The Confusion of Self Care

Let's be honest. Self-care is probably the buzzword of the year so far.

Everywhere you look from magazines to TV shows to podcasts to books to social media posts (like this one), there it is in bright lights: SELF CARE.

And for all the discussion going on, there still seems to be a lack of clarity around it as we are often told what to do instead of tapping in and actually do what feels good to us. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we try to put it in a nice little box with alluring titles such as “5 Ways to Your Best Self-Care!” or “10 Ways to Dramatically Improve Your Self-Care.” (I’m being dramatic but you get the point.)

But self-care cannot always be summed up in a cute article especially because so much of what we consider to be self-care lies within the physical realm: massages, manicures, pedicures, working out, eating well, sleeping enough, etc. And please do not misread, there is nothing wrong with any of those things. I love everything that I listed and I know they all play a very crucial role in maintaining our health, wellness and just our sanity in general. We cannot and should not give those up. We deserve it.

……...However, for many of us we allow those things to solely define what self-care is. As incredibly important as physical health is, our emotional well-being is just as important if not more, yet we shy away. We fear what is going on within us and so we ignore it or we pretend there’s nothing wrong. We have no idea what it means to have emotional self-care and so there is a missing piece in our regimen.

It’s easy to not have a clue where to begin to start with one’s emotional wellness because although it has been changing over the past couple of decades, as a culture we still put immense emphasis and importance on the external. With the infiltration of social media in nearly every aspect of our lives (and honestly even without it), how we are being perceived is in the forefront of many of our thoughts and actions.

So while our hair is fleeking, our nails are on point, we don’t have bags under our eyes, we are at our ideal weight and we’re surrounded by friends who love us at a VERY hip club, there is still a void. There is still an emptiness that we cannot seem to fill no matter how many appointments we make or gym sessions we go to.

That void can only be filled by having the courage to go within; to actually sit with our shit; to take stock of our lives and take responsibility for ourselves and our own definition of happiness. A massage and facial can certainly get us into a relaxed enough state where we can begin this process, but those cannot always be the end all of what it means to give love to ourselves.

Our internal state needs maintenance just as much as our external state. When we don’t tend to it is when we look up and find that while we may look great physically, we are a complete stranger to ourselves and to our lives.

So where does one begin to start having some emotional self-care? By being vulnerable. That is where we start. And how do we get vulnerable? We get honest with ourselves. We get curious and put the spotlight on ourselves and our patterns. We stop our constant doing: no appointments, no binge watching TV, no over-booking our calendars with plans and activities, no social media….. at least for a small amount of time and we allow ourselves to just be and see what comes up. Instead of tuning out like we are now programmed to do, we start the process of tuning in.

And we learn to connect to our bodies. They are far wiser than the brain yet we do not treat them as such and actively disconnect from them for most of our days (and possibly lives). So much of the healing, peace and clarity we seek can often come from just slowing down and understanding what is going on below our necks. It doesn’t have to be complicated. We can simply breathe. We can see where we are holding our tension and we relax into it. We give space to it and allow the body to deliver messages to us that our thinking brains simply cannot do.

So no, this doesn’t mean we forego our physical self-care; alternatively, we allow that, whatever that looks like to us, to be a vehicle to tap into what’s going on within. We boost our physical state as a means of elevating our internal state. They go together and their success are interdependent on one another.

So today I urge you to take some time to go within and make your self-care regimen a bit more robust and begin to tune in, however that feels comfortable for you. Have you been holding in a good cry? Let it the f**k out. Pretending that you have it all together when really you are on the brink of falling apart? Scream into a pillow. Find a quiet place and journal. Practice some mindfulness (The Calm app is my recommendation) or just sit outside without a phone and look at the world around you. There is much to see and learn about ourselves outside of our screens and our minds if we just allow it.

The (False) Belief You are a Burden

You hate asking others to do things for you.

You hate asking for help.

You hesitate to ask a question that implies the slightest sense you may need something from someone in some degree.

For many of us this is what we experience on a nearly daily basis. We carry around a burden of resistance to asking anyone for anything because one of the filters of our lives is that we believe ourselves to be a burden to others.

