Dr. Gail Brenner

Sacred Space for Awakened Living

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The Highly Intelligent Approach to Difficult Emotions

“This is a very important practice. Live your daily life in a way that you never lose yourself. When you are carried away with your worries, fears, cravings, anger, and desire, you run away from yourself and you lose yourself. The practice is always to go back to oneself.’
~Thich Nhat Hanh

As we established in the last post, avoiding, ignoring, or hiding from difficult emotions simply doesn’t work. Here is the truth: the more we run from our feelings, the more they run us.

Take a look at your own life to see if this is true:

  • Are you limiting yourself when you know you are capable of more? Fear is driving you.
  • Do you drink or eat too much? Some feeling is eating away at you.
  • Do you complain? You are likely to be irritated or disappointed.
  • Are you emotionally triggered by certain people? Do you continually make self-defeating choices? You haven’t yet discovered the feeling that is the root cause.

We dance around our feelings for good reason – we are programmed to avoid pain and seek pleasure. The highly intelligent approach to difficult emotions invites us to rise above this programming. It asks us to courageously shine the light on our experience and receive it fully as it is.

When we can relax with all experiences that appear, miracles happen. We know that what we resist persists. Likewise, the end of resistance to feelings is the end of being ruled by them. As feelings are seen for what they actually are, conditioned tendencies fall away, revealing the natural state – clear, open, aware. The possibility for all of us is to live as this fullness.

School Is in Session: What Is a Feeling?

Before we can learn how to be with feelings, we must understand precisely what they are. What is a feeling? To answer this question, get out the explorer’s headlamp. Be unflinching in your desire to know the truth in your own direct experience, for this is where freedom lies. Bring awareness to the actual experience of your feelings, and what do you find? Is there a thing called sadness or fear?

Surprising as it may sound, when you look for a feeling, you can’t find it. What you do find are sensations in the body and a story that you tell yourself in your mind. You feel afraid? What is actually present are thoughts about what may or may not happen in the future along with tension, vibration, and jitteriness in the body. Sad? You will usually find a story running in your mind about lack, insufficiency, or regret along with a heavy or dense sensation in the chest.

The Facts About Feelings

This fact – that feelings are actually thoughts and physical sensations – holds the key to freedom from them. But rather than adopt this point of view, look inside with a laser focus. Where is the feeling? What is actually present?

How surprising it is to learn that when we avoid a feeling, what we are actually avoiding is the experience in the body – the physical sensations. We can spin around in the story forever, but until we are willing to receive these sensations in the space of awareness, to allow them to be fully as they are, the feeling will persist.

School Continues: Know How the Story Works

Giving attention to any thought will take you away from the direct experience of the feeling in your body. Again, check it out in your own experience. When you are captured by a feeling, how often do you repeat in your mind the story of what happened or what you should have done or what you need to do? This can go on for years keeping the feelings – and the suffering – firmly in place.

The function of these energized thoughts is to divert you from directly experiencing the sensations. Why not feel them? Two reasons.

  • We imagine that if we allow a feeling in its totality that we won’t survive the pain.  In other words, we are terrified.
  • We simply didn’t know that this was the path to freedom.

Maybe you have had the same experience as me. If I’m angry at someone, I will “wake up,” becoming aware that I have been rehearsing over and over in my mind what I would like to say to the person. My hands are clenched and my body is tense and contracted. I’m clearly having a reaction, but I didn’t realize it because I was lost in the thoughts.

Paying attention to thoughts will never release you from the feeling. Resist and ignore the sensations in your body, and you will live in the story forever. Let the stories go, no matter how enticing they may be, bring openness and compassion to the felt experience in your body, and even long-standing patterns, habits, and grudges will begin to release.

Sometimes the Story Needs to Be Told

Despite the wisdom of letting go of the story, sometimes it needs to be told. Not in the same compulsive way you have been telling yourself forever, but to have it be truly heard by someone. Find a trusted friend or professional, and tell the whole story – for the last time.

Be willing to say “goodbye” to it like an old friend who has long outstayed her welcome. Then begin to peek into the feelings in your body that have been driving it.

The Possibility

Put down the fight with your own experience. Then you will be available to the peace, joy, and love that are your natural state. This is what is already here, waiting for you to return home.

