This podcast speaks to mental health, healthcare, and wellness professionals and is a little different from ones I’ve done before. Dr. Moss asks a lot about how I take care of myself while taking care of others. We talk about:
Being a helping professional in different realms and my personal approach as a therapist and ceremonialist
Learning to access and honor what the body and spirit needs
There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to living a life. Though we can learn a lot from each other, in the end, each person has a unique history and thus a unique path forward. As you hear more about my process, I hope you feel inspired to trust what’s right for you and bring in more of what supports your own balance and well-being.
I’m curious, who showed you how to feel and process anger in a healthy way?
(Just kidding, that’s not a fair question!)
Depending on our background, we may have learned to numb or suppress negative emotions, beat ourselves up, or lash out, but it’s pretty rare for an adult reading this today to have grown up in an environment that modeled well how to work with feelings like anger, guilt, shame, or fear. It’s something we as a species are still learning. We continue to trigger negative emotions in each other all the time though–that’s just being human and living in society with other humans. Part of growing into adulthood is learning how to respect what we feel while also respecting other people’s experience, and while that may sound extremely basic, it’s often extremely missing.
You may have heard the term “shadow work” before, and it may mean something different to you than it does to me. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll define it here as finding a way to work with the thoughts, feelings, and parts of ourselves we’d prefer to banish to the basement of our consciousness. Let’s say you read, hear, or see something that gets your ire up. You begin to look for fault, but rather than inwardly or outwardly blaming (or avoiding), you pause. You say to yourself, “Hey, let’s not focus on who’s wrong right now. I’m more curious about what’s happening inside you?” Maybe you notice a little voice that’s feeling scared or lost, along with some tension in the body. And you don’t try to do anything; you just be kind about it. You offer empathy and compassion to yourself the way you would if a dear friend was sharing something similar. Giving attention to thoughts, feelings, and sensations with care in the heart, you may find yourself breathing more deeply and noticing more nuance. Maybe there is something to say or do now or maybe not. At some point, you’ll know what the next step is for you.
This is just one of many different ways we can work with triggers. Shadow work helps us to be less controlled by our conditioning and inner demons, so we can return to our truest essence. The big triggers need big patience and support. And if we’re often holding space for other people’s triggered feelings, making room for our own is doubly important.
Anger is part of a guidance system–it points us toward boundaries that need setting and power that needs rebalancing. Once we’ve moved through its fire, we can use it as fuel for change. Rather than asking who is to blame or getting stuck ruminating over what other people are doing, we might look at questions such as: How can I accept my whole self, with all my feelings and history, and take courageous action from a place of centered clarity? What is my unique role here to play in the bigger context? As social beings, we have the power to regulate and disregulate each other. In tending to ourselves and showing up again to the complexities of living in society, we make a difference.
The quieter voices in the room, just like the quieter voices in ourselves, have some important things to say. Listening and learning, we evolve together.
In the school of life with you, in gratitude for our connection,
PS-If you need at-home support with the kind of shadow work we’re talking about, try the simple practice outlined in this little book. It’s an affordable, accessible resource for anyone feeling challenged by negative emotions and looking for a new way.
Do you ever feel upset at people for asking too much, but you keep those feelings to yourself and do what they ask anyway?
Do you procrastinate what’s important to you while continuing to meet others’ expectations?
Do you sometimes feel unseen and taken for granted?
Maybe when you were young, you felt all the feelings in a room, and you took on the responsibility of making everyone else feel comfortable. Maybe you found security in caretaking those whose needs seemed to loom larger than your own. Now mind you, these aren’t bad tendencies; our society as a whole sure could use more sensitivity and caring about each others’ feelings! But when caring becomes people pleasing, it gets out of balance, becomes inauthentic, and can result in major burnout when one person is doing all the accommodating. So how do we unlearn the old patterns while holding onto our hearts?
