive person.  I was even more shocked that prior to taking the quiz, I never would have described myself as highly sensitive.  I instinctively knew that large crowds and loud parties were “not my scene,” and that I needed plenty of down-time to recover from large social gatherings.  But I somehow framed it that my sensitivities to my environment (loud noises, large crowds, people’s energy, their emotions, conversations, etc) meant that something was wrong with me.

For a highly sensitive person who soaks in everything around them, a trip to Costco or the mall almost always leaves me frazzled.  Too many consecutive commercials on the TV or radio feel like an assault on my senses.  Constant social interactions drain me, and I crave alone time to soothe and reset my nervous system.  So I have learned, and am continuing to learn, how to honor my sensitivities with care and compassion.  The holidays, when there is such a frenzy of activity, decorations, social gatherings, and perceived and real expectations from family and friends, offer up so many opportunities for me to practice.  I notice how I still say yes to too many social engagements from a place of duty, obligation, or the concern of disappointing or offending others, or not wanting to appear anti-social.  I want to turn down social invitations, excuse myself early from them, or retreat to my room when there are too many people over, because this is how I take care of my sensitive nervous system.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t love my family and friends, or want to spend time with them.  It just means that the amount of stimulation that it takes for me to go from an enjoyable experience to a depleting one spills over much faster, than say for my husband, who has a larger reservoir for the amount of sensory stimulation he can handle.  

Highly sensitive people aren’t usually the type to speak up about what life feels like for us on the inside.  We also aren’t usually the ones drumming up large groups of people to champion our cause.  We are the minority (it is estimated that 1 in 5 people are highly sensitive), but a sizable minority.  It is time for highly sensitive people to have a voice, and to be understood too.  So pay attention when you gather with family and friends this holiday season.  Chances are, there probably are some highly sensitive people in the group, perhaps it’s even you, trying to find a way to enjoy yourself amidst all the hustle and bustle.   

Do you know that feeling when you’re crammed into an elevator with too many people, and there’s barely any space to move or breathe, and you just pray that it doesn’t break down and leave you stuck?  Going through medical training while raising two young children with a husband who was also going through his medical training often felt like that.  We weren’t physically stuck in an elevator, but there was barely any wiggle room in our work schedules and child-rearing responsibilities.  I felt like I was constantly rushing from dropping off our kids at day-care to zooming to work to see patients while squeezing in lunch and notes before hurrying out of work to pick up the kids and start dinner preparation and bedtime routines.  I barely had space to catch my breath before being faced with a new task at hand, and it felt like I had no choice but to keep up.

When I graduated from fellowship, I knew I didn’t want to work full-time.  I started working 4 days/week, which was a welcome relief from 5 days/week, but I still wasn’t experiencing the spaciousness I wanted in my life.  I chased after an illusory “balance” where if I could just work “x” many hours and have “y” many hours off, then I would feel better.  I was still looking for answers outside of myself, when what I was really craving was an experience of inner spaciousness and freedom that would permeate each moment of my awareness regardless of my external circumstances.  I didn’t realize how much my inner narrative about “how busy my life was, how little time I have, how I have so many things to do, etc,” was essentially keeping me a psychological prisoner and victim of my own doing.  With the guidance of a spiritual and metaphysical coaching program (https://www.multidimensionalu.com/) and reconnection to my own inner guidance system, I began to clean up my self-limiting beliefs about my life, and that has made a world of difference. 

I now feel empowered to rewrite the inner narrative of my life, which ultimately leads to changes in my external life.  I had been going about it backwards, looking to alter my external circumstances to make me feel better inside, when the path to liberation is about shifting my internal landscape and rebuilding and restructuring my external life from this newly expansive foundation.  I no longer allow myself to indulge in self-defeating or self-limiting thoughts or beliefs that place me in a disempowered victim role to my circumstances.  I used to say/think quite often, “It’s so hard to…..(fill in the blank with my myriad of complaints about how hard it was to….work on my marriage, soften my inner critic, focus on my kids, balance work, family and personal life, etc).  Yes, these are big tasks, but when I constantly tell myself how hard something is, I am giving my power away to an external circumstance.  It is more useful for me to reconfigure those statements into empowering ones such as “I AM working on my marriage.  I AM softening my inner critic.  I AM focusing on my kids.”  I’m not perfect about it, but whenever I notice I am placing myself in a victim role to my circumstances, I gently find a way to reframe it.  This inner spaciousness I have reclaimed is the wellspring from which I now let my life flow.

As I devote myself to peeling back the layers of conditioned habits and patterns in my life, it has been a delight and surprise to uncover my true nature.  She is a wild spirit and much more adventurous than I ever imagined.  She feels most free and herself in the natural world.  She loves walking in the woods and marveling at the shafts of sunlight streaming down through the leaves from heaven to earth.  She is enchanted by bodies of water and loses herself frolicking in the ocean or by the river’s edge.  She finds herself drawn to the stars in the night sky, beholding the expansive mystery and beauty of the grand universe.  And there, right beside her, is the sensitive artist who feels called to capture, document, and share these experiences through words and images to evoke the same feeling of wonder and inspiration in others.  

It is these complementary aspects of my true nature – the explorer drawn to discovering new terrain, and the one who can’t help herself but document these explorations by firelight, that form a core part of who I am.  Bill Plotkin, a pioneer in the field of eco-psychology, would call these aspects part of my “mythopoetic identity,” the images, the callings, and the unexplainable fascinations that pull me into the deepest parts of myself, my soul.  In a thriving ecosystem, each living being occupies a unique ecological niche that matches its own particular characteristics with its contributions to the greater whole.  The sloth and the cheetah differ in speed, but each bestows its own oneness to the great diversity of our ecological world.  Likewise, each of us humans carry within us a singular seed, “the truth at the center of the image you were born with” waiting to grow into its fully embodied expression and contribution.

Tracking your soul is no different than tracking an elusive animal in the jungle.  Once in awhile it gifts you with an encounter that you know to be so true and beautiful that you promise to devote your life to following its path.  You track your soul not to capture it, but to allow it to lead you deeper into the truth of your own unique mythopoetic identity.  You romance your soul, you present yourself to it with the purity of intention in your heart, asking for it to return your affections by revealing itself to you with glimmers of intrigue and promise.  You become more accustomed to living your life following the scent of your soul rather than the distractions of the outside world.  And every now and then you are gifted with a direct, face to face encounter with your own soul, where you look into each other’s eyes and surrender with gratitude and reverence for the divine orchestration of our extraordinary existence.  It’s enough to keep me going.