Ask Helen: a reader question about fear, readiness, and inaction

Dear Helen,

How can I figure out what's hanging me up from moving forward? How do I know if it's fear talking, or if I'm hesitating because I'm truly not ready/it isn't actually the right time to pursue the thing?

Thank you!
Stuck Here

Dear Stuck Here,

I promise I'm not being snarky, but I have to ask: Does it matter?

Does it really matter if you're feeling afraid versus the timing isn't right?

Don't get me wrong, I completely understand where you're coming from with this question. It's a distinction I know many of us puzzle over when we find that we're not moving forward in the way that we think we ought to. (Let's put a pin in the whole concept of "moving forward" and come back to that in a minute, because—big surprise—I have a lot to say about that, too.)

But I'm just wondering: How would it help you to know one way or the other? What would you do next, if you knew 🔮 FOR SURE 🔮 that you were experiencing fear, or, on the other hand, that it really isn't the right time to pursue this thing?

I suspect you're asking this because you want to know if this is a 'you' problem (something you need to get over or solve for in some way) or if it's merely a timing thing or circumstance (something you might see as being more unchangeable and, therefore, maybe a more legitimate reason for not making progress).

Minds do this. I've said it before: They're black-and-white thinkers with strong opinions, and they tend to compile pretty compelling evidence to support whatever their current belief system is. So, it's not at all surprising that your mind wants to know, definitively, if it's your fault you're not moving forward (as though it could be) or if it's truly out of your control. Your mind wants to know if you should push through this (whatever 'this' is) or hang back.

So binary!

It believes there's a right answer to this question you posed, a trustworthy way of discerning what should happen next, and it's on you to figure it out.

I'm pointing all this out because I've found that it's helpful to start to notice where our minds jump in and try to run the show for us in ways that aren't entirely or even mostly helpful.

Your mind thinks you should be pursuing this thing, and because you're not, your mind is saying there's a problem. And then your mind is really bearing down on this so-called problem and wanting to fully understand it in an objective way, as though it wasn't the one to create it in the first place and as though objectivity exists in this situation.

It's kind of bonkers when you think about it, right?

Okay, now for the second part of my answer, which, of course, involves posing another question to you: How do you know you're hung up from moving forward?

Really think about that for a moment.

How do you know?

How do you know this isn't supposed to be the way forward—with you not doing the thing, regardless of the reason?

From what I can tell, nothing ever gets hung up. It's impossible. Things keep unfolding, life keeps on going, and change keeps happening.

'Forward' is a funny way of describing the direction, because it implies there could be a 'backward' or a 'standing still'—and when I really look at these concepts, I see that they're exactly that. Concepts. They don't seem to exist outside of a mind. Nothing but a mind could determine that the direction a pursuit is going is backward. Or that a pursuit is somehow hung up, frozen in place, not advancing. Can you see how there's no objective truth there? It's all mind-created.

But I get that, societally, we often think of the unfolding of things as 'making progress' or as 'forward movement' because that's what it feels like—or, more probably, what we want it to feel like to move through life.

It sounds like you're simply not doing a thing that you expect yourself to do, want yourself to do (or think you want yourself to do), or believe you should be doing.

You're not doing it, who knows why, and then your mind is coming in with A Lot To Say About It.

Of course it is. This is what minds do.

Minds are meaning-making machines. It's their whole job to generate the stuff, and the meaning they make can be total nonsense.

So, what if nothing is wrong here? What if it isn't on you to figure out if or when you should be going after this pursuit? What if that's just a giant misunderstanding?

Try on these questions and see what you see.

I hope this helps!

Love,
Helen

Ask Helen: a reader question about comfort versus growth

Dear Helen,

I have been wrestling with a question lately, and it seems like the kind of thing you’d have interesting thoughts on. How do we reconcile our desire for comfort and ease with our desire for growth, which nearly always comes with discomfort? 

Thank you!
At Odds

Dear At Odds,

This is a question that I'd have given a completely different answer to only a few years ago. I would've thought some kind of ✨strategy✨ would need to be employed, or, at the very least, a bit of noodling on the mechanics of competing desires.

But, nowadays, it looks quite a bit simpler to me.

As I see it, there's nothing to reconcile here. Nothing is actually at odds.