In my experience, people who were conditioned to center their orbit around others often need more permission to value themselves. I’m actually not talking about putting on your own oxygen mask first or any other “me first”. “Me first” can get just as unbalanced as the “you first” culture of helpers and caregivers. You don’t have to stop caring for others; you can include yourself amongst the people you care for. If we become part of the “us,” it’s not about my needs vs. your needs. It’s about expanding the heart space for all.
Like trees in the forest, we grow best as humans in community. Together, we re-discover our resilience and the healer within who knows just what to do.
Grateful to be in connection with you,
Julia Aziz
*The challenge of shifting from “you” to “us” is that past conditioning can have quite a stronghold, especially when old triggers persist and new patterns aren’t yet firmly rooted. That’s why making changes alongside other people is so effective. Just like you might go to a fitness class if you were trying to get in better shape physically, if you’re unlearning people pleasing, perfectionism, overdoing, and other accommodating patterns that lead to burnout, a group program like the Release & Empower Women’s Circle can support a real shift. More details on our next season can be found here.
“I just gave and gave and gave. And now you’re telling me I’m the one inside, I have to heal myself?!?”
If you spend time helping or caring for other people, you may resonate with this question Sindee posed to me in our recent conversation about self-healing. It’s a valid point! How do we show up for others as well as ourselves when we’re depleted or going through our own struggles? I hope you give this interview a listen. I so enjoyed discussing shifting perspective in how we approach service and the importance of nourishing our own spiritual lives.
Though this interview is part of a therapist podcast, its underlying message is truly for any individual who is often supporting others. I hope you know how much you matter–not just because of what you are to other people, but because you exist here too!
Have you struggled to tend to the needs of patients, children, clients, or elders while you were going through your own big or small health crisis? I share these inquiries with you today in honor of all the caregivers contending with illness or pain, whether there’s cancer, autoimmune disease, recovery from an acute health emergency, long or short covid, or the many other viruses and bacteria we experience living in a body.
Listening in
Our bodies are always talking to us, and those of us with particularly sensitive nervous systems are privy to a whole lot of conversation. Listening to the body, like learning any new language, requires some persistence and patience. One message that’s often loud and clear though is “slow down and rest”. Sometimes the rest we need is much deeper than a temporary pause, and it questions the very pacing and choices of our lives. We might ask, “What is this illness slowing me down from, and what is it asking me to change?” We may not like the answers to these questions, butwe can still tell the truth to ourselves and take some time before choosing what to do about it.
My new favorite word: Divest
Some humans could use a little more empathy, but many kind caregivers are actually learning to divest. Divest from caring quite so much, divest from being so acutely tuned in to other people, divest from the stories we tell ourselves about how we’re not doing enough. And let’s not forget divesting from standards that are too high to maintain when we’re ill. In divesting, we might ask, “What can I not do? What can be postponed? What could someone else do?”
Asking the now
Have you ever gotten overwhelmed by the multitude of supplements you should be taking, practices and exercises you should be doing, and all the doctors and healers you should make appointments with? That overwhelm matters for your well-being too. Taking a slow breath, we remember that the body asks for what it needs in the now-time. Can responding to that one need be enough, just for this moment? What would it feel like to trust in taking one step at a time?
Compassion is not complete if it doesn’t include you
Being sick can make us cranky, fearful, zoned out, and despairing. It’s ok to be angry; it’s ok to grieve. Sometimes rather than a pep talk, we just need someone to say, “Sweetie, that totally sucks. It’s so hard. I love you.” That someone might need to be you–whether or not you’re near people who care. No one is going to know just what you’re going through like you do, and the voice of your caring heart needs more airtime than any inner critic.
Illness making you matter
If you’ve been centering your life around other people and giving less to your own body and spirit than you do for everyone else, illness may be asking, “What about you?” We can’t just keep grasping at crumbs and expect that to be sustenance for caregiving. It’s OK to be high maintenance, to need a lot of emotional and physical self-care in order to continue to be of service to others. It’s also OK to dream your own dreams sometimes. You exist here too, and if there’s one person you are most responsible for, it’s you.
