Welcome to this tiny corner of the internet where an off-duty psychotherapist keeps the conversation going on how to make sense of this life thing we’re all doing. If you ever wondered what your therapist does off the clock—which, who among us hasn’t?—this is like that. Think of it as the adult equivalent of seeing your elementary school teacher at the grocery store picking out lemons. 🍋 I typically oscillate between long-form psychoeducation pieces and narrative essays—sometimes I smush them together. I also do a biweekly podcast with my husband, roundups and a segment of brisk thoughts on music, TV, and film.
One thing before we jump in, I show up very much as myself here. Myself first, and all my other labels are secondary. If a therapist speaking candidly feels like too much to your system, that is absolutely is OK and this may not be the best particular newsletter for you.
Moments after clicking publish on the newsletter where I mentioned I’d be taking a late summer hiatus, I felt space. It was suddenly so clear I wasn’t showing up as a very wholehearted parent to myself. I had become rigid and unwilling to hear from the softer parts of myself.
As you’ll soon see the break wasn’t all unicorns and rainbows, in fact, I’ve only seen one rainbow since we last crossed paths. Singular. And zero ‘corns.
Howeverrrrrr, as I recently articulated in a question prompted by the Editing Queen
, writing is a wild, beautiful thing for me. I can’t tame it. I can only hope to jump inside it when it visits me.I just got a visual of double dutch. I gotta take my shot when it’s for me and rest when it’s not.
Basically this time has helped me more fully embrace this
ism from Big Magic,“Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us—albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual. Therefore, ideas spend eternity swirling around us, searching for available and willing human partners.”
Wild, beautiful things need rest, too. Because they’re tired and so they can remain wild, beautiful things.
I have some personal essays about loneliness, money, and motherhood (oh my!) ready and waiting in my drafts to come visit you soon.
Something I learned as I completed an intensive training last month on Internal Family Systems (IFS) was to honor the transition. So, instead of jumping straight into one of those types of essays, I’m going to practice this new lesson by easing. Honoring by slowing. By naming what is happening rather than acting like it didn’t happen.
It’d probably be less chaotic if I just wrote a cohesive essay on one thing, but that’d be so insincere of me. Instead, I have written about moments of reflection from the last month. Stay tuned next week for more on honoring transitions.
slumber
Since we were last together, I’ve been mostly keeping tabs on my boyfriend.
This boyfriend always texts me back. He’s a great listener and just what I need after a long day.
He is, in fact, sleep.
I over scheduled myself this summer. Plain and simple. I thought if I implemented strategies aimed at protecting my well-being everything could be accomplished without collapse. In the end, what I really needed was to set parameters allowing for more sleep or just, ya know, do less.
But (in a whine, she says), I was so excited to do all the things.
Our son was operating exclusively on summer hours, waking with the sun without fail every single morning. As August neared, I was inching closer and closer to 5-6 hours of sleep a night. I somehow convinced myself I was the kind of person who can run on that amount of sleep day in and day out.
I’m obviously not.
I don’t know if I believe anyone can run on that amount of sleep (or less) but I’m not gonna waste breath on that argument. What I do know is I’m a sensitive creature. Very sensitive.
Every single time I think I can get one by myself, I pay the price by way of illness, anxiety, and/or burnout. Sometimes, if I’m really lucky, it’s all three.
So, I’ve been sleeping.
Like that Bagel Bites ad from the 90’s, I’ve been sleeping in the morning, in the evening, and at supper time. Truly, sometimes at supper time.
This may sound simple enough, but I have parts of me afraid to rest. It means I’m slipping. I’m wasting time. I’m depressed. I’m trapped.
There is also something inside of me so tired of being tired. After my son was born, I spent years being tired. It had become my personality.
“Hi, nice to meet you. I AM TIRED.”
I get cagey now when I feel it coming on. I deny I can still be tired. Sometimes I compare it to that time, “Well, I’m not THAT tired.” It just feels so overdone, ya know?
The delusion is alive and well over here.
I’m happy to report, with a little bit of discipline, I’m more well-rested these days.
teeth
Wanna know my deepest, darkest secret (that I’m willing to put on the internet)?
