You all know the inner critic—the voice that sounds remarkably like your own which pipes up of its own accord. It’s your very own personalized inner narrator that comments on everything you’re doing wrong and could be doing better, and seems to know exactly what to say to make you feel like a total asshole, a ridiculous mess, an unworthy and unlovable loser who can’t do anything right.

Sound familiar?

The language of the inner critic may not always sound quite this intense. You may instead hear something like: “I can’t believe I did that” or “I’m so disorganized” or “I should…”. What gives these self-judgments the power to hurt us is what they are connected to: our most painful insecurities and vulnerabilities. This is why a seemingly innocuous statement like “I should really cook more” has the power to make you feel so bad: it’s connected to something else—I’m so lazy or I’m a bad partner—that cuts us deeply.

My inner critic is constantly informing me—in many creative ways—that whatever I’m doing is not enough; that I should be doing more of this and less of that. Sometimes, what it’s saying is actually true, but even so, it’s unhelpful.

There are many different approaches to working with the inner critic—you can agree with or use humor to disarm it, or firmly tell the voice to stop.

My new favorite method of working with the inner critic, however, is called metta, a Pali word meaning loving-kindness and goodwill. The Buddhist practice of metta meditation, in the words of the teacher Jack Kornfield, is “[one] of cultivating an unconditional friendliness and warmth toward ourselves and all living beings.”

It is exactly what it sounds like: being incredibly friendly and kind—unconditionally so, in fact—toward yourself. It is repeatedly generating a feeling of goodwill and turning it both inward and outward.

If you were to listen to a five-minute metta meditation on YouTube, you would likely find a script guiding you to direct kind and peaceful words toward someone you love, to the world at large, and toward yourself. You would hear phrases like “May you be filled with loving-kindness”;“May you be well”; and “May you be at peace”.

When I first came across metta almost a decade ago, I found it difficult to feel sincere while practicing. It can feel phony to honestly say “May I love myself” if our inner critic is loud and strong in the opposite direction. As I have worked with myself over the years, however, directing self-compassion inward feels more accessible.

The practice of loving-kindness is an extremely effective method to develop, over time, an equally strong counter voice to the inner critic.

When the voice of the inner critic pipes up and we are awake enough to hear it, may we then practice pairing it with an offering of kindness and love toward ourselves.

Try starting with saying ok to whatever your inner critic is telling you right now.

Try following it up with: but I love you.

If that feels phony, try something else.

Try: May I be free from suffering. May I feel love. May I know joy.

When we get into the practice of continuously offering compassion and friendliness toward our inner and outer selves, we start to actually believe what we’re saying. We deepen our capacity to receive love, from inside and out.

So, may you know peace today.

May you know love.

May you feel at ease.

May you be well.

May you trust that you are doing the best you can.

May you be free from the suffering your inner critic brings you.

May you strengthen the loving voice within.

Maggie

If someone you know needs to be kinder to themselves, send them this post.

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Thank you to everyone who has been here from the beginning, and thank you to those who have joined at some point along the way.

I started Actual Honesty for all of the people who struggle with rigidity and perfectionism, who can’t make recovery from anything work while adhering to society’s insane standards. This newsletter is about how to be well without being suffocated by wellness culture; how to help yourself without drowning in self-help routines; and how to be mentally healthy without losing your mind.

The cornerstones of wellness and recovery, for me, have become these four subcategories which you can find on the homepage of this publication. As follows, they are: Decrease Digital Dependency; Be Here, Now; To Love is To Grieve; Actual Self-Help. There are dozens of entries documenting my relationship with self-development, mental health and wellness, and dozens more on what I think “Actual Self-Help” actually looks like.

The people who read this newsletter—including you!—come from all walks and decades of life. We certainly don’t all share the same opinions or ideas about how things should go, and frankly, that is what I am most proud of. It would be a fascinating, beautiful experiment to gather all of us together and compare life notes.

Whatever you get out of this newsletter, know that its intention, at the core, is to empower you to live the life you were meant to live and to recover from whatever you need recovering from. May we all recover ourselves, our minds, our lives.

If you will allow me to give you a tour of what you can find here over the last 5 years, here goes:

The actually honest lifestyle is one that involves changing your mind. It means you have to be brave enough to quit when it’s right to quit, and stay when it’s right to stay. To lead an actually honest life inevitably involves facing what I have come to call “The Void”, that unknowable stretch of uncertainty between what is coming and what we left behind. If you learn to respect the void, it can take you somewhere better.

Instead of pricey wellness potions and 12-step morning routines, Actual Self-Help is about having fun, remembering how to play, and actually resting. Here, we challenge the notion that wellness equals purification, and we remember that good enough is good enough. We cheer on all who quit the rat-race of self-improvement in favor of pursuing a softer life.

Actual Self-Help asks us to treat optimism as our personal responsibility, fight cynicism, and choose joy. It is based on the premise that being here, now is the best preparation for the future.

Actual Honesty is also about how Without Grief, There Is No Love. It is about being open enough to feel lucky, and brave enough to feel the pain of saying goodbye. About how living with the end in mind can inspire us to live well, now.

This newsletter houses my process of decreasing my own technology use. I wrote about how I Finally Quit Instagram and added myself to the growing list of Gen Z’ers straying away from the digital world. Here, we believe that social media is a choice—your choice—and that you can absolutely quit the damn apps if you truly want to.

What I find myself writing about over and over are the same lessons I keep needing to learn. They are the reminders I always need to be reminded of—like being present, relaxing and letting go, and being honest even when it’s hard. Like investing time and love and energy into the real world, not the one behind the screen. Like remembering to feel it all.

I started this newsletter for the people like me who want so badly to be and do and live better. May we continue to remember that living better is a choice we can make in any given moment, and that it is usually in the direction of softening our grip.

Thank you for 5 years, and cheers to many more. May this be your invitation to start the thing you’ve been wanting to start for five years—just imagine what 5 years from now could look like.