Wishing you gentle loving kindness, tons of patience, outrageously vibrant health, and a whole lot of letting yourself off the hook.
I’m happy to say I’ve been meeting new friends on my morning walks again. Just last month, I had encounters with a porcupine, owls, armadillos, hawks, foxes, a crested caracara, and coyote. I always try to play it cool, gently slowing down without making too big a deal of it, wanting to greet the animals in a natural way. As you might imagine, they don’t often hang out for more than a few moments, and I find myself feeling wistful each time they leave. Not knowing when or if we might meet again, I’m left with a fleeting joy, better nourished by the connection.
If you’ve been involved in spiritual, self-help, or personal growth circles, you’ve been hearing the phrase “let go” anywhere you look and listen. Lately, I’ve been curious about what I’m calling “letting leave,” a concept best taught by our wise companions and caregivers, the trees, in this new fall season. Letting leave is a less active, more receptive process than letting go, one that honors a timeline beyond human will. The leaves of a tree are not hustling and on the go; rather, when their time comes, they simply fall to the earth. A gust of wind or a big storm may also blow through and accelerate the process of leaving. Life is like this too, isn’t it? Smooth or sudden, ready or not, when change wants to happen, it will.
In the healing arts, we often begin with what we want to let go of. What’s wrong, what’s the presenting concern, what are you struggling with? A problem focus is helpful in knowing what needs attention, but concentrating too much on the issue can sometimes hinder its release. As I see it, one of the key aspects to actually receiving help and letting support in is being able to let suffering leave. On the surface, we all want that. But when you’ve been struggling with something for a long time, be it physical, emotional, mental or spiritual, the question of “Who am I if I’m not a person with this pain?” feels almost incomprehensible. There’s no easy bypass here; instead, we might keep asking the question. At a deep level of consciousness, we “let leave” the attachment to knowing what we are or how change will occur.
The letting leave process doesn’t often happen in one fell swoop; everything has its season, and seasons come and go too. It can become a bit easier to trust the natural cycles when we notice the subtle shifts happening all the time. Have you ever found yourself telling a familiar painful story, and realized it’s not actually true or still happening in this moment? Healing may be the recurrent “in the now” experience of letting the resistance to what’s hard leave. It is also, as the Buddhists know well, the loosening of our clinging to what feels good. I watch those trees rooted down into the soil, and see how they allow more powerful forces to weather and therefore strengthen them. We have this capacity too, when we are grounded and willing to hold lightly what we think we have to do.
The invitation I’m hearing this fall is to soften and find courage in letting what needs to go leave when it’s ready, whether that’s old patterns, beliefs, or something more tangible. There will be grief, and sudden loss especially will need plenty of time and love to integrate. In holding sacred the leaving times, may we also find deep appreciation for all that is here with us now.
Have you ever sat by a waterfall in the forest, relaxed in a hammock on the beach, or watched an impressively colorful sunset and felt… nothing? Beauty and peace surround you, yet you’re lost in your own troubles. Maybe you’ve even had that experience with helping professionals, going to therapists and bodyworkers and life coaches and doctors and still, you remain caught in the same struggle that brought you there. It’s an awful feeling, like being handed a beautiful gift made just for you, only you can’t reach out your hands to accept it. You might decide the gift is not right for you and continue your search for more and new and better gifts. But what will help you to receive them?
As many of you know, I am a huge proponent of what I call “self-healing.” This phrase wasn’t super popular long ago, but much like “mindfulness” and “energy work,” it’s becoming so commonplace, it’s losing all meaning. So let me clarify the essence and the hype, as I see it.
What self-healing is not
When we are suffering, the darkness feels more real than the light. Finding solutions to problems in that dark place can seem pointless and burdensome. Self-healing, contrary to its name, is not about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and applying that independent, self-reliant, cowboy attitude to recovering from burnout and trauma. It’s not about undergoing a multitude of different therapeutic modalities or taking every nutritional supplement or psychedelic medicine available on this earth, though your own self-healing process may certainly include some of these wonderful tools and teachers. Self-healing is also not about manifesting everything you desire or replacing social needs with spiritual pursuits. And just like an outside person can’t make a change happen in you, no “self” can force you to think and feel differently either.
