Deciding when to “put a dog down” (I very much dislike this widely used phrase) is not for the faint-hearted.

The last months of a dog’s life are often filled with ambiguity. One day they are fine, the next not so much, leaving their human with the agonizing question: Is this the day?

My sister asked that question every day for weeks. I’ve often said to people facing this moment, “you’ll know when it’s time.” I had said those very words the night before.

We have the extraordinary responsibility and gift of being able to ease our pup’s ending.

Endings matter.

We did the best we could for Sadie.

We gave her some meds to calm her down before getting in the car and going to the vet—I’m not sure which of those things she despised more!—but we were grateful that the meds did the trick.

My sister carried her to the car in her bed, tightly cocooned. And that same bed she had slept on for many months, if not years, became her departure pad.

We loved her up on the floor of the room we were in, stroking her head and body, and crooning soft words of appreciation for a job well done.

I heard my sister whisper softly, “You came into my life when I most needed you,” tears pouring down her face.

The grief unleashed was not just the grief of that moment, but was laced with the past struggles my sister had gone through, and the future grief she was already anticipating for another loved one.

For anyone who has lived through this moment, you know the enormity of it. A dog’s love is abiding and unconditional—something we experience in very few of our other relationships.

So the grief is commensurate.

I’ve always thought loving a dog meant feeding them, walking them, protecting them, delighting in them, caring for them as they age.

But Mary Oliver, one of my favorite poets, reminds us there’s one more requirement of loving a dog that we might prefer not to think about.

Eventually, we have to let them go.

To live in the world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

(from “In Blackwater Woods” in American Primitive, © Back Bay Books, 1983)

We know this when we bring a dog into our lives. Or at least we think we do. Their lives will almost certainly be shorter than ours. The letting go is part of the bargain from the beginning.

Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier when the time comes.

My sister cocooned Sadie in the end, holding her close to her bones.

And in the bargain, Sadie cocooned my sister for 14 years.

Try This.

Hold the mortal beings you love close to your bones while they are still here in flesh and blood.

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I’m learning what it feels like to walk the moss covered path to my cabin in the woods.

Ferns line the path on one side; trees of various shapes and sizes line the other.

Once at the cabin, the view opens and expands over a marsh.

It feels like I’m walking through an ever-changing landscape. And the marsh had yet another surprise for me early this morning.

As I crossed over my small bridge onto the rail trail and turned left, my breath caught. About a quarter mile away, an ethereal mist rose above and stretched across the trail.

The picture doesn’t do it justice. By the time I got close enough, the mist had already begun to evaporate.

And when I walked through it, it was as though it disappeared entirely. Yet when I looked back, it was still there.

I thought about how we can be living inside our own version of mist and not even know it. I thought about how clouded our perspectives can become when we are shrouded. I thought about how mist can seemingly arise out of thin air and then evaporate, just like our emotions.

I had a vague recollection of how mist forms but I asked the Googles when I got home just to be sure.

Overnight, the temperature of the air drops significantly. The marsh water, in contrast, retains much of the previous day’s warmth.

At dawn, moisture rises from the warmer water into the chilly morning air. As the moist air cools, the invisible water vapor condenses into tiny, suspended droplets, forming the soft veil of mist that drifts above the marsh.

Suddenly what is invisible to the naked eye becomes visible.

The moisture was there all along. Conditions shifted. The mist wasn’t so much created, but revealed.

I thought to myself, What are the conditions in my life that make what’s invisible in me visible?

A crisis reveals courage.
A move reveals possibility.
A photograph reveals longing.
A death reveals love and grief.

Is the feeling created by the moment? Or was it always there, waiting for the right conditions to reveal it?

I’ve been thinking about emotions a lot lately. I can go days feeling solid, stable, and whole. And then, like cool morning air meeting warm marsh water, an emotion condenses into something unmistakably real.

And then, like the air and water warming together, the emotion dissipates and dissolves.

I’ve found that happens most readily when I turn toward the aching feeling of grief and welcome it.

Many—including me at times—see emotional discomfort as something to get rid of as quickly as possible.

Yet no one, seeing the morning mist rise above the marsh at dawn, thinks “How horrible, look at all that mist.” (Although maybe the errant early morning bike rider might think those thoughts!)

Without the right conditions that beautiful phenomenon would remain hidden.