The next post will be all about relaxing into the bodily sensations. For now, I invite you to reflect on these questions:

  • Can you identify the stories you tell yourself that keep your feelings stuck?
  • Can you play with letting them float across your awareness, not giving them attention?
  • Do you notice any resistance to not feeding the story?
  • Can you find the physical sensations? Can you simply let them be?

As always, all questions, reports, and insights are welcome. I’d love to hear…

The Art of Navigating Difficult Feelings

“You can’t punish yourself into change. You can’t whip yourself into shape. But you can love yourself into well being.”
~Susan Skye

Feelings are a natural part of the landscape of human experience. Joy, sadness, concern, anger, excitement, jealousy, fear, misery. These emotions are intimately woven into the stories of our lives.

Yet we avoid certain feelings like the plague, and understandably so.

  • Intense and painful feelings can be frightening or overwhelming.
  • We feel out of control and don’t know what to do with them.
  • We have no role models to guide us.
  • Our schools and families fail us in this most essential instruction.
  • Everything about our post modern, feel-good, get-ahead culture encourages us to deny their existence.

How surprising to discover, then, that taking the radical approach of turning to meet feelings rather than avoiding them is the cure for our dis-ease. If we want to be truly happy, we need to stop erecting barriers to our feelings. Instead, with an open heart and curious mind, we must learn to deconstruct them into their most basic elements so we can know exactly what they are.

Only then do they stop driving our choices.

Avoiding Feelings Creates Trouble

Unexamined feelings cause trouble – have you noticed? The avoidance of feelings is the undeniable culprit in your addictions, self-defeating behavior patterns, and interpersonal strife. They contribute to feeling separate, alienated, and alone.

Take a look at any area of your life that isn’t working for you, and I guarantee you will find some painful feelings lurking.

Certain feelings seem so commonplace that we don’t question them. I used to wake up every morning with a subtle sense of anxiety and dread. Some of us live with a low level of sadness or confusion. We take these experiences as normal until we get serious about being truly happy and begin to investigate them.

I say, “No more.” No more “good enough.” No more resigning ourselves to a fraction of the happiness that is actually possible. No more playing out of patterns that hurt ourselves and others under the guise of normalcy. Learn to navigate the terrain of your feelings and you will cease being a victim to them.

Relentless Dedication is Required

The very good news is that we can learn to deal intelligently with feelings. How do I know? It’s been my journey. I finally got fed up with my personal struggles and found the way through to happiness. And I can tell you that it is imperative to learn how to embrace feelings. Only then are you available to the truth of the moment that allows you to make conscious and appropriate choices about what you say or do.  In other words, sanity.

Leave feelings unexamined, and you will be driven by them. Take an entirely different approach of bringing feelings out of the shadows, and the possibilities for joy, peace, and fulfillment are endless. You can be a slave to your feelings, or you can be free. What do you choose?

This path of freedom which leads us into the foreign land of feelings is not for the timid or faint of heart. If you are attached to your dramas or afraid to step away from what is known and predictable, you won’t get very far. The more you put up for grabs, the more willing you are to examine every single thing about your experience, the greater the riches that are available to you for sure.

Prepare Yourself for the Lessons

Recently, a client came in absolutely elated. She had been diligently applying the lessons about feelings to long-standing, persistent anxiety. She was thrilled that she had barely felt anxious in weeks. She says, “Before, I thought I had to combat it. I tried to breathe it away or exercise it away.” And now? “I accept it. I notice the bodily sensations that I experience and feel compassion toward them.” So simple, but a revolutionary outcome.

What are these lessons? We will spell them out in the next post or two. In preparation, bear in mind that these are not just words to bring a few minutes of a pleasant feeling to your day. Absorb each of these instructions into every cell of your being. Apply them relentlessly to the moments of your life. Dedicate yourself to happiness and freedom consistently in all of your actions, and you will realize the peace you are looking for.

Do less, and your suffering will sustain.

Are you ready? Begin by contemplating these questions:

  • How you run from your feelings. What habits and tendencies do you play out that are driven by unexamined feelings?
  • What are these feelings?
  • What are you willing to change, give up, or let go of to be free from suffering? Are you fed up enough to try a new way?