Maggie

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Many of the core principles of why therapy works are the job of the therapist to execute: empathy, unconditional positive regard, genuineness1.

The most basic reason of what makes therapy work is the job of the client, and is the same reason as why running soccer drills every Sunday afternoon makes one a better soccer player: what you practice is what you get better at. If, inside of the contained therapy hour, you practice being less emotionally reactive, or challenge your faulty thought patterns, you will theoretically become better at those practices outside of that hour.

Alternatively, if you play piano for thirty minutes a day, you will get better at playing the piano—especially if you have a vested interest in becoming a stellar piano player.

This is, to me, a crucial truth to internalize and one that successful people use to their advantage. The people who achieve what they want are generally good at what they are regularly doing. Consider how any Olympian, Michelin star chef, or successful entrepreneur got to where they are: regular practice.

If you check out my first Substack posts nearly five years ago, you will see that my writing is more immature and less technically sound—it also took me significantly more time to write the same number of words than it takes now. Practice makes progress, as they say.

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This fundamental principle of behavior change and personal growth—practice—shapes our lives every day. Whether we like it or not, what we consistently do is what we get better at, and every minute we spend on activities of our choosing directly impacts our futures. If we want to start a new habit or strengthen an existing one, we ought to start by looking at the habits that presently take up all of our time.

Scrolling on social media counts. So does checking your email, your morning walk, and all the time you spend worrying.

Here is your opportunity to look at the habits that comprise your days and decide whether they are helping or hindering you.

Are you consistently doing what you want to get better at doing?

What are you consistently doing that is obstructing your desired path?

What can you start doing, little by little, in the direction of where you want to be going?

We know from habit research that implementing a tiny and exceedingly manageable new habit and then slowly building on it is more likely to yield the results you want, over time, than trying to achieve the entire goal all at once.

Writing for five minutes a day will help you develop a stronger writing habit than writing for one hour three times a week; the former develops the practical routine of sitting down to write far more quickly than the latter.

What we do consistently is what grows.

May we use this basic principle of personal growth to our advantage—may we practice, over and over, in the direction of where we want to be going.

Maggie

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This pattern is, of course, very human—we are inclined toward avoiding the discomfort of uncertainty and exerting control any way we can. New things—jobs, routines, people, houses—are often difficult at the beginning. It would be weird if they weren’t. Instead of allowing this to be, we want to skip the uncomfortable newness and go straight to ease, feeling settled, and knowing what to expect. Focusing on solving future problems is one way to avoid present moment discomfort.

A couple of years ago, I wrote this piece on this same Substack you are reading now, pinned below. I called it “The Case For Working For What You Want” and quoted Cheryl Strayed of the memoir (and movie) Wild and the advice column “Dear Sugar”. Strayed offers a young, depressed writer-who-can’t-write the advice to pick herself up, dust off her arrogance and anxiety, and write. It is the kind of no-nonsense advice that doesn’t account for the nuances of the individual’s life context—there is a place for this, and an advice column isn’t usually it—but boils down to the essential necessary component of becoming a good writer, which is what the advice-seeker says she wants: actually writing.

My response to Strayed’s advice is a reflection—which you can read after this, if you’d like—on the idea that working hard for what you want is still the right advice in more situations than we would like to hear it in. Doing the thing right in front of you, as hard or as uncomfortable as it is, is what gets you to the future you want.

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If we spend too much time worrying about or planning for the yet-to-be-known future, we fail to see what is right in front of us: the opportunity to get really good at what we are doing right now.

As I wrote in that 2024 post, “If you’re lucky enough to choose what you want to do with your life, you’re lucky enough to work for what you want. It might be that working for it—applying effort, remaining determined and trusting yourself—is what makes that outcome satisfying or rewarding.”

Right now, I can’t know what the future will bring; but, I can take a walk around my new neighborhood and spend one present hour with the first client on my caseload. I can be here.

The way you get good at what you are doing is by doing it.

Here is your invitation to stop trying to figure out the future—do what is in front of you, now.

After all, as Ram Dass said, being here now is the best preparation for the future.

Here, now is the only time you can do anything about anything, anyway.

Maggie

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Feeling what you are feeling is a practice inherent to good therapy, self-reflection, meditation, and grief, and its effects are powerful.

Not feeling our feelings, such as by denying or mentally bypassing them, has the effect of compounded psychological suffering. When we deny what is present within us, it often manifests as something even less palatable than the feeling itself—anyone ever take a bad day out on whoever has the misfortune of being around?

By allowing what is there to be there, we relax our mental grip on trying to prevent what is to be what is.

By feeling our feelings, they will change and lift. Instead of calcifying inside or exploding outside—as denial can lead to—they release. They may even fade entirely.

To feel a feeling is to let it change, and then, often, to let it go—at least for the time being.

As I am presently faced with a lot of change, this lesson is at the forefront of my mind: Feel what is here, and it will change. Deny it, and it will harden inside or come out in other ways.

Though certainly a phrase that has become popularized by pop psychology, “feel your feelings” is neither trite nor superficial. It is, rather, deep psychological and spiritual wisdom that has the potential to shift the entire axis point from which you operate.

“Feel what you are feeling” does not mean you need to conjure up feelings that are not there, or even that you need to cognitively know what you’re feeling. Knowing what to call it does help—that’s what a good friend or therapist is for—but it matters more that you feel it.

So go ahead, as you are reading or listening to this, and relax your tongue from the roof of your mouth.

Unclench your jaw.

Breathe into your stomach.

And let your shoulders fall as you breathe out.

How are you feeling, right now?

Not what are you feeling—how are you feeling?

Try saying okay to that feeling.

Try letting it be here, now.

Let it all the way through.

And watch it change.

Maggie

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In short, the piece is about how the first few years of my twenties were characterized by “sweeping life changes” and “the void”; by which I meant I was constantly moving around and changing my mind, with no real plan but to follow what felt right.