What self-healing is
Self-healing is an opening. It is being able to see and acknowledge whatever kind of angsty mess we might find ourselves in for the moment. It is surrendering from the struggle to make it all better, a giving up on the attempt to figure it out. Self-healing, in the way I practice and understand it, is being willing to accept life on its own terms and to follow the step that shows up next like one would follow a flashlight through a dark cave. The actual steps are unique to each of us and the timing is as important as what actions we take. In essence, though, self-healing includes both some stepping up and some stepping back:
Stepping Up
We accept we can’t delegate our ability to feel better about ourselves and our lives to outward circumstances or to someone else. We don’t wait on what is outside our control to change. We give up the quest for the final answer being out there somewhere someone else has hidden, and take loving responsibility for our own internal experience of this life. We tell the truth to ourselves about how we’re doing and use our will to be willing.
Stepping Back
We slow down and let in the support that is already available. Maybe there’s a passerby that makes eye contact and smiles, a cardinal that lands on a nearby tree branch, a cooling tea with just the right herbal blend, a song, a movement, or a powerful ally or ancestor unseen by others. The form the support takes is irrelevant–what matters is we’ve let down our guard and allowed the spirit of what is present to touch us. The natural flow of life is healing itself when we stop blocking it. We learn how to receive, which, most simply put, is how to relax around what is.
We think we need to feel better; often what we really need is to release resistance to what we actually feel and allow the everyday magic to do its thing.Healing as a noun is still a verb—it’s a process unfolding all the time. Shit happens and you can befriend yourself through it or abandon yourself. Self-healing is about learning to be your own champion, your own rescuer, your own beloved. Not because you have a big ego and can do all those things, but because you know you can’t. It’s like the little fuzzy caterpillars I’ve been seeing on my morning walks these days. I was looking at them and thinking about how they will become butterflies. Then I saw one being eaten by a chipmunk. All is not light and wonder. Healing is transcendence but not always through outer transformation.
The caveat
The individual’s decision to accept rather than resist is a turning point, not the whole story. We are each unique beings, but we are also part of a much larger organism, beyond our own families and loved ones. We are not separate from the earth we walk on nor the child on the other side of the globe. We affect each other. We can trigger each other like crazy, but we can also heal together in depths we can’t reach alone. There is quite a lot of stepping up and stepping back that needs to be done in community as well. Self-healing is essential: only you can choose to be willing and open. Self-healing is incomplete: like trees in the forest, we may seem separate above ground, but our roots are interconnected.
I hope whatever you’ve got going on now, you’re connecting in a way that is nourishing for you. For the empaths and the sensitives, that way may look quieter and more intentionally slowed down, and that’s absolutely OK. For some of us, being in public spaces is harder than turning in to the introvert’s cave. We’re all working things out somehow though. Thank goodness we’ve got ourselves and each other for company on this wild ride.
I am beyond excited about the next cycle of the Release & Empower Women’s Circle, where self-healing in community moves beyond theory to practice. Women who give much of their time and attention to others are coming together in a sacred space for their own self-healing. We are upleveling the energetic container of the online experience, syncing up with the rhythms of nature, and amplifying the creativity and power of women. Read more about the women’s circle here to see if it would be a good fit for you or to apply.
I’ve been living in the same neighborhood for ten years now, and given that I take a walk at least once a day, I’m pretty familiar with my surroundings. There’s the blue house with the big cactus out front, the little library around the corner, the “for sale by owner” sign two blocks away… you get the picture. Seeing the same things every day can, as you may well know, get a little monotonous. Yesterday though, it occurred to me that I could walk in a different direction. That sounds obvious, I know, but taking a left from my front door means crossing a busy street, so I never go that way. Yesterday however, I turned left, waited to cross the street, and found myself in a neighborhood I had never seen before.
