#1. The One Where It All Begins...

Welcome to dialoguing. You’ve found yourself at the first ever edition of this newsletter!

The TLDR: My name is Kaitlyn. I’m a psychotherapist, life coach focused on well-being, and business owner. This newsletter will be a smattering of what I’ve learned and am still learning within the aforementioned roles, in addition to friend, wife, mother, daughter, and human person. It’s about how we talk. How we talk to ourselves and one another. How we talk about the books we read, the movies we see and, if you’re anything like me, the endless stream of podcasts we listen to–and how these conversations shape the life we end up leading. Key word: Leading. 

If you want more info and my full disclaimer (abridged version: I’m a therapist, but not your therapist—even if you are a client of mine ~hi there!~ this isn’t a session. dialoguing is an educational and informational newsletter, not a substitute for mental health treatment) check out the about page here.

what to expect from this edition:

• mine: personal essay about what I learned this week

• ours: dialogue of the week–aka a new tool for making living with human brains slightly easier

• yours: the thing I’m on-mental health boosting habit I’m on this week 

• two flows and a slow–my version of 2 highs and a low

• Inner-dialoguing–a mantra of sorts

dialoguing with myself: what I learned this week.

Moving toward what you want includes a lot of panicking.

To be fair to myself, I didn’t only learn this lesson this week, but I did relearn it for the thousandth time. Beginning the process of starting this newsletter brought about such a rollercoaster of emotions. I began thinking about this years ago, talking about it earnestly months ago. Then, I began working away at it in chunks. Truly doing nothing for weeks, sometimes months. A friend of mine, who I’d told in passing about this idea, reached out expressing how excited she was to read it one day and it got the yearning in my belly going again. Then in the last week, I felt the energy and excitement swell inside me and I jumped on my surfboard and rode this energetic wave into action. My brain was firing constantly with ideas. So much so that it became a little consuming in a way that felt intoxicating–in the pleasurable sense and in the “I feel out of control” sense. As a result, my Notes app, that on a good day is truly just the unhinged ramblings of a therapist, became a dumping ground for every thought and idea I’ve ever had or stumbled upon. 

As I rode that wave, I felt mostly momentum and buzzing. Then, I wrote an email to a few people mentioning I would be starting a newsletter soon. And guess who arrived literally seconds after I hit send? 

Dread. 

Panic. 

Shame. 

Impostor Syndrome. 

Each of these beasts had apparently been weightlifting while I kept this sacred dream at bay waiting for me to say I wanted it so they could come in and bench press me into retreat.

Even while encouragement and praise came in from my loved ones, I felt my stomach trying to exit my body, like, “Ma’am, you’re on this one alone. Byeeeeee.” The buzzing in my body, that hours earlier felt like running toward something, started to feel like a signal to run away. 

“You’re so arrogant to think people want to hear what you have to say.” 

“You’ll never keep up with a weekly newsletter, let alone create a podcast one day.” 

“You can’t do this and be a therapist.” 

“You don’t have anything original to share.” (Insert, the brilliant, Liz Gilbert on originality here. Also, read “Big Magic.”(*)

Ouchy, ouch.

These whispers/screams from the deeply fragile, soft part of myself. So scared to fail that she can be cruel. This part of me works off the assumption that feeling like shit about yourself is less painful than failing. Let’s put a pin in that one for the future.  

This section of the rollercoaster truly felt like the sting of a belly flop. At first, you're only jumping, you’re joyful, you’re full of hope. Then, WHACK! Now, your ears are ringing, your face is vibrating and all you can sense is shame. 

Thankfully my training has taught me a few tricks to navigate these intense swings of emotion. Which leads me to our tool for the week or as I’d like to call it: dialogue for the week. 

dialogue for the week: cognitive defusion

Cognitive Defusion is a tool used in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Before we get into defusion, my elevator pitch about ACT: It’s not our feeling anxious or depressed that inherently causes us deep suffering but the anxiety and depression we experience about being anxious and depressed that leads us to feel overwhelmed, unfulfilled, apathetic, stuck, etc. With cognitive defusion, we can change the way we relate, as the name suggests, by de-fusing ourselves from our thoughts and feelings in an effort to diminish their disruptive effects and increase psychological flexibility. There are a variety of ways to engage this skill when you’re stuck. 

“I notice I’m having the thought that (fill in the blank)”

For me this week, instead of, “I’m so arrogant for starting this.” it would sound something like, “I notice I’m having the thought that I’m arrogant for starting this newsletter.” With cognitive defusion I can look at it rather than being bathed in it. I go from being arrogant to noticing I’m having the thought that I am with a simple change in phrasing.