Whether an event occurred that was distinctly traumatizing or something small happened that we subconsciously internalized, at some point in our development we created the story that we are a burden; that our needs and desires are too much to be expressed so instead we suppress; we believe we ask for too much so instead we don’t ask for anything at all out of fear of being disliked or worse off, abandoned.

We then start to believe it’s us against the world and we must do whatever it is we must do on our own. We hate asking anyone for anything just to avoid the possibility of experiencing the pain of rejection or embarrassment. We begin to harbor shame and even resentment towards others and the world when the truth is that it’s mostly towards ourselves.

As a woman I see this more often amongst other women as the word “sorry” seems to have a permanent residency in our language even when it’s not necessary. At some point it was ingrained in us that our needs and desires were not a priority so we apologize for everything …...but especially for when we (falsely) believe we are asking too much of others. We don’t want to be seen as “too much.” So what happens? We suppress. We stifle. We put everyone else’s needs before our own.

Our work as both men and women comes down to healing these stories; allowing that young child within to yell out and cry from its depths releasing the pain and grief of feeling as though they were “too much”; that their presence was unwanted; that their needs and desires were a burden or hassle to someone else and worse yet, that it was not safe to express them.

And how do we heal? Well first we allow this grief to pass through us from the very depths of the cells within us that have been storing it our entire lives. We gives ourselves the gift of tears and release and once we have allowed that to pass (we don’t continue to feed into it), we replace it with the truth.

What is the truth? That we are a gift. Our presence and existence alone are a gift; that we are a unique expression of love that exists nowhere else, has never existed before and will never exist again; and that it is safe to express our needs and desires because it is a pure extension of us. We deserve a seat at this table called life for the sole reason that we are alive and breathing right here, right now.

Finally, we forgive. We forgive ourselves for believing these lies and more forgiveness for not knowing any better….and we forgive anyone else that we feel may have contributed.

The more we allow this healing to occur, the bigger our voices and our self expression can become. The more freedom and joy we can experience. We can feel safe to fully express ourselves and not stifle our voice. We can feel safe to fully give and receive love (or at least start to) without the chains of fear and shame. We can feel safe to well…..just be ourselves.

Living from the Heart vs. Living from the Head

As young children we lived fully. We laughed, we cried, we made art, we played, we had imaginations and we had big dreams. We could often see a life and world beyond what was the “reality” in front of us.

We lived from our hearts because that’s what felt natural to us. We lived from our intuition and that’s what guided our actions because we trusted it and we trusted our hearts.

But over time, whether through one traumatic experience or a series of smaller micro-experiences, that connection and that trust in our heart began to break.

To protect ourselves from the judgements of others, the pain of disappointing others (or ourselves) amongst other things, we began to trust the mind over the whispers of our soul. Over time our lives and who we started developing into began to reflect that shift. We began to live by “shoulds” instead of our soul desires and the connection to our hearts grew weaker and weaker.

The journey for many of us in this life is restoring that connection and allowing those whispers to shape our lives instead of the often loud voices of the thoughts in our head.

Starting today, are you able to take some time, if only a few moments, to slow down enough to exit the chaos of the mind and enter into the clarity of your heart? To stop doing and allow yourself to be? To feel your breath and your own heart beat? This is the beginning of discovering both the peace and the answers you so desperately seek.

A Life Unhidden

It may seem like an oxymoron these days, but despite the rampant use of social media (hi, i’m using it right now), many of us live hidden lives.

This is not a new or revolutionary thought but despite our near constant updates on what’s going on with our daily lives, many of us still hide our realities from the world; but more importantly, and what can often be more destructive, is that we hide the reality from ourselves.

We suppress our emotions and we hide our pain. We feel stifled and that we are unable to express ourselves in the way that we want. We feel as though we are not enough. And so many of us fall into a trap of avoidance and ignorance simply due to the fact that it’s easier; it’s more comfortable; we don’t have to take responsibility; we don’t have to risk anything. But soon enough we are in a body we don’t understand and living a life that we aren’t really sure of.