Some moments, you will gravitate toward so-called comfort.

Some moments, you will gravitate toward so-called edginess—or something you might describe as being "outside your comfort zone."

And truly, only a mind would categorize your actions as one or the other. Minds love to make distinctions; they love to chop up the seamless, flowing experience of life and slap a label on each component.

This is me, seeking comfort.

This is me, striving for growth.

That's just the function of the mind. It's what minds do.

In reality, though, you're doing what occurs to you in any given moment—be it watching Netflix on the couch or putting in the miles to train for a marathon.

Your mind might say that one activity is 'easy' and the other is 'hard'; it will probably even suggest that one merits more kudos than the other.

But such distinctions couldn't possibly exist outside of a mind.

Minds think in black-and-white and they have strong opinions (often changing and contradicting themselves, though they won't cop to that). It sounds like your mind has a lot to say about how you spend your time, and whether or not you're choosing the kind of activities that require you to step outside of what's comfortable and easy.

Your mind also has ideas about how and when growth happens (and I'd bet anything it has evidence to support its claims).

Who could say that growth occurs mainly through discomfort? (A mind would totally say that, but, really: How do we know that's true?)

It sounds like your mind is recalling what it believes about growth, maybe even remembering past experiences of growth—how uncomfortable things felt, how you were in limbo for a period of time or stretched in some particular way—and it's trying to reverse-engineer the whole thing going forward. Like, I grew so much via such-and-such experience; my memory of it is that I was super uncomfortable and challenged the whole time. Ergo, in order to keep growing as a person, I must make sure I'm seeking out experiences that are uncomfortable and difficult.

What the mind won't like to hear (because it renders moot the mind's chatter and scheming) is that we're changing and growing constantly, regardless of what we do with our time.

Uncomfortable, challenging moments (that may or may not inspire something we'd later refer to as 'growth') arise on their own over the course of a life, and we respond in the moment in whatever way occurs to us. Some future version of us might look back on all that and call it 'growth,' even though we didn't choose it or make any real decisions about it; it was just the natural unfolding of circumstances, plus our common sense responses to those events.

As I said, the mind will come in and want to chop up everything. It will want to know which season of life you're in right now, and when it will end, and what efforts you plan to put forth in the spirit of growth. It will want to know if the marathon is challenging enough or should it have been a triathlon? And what will be your growth project after this? As though that's the only way you'll grow, if you're consciously moving toward some outward goal that requires so-called discomfort and discipline.

Of course your mind is going to wrestle with this question, At Odds! It feels like something you really have to reconcile, because it feels like there really are two competing desires at play. But, in truth, there is no binary here. Comfort and growth aren't in opposition to each other. How could they be?

I'm going to take it a step further with this: You don't even need to be intentional in order to grow.

Your mind is going to resist that statement, because it goes against everything a mind believes it needs to do to advance our position in life (not to mention what we've been societally conditioned to believe about growth)—but maybe that's exactly where real, honest-to-goodness growth lies: in considering that you don't have to do anything in particular in order to grow.

Bodies and minds grow all the time, without our involvement or effort—even in spite of our blessedly messy interference.

I hope this helps!

Love,
Helen

A gentle New Year's reminder

Happy New Year!

Our household is emerging from a solid month of sickness. Back-to-back viruses (COVID for Christmas! An interminable January cold!) that have me wanting to buy stock in Kleenex.

It's funny because I keep thinking, We've been sick for SO LONG. But then I look at the calendar and realize that a month isn't actually all that long. I mean, what's 'long,' anyway? Longer than I'd like? Yes, for sure. But, really and truly 'a long time'? No, not in the grand scheme of things.

Anyway, how are you feeling?

Are you finding yourself drawing any conclusions about how the rest of the year will go, based on the past three weeks?

When the new year starts off rough, superstition tends to creep up even for folks who say they don't believe in it. They get to thinking that a couple weeks of feeling kind of meh or blah in the new year means something.

Let me tell you what: It doesn't mean anything beyond a couple weeks of feeling kind of meh or blah. I promise.

(And besides, it's January. Who doesn't occasionally feel meh or blah about January? Or about any random month, for that matter. Our emotional landscape is changing constantly, so there's a good chance if you live a decently long life that you'll feel crummy at some point during each and every single month. This is okay! This is what it is to be a human being. Nothing is broken or wrong.)