You are welcome to share your answers in the comments, or simply respond in the privacy of your own experience. In the next post, we will get down to the nuts and bolts of what you need to know to intelligently address your feelings and how to integrate this understanding into your everyday life. In the meantime, relax and be kind to yourself. Breathe and soften. The true medicine is on its way.

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10 Life-Changing Facts to Heal the Inner Critic

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”
~Thornton Wilder

Note: This post is part of the 10 Life-Changing Facts series. Feel free to check out the other posts on fear, habits, and attachment.

Let’s tell the truth. If you feel held back in any area of your life and have the sense that there must be something more, your inner critic is alive and well. There is nothing helpful about the way the inner critic guides you. Who finds it supportive to be incessantly doubted, devalued, and deflated?

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. If you learn to recognize the inner critic in all its disguises and commit to no longer letting this voice dominate you, you can return to wholeness. After all, you in all your awesome glory, are not limited, needy, scared, and small. You are vast and spacious, infinitely creative and endlessly at peace.

Study these facts about the inner critic, then apply them to your own experience – relentlessly. The thoughts may remain, but they will lose their power over you. After all, would you tolerate for one second someone else saying the things to you that you say to yourself? Don’t wait one more second to reclaim the life that is rightfully yours.

10 Life-Changing Facts

1. Self-critical thoughts mask the truth. Do you believe that you are incapable or unworthy? These beliefs hide your inherent wholeness, enthusiasm, and potential.

2. The past doesn’t predict the future. The root of self-critical thoughts is in our experiences in the past. News flash: The past is over. See yourself and the situations you are in with the innocent eyes of a child. You will realize that the conclusions you drew from the past no longer apply. Who are you now?

3. The inner critic is a habitual way of thinking. As with any habit, you need to study how it arises and plays out. What triggers it? What does it say? How does it make you feel in your body? What does it make you do or not do as a consequence? As you get to know it intimately, you see it for what it is – thoughts, feelings, physical sensations – and it begins to no longer define who you are.

4. The inner critical voice is learned. It is not naturally occurring or present at birth, which is very good news. It is a layer of conditioning that is absolutely possible to unwind. As it loosens its grip on you, the unconditioned you begins to shine through – light, joyful, alive, happy, open.

5 .Self-criticism may be at the root of unhealthy tendencies and addictions. When the inner critic goes unattended, it can lead to all sorts of trouble – making poor relationship choices, abusing substances, accepting “good enough” and giving up on your passions and interests, sustained unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Make it a priority to reflect on your thoughts and feelings. Learn what subtle patterns underlie your discontent, and address them. This is the path that will set you free.

6. Believing self-critical thoughts creates separation. Do you feel alone, abnormal, not a part of this world, unworthy? Then the inner critic is in control. You are believing thoughts without checking to see if they are actually true. Investigate them, and simply say, “No thank you,” to thoughts that don’t serve your happiness and well being.

7. Love heals. The inner critic is built on the illusion that you are damaged, lacking, or insufficient. Rather than continuing to live according to these false stories, welcome the hurt feelings into your tender, open heart. Receive them with kindness, and you will know firsthand that love heals.

8. Inattention and ignoring feed the inner critic. Instead, turn to face these challenging parts of yourself. With compassion, lean into the hardest places. Learn about them with open-hearted curiosity. They can’t help but surrender in the face of love and acceptance. Then they begin to lose their power over you.

9. The inner critic might be protecting you. These nagging and demeaning thoughts might be keeping you from realizing your inherent greatness. As the strength of these thoughts melts away, you may find that changes are inevitable – in the realms of work, relationships, how you spend your time. Even though you may be afraid, be exhilarated by realigning your life circumstances with the truth of who you really are, rather than with the fiction of the inner critic.

10. Funny as it sounds, the goal is not to do away with the inner critic. Don’t resist it in any way. Make the radical choice to turn to meet it fully with love and understanding, like you would a hurt and lonely child. See it clearly with a laser focus. Even if the thoughts don’t disappear, you will have the objectivity to effortlessly let go of what doesn’t serve and cultivate what does.

The inner critic just might be a blessing in disguise. Don’t avoid it any longer or let it define your reality. Know it, embrace it, love it, let it melt into the whole of you. Then go forth and enjoy!

