Emotion work is probably the most important, and most challenging, of the entire Release week. I recommend that you space out the following activities over the week; don’t do them all in one day. Release is an on-going process, one that may never be fully completed: Much like weeding a garden, you need to keep releasing, week after week, in order to access the luscious, life- sustaining harvest underneath the overgrowth. And if you keep facing your pain, you’ll learn that it won’t kill you. Simply put, the process of releasing gets better, easier.
RELEASE THE TIME-WASTERS ON YOUR TIME AUDIT
This exercise is an eye-opener that helps people finally make the connection between where they are and where they want to be. Give yourself an hour or so to do this audit revision and let it really sink in. The results will be worth it.
Get out your Time Audit from the Reflect stage and take a good hard look.
Scan through the hours. Are there areas you can see where you know you’ve been killing time, not moving ahead? Are you spending too much of your life doing things that make you unhappy? Highlight all the hours in the audit spent doing tasks that didn’t make you happy.
Now, here’s the tricky part: Be honest. In your notebook, write out a reason that you do each of those particular unrewarding activities: Why do you think you’re doing each?
Is it because you haven’t found your passion yet? Something to drive you?
Here’s an example: Say you’re afraid of being rude to your boring, nosy neighbor, so you drop everything when she stops by to chat. What if you were working on a project that consumed you—would you be more likely to say, “Sorry, can’t talk now,” or would you still feel beholden to be “nice” and continue a time-wasting conversation?
Perhaps you’re still on that consumption track—you’re consuming instead of producing. Do you think your life has value, that you’re making a contribution to the world? Are you feeling powerless and lost? Or are you totally directed and know exactly why you’re here and what your place is in the world—and those activities are part of “paying your dues” to get there?
Where are these activities taking you?
Most of us in pain are running away in some fashion, trying to escape and therefore filling our lives with distractions. If this is case with you, it’s time to let it go. Let it all go. Let go of the guilt. The regret. The self-torture. Each coulda-shoulda-woulda that keeps you from getting on with things and just moving forward. The huge, heavy baggage from former friends or lovers, or a less-than-supportive family. All of that, at this moment, exists only in your mind.
To support your letting go, take out a blank sheet of paper to supplement your Time Audit—and create a new schedule. Include all the stuff you did that you enjoyed—spending time with friends, reading a great book, exercising, cooking a delicious meal with fresh foods, even spending a lazy Sunday in bed. All the things that, when you did them, made you feel joy and satisfaction—even if they took only fifteen minutes.
Now, those spaces where you put crap television or endless web surfing or junk food binges or cocktail hours . . . those you scour. Wipe them clean.
Pretend they’re not even a possibility. Selectively take out unfulfilling tasks as well—those that you didn’t have to do but did anyway.
In their place, write in the few things a week that you know would make a huge difference to your mental health. Walk at five thirty each morning with the dog? Put it in there. Meditation before bed? A session with your journal and a cup of coffee after the kids head for school?
Now look at this new schedule: This is where you really were. This is where your brain and your heart were while your body killed time. This is your true life.
Rather than waste your life in a dream world, zoned out from the things that really matter to you, start to think about your revised Time Audit as reflecting the true, real, actual events in your life—and the crossed-off events as mere hiccups that you’d like to soon forget. Switching your mind’s orientation from “I’d love to do this” to “I do this” is a huge leap forward in terms of making something happen.
Make copies of this new schedule and hang it up throughout your house and your workplace. Tape a copy to your bathroom mirror, so you can read it during your Morning Glory ritual. Stick a copy in your purse or pocket. Stuff it into the visor in your car. Have this reminder around you all the time: This is my life. I may get distracted every once in a while, but this—this is where I
really am. And then fake it ’til you make it!
RELEASE HARMFUL HABITS
Okay, I realize that simply walking away from unfulfilling activities is tricky.
Those time-wasters that you didn’t transfer over from your original Time Audit onto your ideal-world schedule are likely harmful, time-wasting habits.
When we’re hiding from our pain, running from it, we find lots of nice diversions to keep us from addressing it. While everyone needs a way to blow off steam and relax, sometimes these diversions can turn into addictions. It’s not just drugs and alcohol we need to worry about: Many activities can be addictive, and can have equally devastating effects on otherwise productive lives.