During those years, I became more and more familiar with the impermanent nature of everything. My favorite word was transitoriness, meaning “of brief duration, bound for change”. My greatest fear was “stagnancy”. The “void”—the seemingly empty space between what is coming and what was left behind—was my comfort zone.

I was starting to know then what I have continued to learn since: uncertainty does not have to be terrifying—it simply is. As you are and as I am, uncertainty is.

Living with uncertainty is not a choice we get—it is something that is chosen for us. What we can decide is how we live with uncertainty. We can choose to befriend and let it teach us, or try to deny it.

Our fear of uncertainty feels greater when we avoid it than it does when we confront it. When we accept that uncertainty is a given, we can collaborate with it. We can let it show us where to go, and lead us to who we are becoming.

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The last three-and-a-half years have shown me that though the circumstances of life never stop changing, there is a kind of steadiness that can be felt in every moment. There is stability in the impermanence, a rhythm to the ephemeral nature of existence.

To tap into the energy of this present moment, right here, now, is to tap into that stable current that lies at the core of life. To be present is to hold change, in all its everlasting constancy.

The choice we get is whether to hold with an iron grip or with an open palm.

My writing and I have grown up, but three-and-a-half years later and I’m still writing about and trying to learn the same things. I am still reckoning with impermanence and trying to loosen my grip. I am still seeking to meet the unknown with openness.

Maybe it’s my fully formed prefrontal cortex, but I’m starting to feel like stability no longer equates to stagnancy. Moving, again, feels unknown but steady.

As my younger self advised us:

You don’t have to be swallowed by the void of uncertainty or fill it with packing peanuts. You can let the space be there, and inch your way through, stopping to pause, feeling it all, dreaming up what might be on the other side…

[A]pproach uncertainty in the void with curiosity, and wait for life to show [you] what’s meant to fill it.”

Whether or not we have chosen a new beginning or it has chosen us, we are offered the opportunity to embrace what lies ahead or to close against it.

We can approach the unknown with curiosity.

We can find what feels steady in every changing moment.

May we remember to loosen our grips a little bit more, and try to enjoy the ride.

Maggie

For the sake of a casual exchange with a psychologically stable friend, affirming someone’s subjective experience of reality—if you actually agree with it—seems relatively harmless and inconsequential. When considering the longer-term, subtler impact of validation, however, we see how it can lead us away from growth and psychological depth.

The problem with the word validation in this context is that it technically means “accuracy”: When we talk about the validity of something in research psychology, we’re talking about the accuracy of the thing. We can understand the phrase “your feelings are valid” as if we are declaring that feelings are “accurate” simply because we experience them in that particular moment. To which I say: Sure, but.

It’s a pretty flimsy declaration.

Most professionals would not categorize feelings as “accurate” or not. Feelings exist, and can usually be understood when considering normative reactions to stimuli as well as the personal context of someone’s history and inner world. Feelings are also fickle, subject to change on a whim, and may emerge unbidden from some stimulus hidden in our unconscious.

There are times when it is not helpful to understand our feelings as being “accurate” simply because they exist—such as when we get the facts wrong, or miss important information, or talk ourselves into feeling something easier because the deeper feeling is uncomfortable to confront.

Having an outsized emotional reaction to an objectively minor inconvenience does not mean that it was “accurate” to have that reaction simply because you did. It more likely indicates underlying stressors, shoved-to-the-side feelings, a lack of emotional maturity—or hormones, hunger, or exhaustion—that manifested as an extreme or inappropriate reaction. It happened, so, sure, it was technically “valid”. But to “validate” that this thing happened and imply that this individual was “correct” for doing it is counterproductive: it diminishes the chance that this individual will self-reflect or grow from this experience. There’s something going on underneath that needs to be extracted and named.

What we want validation for is often about the external thing we identify with most. What we need “validation” for, however, is the internal thing that is harder to pin down and more uncomfortable to experience.

Take, for example, someone who feels angry about their spouse cheating. The surface feeling may be anger, understandably. However, the emotion that probably needs to be pulled out and “validated” is sadness. Saying “You’re really mad.” keeps us on the surface. Alternatively, saying “I’d imagine there is a part of you that feels sad about this.” takes us deeper and thus into a more productive growth space.

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“Validation” is psychologically helpful when it involves becoming aware of a feeling or reality that has been denied or repressed or is simply hard to accept. It matters that we can see and experience it, so that the feeling may change and promote growth and understanding within us. Sitting with another person during this process can be profoundly supportive.

It has become so commonplace to use the words “that’s valid” that I don’t think my nitpicking about technical definitions is necessarily change-making, and that is not my goal. But as a therapist, a word-lover, and a lifelong seeker of psychological depth, I would be remiss not to call out how far this concept has crept and how we can edge it back closer to psychological helpfulness.

If you are a person who finds that the words “that’s valid” feel meaningless in your mouth—try “that makes sense”, or “I understand”, instead. Bonus points if you use the gold-mine phrase “Tell me more”.

When next we find ourselves wanting others to agree with our versions of reality, pause and ask within: What am I avoiding facing?

Maggie

One of the greatest gifts I recently received from a dear friend were the words: “I’m really going to miss you.”

My friend is supportive and we will continue to be friends. But she offered me what many people cannot—a recognition that something is actually ending, and that it is sad. I will miss you is one of the most difficult things to say, and one of the kindest.

Collectively, most of us have a hard time with endings. We don’t want to let things go or to feel sad. It’s hard to acknowledge that things are changing and will not be the same. Thus, we try to soften the blow of saying goodbye with some kind of logical workaround that makes it feel like it’s not “really a goodbye”.

We do this, of course, to make it hurt less.

However, when we refuse to acknowledge what is hard, it hardens within us. It cuts us off from life and from our emotions. Using our minds to rationalize why an ending isn’t sad or hard denies us the chance to feel or express love to the people involved in the ending. Avoiding pain or discomfort means we deny ourselves the opportunity to let it change us for the better.