I have some health anxiety/avoidance that has resulted in me not going to a doctor or a dentist in years.
The story I told myself was I hadn’t gone because after a year of appointments several times a month during pregnancy, postpartum, and my son’s newborn phase culminating in one appointment where a doctor fished a lodged IUD out of my cervix, I was good for awhile.
Which is partly true, but only partly.
The rest of the avoidance has a totally different source material. I’m strangely less worried about something being wrong with me than I am with getting in trouble. As if the doctor has some say in my moral rightness. Some of that is my own shit around following the rules, and some of that is having had unpleasant experiences receiving medical care.
I finally scheduled myself a dentist appointment the day after my birthday (Why would I do this you may ask. I don’t have a good answer for you other than maybe complete dissociation during the scheduling process.). This particular dentist happens to be a neighbor and a friend which made it both less and more nerve-wracking.
Did I want my friend looking inside my mouth that hadn’t seen a dentist in almost 5 years?
Not particularly.
But, I also know dental health is important to my overall health. Not to mention, I feel like a fucking hypocrite every time I take my kid to his appointments. Feeling like a hypocrite is quite motivating for me.
Freshly 36, I took me and my teeth to the neighborhood DDS. Not surprisingly, my friend has an incredible team he works with. They couldn’t have been nicer. No lectures about me not having gone for years and lots of walking me through each step of the visit. No major issues which is a shock. A catastrophizing part of me thought they were going to take one look and say, “We need to take them all out and start over.”
I didn’t get out of there with an A+, though. I’ve been grinding my teeth pretty bad apparently. You know what that means…I’m joining the very esteemed Mouth Guard Club.
My husband has worn a mouth guard as long as I’ve known him. I lovingly refer to it as his teeth.
When we pack for a trip.
“Honey, can you grab my mouth guard?”
“Yeah, I got your teeth.”
Now we both have our teeth. Archie noticed immediately the new blue case on my nightstand.
“Oh, you have teeth now, too?!”
urges
I notice I feel slightly more nervous sharing this one. And yet, I know it’s OK to do so.
While on a weekend trip to a cabin with some friends, for the first time in recent memory, I had a very distinct urge to drink. Typically I feel pretty content in my sobriety. I don’t often feel like I’m missing out.
I don’t know if it was the cabin and sunset of it all or me feeling super raw and emotionally lonely after completing my IFS training the week prior, but I heard a little whisper, “Just take a sip of that wine.”
It was almost as if a part of me forgot I don’t drink alcohol anymore. It was startling.
Immediately in my mind, I heard in response, “Don’t tell anyone you had that thought.”
And I didn’t.
I feel a little teary right now even recalling that. This part didn’t seem worried I’d drink, but they believed it was so shameful to have the thought at all. An urge. A moral failing to hear words in my head.
“You’re bad. You’re weak.”
While it's a harsh message, I know underneath is a scared little piece of me. So afraid to be rejected. To be bad.
In one moment of courage–and it felt nothing short of that–I told my husband and friends I noticed myself thinking about having a drink. And just like that, it was gone. The urge, the shame, the heat in my face, poof.
It was settling to have my friends hear that and without skipping a beat welcome me back into the fold. No doubt about that. But what was even more reassuring was to know that it was OK within me to say that out loud.
I will admit, the shame came back briefly as I wrote this—and probably will again when I hit publish—but so did the flushing of it from my body after I let it out to get some air.
I’ve seen this happen whenever I do something for the first time sans drinking. The piece of me that used to suggest drinking as a tool needs a little update. So does the bit that thinks hiding myself is the way to be accepted—they are connected, after all. I have a wedding coming up and I have no doubt we will do this little dance again.
Scratch that.
I commit to checking in with these parts before the wedding.
I find this to be true for a lot of the conscious changes we make. Parts of us need to be reminded, gently, why we don’t do a behavior we used to and how it’s become safe enough to not need to do so anymore.
the sandbox
In the continued experiment of vulnerability that is being here—writing, creating, and putting it out in the world to see—I attended a Substack meet up with other Colorado writers. As I wrote about, it was, what we call in IFS, a parts party.