How can you tell when your harmless distraction has turned the corner?
According to the Stanton Peele Addiction Center in New Jersey, an addiction has five distinctive characteristics:22
1. You use it to erase negative feelings (such as pain, anxiety, or despair).
2. Using it detracts from other areas of your life (your job, friendships, or other interests).
3. It props up your wobbly self-image (you feel better when you use it;
worse when you don’t).
4. You organize your life around it (embedding it in firm routines).
5. You ultimately don’t enjoy it; it becomes less and less enjoyable with time (yet you can’t imagine not doing it).
What do you think—is there anything in your life that qualifies?
Everything from smoking and gambling, to online shopping or porn, to fatty foods and Internet use, to smart phones and social media, to tracking political news—any of these can be an addictive “substance.” You’ll know you’re ready to quit when you start to feel as though the benefit of the addiction isn’t worth the shame, the hassle, the money, or the time you’re wasting. The most successful “quitters” follow a very specific pattern:
1. They experience a building unhappiness and disillusionment.
2. They have a blinding epiphany: Eureka! This is bad for me! And I don’t have to do it anymore!
3. They deliberately change their pattern to break the harmful habit.
4. They change their whole self-image to that of a person who doesn’t do that addiction.
5. They tackle each relapse head-on and don’t let it drag them back into Negative Feedback.
If you’re ready, make a deliberate plan to break the chains of each harmful habit. If you’ve got multiple habits to work on, you can’t transform them all in a day—but you can plan your transformation. The most important tool at your disposal: your attitude. No one can do this but you; no one will do this but you. You have to show up and be there for yourself—no one else can do the hard work for you.
If your addictions include any kind of chemical substance—prescription drugs, street drugs, alcohol, tobacco—you need some extra help. Your life could depend upon it. Please reach out to your family doctor and just say those words: “I need help.”
CALL IN REINFORCEMENTS
With major changes in the offing in your eating habits, your food shopping, and how you spend your discretionary time, you’ve got challenges ahead.
Why not call in reinforcements? Regardless of the habit or addictive behavior, we could all use a bit of help. Sometimes just reaching out for a hand can help you wipe away some of the shame and self-blame. It’s likely that your friend can empathize with you. That empathetic connection is therapeutic in and of itself.
Here’s an idea: Gather the list of foods you’re trying to release and, instead of going out for dinner with a friend, invite her over. Tell her you have no time for hors d’oeuvres and alcohol; you need help. Can she come over while
you’re going through your kitchen to get rid of foods that increase heat, tiredness, inflammation, pain? Or help you gather up all your old, unwanted clothes, books, and other household items—the stuff that you think is “too good to throw out” but that drags down your energy. It’s time to let it all go.
Your friend could help you box it all up and drive it to Goodwill with you, and then take you for a nice green smoothie afterward.
Another way a friend can help is if both of you support each other in overcoming bad patterns and habits. A Korean study found that when coworkers joined a quit-smoking challenge and were offered a reward if everyone succeeded in quitting, their quit rates shot to 50 percent (versus the average 4 to 7 percent of those who go it alone)23—quite a difference in effectiveness!
If you can find a friend who is truly supportive and whom you trust completely, you can use this effective solution with almost any Release challenge—food, smoking, exercise, not calling an abusive ex, you name it.
Set up the reward as something you both really want—a weekend away in the city or at a spa, or a night on the town without spouses or boyfriends, or buying a pair of high-end shoes you’d never buy just for yourself (but now that you’re doing it for a friend . . .). Not only are you employing peer support (“C’mon, we can do this!”), you’re also wielding a bit of peer pressure (“Don’t mess up, because then neither of us gets a reward”). This approach can keep you accountable to each other and give you tremendous built-in cheerleading.
EXPLORE A NEW MODALITY
Another way you can look for help and support is to explore a new health modality. Before they come to me, many of my patients have been stuck in a health practitioner rut, falsely believing that all their mind-body health needs could be satisfied with one type of healing modality. Perhaps massage, maybe acupuncture, possibly Reiki. I guess it’s my osteopathic background, but I find I’m never satisfied with just one approach to healing. I know that every person’s energy is different, and every single day is different. You may have a health challenge one day that your acupuncturist would never be able to find—but a reflexologist could pinpoint right away.