Perhaps when our most difficult emotions condense into visible droplets, we can stare in awe rather than dismay as they illuminate our most tender human experiences.

Try This.

The next time a strong emotion arises, pause before explaining it away, fixing it, or pushing it aside.

Ask yourself:

What might this feeling be revealing that was already here?

Perhaps anxiety is revealing something you value. Perhaps anger is illuminating a boundary. Perhaps grief is making love visible.

Like the morning mist over a marsh, the feeling may not be a problem to solve. It may simply be something that has become visible because the conditions were right.

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• ANS: Autonomic Nervous System (involuntary functions)

• SNS: Somatic Nervous System (voluntary movements)

• PNS: Peripheral Nervous System (nerves outside CNS)

• CNS: Central Nervous System (brain and spinal cord)

• ENS: Enteric Nervous System (gut nervous system)

I’ve discovered a new anatomical term—the INS—or Interlinked Nervous System. I’d like to think I’m super clever and it’s something brand new, but it’s not. More on that in a minute.

The phrase popped into my head as I was sitting here thinking about the bond between me and my dog, Archie. As the human in the mix, I find the relationship often complicated and fraught with tension—especially as of late.

For my pup, it’s pretty straightforward, I think. His needs are either being met or not being met. End of story.

Often he’s just being a dog in the most doggiest of ways.

He barks incessantly when I stop the car somewhere.
He barks incessantly at the mama and baby deer in the yard.
He vocalizes his distress when I’m out of sight.
Right now he is on guard because the gutter installation guys are here.

I imagine the thought bubble coming out of his head—What in god’s name are you doing outside my house?! And why on earth are you making all that noise?!

He is just doing what dogs do.

If I’m honest it often makes me cuckoo bananas. Especially right now. I have little to no patience for Archie’s antics and his needs.

Early on I was convinced he should be rehomed. Some days I still wonder if I’m the right human for him.

I remember my coach saying, “Well, if you want a mirror to your own nervous system, keep him.” I laughed then. Who’s got the last laugh now? The dog, of course.

I’ve written about Archie a lot because this relationship is telling me a lot about myself. And sometimes it just isn’t that pretty.

I have a sensitive nervous system. I prefer quiet. I prefer calm. I’m somebody who doesn’t love someone talking in the car when the radio is on at the same time. You can imagine how Archie might feel like nails on a chalk board.

Archie and I have been traveling back and forth to Connecticut from our new digs in New Hampshire. Our routines—that if I’m honest haven’t really been established in our new home—shift with every trip.

So, that’s the new normal. And I’ve been puzzling over how to make it smoother for all parties involved—me, him, my sister’s family, my mom and dad and their dogs.

One morning last week my nephew was watching the usual dynamic play out. I walk out of the room. Archie, who is anchored to a dining room table (and apparently to me), loses his shit. I walk back in and he frantically wants to reclaim me.

Matt said: “He’s not your support dog! You’re his support person!” We all had a good laugh. And I realized how dead-on right he was.

This dog was anchored to me. And became even more so when we shifted environments. He was taking his cues from my energy all the time. We have a shared nervous system—the INS!

Turns out my “Interlinked Nervous System” isn’t a new discovery. Researchers have names for it: emotional contagion, physiological synchrony, neural coupling. Different labels for the same phenomenon—two nervous systems influencing one another.

I am completely in awe of a friend of mine who has three kiddos. She has demonstrated the utmost patience with whatever energy shows up in those three active, outgoing kids.

I used to think what made her effective was what she did.

Lately I’ve been wondering if it’s who she is.

She brings a steadiness that the people (and the dogs!) around her seem to organize around.

And if that’s true, it helps explain a lot about Archie. And about me.

I have a tendency to go from calm to flooded in a flash. That’s what I continue to work with.

It’s been much, much harder lately with Archie. He has reverted back to some early behaviors. I’ve asked a lot of him with all the changing environments.

The pattern: He misbehaves. I get annoyed. And around and around we go.

I know I’ve written about my relationship with Archie a lot lately. There’s a reason I keep coming back to it. Why? I haven’t cracked the nut yet.

Whether I like it or not, Archie is organizing around my nervous system.

My anger does not help. In fact, it exacerbates the situation. I know this and can’t seem to curb the tendency.

If you could see us now. I am writing quietly on the couch. Archie is asleep next to me. Earlier I let him have his conversation with the gutter guys and didn’t react. He pops his head up occasionally at an errant noise from the guys and then relaxes back down. I continue not to react.