What if we approached endings reverently, with all emotion held front and center as we say goodbye?

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In 2019, I worked for one beautiful summer at a children’s residential treatment camp in New Hampshire. At the end of the summer, after having spent countless hours forming relationships with the campers, my clinical supervisor prohibited us staff from telling any camper that we would see them again next summer, though some of us planned to return. Instead, we were to treat each goodbye as a true goodbye, not a “See you later.”

As many of our campers had experienced significant relational trauma and loss, a broken promise from a trusted adult would have counteracted the psychological growth they had achieved over the summer. Promising that we’d come back next year and then not being able to fulfill that promise—regardless of the reason—would have hurt more than it helped to soften saying goodbye in the first place.

That job taught me that nothing lasts forever, and that saying goodbye is supposed to be hard. An honest goodbye can be profoundly healing.

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Many endings don’t come with a warning or a 2-week notice. They often come abruptly, bringing chaos and an unfulfilled longing to “go back” to before.

When a clear ending arises, we ought to treat it like the gift it is. It is an opportunity to let ourselves feel what we honestly feel. So, let it be awkward and tenuous and unknown. Say “I’ll miss you.” Take it as a chance to reflect on what this ending may be offering to us—for inherent to every ending is a beginning, regardless of if we asked for it or not.

When we meet an ending, we can let it change us in ways that take us deeper into life or harden us against it. The choice is ours.

I am under no illusion that I will ever recreate the life I had in this part of sunny Southern California. I will certainly maintain relationships and I will certainly visit. But it will never be the same as it is now. That is sad, and it is ok.

Saying goodbye is an act of love. It is an act I have avoided in the past and will not make the mistake of doing again.

It’s hard to let things change.

And, it’s what we’re here to do.

Maggie

Before sitting down to write this, I read an article by someone I’ve read consistently for a year or so and thought “Wow, she’s gotten cynical.” In fact, I have often recently been noticing when other people or writers sound snarky and superior—and then think about how it’s a good thing I am not like that.

Joke’s on me, of course. I react strongly to people who act out qualities of superiority, judgment, snark or self-righteousness because those are the very things I very much do not want to believe that I have in me, too.

Oh, but I know they are there.

If I can pledge one thing to myself during this year of being 28, it is to continue to face the unappealing parts of my personality I would rather deny. It is to confront my shadow self, if you will.

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It is often true that the things we dislike or even hate about other people reflect the things we refuse to accept in ourselves. It’s a defense mechanism; a way to distance ourselves from what is embarrassing, shameful, or uncomfortable within us.

I read a post on Facebook last week detailing a medical establishment’s controversial decision and found that the comments—both for and against the decision—shared equally vitriolic disdain for the other, and each side communicated this disdain in equally dehumanizing and accusatory ways.

I would imagine there are some complex defense mechanisms at play in each of these commenters, many so sure that they are against the very thing they are engaging in. I would imagine that each of us observers possess that same capacity as the commenters, even if we wouldn’t act it out in that same way, or at all.

Our shared humanity—the shared qualities that make us human, in other words—means that we have the capacity to hold and act within the entire range of human experience. This is hard to reckon with, especially when faced with what we really don’t like in other people. Somewhere, deep or not in our psyches, we probably identify with that quality.

When I drum up a sense of self-righteousness while reading something snarky or judgmental online, I am tapping into that same energy of being snarky and judgmental. I’m not above it—I dislike it in others because I dislike it in myself.

It is interesting that it is much easier to feel intensely about someone and their opinions or attitudes when we don’t know them personally, an effect that is amplified when we view them through a social media platform.

As Dr. Brené Brown said, “People are hard to hate close up.” When we actually talk to a real person, face to face, we more easily realize that they’re just people, like we are. They’re flawed and judgmental and bitchy and angry and flaky and ungrateful and entitled—just like we can be, too.

Because we are human we have the capacity to enact good, evil, and all in between. Uncomfortable or not, refusing to acknowledge that drives us apart. Refusing to accept the humanity in our disliked peers makes us less human and less known to ourselves. It makes us more likely to act out of our shameful, disallowed parts.

When we are blind to what we are ashamed of, embarrassed about, or uncomfortable with, that is what rules over us.

If I refuse the part of me that feels cynical or self-righteous, that part of me does not go away. It may actually make me act out of this denial in ways I dislike.

My desire to not grow cynical and judgmental with age means that paradoxically but necessarily I have to accept the part of me who gets cynical and judgmental. The work of my lifetime, it seems, is to continue to confront and accept the truths that make me feel uncomfortable, so then they can change.

Shining awareness and acceptance on what we dislike allows those parts of us to move toward something lighter, toward something that feels less righteous and more free.

How do we know when we’ve integrated some shameful part of our personality or psyche? When the thing in other people that used to piss us off no longer does.

I’m excited for the day where witnessing people act out self-righteousness and snark doesn’t piss me off.

Until then, happy birthday to me. Another year is absolutely worth celebrating.

Maggie

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With respect to those for whom this advice feels empowering, as it can be in certain contexts, I am compelled to dissect why it may have the opposite effect.

The problem with overusing phrases such as “If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no!” is that the concept has crept so far as to take on a new meaning. What initially served to teach the perpetually people-pleasing individual that it’s ok to say no sometimes—a worthy lesson for such individuals—has since morphed into oversimplified pseudo-therapy speak that functions as an excuse to avoid the discomfort of growth.

As I’ve grown up, I’ve learned that anything worth fighting for requires fighting through some resistance and against our more self-indulgent or self-destructive tendencies. We know that our brains are not always trustworthy. We may feel ‘hell yeses’ to things that our next-day selves wished we hadn’t said yes to—calling out of work, having another cocktail, staying up too late watching a great show, buying something flashy and out of our budget.