Does your inner critic control you? Have you discovered freedom from it? I’d love to hear…

What It Takes to Bring Light to Darkness

“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence. “
~Henry David Thoreau

We all have them, so let’s be honest, can we? You know they are there – those places inside yourself that you let hide out in the darkness. They may be memories, feelings, fears, secrets. You try to pretend they don’t exist, yet, in your desperate moments, you admit they are the reason you are not happy.

And oh, what we do to avoid these experiences. We engage in addictions, compulsions, and habits of all kinds. We strategize and rationalize, resist and defend. Anything to keep us from taking off the blinders and meeting ourselves fully and directly.

We live like we are split in two trying to carry on, as the truth is nipping at our heels. And, meanwhile, we deny ourselves the freedom and peace that we long for.

The Fire for Truth

I know whereof I speak, as this is how I lived for years until I got serious about being happy. And once I did, I was on fire. I sought out teachers who could show me the way. I was willing to put my whole life up for grabs for freedom. I became open and receptive.

If you want to know what you are committed to, just take a look at your life, for it speaks volumes. Before my journey began, I lived in a tangled web of confusion, and it showed. Now there is alignment, intention, clarity, and peace.

It is amazing that in any moment, we have the power to make a choice. If you want happiness, you can stop choosing unhappiness. If you want love, you can realize that it is already the essence of who you are. Be inspired, and blast through the limits of what you think is possible.

What Do You Choose?

“How to do this?” you might be asking. Here’s how. Orient your life in the direction of your deepest desire. Honor each sacred moment by intentionally making a choice. Find these qualities in yourself, and make the space for them to flourish.

Be ferocious

Let yourself be on fire for the truth and keep it burning. Be willing to jump into uncharted waters that may be way outside your comfort zone.

Focus

Be single-minded in your desire to know what you need to know to be free. Clear away distractions in your life, which takes honesty and commitment on your part.

Cultivate discipline and diligence

Stay on your path, even when it gets challenging. Know that every moment counts toward freedom.

Embody willingness

Make the commit to do whatever it takes to realize enduring happiness. Let every cell of your being be open to learning and discovering.

Take responsibility

No more blaming, accusing, wallowing, defending, running away, or making yourself into a victim.  These are a recipe to keep you exactly where you are.  Be willing to investigate your own thinking patterns and emotions and keep your attention there.

Get humble

Give up the need to be in control. Abandon your cherished belief systems about how things are supposed to be. Let go of what isn’t working for you. Find teachers and teachings that support your journey and apply what you learn to your own experience.  If you are still suffering, realize that you don’t know everything you need to know.

Set your priorities

Remember that you are always making a choice. Determine your highest priority and align yourself with it in your thoughts and actions.

Discover innocence

Cultivate beginner’s mind. Forget everything you know and approach each moment as fresh and new. Because it is.

Stay enthusiastic

The power of old habits can be very strong. Find ways to keep your intentions and priorities alive in your daily life.

Open to compassion

Be ruthless and compassionate. Meet each moment, even the hard ones, with a full and loving heart.

Trust

Listen to the quiet voice inside you and follow it. Let yourself be moved by your natural intelligence rather than by the mind and thoughts.

Be resilient

It’s a guarantee that you will forget.  Your emotions will get the better of you, and you will feel like you are at square one.  Go inside to find your inner strength to keep going.  Reconnect with what you really want.

Change your life circumstances

It might take time – years, even – but move toward aligning yourself with people and situations that are a reflection of your deepest truth.

Find support

It’s everywhere in books, blogs, online videos, retreats. Keep looking until you find what you need, and when you do, stop. Don’t get caught in endless searching. Take in the teachings and let them flower in you.

I offer you a prayer, from my heart to yours. May your mind be like a still mountain lake without a ripple. May your heart be vast and wide to hold everything unconditionally. May your happiness overflow everywhere.

What is your experience with bringing light to darkness? Anything you want to add or report? I’d love to hear…

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My blogger friends Lance Ekum and Tess Marshall have lovingly assembled an e-book of 60 articles entitled “Love Care Donate,” one of mine included, to help the community of Joplin, Missouri that was hit by a tornado on May 22, 2011.  Please click here to make a donation of any size to the Heart of Missouri United Way, and you will receive a link to download the book.

