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I’ve written lots of educational and inspirational blog posts but recently decided to start writing a weekly coaching related post on Mondays. This is the third week. If you’re just tuning in now, check out the first two posts: Cut Yourself Some Slack for Being As Good As You Are Now and Take Back Your Power: Plug the Leaks in Your Life.

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The leaks in your life are a symptom, or an expression, of how you feel about yourself. So if we’re going to get real about leaks and really take our power back, we have to talk not just about your leaks but about how you feel and think about yourself as this is the perspective you live your life through.

Victim is a feared word because it so goes against our “I’m fine, thanks” mask. You know, the one you put on to try to feel safe and secure in the world. Nobody wants to be seen as less than the perfect, wise, wonderful, loving, funny, etc. person we want to be seen as. But we are full-specturm beings who have been marinated in the collective consciousness of this planet which is DEEP in victim.

Centuries of violence, institutions that have systematically killed millions of people over centuries, endless genocides, the attempted destruction of the sacred feminine, and probably a million other things have led to a collective of people who feel insecure and believe they’re helpless to change things, that their efforts won’t make a difference.

But it’s not COOL to talk about it. It’s COOL to “be brave, look strong, put on a good face, play the game well”.

But this is such bullshit. In our hearts what we know is truly cool is to be undefended and REAL. So let’s drop the denial or posturing persona stuff we may have going on and own that throughout the course of a day there are probably 50+ moments in which you come into direct contact with the insecure feeling of victim inside of you. You find you can’t make a decision. You feel less than. You blame someone, your body, or an event about why you can’t feel good, be happy, or don’t have what you want. When this comes up, you don’t want to feel it so you get on Facebook, get something sugary to eat, over-stimulate yourself with texts, busy-ness, or whatever to try to numb the feeling.

This is running to stand still. This is lying to ourselves. This is a trap.

So let’s call a spade a spade and call out the conditioning that has each and every one of us set to a default setting of victim orientation. It’s like a lens or filter we see ourselves and life through. It uncomfortable, limiting, and also completely untrue… but KNOWING this isn’t enough. We have to put our knowing that this is a bunch of lies into action to really be free of it. And not just once, but over and over to reset our default orientation and identify from victim to creator.

THE VICTIM TRIANGLE / THE DRAMA TRIANGLE

I’ve sat through hundreds if not thousands of counseling sessions. Regardless of what each person’s stated reason is for seeking support, there is one thing every person, without fail, speaks about… which is that they are caught up in the victim triangle. It goes like this:

Victim – Poor me. I am not to blame.
Persecutor – The person, job, situation, event, circumstance, habit, inheritance, etc. you’re blaming to justify being a poor me. When you’re living in the victim triangle, you need the persecutor. Without it you have no justification or excuse to be a poor me. When you’re being the persecutor, you feel right.
Rescuer – What the victim goes to to seek relief from the persecutor. When you’re being the rescuer, you believe you’re doing something good.

We play all three roles. And all three roles are faces of a victim.

For example, you feel persecuted by someone else being a big victim. You know the friend, coworker, or relative who will not, for the love of all that’s divine and magical, stop complaining about their drama. You get sick of listening to this so you try to “help” them. And even though it’s clear they don’t really want to do anything about it, you keep helping. But the reason you’re helping, ie. rescuing, is because you feel persecuted by their victimization. But the person who’s getting false power and attention from being a victim continues being a victim, ignores your advice, and continues to complain to you (because you’ve made yourself available for it) and after awhile you get really pissed off! You’ve had it with their drama and you turn into the persecutor yourself. You make them wrong and yell at them… all because you felt persecuted by their victimization.

Or, it could be more like you feel wounded and broken from your past. You wouldn’t call yourself a victim exactly, but whether you want to say it or not, that is the orientation you’re living from. You had a rough beginning and/or something really invasive happened to you (the persecutor) and you feel like you’re operating with a deficiency that will not, despite your best efforts, go away. So you smoke pot or take pills or drink regularly or overeat or shop excessively, etc. (the rescuer) but that only felt like a relief in your early 20s. Now you’re older and you’ve developed health problems, weight gain, depression, paranoia, or huge debt and now what was once a source of relief, is now also persecuting you.

Any which way you look at it, it’s the same thing again and again. And while there may be one of these roles you may go to more than another, we all play out each of these roles – victim, persecutor, and rescuer – repeatedly.

