The simple scheduling habit we did during quarantine I’m re-instating that’s helping me stay connected to my values
Blending an ACT skill with the desperate need for aliveness, alignment, and engagement.
hi!! you’ve found yourself at dialoguing, a newsletter where I bring what I know from my work as a psychotherapist into the rest of my life--parenting, marriage, friendships, identity, habits, the relationship to myself and my body--in the least clinical way possible. as the name suggests, I'm conscious of how we talk. to oneself, to each other, about media.
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.
Take a peek inside an interaction I have with any given client at least once a month:
We are exploring their creative interests or some form of leisure they daydream about but do nothing all that tangible about. What always follows is frustration and bemusement.
They cut themselves off, “Why am I talking about this? I have bigger fish to fry.”
Risking an eye roll I’ll reply, “Something inside of you disagrees.”
A lot of being a therapist is being willing to have eyes rolled at you. But I’m willing to take it on the chin, because these wonderings are anything but insignificant to the so called bigger fish. We think of these whispers about art, rest, dreams as tertiary, a luxury, a when/ then proposition. When I get the rest of my life figured out, then I’ll take a pottery class.1
We can only expect our hunger to turn on us—either by becoming overwhelmingly intrusive or retreating entirely—if we treat it this way. It’s not an afterthought. The call is coming from inside the house.
The clients and I will explore this a bit more. We have before and I’m sure we will again.
I’m happy to. I know this struggle from the inside. How in the world can we prioritize everything that is important to us?
Not to be a downer, but I’m not certain we even can.
It’s been helpful for me to surrender to the fact I’m never going to fit it all into a day or a week (or month) [a year] {or even a lifetime}, but that needn’t stop me from engaging with a little bit each chance I get. Trying my damndest and all that. A low-key antidote to black and white thinking.2
This got me thinking about something my husband and I did during that first mandated quarantine.
There are lot of “strategies” I did during the first few months of COVID3 I wouldn’t revisit if my life depended on it (e.g., daily at-home happy hours), but there was one thing we did to break up the days that has been tickling my brain. Teasing me to return.
All we did was take out a scrap piece of paper, identify our free blocks and collaborate on what we wanted to do during them.
Look, I never said it was sophisticated. In fact, I said in the title it was simple.
While I’m certainly not blazing any new trails over here, it was something different than no list. Or the informal list we had in our heads which was “Do bedtime routine with infant. Plop on couch. Doom scroll and/or watch TV until you’re so exhausted you stumble to bed and do this groundhog day all over again, seemingly ad infinitum.”
While we weren’t consciously doing this at the time, this purposeful intention setting around our time evoked a tool used in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).4
If you read the instructions above, you will see it’s not about being perfect. Or optimizing anything. It’s not about what you should do either. No moral policing. It’s an invitation to go inside yourself and get honest.
This exercise asks:
What sort of person do you want to be?
What sort of strengths and qualities do you want to cultivate?
What do you stand for?
What do you want to do?
How do you ideally want to behave?
Values are a huge part of the ACT model—if you don’t know what the hell I mean by that, start here.
It’s not about the “b” word either—balance. We can agree that word has been all but ruined, right?
No, no. I’ve come to prefer the word flavor.
In a recent episode of IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson, Dr. Orna from Couples Therapy was the guest. In responding to a question from a caller she said, “Are you arranging your life in a way that meaning can emerge?”
That is the energy I’m bringing to this experiment.
General Considerations and Steps
Complete The Life Compass worksheet per the instructions
I found it clarifying to write down things that fall under each category. For example, under Health I wrote down things like doctor appointments, cooking, physical movement, stretching, massage, therapy, meditation, rest. Even include behaviors you don’t do yet, but are important to you and you feel they fit under that umbrella.
You may find things you do or want to do that don’t fall neatly anywhere—some of these categories feel a bit incomplete/outdated. Like housework and organizing, I’m not sure where that would go exactly. No wrong answers, but just make sure you find a spot for it, even if you need to create a new life domain. This will be a theme today: It’s your life, you can do what serves you. You can make some shit up.
You may notice areas you rank as highly important to you, but your investment level is low. This is helpful to determine which domains to prioritize more moving forward. You likely will also notice the inverse–areas that are slightly less valuable to you, but you’re handing over your time and effort to them—often a painful insight, but important.
Isolate blocks of your week that are open for business.5 Are these fixed or change week to week? If the latter, the schedule will need to be considered each week.