We may feel “hell noes” to things which actually may act in service to our growth—dragging ourselves to that workout, attending that dreaded event we ended up enjoying, doing our math homework, going to class.

This kind of self-help marketing falsely situates certainty as a requirement for accessing intuitive wisdom, and gives those who are often on the fence an excuse to say “hell no” when something pretty good comes around. For those of us who experience doubt or anxiety, waiting to feel a “hell yes” might mean we wait too long.

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When you say hell yes to things which temporarily feel good but later don’t, you train your brain to seek momentary reward and avoid the dirty work of sitting with the “I don’t knows”. When you avoid the hard stuff because it doesn’t feel like a hell yes, you eliminate the potential for growth and longer-term reward.

Our growth edge can be thought of as the line between what we are ready to say yes to and what we are afraid of—which will probably feel neither like a hell yes nor a hell no. There is a deeper intuitive wisdom that is not charged with the buzz of a “hell-anything” that guides us toward what is right for us.

Knowing when to say: “I’m ready to do it even though I’m scared” or “Even though this feels “good”, I‘ll pass” is a skill that takes time to develop. It goes beyond relying on the oft-changing urges of our animal selves.

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When we come across this kind of buzzy pop psychology online, we have to remember that it is necessarily reductionist so that it fits in a tiny square. The other thing to keep in mind with this marketing is that it is designed to make you keep buying or engaging with the marketer’s content. Influencers will use deceptively self-empowering phrases like “follow your hell yes” and then present something objectively exciting and enticing…for only $444.44, if you purchase during the pre-sale. A good marketer knows how to elicit that “hell yes I want that” feeling in your body, and encourage you to “listen to your intuition”…and buy their course.

The hell yes/hell no framework for making decisions sells us the idea that we should trust our strong feelings and also should feel certain.

The illusion of certainty is certainly more glamorous than being willing to confront the uncomfortable growth edge or sit with the burning “I don’t knows”.

Instead of searching for that illusion of certainty, get curious about the “I don’t knows” and the “I think sos”. Face the areas of your life where your hell yeses and hell nos are actually sabotaging you. Let yourself be guided by the intuitive wisdom that probably doesn’t sound flashy or glamorous at all.

If you don’t feel certain about anything, it may be a sign that you’re tuned into the nature of reality, which is anything but certain.

If you are a “Maybe” or a “Let me get back to you” person, you are welcome here. No hell-anythings required.

Maggie

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Over a decade into my recovery, I can finally say that my eating disorder was never about the food. It was always about what the food was distracting me from.

There’s a saying in recovery which I believe originates from Eating Disorders Anonymous (yes, that’s a thing and they have meetings all over the country!) that goes something like this: “The eating disorder will leave when you no longer need it.”

Anthropomorphizing the eating disorder is a common recovery trick; this way, you are better able to see that the eating disorder is not you, but a distinct thing you can learn to disidentify from. Giving the eating disorder the capacity to stand up and leave allows you to see that it is not inherent to your being, though it very much feels that way. Many of us who struggled with an eating disorder experience it as part of what we think our “true self” is, or, disturbing as it may be to those who love us, as our friend.

Recovery often involves grieving the loss of the eating disorder as we may grieve a friend’s departure. Needless to say, the eating disorder is not a friend, even if it brought us something we needed at the time—purpose, perhaps, or a way to avoid confronting what we did not yet have the capacity to face.

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Looking at the idea that one could ‘need’ an eating disorder requires a nuanced lens, as well as the context that this idea can apply to many other disorders, addictions, and learned behavioral responses: at one point, we may have needed them, and at another point, ideally, we no longer do.

It is true that there is often a genetic or characterological predisposition involved in addiction and mental health disorders that we would be remiss not to acknowledge. But we must also consider what the disorder or addiction or behavior is giving or allowing us. We must look at its function.

There is a concept in psychology called “secondary gains” which is often applied when treating depression. Secondary gains are essentially the benefit of being depressed—or anxious, anorexic, or addicted—as perceived by the individual. A secondary gain of being depressed may be that because one is depressed, they receive more care and attention from their family than when they are not depressed. Thus, staying depressed is reinforced by something the depressed individual wants.

Secondary gains are important to evaluate not because we intend to blame the individual for being depressed or addicted or imply that they are “doing it to themselves,” but because if we do not address what the individual is actually “gaining” from inhabiting this state of being, they will be less likely to truly want to change. Understanding what is reinforcing the behavior or disorder allows us to develop the skills we need to receive these desired outcomes in other ways, as well as the ability to deal with what is underneath.

What purpose is the eating disorder, addiction, or behavior serving? Much like any other defense mechanism—denial or projection, for example—certain kinds of disorders and addictions and behaviors may function to cover up something that the individual is not yet capable of facing or feeling. Again, biology plays a critical role in this: the seriously undernourished or chemically dependent individual must rehabilitate the brain and body before embarking on this “deeper” psychological work.

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The eating disorder, for me, initially functioned as a way to not feel what was underneath. As I grew up, it then became a default mode of dealing with stress or life transitions: numbing through deprivation was a way to cope, albeit a destructive and unsustainable one.

Over the past many years, I have taught myself how to feel, again. I have remembered how to exist here now, in this moment, without trying to escape it—at least, much more of the time. I no longer need to deprive myself of nourishment to defend against whatever is underneath.

I have slowly but surely developed the ability to confront all that is underneath and let it teach me.

Humans replicate this pattern of defending against what cannot yet be dealt with through myriad habits and behaviors. One need not meet criteria for a DSM-5 diagnosis to experience this. What is the purpose of scrolling on your phone for 3 hours? Bingeing the latest Netflix series? Getting snarky with the people who will love you no matter what?

What are these behaviors protecting you from or defending against?

What are they enabling you to avoid?

Can you open yourself to what’s underneath, yet?