(Sidenote: My experience is that rescuers tend to have the hardest time seeing this. They really think they’re being helpful and even though they constantly complain about how resentful they feel, they have an extremely hard time SEEING how they’re actually playing a part in the victim triangle. If this is you, if you find yourself in a the role of the “helping friend” to people who are constantly in drama and complaining about what relentless, ungrateful, blood sucking vampires they are, you need to have a truth session with yourself. Just sayin’.)

So here EVERYONE is, in the victim triangle and living out a huge, distracting, disempowering drama. Oh, wait a minute, did I say everyone? Yes, everyone. That’s me, you, and everyone we know. Seriously – I have yet to meet anyone who is outside of this on a full-time basis. Don’t believe me? Then I invite you to take the next 24 hours (or week) to observe what people speak about. Listen… to your coworkers, the people in line at Peet’s, to your friends, to the people you live with, and your neighbors. What you’re listening for is that regardless of the CONTENT of what they talk about, what they’re really talking about is the drama and suffering they’re experiencing as a byproduct of living in the victim triangle. It will be something like “I am a victim”, “Someone or something is pissing me off” (I’m a victim who’s identified as a persecutor), or “I just want to help so and so but it’s not working and I feel resentful” (I’m a victim who’s identified as a rescuer).

I swear 99% of conversations are this. Until….

They’re NOT!

More on that in next week’s post!

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Everyone’s looking to feel more confident. More powerful. More dynamically alive, fully expressed, radiant, free, and generally fantastic.

But here’s the thing – the elevated vitality, well-being, and feeling of empowerment we seek is only partially about building up our energy. The other, and perhaps more overlooked part, is learning how to HOLD the energy we have.

What’s the difference? One way to look at it is building your energy is all about the things you do that fill you up. Eating well for your body’s needs. Exercising regularly. Sleeping well. Meditating. Engaging in meaningful connections. Being creative. Having fun. And whatever else floats your unique boat.

Holding your energy is about being a solid container. Put another way, it’s about plugging the leaks in the container of how you live your life. Things like communicating clearly and making clear agreements. Advocating for and honoring yourself instead of over-compromising and giving your power away. Being your own source of approval and permission instead of endlessly looking to others to validate you. Having your finances in good order and not going into debt. Seeing things through. Attending to details. Owning your projections.

We can build all the energy we want but if we just leak it right out, it doesn’t do us much good. If we want to feel great, if we want our lives to flow, if we want to feel stable, supported, confident, and energized, we have to plug our leaks.

There’s no blame or judgment here. We all have many places where we leak our energy. These are the places we’re scared to deal with because they bring us into contact with our insecurities and less-mature ways of thinking and operating. So we “cope” by hanging out in our comfort zones and focusing on what we feel good at. But this style of avoidance doesn’t work because there is so much more for us to stretch into. So many more places in our bodies, emotions, minds, relationships, and lives for us to inhabit.

How to plug your leaks

It starts with making an honest assessment of the places where you leak your energy. Look at each area of your life like a container in itself. Where does the energy hold and flow? Where does it leak? If you’re not sure, consider where you get results that make you feel depleted, confused, disappointed, or angry. Also, notice what you find yourself complaining about repeatedly. These are all good indicators of where you have leaks.

If your leak list is gigantic and makes you feel like a soggy porous colander, don’t sweat it. We’re all like that because we’ve each been deeply trained to project to others, and even ourselves, a persona of perfection and avoid admitting to, let alone attending to, things that have us come into contact with the vulnerable truth of who we are. We’ve also been trained to use our broken places to get attention as well as a false sense of identity and power. This runs deep and isn’t always easy to see, but most everyone does it to some degree. Not sure? Just think of all the times you’ve gone over the same challenge/drama/heartbreak/struggle with your friends and how they’ve given you counsel and yet you find yourself in the same place. Or how defensive you get in justifying your limitations when an event or person asks you to step beyond them.

It gets twisty and vulnerable in these shadowy places but if we’re going to walk the spiritual path with practical feet (i.e. walk our talk), we have to be honest with ourselves and take action to own and expand into the areas beyond our comfort zone.

The fun part is once you’re clear what area you want to focus on you get to apply your creativity and come up with an experiment on how to approach this part of your life differently. Run your experiment for a period of time – a week, month, or longer – and see what results you get. If things improve, you’re on the right track. If not, re-evaluate both the leak and your way of addressing it and refine your approach.