Simply put, we are not living authentically. We don’t allow ourselves or others to see us…..I mean REALLY see us. Yet there is something within us that craves for this authenticity; craves for a life that actually feels in line with who we really are and not the life we think we should be living. There is something within us that yearns to be vulnerable and remove the layers and filters preventing us from true connection to ourselves and this world.

So today I ask the question….where are you hiding? Where are you holding back either from yourself or others? Where do you find yourself continuously getting stuck?

Peeling Back Your Layers

Despite knowing otherwise, I still sometimes fall into the trap of believing that I’m done shedding; that I’ve finally reached some theoretical destination where there are no more layers of the onion to peel back.

It would be so easy to see life that way; healing an aspect of ourselves and then being set for the rest of our lives. And many of us believe that to be the truth: that if we can just fix this one thing, all will be perfect. We have been trained to believe that if we just do a + b then it must equal c. So many of us (myself included) have been taught to think in this very linear, yet very limiting way.

But it just doesn’t work that way and it doesn’t mean anything is wrong with us; it means that we are human beings having a very human experience.

We live, we are confronted, we resist, we struggle, we eventually surrender, we learn, we heal, we grow and then we repeat. This is such an integral cycle of being human and when we resist this we resist our own natural evolution.

The image above is a physical representation of another layer being peeled away in my own life. It is a layer that consists of the fear of surrender, living a life from the heart and not the head and being seen…..really being seen. It’s a thick layer to say the very least and one that I believe many of us want to peel away so that we can unlock the chains keeping us from our joy, freedom and authenticity.

The journey of peeling back these layers is what I'll be exploring in the upcoming posts so stay tuned!

Your Unfelt Pain is Your Incomplete Healing

As another round of rain is set to hit Los Angeles, I can't help but think how our Earth is grieving; her tears will pour out of her in the form of endless raindrops.

Her pain and grief will storm around us, reminding us that she too needs to release what has been stuck and locked away. What is she grieving? Too much to even list: the prostitution, destruction and degradation of her body; the unfelt pain, anger and sadness of those whose physical bodies have come and gone but whose spirits and their grief still lie within her foundations. She grieves for us and the violence we impart on one another.....but she also grieves to give us a chance to release our own pain.

She grieves to show us what it looks like to actually stop and feel what is there for us. She grieves to show us what it looks like to feel what we have been unwilling to feel; to let go and be vulnerable. She grieves to show us what it looks like to heal.

So in this moment I ask, where are you unwilling to go within yourself? What are the questions you are scared to ask? What is it that you are unwilling to feel?

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

"Jekyll and Hyde"

“Light and Dark.”

“Good and Bad.”

It may go by different names but it all comes back to the same universal concept: there is an inherent duality to all of our natures.

And there is absolutely no problem with that.

I repeat, there is no problem with having opposing sides exist within us. The problem only arises when we make it so; when we ourselves say it is a problem that our bodies can be a home to many contradicting forces.

This is because it is difficult for us as humans to live in the gray. We want answers. We want clear lines. We want it to be black and white because for it to be anything other than that forces us to confront uncertainty; it forces us to sit with discomfort and it forces us to confront the constant changing nature in ourselves, in others, in relationships and in the world.

But to be human is to be gray.

We see it as a problem to have sides to us that are completely contradicting because growing up, we are not taught to make space for all that is within us. We are taught what looks and feels “good” and what looks and feels “bad.” We don’t understand that there is nothing wrong with having opposing forces in our one human body.

To repeat, the problem exists because we tell ourselves over and over again that it is a problem in the first place.

There is no problem and to suppress and degrade an aspect (or aspects) of ourselves that we deem as “the dark” and “bad” while only acknowledging “the light” and “the good” is not self-love. That is not compassion. That is conditional love: only loving ourselves when we fit into the one box that looks good to the outer world and feels good in our inner world. This then also affects our views of how we think others should be as well.