Putting the feeling or thought in your hands

I recently did an ACT training related to body image with Diana Hill. In this training she talked about a cognitive defusion technique that deeply resonated and, bonus points, seemed to be effective when I’ve tried it since with clients and with myself. She began by asking us to take whatever thought or feeling you’re having that is getting in your way. Imagine placing it in your cupped hands right in front of you. Feel it there. The weight of it. The shape of it. Really look at what these thoughts and/or feelings consist of. Then ask yourself can I hold these feelings and thoughts right here in my hands and do the thing that matters to me right now? 

This skill in practice would (and honestly, did) look like holding all these feelings of fear of failure, ridicule, and judgment just outside my body in my cupped hands and doing the thing that matters to me–writing these very words. When I asked myself if I could do that, the answer was “Of course.” Which is wild because before I did this exercise I felt very close to scrapping this newsletter all together. I went from “Maybe it’s best to not do it.” to “Of course I can do this. I have to.” A path cleared in my mind when that fear was next to me, rather than within me.

That thing I’m on…

Anything I talk about in this section from here until eternity comes with a huge, ginormous caveat: Whether or not you’re able to engage with any behavior I mention here, has nothing to do with your “willpower” and everything to do with the balance (or imbalance) of resources to demands in your life. Resources being the obvious ones like financial and having access to services, and also things like adequate sleep, emotional regulation and self-compassion skills, supportive relationships, time, etc. Demands being your job, your family, the impact of racism, sexism, and discrimination, invisible labor, mental health issues, etc.

I’ve heard throughout my tenure as a therapist to never ask a client to do something you’re not willing to do. Never may be too inflexible of an expectation here, however I’ve taken this adage to heart. I have stopped everything from social media to drinking & started everything from setting boundaries up the wazoo and taking accountability for my part in things even when I feel deeply hurt—all after conversations with clients where I ask them to do these very same, super hard and uncomfortable things. Basically, I’m out here experimenting with all sorts of stuff to see what lands and actually influences a shift in quality of life versus what is more superficial. The latter in this arena that would be looking and sounding perfect/healthiest/most successful/fill in the blank with whatever other adjective that signifies enoughness here.

When I had a newborn at home, the “thing I was on” was putting one foot in front of the other in the same pajamas I’d been wearing for days. It’s all relative to your resource:demand. Also, spoiler alert, this section is more about asking yourself certain questions—dialoguing with yourself, if you will—than it is about any specific behavior, that’s why it’s titled yours.

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To be very transparent, I have been recovering from the impact of becoming a parent and postpartum anxiety and depression (both of these events co-occurring with a pandemic, just to make sure I was really paying attention) for almost 4 years. Basically, your girl was in a sea of low resource and high demand. In order to make space for behaviors that built me back up to a whole human, I had to work at increasing resources and find ways where I could decrease demand. In the last year, I’ve really gotten my legs back under me and have instituted so many new habits that have increased my quality of life more than I could have imagined a few years ago; not to mention they increase my resource bay drastically. It feels something like taking off your glasses and realizing they’ve been covered in gunk for years, you wipe them off, put them back on and suddenly everything looks brighter, clearer and more possible.

For this edition of that thing I’m on, I’m taking us back to the moment of deep imbalance of postpartum anxiety and depression, new identity as a parent, and pandemic—a trio for the ages—because at that very low, low is where I started to restore my resource to demand ratio. If I recall correctly—and I’m certain I don't remember anything correctly from that time—it all started with reading for pleasure again. After 2 years of reading almost exclusively about pregnancy and then about newborns, I picked up fiction again. I would once a week have a night where I read. I finally found something where I could be carried away on a wave to somewhere else. A world where people shower every day,  talk to other adults, and, maybe even (gasp), travel. A vision that felt alien to me at that point. 

The good news here is that I'm not telling you to read. That wouldn’t be very novel. (My first pun! Don’t worry I don’t do puns, that one happened against my will, promise.) I chose reading because it’s something I had a long relationship with. Something that came naturally to me. Something that felt like I was coming home to it. This is important when we are low resourced and our central nervous systems are dealing with high demand: we need something familiar to us and with few obstacles. Find something that feels like “home.”; remembering that home is not always a place. In fact for a lot of people, the home we are born into doesn’t feel like home at all. Home is a feeling. For me, it’s something that brings familiarity and ease. 

A shortcut to use if you’re struggling to cultivate a behavior is to ask yourself, “What did I love to do as a kid?” Basketball? Drama? Painting? Lego? Puzzles? Dance? Making jewelry? I love this question because it evokes something a lot of adults can start to find in short supply because life becomes way too serious to have a hobby. I wouldn’t even be surprised if you bristled at the term “hobby,” that’s how much our adult brain rejects it.

The thing about kids is that they reeeeeeally love stuff. When you ask yourself “What did I love to do as a kid?” I suspect there won’t be nearly as much hemming and hawing as you may feel about activities in your adult life (e.g.. “I like hockey but it’s just too far of a drive to the rink.”). If a kid loves hockey, they are gonna get there. They are gonna beg their caregivers to do anything they can to get them there. In this scenario, you’re now the parent and your Self is begging to be driven to the hockey rink so you can play, flow, and forget for a minute just how serious your life is.