For example, if you notice that people walk all over you and overstep your boundaries, practice standing up for yourself. Practice saying what is and what is not OK with you. Practice tolerating the insecurity that comes up in you when you feel others are disapproving or mad at you. Practice tolerating the shame and guilt that comes up when you place yourself as a higher priority in your life. Educate yourself about healthy relationship dynamics and communication skills, such as reading The Four Agreements or The Mastery of Love as well as Non-Violent Communication.

Personally I’ve been working on how to improve the overall flow of the photo shoot process. After 15 years of counseling/coaching work, I feel confident how to hold that container. But photo shoots are a new process to me so I’ve been evaluating the whole process from when someone calls me to inquire about a session from the time I send a thank you note and fine tuning how to make it a clear, flowing, mutually beneficial process. And guess what? I’ve had to face some gnarly insecure stuff in me to do this. Like how impatient I can be with myself. And how deep my defense is to be “perfect” and how much shame and resistance comes up in me when I need to get real with where I’m at and create from the place I’m in as opposed to the place I’d like to be.

Ah, being human! But this is the thrilling ride we signed up for so know that if you run into some uncomfortable stuff in you as you admit to and work to plug your leaks, you’re not alone.

Because this is something you need to do and experiment with as opposed to read more about, the last thing I’m going to say to you is this:

It can be seductive to focus on how others may be involved in your leaks. But don’t sell yourself short and settle for blaming others. People show up for what you’ve knowingly or unknowingly invited. And, people can’t take what’s not being given away. You are the common denominator. It’s your life and your energy to manage and be a skillful steward of. Owning yourself on this level is a rite of passage we all must go through if we want to transition from being eternal adolescents into integrated adults who are living with personal responsibility and experiencing authentic fulfillment. So don’t go do something else. Grab your life by the reigns and make this sweet life of yours as solid and fabulous as it can be. The ball is in your creative court.

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Recently I’ve had quite a few people ask me, as they see me doing more photography, if I still do coaching work. To this I say: YES!

For obvious reasons, it’s easier to show my photography work. A picture says a thousand words – perhaps more! So I thought about how I can equally share what I do in my coaching world with you and I decided I’d write a weekly coaching column here on my blog. The notion of committing to a weekly column makes me mildly squirm, but it will be a good challenge. It will come out on Mondays as I think having something to stir your thoughts and uplift you is a great way to start the week.

I considered giving it various sorts of structure, all of which did nothing but dull my flow. So I’m going to go about it in a spontaneous fashion and share topics that are fresh, interesting, and timely to me and those I work with. If you want to find other coaching related posts, click on the category coaching. Ready? Here we go...

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If you’re an adventurous sort who’s driven by evolution, expansion, creativity, growth, and awakening (which I’ll assume you are if you’re reading this blog) you’re most likely continually setting your sights on new horizons. Whether you set your sights on an expanded perspective, a new skill, or becoming a better version of yourself, you’re on the cutting edge of your life, pushing the edge of your comfort zone.

Which is also to say you’re continually putting yourself in the position of being a beginner.

For some reason (such as we’ve been brainwashed to believe masking vulnerability and appearing perfect will make us safe) most people are really impatient with themselves about being beginners. We want sooo badly to be not only good, but great, at everything we do. And not eventually, but immediately! But that’s not how it goes. There’s a road, with million little learning curves, from here to mastery that we have to be willing to diligently and patiently move through, step-by-step… with every single thing we go after. And it never stops because mastery is a continually evolving and expanding thing.

So why not start cutting yourself some slack for being where you’re at? If there’s no final destination or “there” then there’s nothing wrong with being here. Chances are the level of understanding and embodiment you have now is something you hoped, dreamed, and prayed for 5 or 10 years ago. Why not celebrate where you’re at instead telling yourself it’s (ie. you’re) not good enough and use this encouragement to enthusiastically move yourself forward?

This past week I went out to dinner with two of my close girl friends. One’s newly a midwife after many years of being a doula, the other has been a nurse for two years, and I have been a photographer for just shy of a year. The three of us were talking about how awkward and humbling it is to be beginners. To know that you’re 100% engaged and doing your best, but you just haven’t been doing your new thing for long enough to be awesomely skillful and graceful at it – yet.