For years I suppressed what I deemed to be bad and my dark side. My resistance to show any form of jealousy, anger, anxiety, depression, annoyance, sadness, grief and frustration stemmed directly from my resistance to allow myself to actually feel these emotions. If I did feel them, it always came with a sense of shame as if I needed to somehow do better; as if I should have better control; as if there was something inherently wrong with feeling what are normal human emotions.

In reality, I created my own self-inflicted Jekyll and Hyde. My Jekyll consisted of the sides I felt were the good parts of myself. It was the side I showed to the world: extroverted, life of the party, funny, boisterous, enthusiastic, sarcastic, loyal, unattached, rational and tough. My Hyde was the side I didn’t know how to come to terms with or deal with; the side that seemed too deep and too overwhelming; the side of me that felt like the polar opposite of what I showed to the world: vulnerable, deeply sensitive, emotional, loving, passionate and even introverted.

If you’ve read my writing before, you can take a solid guess as to where that suppression led me to………

You got it: a nervous breakdown. The years of control, rules, restraints and denial had finally caused me to reach my tipping point (and thank God it did).

Looking back now it makes perfect sense how and why it all happened; however at the time, the amount of delusion I had towards trying to understand where this had all come from was almost in parallel to the amount of anxiety, depression, grief, confusion and overwhelm that I was experiencing.  

But that’s just the thing, my delusion was warranted because up until that point, the concept of allowing all emotions and other traits to have space and a place within me was a foreign concept.

And I believe it is foreign to many of us which is part of the reason why our society and political landscape is the way it is: it is occupied, rather saturated, by disconnected, unhealed, unclear and confused human beings.

It is not totally our fault as many of us are not taught any differently, but it doesn’t have to be this way. We have a choice to acknowledge, take responsibility and make space for what comes up for us in whatever way that may look like.

To be clear, this is not to say we always physically act on every changing whim of an emotion that we experience. That is not self-love and in fact puts the responsibility of handling our emotions in that hands of someone or something else outside of ourselves. What I’m saying is that we can see and feel all that is happening within us and not make it wrong or right, good or bad, light and dark. It is all a part of us and it is our choice whether or not we want to suppress or give love to ourselves and make space for all of it.

The more we try to fit ourselves into a box of black and white the more internal strife and grief we will give ourselves; the more limitations and less freedom we will experience; the less love, compassion and acceptance we will feel towards ourselves and others. How can we expect to accept others as they are if we cannot accept ourselves the way we are? Therefore, the more space we allow, the more we can act from a place of love and equanimity.

We can then consciously choose to act on the traits that will be the most loving to ourselves, family, friends, society and the planet but not at the expense of suppressing or denying all of the other aspects of ourselves.

Yes, it is true that whatever we choose to water will grow but we mustn’t forget to tend to the weeds and whatever else that will undoubtedly pop up. We can’t afford to put blinders up and only focus on one seemingly beautiful aspect while abandoning the rest. We may just look up one day and realize that while our one little section of focus is doing great, the rest of the garden as a whole is not.

At any given point in our lives, we can be introverted or extroverted, reserved or outgoing, creative or analytical. We can create a loving space for peace and anxiety, anger and joy, resistance and acceptance, vulnerability and fear, frustration and love. They are all pieces of the same pie. Especially those of us who are highly sensitive, emotions can sometimes change in the blink of an eye so creating this space of free flowing acceptance and equanimity is not only encouraged but nearly required.

This unwavering acceptance is what creates this deeper connection within and a sense of grounding even beyond the emotions. This is what erases our love for our Jekylls and our shame for our Hydes.

Duality exists within us and duality exists outside of us and they are directly related; the more we can accept one, the more we can accept the other. I believe this acceptance is where both the inner healing of us as humans and society as a whole will begin to take place.

Healing the Overwhelm

Overwhelm.

The other Big O.

It hits all of us at some point or another in our lives but it effects some of us far more deeply and profoundly than others (especially if you are a high achiever and/or highly sensitive as many of us are). It can often be debilitating. 

I am one of those people.

As I have openly discussed in previous writings, we all develop stories about ourselves and life early on which then create a filter for all of our experiences. If we don’t think there’s a story all we must do is look at our external lives and the repeated challenges we face and we can begin to figure out the story; it is more often than not, a direct reflection.

