Beyond Broken

Self Exploration

Oh How We Suffer — Imposter Syndrome

Imposter Syndrome is rampant.  When it was first introduced in 1978 it was thought to mainly affect women but soon it was proven to be equally distributed between men and women with 70% of us suffering from it at some point in our lives.  I suspect that percentage is low.

The research suggests that one of the causes is demanding, overly protective parents.  This makes sense because this type of parenting can take away your self confidence and agency.  Brené Brown loves to say that struggle is what builds confidence and resilience.  If parents protect us from our struggles we do not feel capable to take on life’s challenges.

In my work with clients and from my own observations I have come up with another compelling reason that some of us suffer from Imposter Syndrome.  One of my clients is tormented by the voice in her head that says in a mean tone, “You do not know what you are doing, you are not keeping up to date in your field, you are going to do more harm than good.”  I ask her, “I wonder what job this voice has?”  Since Imposter Syndrome is not a mental illness I know that this active, instructive, mean voice is trying to help in some way.

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I Want to Write About Faith…

 

“I want to write about faith,” is the first line of one my favorite poems by David Whyte.  He continues, “but I have no faith myself…but let this then, my small poem…be the first prayer that opens me to faith.”

I have always loved this poem because from my experience, it describes the process of faith so honestly.

Recently a client asked me, “Wendy, do you pray?”  She is in the midst of her own struggles with faith.  “Yes I pray,” I said, “and prayer for me seems to have seasons.”  The answer came out without thought.  And I was pleased with it.  I have spent many years trying to ‘install’ a prayer practice in my life.  I memorized “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace, where there is hatred let me sow love…etc.”  I learned ancient chants in odd languages, repetitive songs in Portuguese and most recently prayer beads each morning at the edge of the ocean.

During the Pandemic something changed.  The tremendous longing I felt to reach God — to feel some sort of communion— not to feel so alone, diminished.

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The Mandala Moment

This past fall a class gathered to take a deep dive into the topics of Autonomy and Authority.  Eleven of us from around the world took on the challenges and the promise of this work.  First we opened up to an audacious concept that infinite possibilities are available to us at any moment.  It is amazing to tap into this energy — that all you can imagine already exists waiting for you to grasp it!  Then we had to examine deeply what is in our way of actually doing so.  Each of us looked and felt our young emotional dependency, waiting for a parental figure, a gate keeper, to give us the permission we felt we needed as children.  In this mindset someone or something was in the way of what we wanted — of all that was possible.  We each had to answer the question — what do I really want when I wait and lean on another for all that is already waiting for me?  This was a vulnerable place.  I could feel each of us literally grow up a bit as we began to activate in our selves what we wanted from another.

Next we embraced another huge, expansive idea. If you focus inward and are willing to go through the uncomfortable emptiness, you will find everything!  This is a challenging practice. We found constant distractions.  And then we found that what was in our way was how we all give over our attention to outward authorities and wrestle with them instead of finding our own inner authority.  The promise of an ongoing practice of turning inward versus reaching out is that we will experience vibrancy, aliveness and an unleashing of our innate creativity….

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Scar Tissue

 

Oops! I had a pretty bad accident in June. I fell onto broken glass.

I have not written a blog post in a while (since March) and part of the reason is that, for a while, I could not type.  A trip to the emergency room, six hours and fourteen stitches later, I was back home with bandages, pain meds and a long healing road ahead.  Fortunately our local teaching hospital has top hand specialists, and all summer I have been working with a Physical Therapist Angel named Hannah. Lately I have backslid a bit working to get feeling and movement back in my thumb and index finger.  “It is because of scar tissue,” Hannah says.

A Google search turns up all the information I need. …

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Spring Gardening

In my garden this year the weeds are plentiful.  Especially one kind of weed that is very satisfying to find and pull out.  It is wide and can spread out its lush and large tendrils for several feet in all directions but at its base is a small ball and if you are lucky and pull it out just right you get the very deep central small single minuscule little root.  I am always amazed that such a small yet tenacious root can give rise to such a prolific plant.  Buckets of this weed come out of my garden and into the compost.  A Taproot, as it is called, turns out is the first root to appear from the seed and remains the central root of the plant.

I love this as a metaphor.

While we may, in our lives, spread out in many directions with flashy, fleshy greenery we have one central root to our lives and it has always been true.  In the Pathwork this is called our Soul Task.  The promise is that finding this task and staying true to it is the secret to a satisfying life.  Recently, my husband Tom found a letter that I wrote him in 1988.  We had been married for 7 years and I was about to turn 35.  In the letter I say that I  feel like I have checked important boxes in my life: kids, self employment and married for life.  While all this is great I go on in the letter to answer a question Tom has asked me the week before.  He asked, “Do you think we will ever make the Big Time.”  He is  referring our fledgling technology business at the time. Reading it all these years later, I am pretty astonished at my answer .  I write, “I think we will — but on a different track than what we are on now.  I think the contribution we can really make is to share with others who we are and how we are and that is our most marketable product!”  I go on to say that I am clear I can only keep going in this business for two more years….

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