Listen, it wasn’t as if I discovered Shangri-la. It’s just another neighborhood, right? But yesterday it felt like grace, getting happily lost on unfamiliar streets with new sights to see. Of course this mini-adventure only came about because I decided to quit walking around in the same circles and instead notice what was already there. I tell you this simple story that’s barely a story at all because it’s reminiscent of a message that keeps coming to me these days: enough already, and already it’s enough.
What have you had enough of already? I don’t just mean walking around in circles, covid, politics, zoom calls, etc. I mean what are you tiring of inside your own experience? Maybe it’s regretting the past, the “shoulda coulda woulda” internal conversation that never seems to resolve itself. Or maybe it’s complaining, comparing, blaming, guilting, or some other heavy pattern that has become so entrenched it’s easy to forget there is any other way to respond. What I’ve noticed in my own life, as well as in my experience supporting others through shadow work, is that if we get to know these patterns well, we can learn to recognize when they’ve taken hold, say “Enough already!” and experience a real shift. I’m not talking about some grand and fabulous transformation where you’re demanding a brand new you. Pushing yourself (or anyone else) into new awareness just does not work. What I’m talking about is, in your own time, finding the “no” that shows the way to your “yes”.
Take disappointment for example. If you’ve ever felt disappointed for a long stretch of time, whether that be by relationships, jobs, circumstances–you name it–you know that people and situations don’t always change and relieve you of feeling disappointed. If at some point, however, you say “enough already” and claim your needs as worthy of your own attention and love, no matter if the outside world fills them or not, you may feel a profound sense of power returning. When we acknowledge what didn’t happen and love who we are and what we have anyway… now that’s something new.
December is all about more, not less, in our modern culture. Yet here we are at the end of the fall season, a time when the trees lose the last of their leaves, and the sun sets into the darkening sky earlier each day. All is quieting, simplifying down only to what is most essential. This year we face limitations on our choices, and we grieve losses big and small. So I ask you, what still remains? What in your life is already enough?
I hope there is laughter in your tears and tears in your laughter in these changing times. We all could use some of both, I think. And thank you for reading these messages this year. May you find the courage and gentleness you need to keep going, no matter what.
Julia Aziz
PS- If you know you need more practice with setting boundaries on old patterns and recognizing you are enough, this little book is super affordable and available to all: When You’re Having A Hard Time: The Little Book That Listens. If you want to take it a step further, the Women’s Release & Empower Group continues to enroll wonderful, caring souls. Very little staring at screens, lots of space to be you.
PPS- Want to receive these monthly musings directly? Just subscribe here. It’s the best way for us to stay connected.
Are you pretty hard on yourself? In my experience, when something goes awry, some tend towards blaming external circumstances and other people, while others almost always point the finger inwards. If you are one of the latter, you may have been taking the blame for long enough, and perhaps it’s time to take responsibility instead.
Here’s the difference, as I see it:
Let’s suppose there is a conflict, a misunderstanding, or some kind of big interpersonal mess. When we take the blame, we are saying, “Oh no, I’ve done something wrong. It’s all my fault. I messed up, of course I did.” That litany can go on and on, all with the purpose of self-flagellation. The result? Feeling crappy about yourself and stockpiling reasons why you’re not a good person.
Now take this same conflict, and instead of taking the blame, take responsibility for your part (and your part only). This looks more like, “Oh wow. I missed the mark there, and I am going to look at this further so I can make amends, starting from where we are now.” When you take responsibility, you acknowledge where you made a mistake, and you don’t beat yourself up because you know you are human, we all make mistakes, and you want to do better next time. It’s the difference between using what happens in life to prove you’re unworthy and using what happens in life to learn and move forward. The only way to make that shift, in my experience, is to develop a true friendship with yourself. One where you look in the mirror and say, “Hey, I really like hanging out with you all the time. You understand me even when no one else does.”