Are you falling into any of that superstitious thinking?

Have you decided that what's happened so far this month (bad or good—watch out for both) means something about what will happen the rest of the month...or the rest of the year?

If this feels familiar, go gently. Smile for the fact of this new awareness. Remember to stay present to what is, to recognize the good- or bad-feeling moment for what it is—a single moment comprised of moving energy.

What to do with a dangerous mind

Two weeks ago, my four-year-old saw something she didn't want to see.

It was a flashing light.

A white screen that flashed at her repeatedly until she was in tears.

She's hated flashing lights of every sort since an epic thunderstorm a few years ago. That fear was further cemented during a hotel stay some months later, in which the intermittent flash of our room's smoke detector scared the stuffing out of her when she woke in the middle of the night.

Anyway, we lay in bed together a couple weeks ago and she burrowed her small face into my chest, crying and asking for the flashing to stop.

Only I couldn't stop it.

It wasn't real. She was imagining it.

We'd been lying there, playing a visualization game my husband came up with to calm her and get her ready for sleep. It involves closing our eyes and imagining clouds of different shapes floating by.

"There goes a rocking horse," I said.

"I see that rocking horse now, too!" she answered. "And a hat with a pom-pom on top."

"There goes a red bell pepper," I said.

"Is it really red, or are you imagining that?"

(Adorably hilarious because, of course, the whole thing is imaginary.)

"Well, it's a white cloud in the shape of a bell pepper, but I think it would be red if it were real."

For whatever reason, and after some time playing the cloud game, she told me she saw a flash. A white, flashing screen. And she got into a panic about it.

"Open your eyes," I told her. "There's no flashing in your room. No storms, no lightning, nothing."

"But I see a flash!" she cried out.

It didn't matter that it was in her imagination. It didn't matter that she knew it was in her imagination. It was as scary to her as anything real. And no one, not even her, could make it stop.

She talked herself through trying to replace the thought with something else.

"I could think of something jolly! A flashing Santa belly!" Her voice was strained, frantic, as though she was trying to convince herself to be cheerful.

She carried on with various ideas for what she could think about instead. A noble endeavor, and something I think we can all relate to. Who doesn't love a good reframing, a solid mantra or affirmation?

But the more substitutions she came up with, the more that white flashing screen would intrude and bring her back to tears.

"Your mind is safe," I told her. "There's nothing it can do that's unsafe. This is what I coach people about."

"Do some coachy things for me," she pleaded.

I explained some basic facts about her mind. About all minds.

• It's a machine, so it tends to spit out a lot of repetitive stuff. It gets into the habit of thinking about certain things in a certain way.

• It's entirely safe. (She disputed this vehemently. It makes her think scary things, so it couldn't be safe, she reasoned. "It's a dangerous soup." And as much as I love that moniker, I told her it just isn't true. There's no dangerous soup inside her head. Or yours.)

• Sometimes we get stuck on a particular thought. We don't let it pass the way all our other thoughts pass, because there's something about it that scares us, something that feels meaningful or personal, something that hooks us and keeps us engaged with it. It's completely innocent on our part. Still, when that happens, the mind latches onto it even harder and keeps serving up that same dreadful thing again and again.

The trick, I told my daughter, is to understand that this is what all minds do. And to not resist the scary thoughts that it sometimes produces.

It’s showing you some terrifying flashes? Okay. Acknowledge that it feels scary, but don’t forget to also acknowledge that your mind has made it up. It isn’t real.

Desperately wanting your mind to stop doing something pretty much ensures it'll keep doing that same thing. Thinking you can't handle the flashes or the feelings that come along with them makes a mind, all minds, return to them.

Not because minds are awful (they're not!), but because this is just their nature. Resisting the thought gives it a ton of energy. 

Welcoming the flashes? The feeling of terror? Getting to a place where you can say, I hate feeling like this, but I can handle these feelings (in fact, they're being handled as we speak)? That’s when the mind can let go of the offending image. It loses its charge, and the river of thought is once again flowing, unimpeded.

Now, obviously I didn't say all this to my four-year-old. But it's what we might talk about if you came to me, completely terrified of and terrorized by something you were imagining.