The Ultimate Guide to Getting Unstuck

“When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.”
~African Proverb

Congratulations! You’ve done it! You’re sick and tired of suffering. You’ve realized that the struggles in your life are your responsibility. You don’t want to keep repeating the same patterns over and over. You are ripe for transformation. Good for you!

Change must be in the air, as your comments and emails so aptly attest to. I feel a momentum of readers here recognizing how they are blocked, walled off, stuck in a rut – wanting to change, but still finding themselves playing out the same old, same old.

This post is all about, “Now what?” You are willing to get serious about not letting these patterns continue. You are eager to take action, but what do you do? Get out the shovel, the clippers, the fertilizer, and the hoe. It’s time to tend to your inner garden.

As you set the stage for change, be willing to get a little dirt on your hands. Stay conscious so you can discriminate the weeds from the beautiful flowers and plants that bring you joy. Learn to sow and fertilize seeds that support your happiness, peace, and well-being.

As you give your consistent, loving attention to the tendencies that don’t serve, they begin to unravel. And when you cultivate a lifestyle that keeps you from going to sleep and letting your patterns run wild, the freedom you long for shows up at your doorstep.

Are you ready, willing, and able? Here’s how.

Inquire

Begin by asking yourself questions that illuminate every detail of this conditioned tendency that has found a home in you. Identify the roots, stem, and leaves – what drives you, your inner reaction, and your behavior choices. Keep an open heart and mind as you ask yourself:

  • What am I experiencing in my body?
  • What story am I telling myself that is keeping this tendency alive?
  • What do I believe to be true about myself, other people, and the world in this situation?
  • What are my expectations of how things are supposed to be?
  • What am I assuming?
  • How do I go from relaxation to suffering? Exactly how does this pattern develop and manifest?

Receive

You now have a whole lot of information about how these pesky troubles arise. Next, take your time with the answer to each of these questions. Let yourself go from thinking about the responses to a felt experience of them in your being. Walk in your garden and smell every rose.

This step makes the unconscious conscious. It awakens us to the truth of these tendencies, so they can no longer hide. It brings light to the darkness, compassion to what we have rejected or pushed away. It takes us out of the well-worn rut so we can pause, breathe, and observe.

  • Close your eyes and receive the response to each question in silence, in stillness.
  • Feel the sensations in your body, one by one.
  • Tap into your inner wise one, then see the stories and belief systems with clarity. Are they actually true? Do they serve?
  • Review the process of how you go from relaxation to suffering, feeling each step. Get to know this experience with great familiarity.

Open

This step is about breaking the chains from the past. It invites you to be open to new possibilities, to venture out into the unknown. There is an inflexibility to repeating a pattern – the ones that get us into trouble. A happens, then B, then C, and without even realizing it, you are reacting in the same unpleasant, automatic way. It’s frustrating. Your heart is beating, but you aren’t truly alive.

By inquiring, then allowing yourself to receive fully, the pattern just can’t hold up in the same way. The jig is up, and the light has been turned on. As that happens, inflexibility is replaced by openness. New ways of responding become apparent. The soil of your being is rich for new seeds to be planted. You see the same old situations and people with fresh eyes – truly as if for the first time.

Maybe you will walk away. Maybe you will discover the kindest heart ever. Maybe you will discover that silence is golden. Be prepared for the unexpected.

Openness asks us to yield to the mystery, to not know, to make space for sane, appropriate responding to take shape. We behave in alignment with the moment, rather than being propelled by old baggage. We are alive, spacious, and true.

Rinse and Repeat

I can’t say this often enough: True transformation requires a true commitment. You don’t explore a pattern once in a while or only when you’re really hurting. Make your freedom a continual choice. Orient your whole life to wholeness, and the riches of the kingdom will be revealed to you.

Be a dabbler, and your movement is likely to go at a snail’s pace, if at all. Your garden will be overgrown, and your fields fallow.

Create room for stillness. Read inspiring books (and blogs). Spend time with fellow lovers of life. Commit to no longer letting your patterns run you, and the whole world is yours.

Are you stuck in a pattern? Have you found your way out? I’d love to hear…

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