I have been on a journey of discovery and exploration. Since being told about mindfulness
meditations, walks and the like, I have decided to take one of my own. I don’t quite understand
what mindfulness means; I mean, I have an idea, but what is it? When I talk to my peers about
the benefits they have received from these exercises, the answer isn’t clear because they often
use “mindful” in their description, and when you quite understand what the word means, it
makes it all the more challenging. When I find myself challenged, I often seek the guidance of
my elders. I am a two-spirited Haudenosaunee from the turtle clan for those who don’t know
much about me. Many of my teachings come from the elders in my family, my aunties and
uncles from the previous generation who spent their time living the best they could while
following the sacred teachings.
I went to one of my elders and asked about mindfulness. Would this blend well into our practice
of spirituality? Her answer was simple: mindfulness was a means for some to connect to
medicine. I also asked why it is so difficult for some to describe. In which case, my auntie
responded: Medicine is a personal thing; is it possible that they don’t know how else to describe
their experience? Here I was, trying to live vicariously. That is not the way, and their medicine is
not my medicine. People receive what they need from the Great Mother and our relatives.
Nature provides all we could ever need, and not always in a usual way. Not all medicine is
herbal, and it often exists in places and people with whom we share connections. Some don’t
understand the process by which they are receiving healing. Here I was, asking personal
questions. “What was your intention, young, Handsome? Visit your teachings. How respectful
are you being? Is it coming from a loving place? No, I see this coming from a place of judgment.
What was your intention?”
My aunties have a way with words as harsh as they sound. She comes from a loving place, and
her voice never raises and is calm, yet her eyes seem to cut through whatever guard I present,
seeing beyond—seeing me. No anger, no disappointment either, but curiosity. What will I do with
what she is telling me? What is always authentic is to be faithful to me and the teachings. Seven
simple words help shape the person I am, consider them in my decision-making, and live and
embody them the best I can.
The question I brought to her had me reflect on my approach to mindfulness and how I connect
and receive medicine. This path for me and mine alone. Having a clear intention to take in and
learn from the loving embrace of our great mother. Reminding me to visit my teachings:
● Am I being respectful,
● Am I coming from a loving place,
● Be honest about the experience,
● Be courageous when the path gets too challenging,
● Learn from the experience,
● What I experience is true to me, perhaps only for me.
● Be Humble. This journey might make me a better person but not make me better than
anyone else.
​So now I begin my journey into mindfulness, to discover and connect to my medicine. “To be mindful, is it be made aware,” so when I go out to meet the day, I find myself scanning the world for those things that stick out for me. Asking myself what about this event is meaningful? And what medicine lies in this experience? I would have to figure that out on my own. It was interesting that I found myself stopped by a spider web. The caretaker, a glorious female, black and yellow, has an ancient sense of her because of her size. Her web got my attention, the time of day, and the sunlight reflected prisms in the threads. It looked magical. I found myself complimenting her on her work. If I didn’t know better, she smiled back at me, maybe nodding. She continued with her work while the web held me in thrall. This web that provided nourishment, perfectly engineered and anchored, was designed to catch her favourite food. She’s lived a lot of time, no thought of being overly ambitious. Catch what she likes. Otherwise, she’d be creating a new web all the time instead of giving it occasional maintenance. What does this web mean for me? I found myself pausing and asking about how I receive nourishment. These threads were coming together had me reflecting on my relationships and how I connect to the community. How people connect and how they nourish one another. The supports and anchors represent those the community depends on, working together to create a sturdy foundation. A web of people supporting each other. Nothing too ambitious but with potential to grow. A simple web designed to capture the nourishment needed for those spiders occupying and maintaining that web. From that experience, I acknowledged the need and the form medicine has taken for me. This pandemic has many of us feeling alone and isolated—personal connections, dust-covered and on the verge to snap. The spider in me is sheltered and safe while my web goes into disrepair. I find myself needing those connections, reaching out and plucking neighbouring threads to see if other spiders peek out and see who is knocking and maybe wave. Begin my work to repair, take down old broken silks, replace them with new ones. Patch holes, perhaps old friends might greet me, and maybe a few new ones. All of us gather with the same loving intention, our medicine being the same.