And although a white, flashing screen (or a monster under the bed, or a shadow lurking in the closet, etc.) seems to an adult mind to be nothing more than a figment of the imagination, all of our grown-up fears, fixations, and worries are much the same. Intrusive thoughts, certainly, but also all the other things we find ourselves anticipating and trying to mitigate as we navigate life.

Don't fight your mind. By observing with gentle curiosity, you can start to peel apart from it a little—and that little bit of separation gives you the chance to see just how repetitive and not-personal all of its content really is.

There goes my mind again—showing me these scary things I really don’t like.

You don't need to *do* anything to change what your mind is showing you. In fact, the more you try to intervene, the more energy and attention you give to this thing you'd rather not think about!

The nature of thought is to flow.

Your mind is designed to move on.

There's no dangerous soup up there, I promise.

Ask Helen: a reader question about counseling others

Dear Helen,

In my own counseling I deal with individuals who struggle with black and white or all or nothing thinking. How can I help them move beyond these cognitive distortions so they don’t sabotage their progress?

Thank you!
Fellow Helper

Dear Fellow Helper,

I know it can feel hard to be on the other side, seeing something clearly and truly while the person in front of you is believing the lies that their mind is telling them!

But you know what?

It can also not feel hard.

What do I mean?

Well, of course you want your clients' suffering to end. You want them to experience more peace and freedom. You can see how their relationship to their thinking is the only thing standing in their way. (In other words, the fact that they're thinking isn't the problem; we're all always thinking. Believing what they're thinking is what's causing them to suffer. Identifying with their thoughts is what's giving them grief.)

Similarly, if you're believing what your mind is telling you, then this process of helping point someone in a different direction might feel more fraught, more urgent, and more like sabotaged progress is a legitimate threat.

When I'm coaching someone around a particular topic and I see what their mind is doing, how it's coming in and creating suffering for them, it only ever feels urgent and fraught when I, too, am getting pulled into a mind-created story. When I'm buying into the thought that it's up to me to fix them. When I leave the present moment and imagine some future scenario where my client is back at square one, because I didn't ever manage to get them past their cognitive distortions.

Only a busy mind would suggest that a client could "sabotage their progress." How do I know?

1. Because it's an overly simplistic assessment of psychological experience, which, by its very nature, is ever-changing.

2. The word choice is loaded, kind of extreme. It doesn't sound like it's coming from a calm, centered, peaceful source.

3. It doesn't account for all the growth and change that's happening constantly, even as a client appears to struggle with some of the same thoughts week after week.

4. It's predictive. Minds loooooove to make predictions, and they'll go after certainty like it's their job.

Kind of sounds like black and white thinking, huh? 😉

(Coaches and counselors: They're just like us!)

I'm not trying to poke fun at you here; far from it. I just want to help you see that the journey isn't so binary as our minds would have us believe. Clients are not either making progress or sabotaging themselves. Minds are funny things that want to draw neat and tidy (and horribly inaccurate, bless them) conclusions, both for our clients and for us.

Anyway, just start to notice where your mind is jumping in with a story about your clients. And get curious.

As for the clients, themselves: What if the person sitting in front of you already has everything they need, they're just experiencing some in-the-moment thought that looks absolutely real and personal to them?

(This is how I view each and every client who comes my way.)

How should you help them?

You're going to keep helping them in whatever ways occur to you.

Sometimes that looks like continuing to point in the same direction, again and again, until something clicks for them. They have an insight, a morsel of new thinking about who they really are beyond their psychological experience, and everything suddenly looks different to them.

Sometimes that looks like changing your language or using a different metaphor to illustrate what you're saying.

Sometimes that looks like scrapping everything you've done thus far and just sitting down and listening deeply to them. Not with two ears, but more with a consciousness. Don't listen for anything. Don't fixate on what they need to see differently in order to find peace and freedom. Know that there's health beyond what they're thinking. And then respond from whatever wisdom shows up. Something always shows up.

And finally: Know that when the cognitive distortions resurface (as they often do—minds are conditioned machines, after all), this isn't a sign that anything is wrong, that there's been a "relapse" into old thinking, or that all progress is lost. It's just what a perfectly normal mind does sometimes, and the less meaning we make of it, the quicker it changes and is replaced by new experience.

I hope this helps!

Love,
Helen