He settled because I was settled.

The formula is simple.

And yet, I can’t always follow it.

That’s why I keep writing about Archie. Because the work is mine to do. Not his.

Try This.

Pay attention to one relationship this week—a child, partner, colleague, friend, or pet.

Notice what happens when you become agitated.

Notice what happens when you become settled.

We like to think we’re responding to the nervous systems around us.

More often than we realize, they’re responding to ours.

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I’m one of the ladies, but couldn’t join them on their early morning hike. Hard to make 5:15AM when you live nearly 2 hours away.

The picture made me smile. All their cheerful faces in the wee early morning hours. And then immediately after I felt the pang of longing in my heart. Longing to be with them. Longing for what was but will never be again in quite the same way.

I said to them: “That picture is the definition of bittersweet! So lovely to see all your beautiful faces and at the same time missing being there with you terribly.”

One of the ladies—Jayne—once said with prescience, “You know this will all change. I predict our group will look different soon.” Some of the ladies were on the verge of retirement at that point.

I scoffed but on some level knew the truth of that statement. At the time I didn’t want to believe it. My need for things to stay precisely the way as they were, showed me how much I had come to rely on the steadiness and predictability of these women, our hikes, our sharing of lives.

Jayne had shared her prediction precisely at the time I felt the deepness of the anchor with this group. It mattered to me. A lot. At the time I even felt a little panicky at the thought of it not being there in its current incarnation.

And that was one indicator of a place to look inside me. What was this group of women providing to me? What needs were they meeting? What inner resources would I need to build to venture out away from this clan?

They had become part of the fabric of my life.

The longing illuminated something deeper than missing a hike.

There was no way I would have predicted that I would be the one to move away.

But in a truly beautiful way, the anchors in my life—the Fitness Ladies being one of them—were actually the very things that gave me confidence to set sail.

Courage can come from deep within but sometimes not without a launching pad of love and support.

What these friends gave me was not just a friendly jaunt in the woods.

They gave me a place to arrive and stay.

A home of sorts.

A place where I belonged.

The testament to our friendship wasn’t that nothing changed.

It was the fabric we had woven over years—through shared miles on the trails, honest conversations, trust, laughter, and the freedom to show up exactly as we were.

For years I was a “holder-oner”—I didn’t want things to end. I would get unduly excited about a friend coming over, maybe even being described as having “ants in my pants.” I do believe my parents called me “hyper” at one point.

I got that excited about the thing. And I longed for it to never end.

Counting on something matters. It brings a feeling of solidity under our feet. And the bugger of it all is that our footing can slip at any time—because of something inside of us or some unpredictable thing happening outside of us.

The tight grip is precisely where the information lies about what matters most to us.

I still can grip tightly but I’m more conscious of what it’s telling me.

Over time I’ve come to understand what the longing is trying to tell me. The payoff? I can feel it without becoming undone by it.

The photo from my friends evoked wistfulness this time rather than deep pain and longing. Still, the bittersweetness of longing made itself known.

I’m having a lot of those moments right now—being with my Dad as he travels the path he is on. Sweet to spend this time with him. Bitter as hell at the cancer.

When we put the two words together—bittersweet—it evokes a sigh. A tender longing. Life is both beautiful and fleeting. It truly is a bittersweet moment with someone I love who has been a part of my life from day one.

At times where I’m feeling steady, it can be positive and uplifting to revisit memories. But if loneliness or loss is at play, these memories can trigger rumination and despair. Maybe in that moment tasting more of the bitter than the sweet.

If we’re able to hold both feelings at the same time it can point us in directions that make us more whole—that give us a better understanding of ourselves and what truly matters. I highly recommend Susan Cain’s book on this topic—Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole.

Here’s the thing that I know from my lived experience.

When feelings aren’t digested they don’t just disappear.

The unprocessed emotion lingers, sometimes gets bolder and more persistent.

When I received the photo from my friends, I can remember the instantaneous flash of joy followed almost immediately with a hiccup of longing. It happened in a split second. But I turned toward the moment—even smiled a little.

In the past longing would have swamped me.

This time I waited a beat to let the moment land. My friends were with me even if I wasn’t physically present. I knew I was loved despite the physical distance.

And then my friends—who know me well—made a point of saying that I was missed.

Love can reassure from over a hundred miles away.