The subconscious “I’m not good enough” story that I told myself as a reaction to various stressful situations as a child and adolescent created a foundation of anxiety and thus overwhelm as I tried to prove that I was in fact good enough. Every. Single. Aspect. Of my life has been defined by this and therefore it’s no surprise that I have lived a stressful life where a sense of overwhelm is usually present.

And this is the case for so many of us; we subconsciously choose a life based off of the story that we often don’t even know is running the show. But let us not be confused as this is not a scary thing! This is actually empowering as we can take control of the situation once we begin to pinpoint the story and take responsibility.

And healing the deep sense of overwhelm that so many of us can feel on an everyday basis (especially as you step into new realms of upleveling) is no different.

So what do we do? How do we begin to take control and heal this?

We take responsibility. We do not run from it. We do not suppress it. We do not pick up our phone and scroll through social media until it goes away. We own it. We own the feeling. We befriend it. We give a voice to it. We actually feel the experience of it.

We as a human race are incredibly intelligent. We have more information than ever before at a speed that is quite literally impossible to keep up with (this often actually adds to the overwhelm). We have more access to knowledge than we know what to do with at the click of a button; Our brains truly have never been filled with more information.

But as smart as we are, we can not think our way through our healing. We can not read our way through our pain. 

No no no. Healing is in the body. Yes, information and mindset is extremely important but the way you are feeling IN that mindset is where you begin to transform on the deeper, lasting levels. Connecting to your own experience, not running from it, is where your power and clarity lies. 

More information does not necessarily correlate to more healing.

So now I ask you, what do you say to yourself when you are feeling overwhelmed? What is your reaction to the discomfort? Where do you feel it in your body?

The Story That Shaped Your Life

Most of us have defining moments in our lives when we can look back and there is a clear line of distinction. There was life before these moments and then there was life after these moments. Whether we realize it or not, these moments changed us. 

They made a mark on us and altered the way we see ourselves, our relationships and the world around us.

It doesn’t matter if you can remember them or not but I promise you they’re there. It’s the reason you are the way you are, see yourself and life through a certain filter and most likely the reason you experience the same challenges over and over and over again.

What was one of my moments?

It was when I was 12 years old and my parents moved me from a small ethnically diverse Catholic school to a large, prestigious and mostly white private prep school in Los Angeles.

I went from a school where most people looked like me, or some version of me, to a situation where nearly no one looked like me. I went from being one of the smartest students to often struggling to keep up with the classes. And mostly I went from being relatively popular to not having a clue as to how to fit in with 12 year olds wearing $200 jeans and using $300 backpacks.

The immediate scholastic demands and social pressure took a toll on me and the world and the Bianca that I had previously known crumbled.

I straightened my curly hair. I wore colored contacts. I locked myself in the silent section of the library any free moment I had. I was frenzied, stressed out and I was in a near constant state of trying to prove that I could fit in and keep up.

And so, a new filter/story of my life cemented itself: I am not good enough.

Now this was technically not a “new” filter as there were experiences prior to this that had begun to form that specific thought, but this transition was the most pronounced and the “nail in the coffin” so to speak.

Resting itself deep within my subconscious, that belief was the catapult to some prominent mindsets and ongoing challenges that began to shape my experiences on this Earth: 
- Overwhelm
- Perfectionism
- “This is too hard/much” 
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Stress

Unsurprisingly I experienced a life altering nervous breakdown in 2012 and since then I have been uprooting the weeds in the garden of my heart, body and mind and healing these mindsets on a deeper level.

Moving through the pain and the emotion that allows these weeds to grow in the first place allows me to remove those filters. I now see and connect with myself and the world in a clearer, loving, healthier and more vulnerable way and as a coach I work with others to do the same.

So now I ask, what is your story? How did it shape you? What filter did it bring to your life?