That’s also part of the difference between taking the blame and taking responsibility. It is very possible that you did something that hurt someone else, and you didn’t mean to hurt anyone at all. Both can be true—someone else is hurt AND your heart was in the right place. With clear communication and a wider perspective, we can see where we went off course and take correction for next time. We can ask forgiveness and know we are worthy of it, even if we don’t receive it from anyone but ourselves. And if someone is angry at you for more than what you actually did, maybe you don’t have to take the blame, and you can still have compassion for what they’ve been through.
As I’m getting to know the amazing women in the release and empower groups, the question on my heart is “What happens when nice girls find their strength?” I’m not at all an advocate of becoming cold or uncaring. Considering other people’s feelings is essential to the entire world’s well-being. But many of us will break out of our shells and have SO much more to offer when we care a little less about what other people think. When you love yourself, you can clean up the messes you make instead of collapsing in them. You can hold others accountable for their parts without blaming either one of you. You can be a true friend to yourself no matter what happens next.
I hope this message speaks to you in some way that is helpful. If it doesn’t, I hope you send it straight to the trash without a second glance. Maybe this message wasn’t meant for you; maybe someone else needed to hear it instead. You get to decide what you allow in. I honor your truth, and I sincerely thank you for honoring mine.
May your heart overflow with compassion for yourself, and for everyone else in this crazy human existence,
Someday, I’d like to tell you more about my friend Stephen. Stephen was addicted to heroin for eleven years, from the age of 19 to 29. In his former life, he stole from, lied to, and abandoned the people he loved. I didn’t know him then, but I know him now. My first thought when I met him, before we ever spoke, was that his eyes looked like those of a newborn baby, just full of wonder. There’s a certain gentle, open-heartedness about him that can’t be faked. Stephen is still a brave and independent person like he was in his youth, but his new life leads him toward adventures that inspire rather than ones that devastate. He’s going back to school to be a counselor, and I know without a doubt he will help many people over the course of his lifetime.
How did that transformation happen? Well, first I also want to tell you about my friend Creta, a former firefighter who has become a dear friend in Colorado. For a long time, Creta suffered from health issues related to her thyroid. After putting it off for years while the condition worsened, she went to the hospital for surgery two weeks ago. When the prepartory lab tests were run, the blood work suddenly came back normal. She was sent home because she didn’t need the surgery anymore.
These are both absolutely beautiful people with fascinating stories to tell. The specifics are different, and I won’t go into them here, but I can tell you they have both experienced great healing of the heart. I knew I wanted to share their stories with you all, but I wasn’t sure how to talk about them without writing a whole dissertation on self-healing. So I told my eight-year-old daughter these details about our friends, and asked her. “What do you make of this? What’s the moral of these stories?”
“Find your connection,” she said.
She is so right. That is what they both did, and they are not the only ones either. Look around you, and you may start to notice. The darkness in our world today is bringing out some brilliant light. The miracles are here if we are ready to listen to and see them. It doesn’t matter what name you give to what you are connected to or if you think you are connected to something or not. What matters is the feeling of connection.
Knowing love in your heart and believing in it more than you believe in the permanence of your suffering.
It’s very hard to believe in love when you’ve had your heart shattered. It’s hard to believe in connection when it feels like your life is falling to pieces. But I’m talking about a different kind of love and connection, more even-keeled than the human form. It is fundamental to radical transformation and healing. This dialed-in, equanimous way of being doesn’t come easily to most of us, but it can be learned if the intention is there. One thing you can do to feel more connected right now is to start looking for miracles. Notice the big ones, like the healing Stephen and Creta experienced, and the small ones, like the perfect spiderweb I saw on my window pane this morning. If you are on the lookout for miracles, you’ll find them everywhere. Maybe you’ll take a little extra time to listen to a stranger, and you’ll be that miracle yourself.
What’s the moral of your story, dear one? What do you want it to be? That story is being written right now, and I bet it deserves a good read. Meanwhile, I’ll be wishing you the felt knowledge that you are not alone here. Whether or not you’re aware of it right now, you are very loved.
Julia Aziz, LCSW-S, OIM 