But that’s how it goes. With everything. So how do you handle this beginner-ness, this vulnerable becoming, in your life? Does it motivate you to become more skilled? Or do you feel frustrated and embarrassed by it?

I’m willing to bet we all know a lot about how you could respond to experiences of being a beginner with self-judgment, avoidance, denial, comparison, lying to yourself and saying you no longer want or are into x, beating yourself up, going into victim, escapism ranging from excessive social media time to over eating and drinking, trying to be “perfect” to hide your feeling of vulnerability, attempting to fix or control others so you don’t have to be with yourself… I could go on. But I don’t need to because we all know this road. And it goes nowhere but in big, fearful circles.

Personally I think the first choice – to use the feeling of being a beginner to motivate you to become more skilled – is a wildly more interesting option because it has the effect of pouring WD-40 into the gears of your growth and accelerating your evolution. And forward motion’s what you want, right?

Of course you do. No matter what your habits or stories want to pull you towards, no matter how many distractions you’ve become involved with, YOU want to move forward. So start with getting really GOOD with where you’re at. You’ve worked hard to get here and you’ve done a great job. And sure, you have tons more to learn. But that will always be the case when you’re living adventurously. So relax, be nice to yourself, and enjoy it.

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Every now and then we find ourselves in a low-flow moment. We look around and see things are just barely plodding along. The phone isn’t ringing with great opportunities. Your bank account is meek. Your enthusiasm for things is ho-hum.

It’s tempting in such moments to wallow in it and use this ebb as an excuse to compound low-self worth beliefs. But I’m here to tell you: this isn’t the way.

Experiencing low flow feels like being stuck but you’re not stuck. You’re CLOGGED. Yes, clogged. As in: you have so many unresolved loose ends in your life The Flow can’t move anything else to or through you.

Recently I found myself in such a moment. I wanted to experience flow and despite my efforts to make things happen, all I got was mleh. I’m not an ok-with-mleh sorta girl so after a moment of confused frustration, I had a truth-session with myself, looked at my life, and saw a profusion of loose ends that had piled up. This led me to run an experiment.

It went like this:

I told myself “By the time I complete the loose ends on my to-do list, the flow I want will have manifested.” I based this on the logic that if I’m not saying yes to what life has already given me in terms of opportunity, inspiration, and responsibility, why would I think more would come? And why would I think I’d be receptive to new opportunities if I’m wildly saturated with what’s already on my plate?

I’m a little over one week into a whole-hearted experiment with this and I’ve been BLOWN AWAY at the results! Like hold-the-phone blown away. Like I feel like I’ve tapped into some mystery of the cosmos that makes magic happen.

I’m quite sure I’ll learn more through this process but here’s my big take-away from this past week…

The build up in my life, in each of our lives, is a byproduct of avoiding dealing with things. Avoiding making choices. Avoiding taking action.

The only reason we’re in such avoidance is because we’re afraid. Afraid we’ll fail. Afraid we’ll be judged. Afraid our efforts won’t make a difference, Afraid we won’t be supported. So we avoid things to avoid facing our fears. But it doesn’t work. The fear is still there and more things that represent the avoidance of our fear pile up.

Oh, you think you’re not too caught up in this? That you’ve kicked your major addictions and are doing pretty well? Well, if you’re truly beyond avoidance – hats off to you. Seriously. But for most of us avoidance goes so deep in our general approach to life and is so insidiously cloaked in denial and distraction we often don’t admit to ourselves how profoundly we’re avoiding ourselves and our lives until some negative consequence happens. And even then… we’re clever minxes in making up stories that perpetuate our denial and avoidance.

Until we’re not.

We all have a breaking point. A point when we’re sick of feeling “stuck”, confused, and insecure. A point when we’re over experiencing mediocre results in our lives. A point when we become so painfully aware of how half-assed our avoidance-driven approach is that we rip the blinders off, roll up our sleeves, and get to WORK.

Are you there? Have you had enough of being run in circles by your fears yet? Are you ready to have your life work?

Then join the face-your-life-and-create-flow experiment. Make an honest list of what you’ve been avoiding. Mine was gigantic, so don’t beat yourself up. Just get to work. The process of doing these things will bring you face-to-face with what you’ve been avoiding in yourself and your life and you’ll not only break through your unconscious avoidance patterns, you’ll take your experience of flow to a whole new fabulous level.

Want to know why this is particularly important right now? Read Saturn is in Scorpio

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