4 Reasons Why There is No Shame in Crying Regularly

***We are living in perilous, trying and emotionally turbulent times. When I originally wrote this, the unjust killings of two black men within 24 hours by the police, the subsequent killings of unrelated/innocent police and the Nice killings had not yet happened but since then my tears have flowed in almost river-like form. As I watch human lives being brutally wiped away from this earth out of fear and hatred, I haven’t quite figured out any other way to help ease the pain or the grief of seeing such atrocities. What I have figured out is that my tears are the only thing keeping me sane and providing me with an outlet for processing, shedding, and creating space for hope and healing.***  

It was a beautiful sunny Sunday a couple of weeks ago and I spent 75% of it crying my eyes out.

I was crying because I was massively grieving. I was grieving bigger concepts like death and the very difficult realization of my parents’ aging alongside the immense pain, suffering and injustice this world seems to on the brink of exploding from.

I was grieving the smaller more selfish things like fully realizing I can never go back to the innocent and free days of my childhood and at the same time wishing I knew what the f**k I’m doing with my life. I was even grieving how I could possibly reach my grapes without getting up from my lawn chair (kidding…..kind of).

And you know what? I had not one ounce of shame about any of it.

So many people truly believe not crying is a pillar of strength and shedding tears is the ultimate show of weakness; that showing anything more than what society deems as “normal” and “good” emotions makes a person weak and/or overly emotional.

I want to be very clear, I don’t mean tantrum crying where you aren’t getting your way or crying in an attempt to control a situation or someone else’s actions (although honestly I still cry sometimes when I feel immense disappointment). Nor do I mean overly indulgent crying where you are continuously feeding into false and/or negative stories about a situation, yourself or others.

I mean crying in the sense of acknowledging and connecting to what’s going on inside you (however big or small it may be), feeling it completely and then releasing it through your tears.

We must deal with so much on a daily basis without realizing it and just like laughing, here are 4 reasons why crying can also heal the soul:

1.) A Deep Release

Grief is a part of life, it is a part of being human but not all grief is as dramatic as experiencing an actual death; although sometimes it may feel like it. Grief can come in many forms: stress, jealousy, disappointment, anger, sadness but instead of acknowledging these emotions, we are taught to “be strong” and not show how these things can affect us. No, you do not need to have a breakdown in front of all of your coworkers if you’ve had an irritating day at the office but imagine the difference if you allowed yourself some alone time to feel your anger and frustration in its entirety, cried it all out and made space for clarity and peace.

2.) Connects us to our Vulnerability

Shedding tears not only takes vulnerability but simultaneously deeply connects us to it, strengthening the cords to our own precious humanity. In our process of releasing and shedding what has been building up inside of us, our tears metaphorically and slowly tear down those “pillars” which are in reality just blocks to our wholeness.  

3.) Disintegrates our masks

People can often associate a person crying with weakness (once again I’m not referring to overly indulgent, frequent crying tantrums) but what it makes them is vulnerable and with vulnerability comes an immense amount of strength; strength to move past exterior walls and deeply feel what is going on within. It is admirable and a hero/heroine’s journey to feel those emotions that are so often shamed (grief, disappointment, anger, jealousy). Every time you cry, you are tapping into that raw humanity that we so often hide. Connecting to our tears, to our grief (or whatever the difficult emotion may be), is a means of connecting to our soul and moving past the masks that society so often demands us to wear. Shared vulnerability is one of the biggest and deepest connection points that we as humans have. 

4.) Form of Self Love

To associate crying with shame is equivalent to putting shame on ourselves and that is NOT self love. Holding in our emotions and not allowing them to flow through us to be released, causes them to sit and fester within us until they manifest into physical symptoms. I would know because I bragged about not crying for years and unsurprisingly had a mental breakdown which spiraled me into a deep glorious hole of both depression and anxiety (and also unsurprisingly, endless tears). Self love is not just about eating right and working out. It’s about showing unconditional love to all aspects of ourselves and not encouraging some emotions while completely shaming others. It’s about processing life as it comes and filtering out what needs to be let go of. It’s about crying when you need to freaking cry and not being embarrassed to do so and THAT is self love.

Do not fear your tears. Do not fear what they represent. Embrace them and all that they embody. They may just end up being the very thing which make you feel more whole, more connected to yourself and more connected to others.