There was a point in my life I realized that I was missing something. I didn’t have any reason to complain, I was successful, had good friends, stability but I wasn’t happy. I didn’t like my job, I joined the military when I had no other options. It was either this or never leaving my hometown and working in a factory. I did well in school but it wasn’t enough to get me into school, I didn’t want to be a slave to debt, slaving to pay back a loan for an education I may not use. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. In fact, throughout my career, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do, I didn’t want to wear the uniform forever, but I never knew what I wanted to do. What was my true purpose in this life? What was my calling?

Needless to say, I was already doing it. I was the guy that people could talk to. Didn’t matter about what. I was the guy. I enjoyed it. It replenished me during a long trip at sea. Having my shipmates depend on me in this way.
At that time I didn’t know that it was an option.

Fast forward twenty years. I’m in a job I hate. It’s an atmosphere that didn’t agree with me, it made me sour and petty. What else would I do, that offered a similar lifestyle. I’m sure that is something that a lot of people look for, something, high-paying, benefits where you can invest in the minimal effort? When you think about it- there was nothing else?

I felt myself deep in reflection during night shifts. What’s to come next. I felt a need to start a new chapter, but there was a fear lingering, what other options were there? What could I do, that felt that I could be myself? Shedding this skin of my old life and beginning anew? The fear of failing and coming back to my old life with my tail between my legs, haunted by the idea of peers greeting me with their “I told you so,” - “ you couldn’t make it work” - “ you didn’t last long”.

The fear of failure hit me hard and I was scared. The last three years of my contract were by far the hardest stage. Light at the end of the tunnel, chains are broken and I would feel set free.. and then what? What would I do?

This is what I did:

* I reflected on what passion was for me. What are my dreams and aspirations? What was I good at? To answer that I surrounded myself with my trusted friends and family and asked for their ideas. They might see something I didn’t. In fact, that was when I had my eyes open to what my passion was-

* Is it sustainable? It is one thing to have a dream, talent or passion, it’s another thing to turn it into something I could use to support myself. What exactly would I do and why? Is it something that people would benefit from and would seek me out for?

*How do I achieve this? What do I need to do? Are there classes, schooling I would need to complete? What are the short-term goals I need to achieve my overall goal?

*Do I have enough saved to support myself while in school? Would I need a part-time job? Would I have had the time to devote to both school and my job? Where are my priorities? Would my loved ones support me in my endeavours? Would I be alone in this?
*What are my risks? Is this goal worthwhile? What would it mean for me?

I mentioned I was deep in reflection asking myself these important questions to better understand what I needed and how to gain it. Weigh the foreseeable risks to prepare me for the future. Plan for what I could plan for. Once I understood my own process, my fears went away, and I became more excited. It was no longer something I dreaded, I looked forward to my final days because I had something to look forward to, I found myself putting my ducks in a row, updating a resume that I haven’t touched in twenty years, collecting references, and I sent in an application for a school to become the thing I hoped to become. A counsellor. A person tasked with helping people with their problems and helping them through conflict maybe set their own goals.
​
It is possible that what worked for me in my own process might not work for all readers, but it is an endeavour that is worthwhile for those looking to take the leap and change their own lives. For the better or worse, those are terms are a matter of perception. It is all so different, change sometimes needs to happen, it is scary because it brings varying degrees of uncertainty. In my journey, this change of lifestyle allowed to the freedom to be myself more openly. That freedom allows me to show up more genuinely for those seeking my assistance, as a counsellor, I don’t think I was ever this happy, taking these steps to begin a new chapter.

Are you on the edge of the empathy abyss?
Being too empathetic can be bad for your mental health!

We all know that empathy is important: Isn’t it one of those things there’s just too little of? But, like many things, too much empathy may be bad for you. Now, there are a lot of different meanings of empathy, ranging from understanding what someone is feeling, to vicariously feeling what another person is going through to awfully complicated philosophical versions where it seems impossible to know if we can ever know what a person really feels. Hard on the brain! Wikipedia, as always, gives a great overview. For the moment, though, I am talking about empathy in the way Dr. Paul Bloom describes it, “the act of coming to experience the world as you think someone else does” or, more simply, “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.” Dr. Bloom is a Canadian-born Yale psychologist in the midst of some controversy over his recent book, Against Empathy. Controversy or no, he has some valid points.


How can empathy be a bad thing for your mental health? Well, the issue revolves around this point of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Let’s take a look at an average day for a moment. Whether it is a co-worker, child, friend, partner or parent, there are a lot of people around us who look to us for support and caring. Then, there is the daily news, people begging on the street, photos of animal abuse on your Facebook feed; everything calls for an emotional response: “Like,” “Love,” “Angry,” “Sad,” our emotions are called upon all the time. And how could you not care? You are a kind and caring person, so you feel, you care. But this is the empathy abyss. In your busy life, how can you care about all these things? But, how can you NOT?