The idea is to do this for a while so you don’t need to do everything all at once. For instance, with an art undertaking maybe the first week you just get the supplies. Or if you’re delving into getting back on top of health or house stuff (*cut to our railing that has been just barely hanging on for dear life for months now*), family responsibilities or activism, the first block can be solely making a list and/or research.
Be flexible. If, after a trial period, you notice you need more of one thing and less of another, go off with your bad self (complimentary). Also you will absolutely have blocks that don’t go to plan. Plan for that. What will you do to continue to stay committed to what you value even if it isn’t in that exact moment?
Get curious about resistance. As I talked about recently systems resist change. Just because you chose something that reflects something you value doesn’t mean that every part of you will agree to the task at hand. See if you can hear the heart of the feedback. It’s possible there may be some insight in the resistance about what you need more or less of, about your inner workings and the tension that can twist us in knots. One mental barrier I’ve seen with this sort of approach is people feeling like it’s nagging or rigid—seems to be more common for people who found the parenting/coaching/caregiving they received to be overbearing. Good news! This is your opportunity to parent yourself exactly the way you need. The way you approach this with yourself doesn’t need to be harsh.
A quick story about me dissociating—I promise, it’s vital to the heart of all this.
Recently while my friend was in town, we went to the park one Sunday afternoon with my son.
Play structures were scaled, he scooted around every square inch of the park, we witnessed an Irish wedding processional, we rented a swan-shaped paddle boat. I could see he was having fun, that he had energy to burn. I just kept going. It was a time. This much I knew.
What I didn’t know came as we were walking back home. I mentioned to my friend how exhausted I was. She looked at me, “Well yeah. We were running around for like 3 hours.”
“Three hours? No way.”
“You just kept going and going and going.”
The truth was, while I did have some fun on this outing, I wasn’t really there. I was disappearing into what had to be done rather than being a person present in it. Performing. Doing. Not being. This happens to me a lot more than I’d like to admit in parenting. It sometimes doesn’t feel like that time belongs to me, too.
I’ve done enough work in my own therapy to know some of this is my shit and some of this is legacy shit—lifetimes of women before me whose lives didn’t belong to them, not really.
Elizabeth Gilbert says in her new memoir, All the Way to the River, you know the one that no one has big feelings about, “I don’t think I quite understood yet that it was my life I was living.”
This.
This is a feeling I see a lot with clients, too. That their time, or even lives, don’t belong to them and they belong to their lives.
And it’s fair, right?
There are ways in which the systems of capitalism and oppression—and the legislation that supports them—that we deal with every day, detach us from our life force.
Even beyond that, all of our time isn’t/can’t/needn’t belong entirely to us, however that doesn’t mean none of it does.
This may seem obvious, but it doesn’t always feel obvious.
Cut to me sleep walking through Wash Park a month ago. A real-life zombie sighting.
Cool.
Festive, even.
Things I’m considering as I make my schedule:
When I completed The Life Compass this time around I was relieved to see I’m doing more than I realize regarding Parenting and Work so those won’t come up much.
Areas where I could come closer to my values are Personal Growth, Leisure and Health. I’m finally quite aligned in physical exercise, but meal planning with recipes I’m excited about or seasonal ideas, making appointments, and stretching/recovery I’m not in line with my values.
My husband and I are both intentionally investing more times in our friendships outside of the one we’ve built together, so roughly one night a week each of us will have a night solo which in and of itself adds some flare. Good for the kid, good for us individually, good for our relationship, good for variety.
I have a running list of community events/engagements (e.g., a pottery workshop, a volunteer opportunity at my son’s school or seasonal opportunity in the community) and projects (e.g.,
’s recent piece on junk journaling) that catch my eye, as well as to do’s (e.g., go through my closet, make doctor’s appointments, work on my French), so when I have a block set aside for something under those domains, I can just go to my notes app and see the lists. I don’t have to come up with something on the fly.
a few weeks of experimentation
Week 1
This first week my husband was out of town so that in and of itself was an anomaly. Most of these blocks are in the evening, often after bedtime ranging from 1-4 hours.6
Sunday: Watch (Leisure) || what actually happened (wah): As planned
Monday: Writing + Watch, if time permits (writing touches almost all the categories for me) || wah: As planned, but I was really restless so I did some stretching, too.7
Tuesday: Monthly planning (sort of touches all categories) || wah: A harder day all around, so I didn’t have time to edit the newsletter for the next day which needed to get done first. I started by setting the mood (incense, a NA bevie and this playlist on), edited that newsletter and then worked on monthly planning. You couldn’t guess this by how much I avoid it, but I find this very helpful in managing my anxiety and orientation.8
Wednesday: Go through closet for donate and sell piles (Environment) || wah: So tired by the time Archie went down, but I was able to go through my closet earlier in the day. Putsed on my phone and then read The Great Alone and a book for work about using Internal Family Systems (IFS)9 for healing our relationship to food and our bodies.