Exclusive to perhaps the Dalai Lama or the Buddha, we are not often capable of processing everything, good and not, in real time. It is a very human thing to defend against and protect ourselves from what seems like a threat, whether it is a true threat or merely perceived. The problem is when we get lost in the defense mechanism at the expense of feeling anything underneath.

We know that what’s underneath has to come out somehow, some way, someday. And it will. One only has to look at the news or today’s social media feed to see how unprocessed pain can manifest when left unaddressed.

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It’s ok if it takes time to confront what’s painful. But don’t wait for it to eat you.

When you spend time cultivating the skills and capacity for confronting what is hard, you will eventually realize that you no longer need the thing you used to need to protect you from it.

The thing will go when you no longer need it.

If you feel you still need that thing, challenge yourself by asking: Why?

Maggie

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Such a symbolic representation of an ending always invites reflection on the completed cycle and the one which is beginning. Inherent to this reflective process is a sense of loss and of excitement.

This season feels especially ripe with commencements, for me. Anyone else?

While I love a grand symbol of the completion-commencement cycle—a graduation, a wedding, a birthday, a new school year—I am also reminded that we get the chance to begin again every single day. The potential to embrace change and be open to possibility exists each time we wake up.

The concept of the Zen Beginner’s Mind applies here: the beginner’s mind is open, curious, and unattached to specific outcomes. As the Zen monk and teacher Shunryu Suzuki wrote, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

As my Uncle Matt would say: the beginner’s mind is “open to everything, attached to nothing.”

Remaining open and curious about what is to come increases life’s capacity to touch you in meaningful ways. When you are unattached to specific outcomes, you become more in tune with the little beauties and joys around you. You are not limited by what you think you want to happen; you are open to the full range of what is most right for you, right now. The beginner’s mind says: “I have no idea what will happen,” and is then liberated to go explore what will happen.

As soon as we are honest enough to admit that we really don’t know what is to come, we open ourselves to the truly awe-some nature of this life we get to live. We let ourselves be surprised.

I wrote three years ago in this post, The Tenderness of New Beginnings: “The less we try to orchestrate things to happen a certain way, the more easily they usually end up unfolding. If we continuously remind ourselves to let go of [our] attachments to specific outcomes, we may see that life becomes a little more interesting and surprising.”

We have the choice each day to approach what lies ahead with a beginner’s mind.

Starting the morning with an ‘I have no idea what will happen’ gives us permission to go find out with fresh eyes and an open heart.

With this Zen Beginner’s Mind in place, we head into the future with openness and ease.

May the next chapter commence.

Maggie

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If you don’t have an anxiety disorder but still experience non-useful anxiety—as most of us do—the exposure framework is likely to be supportive in overcoming said non-useful anxiety.

There are times when anxiety is useful—it pushes us to study for the exam so that we can pass, or leave on time for an interview, or make sure that our homes are safe for the baby or the dog. Anxiety can indeed protect us. A little anxiety is not only normal, but inherent to the human experience.

However, our minds can get carried away and become anxious unnecessarily. The anxiety attaches itself to innocuous situations or things and then amplifies: Regardless of whether that thing could be dangerous, ruminating over or avoiding it does not serve us. Anxiety becomes disordered when it starts to affect our daily lives significantly and across multiple environments. For example: driving a car can be dangerous, but if anxiety prevents us from ever getting in one, our lives become severely restricted. The anxiety, in this case, has won.

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When you avoid what makes you anxious, you give that thing power. The catch-22 of anxiety is that it often arises out of your desire to be in control, and then turns around and controls you. It is impossible to be in control when anxiety is involved.

To overcome being controlled by anxiety, stop avoiding the feared stimulus—neutralize it by facing it. Don’t let it eat you.

Discerning between a real threat and an innocuous anxiety stimulant can be hard, as anxiety warps our perception of what is safe. Nevertheless, most of us know when our anxiety is unreasonable and non-useful. Most of us know when what we are avoiding is actually exactly what we should be turning toward.

Gradually confronting what we avoid strips those things of their power and takes us closer to what they’re covering up or distracting us from. Digging deeper in that direction may yield relief and restored agency.

Don’t be eaten by your anxiety—eat it yourself.

Maggie

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I may have gotten a degree in clinical counseling, but I am not your therapist and this newsletter is not designed to treat or diagnose. Seek treatment elsewhere if you feel it would be helpful. :)

In many of our adult relationships, love feels, well, conditional. We can get lost in making it about what we’re getting from the other, or whether they are satisfying this or that need of ours. We form opinions on how this person should change or be different, or how we should change or be different because we are somehow wrong.

Conditional love says I love you, now change.

A marriage asks something more of us. A marriage asks us to love another person forever, unconditionally, in sickness and in health and for better and worse.

To love unconditionally is to love without trying to change the other.

To love unconditionally is to accept and appreciate your partner as they are.

What I know of my brother and his wife is that they not only love each other, but they allow each other. They appreciate each other as they are, right now, and will again tomorrow.

To paraphrase the late spiritual teacher Ram Dass: The unconditional loving relationship becomes an environment—soft and receptive like soil—in which each person is free to grow and change in ways they are meant to grow and change. In his words: If you became a person who could love unconditionally, everyone you love would flower before your very eyes.

…

My brother and his wife are declaring the unconditionality of their love today, for all of us to witness. They are reminding us to appreciate the ones we love as they are, right now in this moment. And the next moment, too. May we watch them flower before our very eyes.

In honor of this I invite us all to be open to the place where unconditional love lives within us.

May we all be the soil for which others to grow in the ways they are meant to grow.

Thank you.

Maggie

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That’s how I feel about a lot of what I write—like I’m writing slightly ahead of what I fully understand now, in anticipation of growing into it. I keep buying shoes that end up fitting six months later.

In titling this newsletter Actual Honesty nearly 5 years ago—when Substack was not cool yet, I might add—I had no idea what shoes I was buying and therefore embarking on attempting to fill.

