Why be.?

I like words. A lot. Words convey meaning, communicate ideas, and tell stories. They connect the dots. They connect people. They really matter to me. They matter to Juli, too, and when it came time to choose a word or words to name our psychotherapy practice, we wanted to be thoughtful and intentional.

As we approach our own work and the work that we do with our clients, we often ask:

How do you want to be? With yourself? With others?

What do you want to stand for?

What really matters to you?

These questions can help us clarify our core values; the stuff that we want our lives to be about; the things that we want others to think about when they call us to mind.

Humans really want to be connected.

It turns out that “relationship stuff,” like emotional intimacy/closeness and authentic connection often make the “what matters most” list. As painful as connection can be (with its relation to vulnerability, disappointment and loss), we long for it. Vulnerability and shame researcher Brené Brown reminds us that we have a primal need for love and belonging. A desire for authentic connection with others. To “get” others and to be “gotten.”

Connection requires presence.

To be intimately, authentically connected with others requires presence. Presence requires that we be here, now; that we suspend preoccupation with yesterday and contemplation of tomorrow; that we root ourselves in this moment. Showing up. Non-doing. Here. Now. be.-ing.

We all have an innate capacity to be; to participate fully in this moment. Children are experts in being. We were all children once, and we can reconnect with our capacity to be present if we are intentional and willing to practice. The rewards are great. Don’t take my word for it though. Think of your own experience. See if you can call to mind a time when you “lost yourself” in the moment. Maybe you were “all in” with a favorite activity or pastime. Maybe you let go and fully connected with your playful or silly side. What was that moment like for you?

Presence isn’t always pleasurable.

Rooting down and showing up to our moments – be.-ing – requires a willingness to be in contact with our moment-to-moment experience, including our thoughts, feelings, urges and sensations. We have a tendency to label our experience as “good or bad,” “right or wrong,” “pleasant or unpleasant.” Most often, we attempt to hold or cling to the “good, right, and pleasant,” and we push away or limit our contact with the “bad, wrong, and unpleasant.” We orient toward pleasure and away from internal pain and discomfort. This is certainly reasonable. I mean, who wants to feel pain and discomfort?

To complicate matters, many of us have learned to fear our thoughts, feelings, urges and sensations. There are plenty of reasons for this, including early “programming” (what we learned about thoughts and feelings from parents or caregivers), difficulty with emotion regulation, and trauma. Fearing our thoughts, feelings, urges and sensations, we often go to great lengths to avoid these experiences. We work, eat, drink, exercise, blame ourselves and others, “check out” with a “Netflix binge,” or even move across the country. Problem is, the avoidance of these feared thoughts and feelings is only workable in the short-term, and our struggle to escape or eliminate internal pain and discomfort often leads to additional suffering (i.e., overworking to escape feelings of fear and insecurity damages our relationships; drinking to ease social discomfort may result in high risk behaviors; losing yourself in a television series late into the evening results in insufficient sleep and reduced positive health behaviors, like exercising the next morning). Check your experience to see if this is true for you. In the struggle to avoid thoughts, feelings, urges and sensations, do you engage in behaviors that result in the “piling on” of other problems over time? If avoiding pain or discomfort eases your distress in the short term, does it also have the unfortunate side effect of adding to your long term suffering?

We can suffer less.

In addition to being connected with other humans, the “story” of be. is also about connecting with ourselves. It’s about practicing a willingness to show up to our full human experience – the pleasure and the pain – in service of living full, rich, connected, and meaningful lives. If it turns out that willingness to show up to our full human experience – learning to be with moment-to-moment experiences in a safe and present way - leads to deeper connection, more valued living, and reduced suffering, would you be interested? Could you be willing?

Suggestions for experimenting with a be.-ing practice.

If more be.-ing and less doing calls to you, and you would like to experiment with or perhaps return to a practice, here are some suggestions:

Sit in stillness for one minute and observe your breath. See if you can notice your thoughts. Can you also notice that you are the thinker having the thoughts? See if you can neither cling to your thoughts nor push them away. Can you simply observe the contents of your mind? Can you bring a spirit of curiosity to this practice, rather than judgment? Keep in mind that you need not strive to have an absence of thought; rather, the point of this exercise is to allow and observe; to just notice.

Play. Lose yourself in an activity, game, song or dance. You can do this alone or with others; allow yourself to choose what feels most comfortable. What do you notice about your experience? Is there a difference between what your mind tells you about your experience (i.e., what it will be like) vs. your actual experience?

Choose a type/category of thought for the day (i.e., worry thought, critical/self judgment thought, planning thought, thought about the past) and see if you can notice (and label) when thoughts from that category show up (i.e., when I find myself thinking about how I’m going to manage all of the tasks on my to-do list: “There’s a worry thought;” when I speak to myself in a harsh tone and call myself an “idiot:” “I’m noticing a self-critical thought”). You don’t need to do anything different or change your thought; just see if you can notice or label your thoughts for what they are: thoughts. You can do the same with an “emotion of the day.” Choose an emotion to notice and label whenever it arises (i.e., “I notice that I’m having the feeling of sadness” or “anger is here; I notice that I’m having the feeling of anger”). See if you can be curious about what happens when you notice and label your thoughts as thoughts and your feelings as feelings. No effort to change; just notice. Observe your experience in the moment, as it unfolds. See if you can approach this with a spirit of observation, rather than judgment? What is your experience?