Here is a bit of the problem: Empathy works. This is why ads pull at your heartstrings, and intensely emotional photos draw you in. Studies show that when an appeal is made for your help or kindness, asking you to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, you will. Well, your brain will, and along with it, your emotions. Perhaps you see a homeless person begging at an intersection; you imagine how that feels and are overwhelmed by your inability to help. Or, when you’re at work and a friend texts you about a recent relationship devastation; your heart lurches in sync with the news. Empathy can be an unconscious reaction, or it can be a part of a conscious process where you sit and listen to another person’s story, and understand their pain through connecting with them directly. Either way, one of the problems with this is that empathy is “neurologically literal,” as Bloom calls it. This means that if you put yourself in someone else’s shoes and empathize with their problem, your brain “lights up” as if that experience happened to you. Engaging with friends and family in this constant state of “hyperarousal” is exhausting for you, and has a negative effect on your mental health, leaving you with all the stress and emotion of those you empathize with.


Another thing about empathy is that it can make you biased, and push you to focus too much on the short term things close to your heart, perhaps missing the bigger picture. By this, I mean that you may tend to take the side of someone close to you, without really being able to have an objective take on the situation. Sure, it feels great to support your friends, but is the most helpful thing to do to simply agree with a person, regardless of right or wrong? We seem to be living in a polarized world, where sides are chosen very quickly. Empathizing deeply for one cause, or creating a “spotlight” focus on it, may mean that another important cause is ignored, or pushed to the side. It is hard to have a balanced outlook when you are really focusing on someone’s specific pain. Yet, sometimes, the bigger picture is important, for them, for you, and for the situation at hand.


Let’s look at empathy from the other side, as well. What happens when a friend tells you terrible news, and you empathize with them deeply? You say, “oh no!” and “OH THAT’S AWFUL!” and, “I can’t believe it!” You empathize. You feel their pain and react as if it is your own, because, you DO care, and it IS awful. Now, there is the possibility that this reaction makes your friend feel better: It can be good to know you’re not alone in your feelings. But… what if you make your friend feel worse? What if your, “oh no!” stokes their feeling of just how awful the situation is? And, your friend gets ever more distressed and upset… and of course, so do you, as you empathize with your friend’s pain? As you can see, empathy can sometimes inflate the feelings of distress a person has, because they think, oh no, YOU think it is really awful, too! Empathy isn’t helping those in your life you want to support, and it can mentally exhaust you.


I am not suggesting you abandon empathy entirely; that isn’t the road to being a better friend, or to having good mental health. However, there are a few steps you can take to curb the visceral empathy reaction and help keep yourself on an even emotional keel.


1) Step back from the abyss! Empathy is a finite resource, use it wisely! When you find yourself involved in a story that triggers an emotional response, take the time to ask yourself if you can just listen with kindness and caring, not via engaging with the emotion of the situation.
2) On that note, in order to minimize the emotional content, engage with the story with quiet, “mm-hhhmmms?” or a “go on” or two, instead of the more energizing “oh no!” or “I can’t believe it!”
3) Be aware that if you’re in a hyper-aroused empathetic state, your decisions are likely to be biased and you might not even notice. If you are emotionally engaged, try to take some time and space before you give advice, whether to a friend or for yourself.
4) Wait to hear more. Before you react the way the incident would make you feel, remember different people have different experiences. You may feel an incident as a “10” on the emotion scale and if you react that way, your friend who found it just slightly distressing might rethink it, to negative results!
Ultimately, the goal is: Listen with the objective to understand the person, but without “feeling what they feel.” Limit the possibility of empathetic distress by thinking more about compassion – loving kindness – than empathy. Dr. Bloom tells us that empathy is like “sugary soda, tempting and delicious, but bad for us.” You don’t have to engage deeply in the emotions of the other to be a good partner, a good friend, or to be kind and in fact, not doing so often helps a person make better choices and decisions. Engage with compassion and kindness to support those around you, and you will also take care of your own mental well-being!
​

Have a look at Dr. Bloom’s thoughts on empathy here: http://bigthink.com/videos/paul-bloom-explains-why-empathy-is-bad
Or, buy his book! Bloom, P. (2016). Against empathy: The case against rational compassion (1st ed.). New York, NY: Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.