Actually honest shoes, as it turns out. Ones that I’ve outgrown and exchanged a dozen times over and have since gotten several pairs in different colors.

If I were to define an actually honest life after 5 years of trying to write with that intention in mind, here goes: the actually honest life is one in which you can try on and buy as many pairs of shoes as you want—or not. There’s always time to change your mind, and there’s always room to grow.

The life you were meant to live is your actually honest life. It’s the one you’re living right now. It’s also one in which you will often or occasionally notice that you are living dishonestly. In fact, the hardest part of living an honest life may be how often we are forced to look at the dishonest places: Confronting what has stopped working is incredibly challenging. Looking at the areas which have slowly fallen from feeling right can be heartbreaking.

The actually honest life asks you to look at the parts you’d rather deny and apologize when you’ve done something wrong. The honest life is a humble one. It asks you to change your mind; to quit what no longer is working; to stay with the pain until it abates.

Living honestly means feeling the honest feeling. It means choosing the hard true thing. It means continuously feeling around for what feels right, and letting go of what feels wrong.

The honest thing of the moment does not necessarily feel good in that moment. It might feel achey, uncomfortable, awkward—but the core of it feels true, clear, sturdy. To live an honest life is not to feel good all the time, but to be willing to feel what is here.

If you’re being asked to change your shoes, go out and get some new ones. There’s enough room in your closet.

Maggie

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I feel so lucky to be here, now.

I took a 4-year gap in between undergraduate and graduate school. After college, I flirted with life. I moved across the country and tried ideas on like rotating styles of clothing. I became incredibly passionate about topics I have since abandoned, railed against my idea of what the machine was, and when the opportunity came to attend a program for Marriage and Family Therapy at Northwestern that would have placed me $100k in debt but landed me a full therapist’s license before age 25, I rescinded my acceptance. Every instinct in me rebelled against being told what to do or how to think. I wasn’t ready to be in graduate school, I wanted to be taught by life itself. I continued letting my mind romp around Chicago while funding my $7 cold brews and nights out dancing through babysitting without a second thought to my future career.

Despite the necessity of the four years I took off, when I entered graduate school two years ago, I felt a distinct sense of being behind. I wondered how my classmates rolling straight from undergrad knew they wanted to be there; if they knew something I should have known before then.

In retrospect, it’s completely crazy that at age 25 I felt “too old” to be starting graduate school—a feeling perpetuated by the false cultural narrative that we should always know what we want to do with our entire lives and then take synchronized and planned steps to carry out that life.

The older I get and the more people I meet, the less I believe that it’s even possible to know where you’re headed before it’s unfolding in front of you—or before it has already unfolded, for that matter.

We all would benefit from talking to the people who went to college at age 33 or graduate school at 57, the ones who wrote their first novel at 47, the accountants-turned-community-college-professors-turned-theater-directors. These people know what we all should; that the path is never as straightforward as we think.

For some people, it’s correct to have a plan for life that more or less unfolds as they expect it to. For most of us, the linear predictable lifestyle will remain a myth.

If you are faced with the feeling that you’re ‘behind’ where you should be or fear that it is too late to start something, remember that you’ll eventually be the same age once you’ve done it as you will be if you don’t do it.

Now is as good a time as any to get started.

If I had known where I wanted to direct my career before age 25, I wouldn’t be here, now.

Thank god for being here.

Maggie

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No matter how much we try to plan for what’s coming, we never really know what’s hiding in left field.

Given this reality, we are faced with a choice: fear the unknown and attempt to control it, or accept and welcome it with curiosity. While the former may be what we often default to, we can always choose to try the latter: we can use the unknown as fodder for our personal and spiritual development.

The pressing question becomes: How does one begin to foster a more welcoming, curious relationship with the unknown?

Answer: By paying attention to what surprises us.

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We can treat unexpected surprises as invitations to connect more intimately with ourselves. The unexpected becomes a vehicle for us to access insight and intuition: What did this surprise have to show us? What did it remind us of? What could we learn from this occurrence?

Surprises can also be an invitation to connect more intimately with the world around us or with our version of spirituality. By drawing attention to the unexpected things we did not attempt to orchestrate but which happened anyway, we subtly humble ourselves to something bigger than us. We invite more space for awe and wonder within.

Paying attention to what surprises us is a powerful strategy for nosing our way out of a difficult or boring period: When we start to notice the unexpected, life becomes a little more interesting. We connect with the awe-inducing, ever-present force of change. We recognize that we aren’t the ones running the show. To be surprised is to surrender the part of us that wants to control. We can choose to soften into the unknown rather than resist it.

If it is true that the universe speaks in mysterious ways, then we ought to pay attention to those mysteries.

We can only wonder what kinds of things might surprise us today.

Maggie

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Our brains are wired to detect danger so we can protect ourselves from it, therefore we pay more attention to potential threats and what is “wrong” in the environment. This is what psychology terms the “negativity bias”, which many people identify as being the reason why it’s easier to focus on what’s not so great.

This part of our brain is what would alert us to the presence of a hungry grizzly bear. As it happens, we are not often faced with this dilemma, and in the absence of immediate threat, our negativity-biased brains shift their attention to literally anything else which might be perceived as a problem.

If we allow our negativity biases to rule our minds, we run the risk of sidelining joy, curiosity, and awe. We jeopardize our ability to feel contentment and appreciation when we focus on what is not good.

Cynicism, fueled by our brain’s negativity bias, can thusly be defined as a defense mechanism: something which seeks to protect us from feeling anxious or vulnerable.

Cynicism is a defense against disappointment—if we don’t get our hopes up, they can’t be let down.

Cynicism can be a defense against vulnerability—we close ourselves off to a depth of connection and beauty that can’t be accessed without risking emotional pain. The dark comes with the light, the highs with the lows.

Cynicism can be an adaptive mechanism: it obscures deep pain and fear and drowns hope when the individual does not perceive it safe to feel. However, cynicism usually hits a point of failure where it hurts more than it ever helped.