You may not wanna hear this next part, but that’s what I’m here for: You will likely need to ask for help and/or disappoint someone to make this exploration come to life.  That might mean cancelling plans so you can make a weekly rec league game, asking for someone else to pick up the kids so you can go get the art supplies without being rushed, or asking for a night where you don’t have the baby monitor so you can read without the looming fear of the cries of a startled baby (raises hand). When you’re an adult, most things you invest in require you to take from a different cookie jar and you have to be willing to do so in order to feel any change. 

And listen, life is serious. It’s hard…and really sad and horrifying and heartbreaking. Sometimes all in an instant. We search for childlike joy, not because life isn’t scary. We do it, because it is. 

This is my take on two highs and a low. I find that the high/low framing often ends up with me choosing a low that has to do with something emotionally challenging. I worry that encourages my brain to file this experience as bad, not to be repeated. The truth is these moments are rarely “bad” for me. Rather, they are typically times where I need to slow down, breath, and listen to myself. 

And then there is flow. As a kid growing up in the Midwest in the 90’s, there were very few things that held my fascination and awe more than Michael Jordan. And to me, moments of flow always make me think of him and this shrug:

He said, about this NBA championship game where he sank six 3 pointers in the first 18 minutes, that he was so utterly and completely “in the zone” that he didn’t even know how he did it. Flow, to me, is being in communion with Self so much so that I’m not even really thinking or doing, I'm just being and fully embodied. Without further ado, this week’s two flows and a slow:

two flows: 

• Writing this newsletter. Literally flowing out of me. Not always in the most cogent manner, but flowing nonetheless. 

• Meeting with clients this week. This is a place I routinely experience flow. When I first started as a therapist, this was not the case. Sessions crept by so slowly. Time stretched out before me. On my drive to work: dread. I was consumed by what I was doing. Did I say the right thing? Did I explain that well? Should I have said anything at all? Am I in the right profession for me? 

I remember thinking that I needed to have every possible answer to any possible concern on the ready. It’s horrifying, really, to think how long I put those incredibly deranged expectations on myself. It took years and lots of hours of practice to let go and work at dropping the ego. Now sessions fly by. Truly, it’s like a magic trick. Sometimes they feel like 10 minutes rather than 50 and often I feel like I could go (and want to go) for 50 more. When I look at those questions I used to ask myself on the way to work, I can see they are similar to the fears and expectations I have about this newsletter. I don’t need to have this perfectly figured out and every question answered before I start this. I just need to practice.

and a slow:

I had a particularly challenging evening of parenting this week, one where I felt powerless and just completely out of my depth and ineffectual. I began to feel my chest tighten and my breath shorten, sensing a panic attack could be imminent. Once my son was asleep, I took a few moments to myself which can often relieve all sorts of maladies for me, however I could feel it wasn’t working this time. The tightness in my chest was deepening. I needed something I rarely ask for: I needed to be held in my powerlessness. I experienced this once during a reiki session when the practitioner lightly placed her hands on my face. It was like the levee broke and tears I didn’t even know I had waiting came in full force. Remembering this, I asked my husband to hold my face. A request, I must add, that did not come naturally to me. I paused and stammered as the words came out feeling so incredibly vulnerable and unsure. Once he placed his hands on my face (bless his heart, he barely batted an eye), the tears were stubborn, but I could feel them straining in my throat and behind my eyes. I waited and he stayed. When they were ready, they came. Slowly, then heavily, finally loosening that choke hold I felt in my chest. I was free of needing to be in control. I could just be. 

Inner-dialoguing for the Week:

I am capable. I am capable of feeling immense discomfort and moving toward what I value. I am capable of putting something out in the universe that isn’t even close to perfect. I am capable of letting go. 

That’s it for this first newsletter. I’m worried this is too long, but I also went to the movies the night I wrote this and watched a 3 hour movie about, mostly, men trying to blow up our planet and everyone on it. It was as epic as everyone says and also not at all concerned with its length. So this is me, having the confidence of a white man and not being concerned by length and also, I did edit it down. (Y’all if the movie ended up at 3 hours, we know the first cut must have been 5). Also must return to (*), between writing this newsletter, where I mentioned Elizabeth Gilbert in every draft, and publishing this post, she joined Substack. Did I manifest this?! Please advise.)

 

Hoping for feedback on any topics you’d like covered or issues you want explored. What is a thing you’ve been wanting to do or a habit you want to start  but struggle to? What questions do you find yourself ruminating on? I’d love to make these next editions more about us, the collective us. 

What to expect from the next edition:

• More of what you saw here and, new for the next edition, what I’m reading, listening to and watching. Spoiler alert: Not much on the last one. Open to suggestions—leave some ideas in the comments.