Thursday: Dinner + Concert with a friend (Social Relationships, Community, Leisure) || wah: As planned and absolutely lovely
Friday: Therapy, Writing and going to Taylor Swift’s album release party in theaters (Community, Social Relationship, Leisure, Spiritual) || wah: Due to the complex feelings about Taylor’s newest album, I couldn’t write about it the way I planned so I was a bit unsure around what to do with this block. Caught up on some newsletter stuff, walked, read instead of wrote and went to my personal therapy. It was a banger of a session. I needed all the aftercare.
Saturday: Relax with husband–SNL is back, baby!! (Leisure, Intimate Relationships) || wah: As planned. We love this ritual so much.
Week 2
This week was more usual for us.
Sunday: Rest (Leisure + Health + Intimate Relationships) || wah: As usual, incredibly tired Sunday evening so a no-brainer movie choice with my honey
Monday: Watch + Stretch (Leisure + Health) || wah: As planned
Tuesday: Work reading (Personal Growth + Work + Community + Spiritual) || wah: My husband got home early from his thing. My codependent parts were tempting me to abandon my plans and just hang with him. But I stuck with what I had in mind. Ultimately, this may have been the experience I needed to realize work reading needs to be done anytime but before bed because it was not flowing, which is unusual for me.
Wednesday: Podcast club (Social Relationship + Personal Growth) || wah: This outing got canceled. The exhaustion levels were high so I went to bed immediately after doing bedtime with our kiddo.
Thursday: Watch (Leisure) || wah: Instead I went to a yoga class taught by my friend. I used to try to fit all my getting out time during the hours of the day, but it’s so vital for me to get out and about at night. This may sound bleak, but ever since having a kid every time I’m driving at night it’s notable. I literally think, “I can’t remember the last time I drove at night.” and for me it feels life-giving to see people out. It reminds me of how it would feel on the first spring day after a long Chicago winter seeing everyone milling about.
Friday: Lunch with a friend (Social Relationships) || wah: As planned and it was lovely
Week 3
Nothing super out of the ordinary in planning this week other than it started with my son’s birthday and ended with my husbands so some out of the norm considerations.
Sunday: Rest (Leisure + Health) || wah: Went straight to bed to read a bit after bedtime with kiddo.
Monday: Rest (Leisure + Health) || wah: I woke up this morning with a crazy bad sunburn.10 My face and eyes were incredibly swollen. So it was a tough day. Rest would have been on the docket regardless of what I had planned. I watched TV with an ice pack on my face. Chic
Tuesday: Night out to see Liz Gilbert speak on her book tour and a morning person meetup (Social Relationships + Personal Growth + Community) || wah: It all happened and it was amazing.
Wednesday: Yoga, stretching, reading & ordering creative supplies and planning creative outings (Health + Leisure + Spirituality) || wah: I got an unexpected hour to read midday which led me to pivot and hang with my husband in the evening. This was much more attuned to the moment and how the week had unexpectedly gone—we’d barely seen each other. Also, Love is Blind Denver is the most unhinged season yet and it has us in their clutches. My husband’s pull quote about all this: “Denver. You’re on display.” Indeed. I’ve set aside this creative planning I didn’t get to as a priority for next week’s schedule.
Thursday: One hour max watch with husband and then reading (Leisure + Intimate Relationship) || wah: More LIB, way more than one hour, but I did read All the Way to the River for an hour before bed.
Friday: Planning for husband’s birthday + Writing (so many categories) || wah: As planned, except I was stunned to find out how much I don’t mind going to the mall when it’s for my husband.
Saturday: Husband’s Birthday (Leisure+ Intimate Relationship) || wah: We got a babysitter for early enough we could fit in a movie, a few round of darts, and a nice Italian dinner all before SNL started. The dream.
why does this work? oh, let me count the ways…
Helps preemptively remove decision fatigue
Permission. On nights where you have Leisure down, it may feel easier to lean into because it’s written down (the prophecy says so!). Plus if you see other blocks where you’re doing other things, it may help the do-er parts soften back and let you actually rest. Their time to shine will come soon enough.