The antidote is not delusional optimism, but connection to the present moment and a conscious shift to looking for evidence of goodness and joy. We can choose to see what is still and always good. We can choose to direct more conscious attention to what is going right around us, to noticing acts of generosity and kindness. What we pay attention to dictates what amplifies in our consciousness—much like when we purchase a new car and then suddenly see the same model 10x more frequently than before. The mind will naturally find more and more material to support what it is noticing.1

Feed your mind evidence that there is goodness around you, every day. Be brave enough to set the cynicism down and feel the rawness of life, which includes the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful.

It hurts to feel it all sometimes. It also hurts not to feel any of it.

This is your invitation to soften.

Maggie

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I am no Jungian psychoanalyst, but recently Jung’s concepts have been stirring something in me. I stumbled across the podcast This Jungian Life, in which three psychoanalysts1 discuss Jungian concepts and analyze listener’s dreams. It is extremely interesting and thought provoking.

Jungian psychoanalysis, in a nutshell, is an intensive kind of therapy in which the ultimate goal is individuation, a lifelong process of integrating the unconscious, hidden parts of the self into the forward facing personality. Integration of hidden unconscious material is the key to living an authentic, individuated life. Dream analysis, as well as other modes of connecting with one’s unconscious, are primary techniques employed in this kind of therapy.

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In order to integrate the unconscious, one has to make the unconscious conscious. The unconscious often holds the answers to the questions: What are you really afraid of? What do you truly want? How do you really feel? and may take the form of something disturbing: uncomfortable thoughts, obsessions, fears and desires which bubble up in our conscious mind before we banish them back down. Jung called this the shadow self, the parts of our personality we reject.

Most of us are familiar with suppression: when an uncomfortable fear or desire or thought pops up in our conscious mind, we banish it back down from where it came. We dismiss it, downplay its contents, or alternatively, fearfully ruminate over it. Through a Jungian lens, these shadowy parts of ourselves try to break into our conscious minds because we have rejected and suppressed them. These parts of ourselves demand to be accepted and integrated, not rejected.

In this episode of This Jungian Life called “Why You Dream of Intruders”, a listener calls in with a long dream about an intruder to her home in the form of a camel—a huge, surly animal who angrily stomps around outside, trying to break in. The dreamer recounted that as soon as the window of the house was opened, the camel immediately calmed down. The camel was welcomed inside the home and turned into a man, with whom the dreamer waltzed.

Think what you do about dream analysis, this example is a powerful representation of the relationship we often have to our shadow selves; our fears and rejected parts of the psyche. We lock them out to prevent them from entering, so naturally they cause havoc and try to break in. When we open the window to look at these rejected parts of ourselves, they actually calm down. When we welcome them inside to where we live in our conscious minds, they turn into something not so scary, after all. When we dance with these intruders, we may even find that they have something interesting to offer us. We form a relationship with them. We don’t fear their messages as much, because we understand what they’re trying to show us or protect us from.

We then return to the quote we started with: “The attitude you take to the unconscious is the attitude it takes to you.”

If we fear our shadow selves, as this quote implies, they manifest as something frightening. If we face our shadowy parts with acceptance, even curiosity, they may not present so scarily. Learning to integrate all parts of the self—even the parts we don’t enjoy looking at—leads to a healthier psyche and more easeful relationship with oneself.

The invitation then becomes to pay some gentle attention to our unconscious. Instead of shying away from those little fears or desires or thoughts we are terrified to look at, look at them. Don’t hide. These are coming from the part of you that wants to be integrated and accepted. They are not necessarily accurate nor tell the truth—how many of us have had a camel outside our door?—but are demanding to be heard.

How are you treating your unconscious, the parts of yourself you wish weren’t there?

Instead of pushing down what you would rather reject, turn toward it. Become curious, welcoming.

Look at it face on.

Shine some light on your shadowy interior and pay attention to what becomes illuminated. It may not be so scary, after all.

Maggie

P.s. This concept of integrating the rejected parts of the self is reflected in many, many other kinds of therapy. Needless to say, some anxiety and thought disorders may require a higher need for care and treatment. This newsletter is never meant to advise or treat, but is here to inspire reflection and contemplation.

This newsletter is never meant to advise or treat, but is here to inspire reflection and contemplation.

Behavior change is the point of any kind of self-help, meditation, wellness practice, or introspection: increase our awareness around those things we do impulsively which we would like to change. Then, ultimately, the point is to change those things which are contributing to us feeling bad so that we feel better.

Awareness invites the possibility for positive change of our own accord. Becoming aware moves us from default mode to a place of agency, where we are able to make a different choice.

With awareness, our perspective shifts from an external locus of control, If only something changed, then I would feel better, to an internal locus of control: I can choose something different right now.

Right before our impulsive actions, reactive feelings, and habitual patterns is a space. In that space, “between stimulus and response,” as Viktor Frankl said famously, “is our power to choose our response. In that response lies our growth and our freedom.”

The space is where our agency lies, when we draw our awareness to it. The space holds our power to change and, as Frankl says, to choose our response. The space is where we either move toward growth and freedom, or not.

Without awareness of what we are doing, we are much less able to interrupt the pattern, the default responses. We are much less able to change of our own accord, and are more at the whim of our default mode of operating.

With awareness we do have choice and power. We reclaim the power of the space in between stimulus and response.

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A good place to start increasing your awareness is by simply paying attention what doesn’t feel good. Notice when you compulsively lie or make excuses or pretend or wind down a negative thought spiral. Catch yourself in that impulse. Pause to notice the space. In that pause lies your freedom. In that pause lies the potential for the choice to feel a little bit better.

Yes, interrupting what we are accustomed to doing habitually and then doing it differently can be really hard.

It’s also very accessible. The chance to change is right here, right now. You can practice anytime.

Your first step is simply to notice that it’s there.

Maggie

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