On the drive there I was fielding calls from the part of me that just wanted to bail. “You’re going to have nothing to talk about.” “It’s embarrassing you think you should go to this.”
Another part was just consumed by the logistics. “Where will you park?” “You’ve never been there before, what if the traffic is too heavy getting back to pick up Archie from school?”
Yet another part wanted to lean into this thing I love doing. Take up space with my longing. As my birthday horoscope recently suggested to me, “roll around in your dreams.”
I listened to this choir of thoughts, fears, doubts, and dreams. Just listened. And like I do with my son when he’s feeling them feelings, I took my hand, breathed deep into my own belly and listened to understand.
I walked in and met the host at the stand. We exchanged pleasantries while I explained I was meeting some people there. She motioned for me to go on in. The problem I then faced was I didn’t know what anyone looked like outside one photo, the size of a postage stamp, I’d seen on the note announcing the event. I looked around and didn’t see the face from the stamp-sized photo.
The host noticed me wandering. “Ahhh don’t see me,” I thought to myself. She offered to help and pointed out other tables. This was sweet and helpful, and also mortifying. I took myself to the bathroom. Hoping to slow everything down. It reminded me of how I’d feel walking up to a first date. Shaky, wobbly, excited, exposed. As much energy pushing me forward as there was pulling me back.
Eventually I found who I was looking for—
. We chatted honestly about how hard it is to talk about oneself and to show up for things like this. Later on, joined us, making me laugh with his candor.In the IFS training I mentioned, whenever we’d be about shift from lecture into practicing on each other1 the instructors would say, “Have fun playing in the sandbox.”
I always loved–and needed–this invitation. This reminded the parts of me who feel they ALWAYS need to be trying hard, that sometimes it’s OK to effort less. Sometimes it’s not just OK, it’s everything I’ve been waiting for.
These parts were clearly feeling they were needed in a big efforting way for this outing. And yet, in the end, I was just playing in the sandbox with my new friends. No efforting needed.
I just needed to show up. With all my parts. I didn’t need to be different than I am.
Questions for you
What did you learn, accept, or embrace about yourself this summer?
Anyone else incredibly motivated by feeling like a hypocrite?
What are you noticing inside of you as we begin transitioning from summer to fall?
Upcoming Changes. As I float into one whole year of doing this—a year ago this LDW Monday, I sent my first dispatch—I will be stepping into taking myself more seriously in my writing by publishing some paid-only newsletters (some parts of me are nervous for this boldness I’ve just articulated, but they are trusting me–and I thank them and I thank those who have already jumped on the paid train. You have no idea how much that means to me). I’ll share more about how this will all look as I know more. In keeping with my personal ethos and what I talk about here, paid and free subscribers offerings alike will be fluid with what I can offer and what is feeling nourishing. Which of course means at any point, you can get off the ride if it doesn’t align for you as well.
Disclaiming.You can find more info and my full disclaimer on my about page here. Abridged version: I’m a therapist, but not your therapist—even if you are a client of mine ~hi, dear one!~ this isn’t a session. I don’t think you could possibly confuse this newsletter with mental health treatment. Alas if that were to happen, let me say definitively, dialoguing is an educational and informational newsletter only, not a substitute for mental health treatment.
A Giveaway! Motherhood Minute has been generous enough to offer a giveaway for a select few for the Mental Health and Motherhood Virtual Conference on October 11th. The first two who DM me will be given a code for free admission! I will be speaking there about self-compassion and mothering our inner children with an IFS lens.
Come say hi! Any comments, questions, suggestions, please feel free to email me at dialoguingsubstack@gmail.com—or if you’re reading this via email you can just hit reply and send me a message. Love hearing from you for any and all reasons!
yes, this is ideally, IMO, how therapists learn, they give and receive the modality they are learning
I felt the fatigue bit and, I’m also due for the dentist. I hate when I put something off and then it finds me in a Substack post.
Really appreciated this post. Our internal dialogues are really similar. Meeting people can be really hard. So grateful for your openness and vulnerability- anytime I get to read your work I’m reminded it’s okay to lean into the self.
Welcome back sleepy head!