But I didn’t feel the pang of regret or worry.

This time I knew I belonged exactly where I was.

And I still belonged with them.

Try This.

Notice your longing.

Where does it point you?

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The character Vizzini, played brilliantly by Wallace Shawn, is a clever but arrogant Sicilian criminal who is the mastermind behind the kidnapping of Princess Buttercup.

He utters that famous word—Inconceivable!—according to the Googles 5 times over the course of the movie.

Every time, he’s absolutely certain.

Every time, he’s wrong.

His flaw isn’t a lack of intelligence.

It’s overconfidence.

As he and his conspirators—Inigo Montoya (the swordsmen) and Fezzik (the giant)—set sail across the sea to another country, Vizzini assumes:

• No one knows they’ve captured the princess.

• No one could follow them.

• No one could climb the Cliffs of Insanity.

• No one could defeat Inigo.

• No one could outsmart him.

Each assumption is immediately proven wrong—by the mysterious Man in Black— that’s why Inigo finally says:

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Vizzini mistakes confidence for certainty and intelligence for infallibility.

In fact, each time he’s wrong he doubles down—convinced he is still right.

It’s easy to laugh at Vizzini.

But I wonder how often I do the same thing.

How often do I mistake “I can’t imagine that” for “That’s impossible”?

That’s why Megan Falley’s essay—The Rainbow Connection: What might we be completely wrong about?—stopped me.

Megan Falley is Andrea Gibson’s wife. If you’ve heard of neither, I highly recommend you look them up. Andrea—a prolific poet and activist—passed last year right around this time. Megan is keeping Andrea’s presence alive through her own writing.

She writes:

“Everything we can see and touch, every ocean and mountain, every human body, every frog and rainbow, accounts for only about five percent of what scientists believe the universe contains. The other ninety-five percent remains largely mysterious.

We know an astonishing amount.

We know almost nothing.

So how did we become so certain that death is the end?”

Certainty is like a period at the end of the sentence. Certainty doesn’t allow for mystery. Certainty can certainly blind us.

Spoiler alert: Vizzini is so cocky about being able to outsmart his opponent in the battle of wits that he dies. His final monologue is priceless.

We have a long history of mistaking our current understanding for the final word. (Read Megan’s essay)

The Earth is flat.

The sun revolves around the Earth.

Until new evidence invites us to think differently.

Megan shares a quote from Andrea: “Humans have a history of building bunkers to keep the universe from blowing our minds.”

Vizzini built himself a bunker of certainty. Even as reality pounded on the door, he refused to come out. And he died.

Our brains crave certainty.

Certainty feels safe.

Admitting we might be wrong doesn’t feel so safe.

But if we hole up in our trenches of certainty, we miss out on possibility, on mystery.

Maybe Inigo wasn’t just correcting Vizzini’s vocabulary.

Maybe he was inviting him to hold his certainty a little more lightly.

Try This.

Notice something this week that immediately feels impossible, ridiculous, or obviously wrong.

Before dismissing it, ask yourself:

Is it actually impossible?

Or is it simply outside the boundaries of what I can currently imagine?

Sometimes the most meaningful growth begins the moment we stop defending our certainty and become curious about what else might be true.

Consider choosing a question mark over a period.

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They are polar opposites in many ways. Archie is tall and lanky. Junie is short and stout. Archie is white with brown cow spots and Junie is jet black with some tinges of white.

They walk very differently. Junie is a “bring up the rear” kind of dog and Archie is a “pull wildly out front” kind of dog.

I think of them as the anchor and the sled dog.

I hook one to my belt in front and hook the other to my belt in back—you can guess which one goes where. (And no, that’s not me or the actual dogs below!)

I’ve now walked them a couple of times in this fashion on a wooded trail near my sister’s house. It got me thinking about the idea of homeostasis or balance.

Homeostasis is our body’s remarkable ability to keep everything in balance. Temperature. Blood sugar. Hydration. A thousand tiny adjustments happening beneath our awareness.

I realized these walks were asking something similar of me.

There are moments on our walks when we’re in perfect balance. For me perfect balance is no tension on either leash. I’m in the middle but I don’t feel any tugs.

My nervous system loves those moments.

But they don’t last long. Invariably Junie digs her heels in or Archie gallops ahead. Or that sometimes happens simultaneously. It’s rather comical.

My nervous system doesn’t entirely love those moments.