I wish the United States had more European-type osteopaths, because I love the flexibility I’m able to use with my patients in the UK and other parts of the world. (Perhaps the closest parallels in the States are naturopathic doctors, but they’re not very common.) During any session, I find the exact right combination that works for that person. Just doing cranial sacral therapy without the acupuncture for this person, or the manipulation or reflexology for that person, would seem incomplete. I think of myself as being like a carpenter—I have many different types of tools to help me help my patients.
Or like a cook hovering over a pot of soup: a little more salt, a bit more pepper. I see what each person needs at any particular moment and I use that tool.
I’ve never done just massage without acupuncture or cranial work because I feel it’s not grounding enough. Massage can release endorphins and natural opiates that help fight pain and help reduce anxiety and stress; it’s great in that way. Yet I need to find the energy that’s blocked and actually fix the blockage, get the nerves and blood supply and cerebral spinal fluid flowing, to get the glymphatic system working and allow everything to move along.
That helps me feel that my part is complete, and now the person is able to go and do his or her work. The combination of these various therapies helps give both immediate and long-term relief.
While some naturopathic doctors in the United States use multiple modalities within each session, chances are you’ll have to create this kind of experience for yourself. Rather than get locked into a rut with one type of practitioner, schedule an appointment with someone who practices a different type of healing modality, something you’ve never tried before. I know that some of these treatments are pricey, but one session can go a long way. Save up and splurge. I know you’ll find it both eye-opening and valuable. Please consider one of these:
Acupuncturist Chiropractor
EMDR therapist (see page)
Holistic nutritionist Hynotherapist
Massage therapist (especially one skilled in neuromuscular and trigger- point therapy, lymphatic drainage, and cranial sacral therapy, for
glymphatic release) Naturopathic doctor Reflexologist
Whether you seek the help of any other healing professional, I want you to do this: Believe in yourself. The most important professional advice I can give is to find someone you can trust who will locate your pain, who believes that the pain exists, and who cares about removing this pain. You want someone who is patient-centered, not doctor-centered.
It upsets me greatly that some professionals underestimate their patients’
pain—or perhaps they don’t specialize in pain so they don’t understand how deep it can go. Or, even worse: They put fear in patients where none needs to exist.
I had a patient who was thinking of having a child. She went to her doctor complaining of pain in her lower back and ovaries. She had lost some weight and was tired, thinking about her next big job. Her doctor said, “Well, your eggs are aging and I’m not sure it looks happy down there.” This woman was a dynamic, healthy thirty-eight-year-old. She and her husband had just started trying to get pregnant, and her doctor was already pushing her to do in vitro fertilization (“because it’s guaranteed”).
Wow. Does that sound like a healer?
When she came to me, I took a different approach. “Maybe the lower back pain is a message,” I gently said. “Maybe it’s urging you to stop and think,
‘Hang on a second—my lower back is stiff, I’m overworking, and it’s time to stop and think about my future.’ You need to give yourself some rest, heal your pain, and send your ovaries some love, blood supply, and circulation so your eggs can be happy.” She needed to give her sympathetic nervous system
a break so that her body could recognize that she wasn’t in crisis and that it was safe to make a baby.
Pain was the signal to make that change—and her doctor should have been the one to help her stop making excuses for the lower back pain and take steps to heal herself, instead of piling on pharmaceuticals and procedures to mask the underlying problem.
I’m always stunned when I hear these stories about uncompassionate, disconnected doctors or therapists. You deserve to be treated by a healer, not a drug-pusher or a pacifier. Keep looking for the right person to help you, someone who will take the time to listen to your pain and ask about all your symptoms. Someone who trusts your experience, who believes you when you speak about the intensity of your pain—because pain is whatever the person experiencing the pain says it is, not what the doctor thinks. I’d like you to find someone who believes and can help you understand that though the pain may be present now, it not only can be “managed,” it can be released.
CREATE YOUR OWN RELEASE MEDITATION/VISUALIZATION As I noted earlier, keeping a clear mental space is important to the work I do with clients. I always do a cleansing prayer (removing the “evil eye”) on my way to clients. This meditation helps to reconnect me with my Greek heritage and helps me feel clear; it’s important because it sets me up for a clean start in every session, no matter how challenging my prior client was.