Accountability: Holding yourself to the commitments you make to yourself.
reminded me of a line Liz shared with us during her talk. She encouraged we replace the now confusing landscape of self care with the question, “Do you accept accountability to be a steward for yourself and your body?”Inventory: What is working? What’s not? For instance, the introvert in me hates to admit it, but the social outings were the highlights of all three weeks. So were nights where I worked on the planning. As you can see in mine, I was humbled during many weeks by unexpected hurdles. This practice helped me get a more grounded sense of what is possible. It’s both more than I thought and less.
Hope and Agency. Like a lot of caregivers, I don’t always feel like I have enough time, but this practice reminded me I can engage with the world and myself in a way that fills me up anyhow.
Helps get you off your phone. Regardless of if I was following my plan or not, I was on my phone wayyyyyy less during these weeks likely because I was more tapped into what I needed and what do you know? Doomscrolling was literally never the answer.
A few pieces to inspire:
If this approach to looking at your time feels up your alley, the creators of this model have an entire ACT workbook available for free online.
Questions to consider:
Do you relate to this feeling of “I have time, but I don’t spend it the way parts of me would like?”
Which domains do you feel misaligned in? Conversely, where do you feel super aligned?11
I’m thinking of doing a workshop on how to walk through The Life Compass worksheet. Would that be something you’d be interested in? It could be a zoom where we interact, a pre-recorded thing or a Live that I save and repost. I have no clue how to do any of these things, but confident I could figure it out if it was of interest.
Coming up: A dialouging on dialogue for season two of Nobody Wants This which drops in later this week (check out my thoughts on season one here), a round-up on October for paid subscribers, and in early November a Let’s Talk Therapy interview with
.Disclaiming: Therapy can be great. This ain’t therapy. 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 entertainment and informational newsletter only, not a substitute for mental health treatment. To find a mental health provider, Psychology Today or Zencare can be a place to start. I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org—an organization that supports local independent bookstores. I may earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. The thoughts and feelings written here are all my own. You can check out my Bookshop.com storefront here with all the books I’ve mentioned in dialoguing over the years.
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 hit reply and send me a message. Love hearing from you for any and all reasons!
ICYMI:
35 thoughts on “The Official Release Party for a Showgirl” from a VERY off-duty therapist
September’s round-up: some great stand-up, I start reading Wintering and how I’m finding rest in a sneaky place.
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e.g., “If I can’t do it all, then I’m doing none of it.” or “If I can’t do it all, then why even try”
Correction: In a previous version of the piece used the phrase “At the height of COVID” here which a reader pointed out is incorrect. I updated it to use more accurate language.
From Psychology Today, “Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is an action-oriented approach to psychotherapy that stems from traditional behavior therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. Clients learn to stop avoiding, denying, and struggling with their inner emotions and, instead, accept that these deeper feelings are appropriate responses to certain situations that should not prevent them from moving forward in their lives. With this understanding, clients begin to accept their hardships and commit to making necessary changes in their behavior, regardless of what is going on in their lives and how they feel about it.”
This can be done on an individual, couple—a fun thing to do together even—or family level. You can even get granular with one life domain. For instance, with work I’m seeing enough clients, but could devote more time to reading, admin and marketing.
To be clear, I have other pockets throughout the week where I take care of other tasks, these are just the blocks where work and/or parenting typically aren’t happening so I can offer my full attention to habits that help support my whole self.
My disorientation after becoming a parent has been STRIKING. I know there are so many factors to this—not least of which is having one million tabs open in my brain at all times—but it’s disorienting all the same. I’ve forgotten birthdays, appointments, to eat meals. The list goes on and on. I find it tedious to consider before doing the planning sessions, but once I start I’m so grateful I did.
IFS is a modality that believes within all of us are these parts–with different feelings, roles, personalities–some are protectors and some are more wounded. IFS also believes that we have a core self that is confident, calm and compassionate. The model helps people get a sense of these parts and how they relate to one another in order to be more self-led in their lives and experience more peace within themselves. You can read more about it on Psychology Today’s website here or I wrote a whole piece about IFS and Taylor Swift.
As it turns out when face creams say, “Wear sunscreen when using this product.” it’s not merely a suggestion.
I found that feedback around parenting and aspects of work to be really reassuring and relieving, honestly.
I can’t wait to dive into this worksheet for myself and clients! Thank you for all the time you put into this one ♥️
Love this compass exercise. I’m a sucker for a time blocking/ life organizing/ habit sustaining system. I was just talking with someone about how I’m working on decentering work and focus on cultivating a life that’s well-lived and intentional so this is exactly up my alley. Can’t wait to give it a try!