I just don’t love being jostled around. And there are parts of me that get super annoyed and impatient. Especially when I’m not getting what I need.

Why can’t these two canines behave the way I want them to behave?!

In other words…

Please show up in exactly the way I need you to show up in order to get what I want.

This is a life-long battle for me—maybe for you too?

Wanting my external conditions to be a certain way so I can be a certain way.

The walks gave me the opportunity to watch how I react to imperfect situations. And trust me these walks were a veritable treasure trove of imperfections.

I also came to appreciate that each dog had needs as distinct as my own. The dogs, however, were oblivious to my needs.

Could I make room for someone else’s needs, even when they conflicted with my own?
Could I tolerate being jostled around without fighting it?
Could I settle my nervous system when it started to feel like too much?

What I noticed is that when I saw the humor in it my nervous system relaxed.

Like, if someone were watching from the outside would they laugh at how ridiculous the three of us looked? Yeah, probably.

I also noticed that irritation begat more irritation. Once I was annoyed, every single moment of discomfort became one more thing to be annoyed about.

When I was able to laugh at the absurdity, things eased up. And often the pups did too.

The difference was whether I resisted what was happening.

The dog walking thing was fairly low stakes so practicing was easy. Plus, hello, I was in my favorite conditions—the woods!

It’s easier to find humor when the stakes are low and you’re somewhere you love.

Lately the stakes haven’t felt especially low.

The aforementioned dog lost an entire toenail recently. Is there such a thing as a tragic comedy? I mean it’s taken two donuts and a cone of shame to keep that long legged creature from reaching the affected area.

Resist, resist, resist.

Fight, fight, fight.

You’d think I was talking about Archie.

Nope.

I’m talking about me.

I found (and continue to find) the situation completely, utterly annoying.

And my current external conditions aren’t those of strolling through the woods.

We are in a new house. (On the upside I now know where urgent dog care is.)

We are back and forth to Connecticut visiting family and supporting my Dad.

We are staying at my sister’s house. Yet another new environment for Archie.

Archie is already a highly sensitive creature. If you’ve been reading along here you know I am too. It’s made for some challenging moments.

And yet, it’s just another opportunity to meet myself and my propensities. To notice when I’ve hit “too much,” turning me into a slightly unhinged version of myself.

Version is the key word in that sentence. This is just a part of me that loses its way. Meeting that part with compassion—knowing it’s doing the best job it can—goes a long way toward helping me find my feet again.

Maybe the goal isn’t getting to a place where nothing pulls us off center.

Maybe the goal is learning how to return to balance, over and over again, through a thousand tiny adjustments.

And a bucket load of compassion.

Try This.

The next time something small doesn’t go your way—a slow cashier, traffic, a barking dog, someone who isn’t behaving the way you wish they would—pause for a moment.

Ask yourself:

Am I waiting for this situation to change before I can be okay?

What’s one tiny adjustment I can make instead of asking the world to make one for me?

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It slipped my mind until my phone notified me last night that my flight was leaving soon. Technology—so wonderful until it’s not.

I had a moment of wistfulness but it disappeared like a puff of smoke. The decision not to go was made—much like the decision to buy my new house—with surprising speed, certainty, and with a clear head and an open heart.

In the past I would have held on tightly to that trip and been deeply disappointed not to go.

Buddhists talk a lot about the sources of suffering—gripping tightly to something is a one-way trip to misery.

So what’s up with beavers, blackbirds and blue overalls? Besides the lovely alliteration, these three things anchored me to the here and now.

The beaver, swimming along, and then undulating, disappeared underwater.

The red-winged blackbird flying up to my kitchen window, speaking its own language.

The woman with the bright blue overalls watering plants outside the coffee shop.

Vivid, alive—all three thrilling in their own way.

Each wholly at home in their own world.

I’m not sure where the phrase—bloom where you’re planted—comes from. Its sentiment feels hopeful. That no matter where you are and what you’re doing (or not doing) you can stretch open like a flower to the sun.

But let’s be honest. The execution of it is a little trickier.

There are many rainy days where this little flower is not quite up to blooming.

All that mental chatter that life is supposed to look a certain way and if I’m not hitting some imaginary mark in my brain, it’s a problem.

It took me a long time to know what I needed even when it flew in the face of social convention.

I mean, who draws the drapes on a sunny day? Yup, me. Sometimes you need to create your own rainy day despite the external weather conditions.

And of course, you can create sun on an actual rainy day, too.

I think we’re the only species that frets so much about our lives—about the way it’s supposed to be.

The beaver seemed completely absorbed in being a beaver.

The blackbird didn’t appear to question whether it should sing.

And the woman in blue overalls? There was an ease about her.

As she filled her watering can near where my dog Archie and I were sitting, we struck up a conversation. She told me she’d spent years working for another gardening company before she and her partner realized they could do it on their own.

Their company? Overall Garden Services!

Talk about blooming where you’re planted.

So today I’m not in Scotland. And that’s ok. Actually it’s more than ok.

Because today, there was a beaver.

A red-winged blackbird.

A woman in blue overalls.

And me, leaning into the here and now.

Try This.

Where are you planted right now?

If you stopped wishing you were somewhere else—even just for today—what might you notice that’s been there all along?

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Chodron speaks quite a bit about working with our propensities—the mental tendencies we have that are strengthened by repetition.

Sound familiar? Repetition = stronger neural wiring.

The grooves in our brain get deeper and deeper the more we repeat the same thoughts and behaviors. The same is true of all our propensities—not just the ones that trip us up, but also the ones that serve us well.

I was driving to Connecticut to see my Dad. I wasn’t sure how or in what ways I could be of service to him or my mom or my sister. In the past I might have let those seeds of doubt stop me from moving forward with a plan.

Leaning, instead, into the propensity to wait. To hesitate. To know with 100% clarity before acting. To let someone else decide.

What do those propensities feel like for me? A lot of mental chatter that sounds like this:

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“My sister probably has it handled.”

“I don’t want to get in the way.”

“I’ll wait until someone asks me.”

This time I listened to my heart and simply got in the car, trusting that it was the right thing to do. That I could show up and take the next right step.

Pema writes:

“Our propensities are the authors of the script. Another thing about these propensities is that they don’t stop by themselves. We have to recognize them when they arise and not be so predictable. Over and over again we have to find our way to do something different. If not, they will follow us for the rest of our life.”

That line stopped me.

The authors of the script.

We can walk through life unconsciously being run by our propensities.

Unless we interrupt them, we’ll keep reading from the same script—thinking and doing the same things over and over again. Sometimes performing the same 3-act play and being crazy enough to think there will be a new and more satisfying ending or that someone else will make a decision for us.

Something deeper was at play for me. It almost felt like a bodily sense or a gut instinct. I didn’t think much, I just knew what I was supposed to do. Get in the car and go.

Clarity came to me as an intuitive hit. Our propensities might be writing the script, but don’t dismiss your intuition as a source of guidance.

The old script didn’t disappear. I simply didn’t let it make the decision.

As I reflect now I think part of my decision was rooted in a promise I made a long time ago to my sister: You will not have to do this alone.

Pema’s invitation is simple: Wake up to what’s happening, even when it’s uncomfortable.

As I was listening to the audiotape one night, someone asked Pema about a young woman who was in the final stages of dying. The woman said, “As my friend gets closer to the end she is in a state of complete terror. Any words of wisdom?”

Pema spoke of seeing people in two states as they get closer to the end—either letting go joyfully or they are totally terrified.

She shared an anecdote of a hospice worker who was with someone who was dying in terror, and had obvious discomfort with the prospect of not being able to breathe.

The hospice worker said, “When you breathe out is there a space there?” The woman nodded. The hospice worker gave her this instruction: “Rest in that space.” Pema said you could see her terror receding in that moment.

What helped me most was hearing Pema say you don’t ever stop being scared, but you can practice not being scared of being scared.

Watching my dad’s illness unfold has changed the way I hear teachings about fear, letting go, and uncertainty. It’s no longer a philosophical conversation.

I am practicing not being scared of being scared.

I am practicing living in uncertainty.

I am practicing listening.

I am practicing presence.

I am practicing letting go.

Try This.

What old script has been making decisions for you?

Maybe rewriting the script doesn’t require knowing the whole story.

Maybe it only asks us to take the next right step.

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My weekly essay should already be finished. By now it’s usually edited, uploaded to Substack, and scheduled to land in your inbox Friday morning.

Instead, I’m just beginning.

Something changed.

Actually, lots of things changed.

I moved to a new house in a new state, and without realizing it, I dismantled the entire ecosystem that had supported my writing.

My weekly writing ritual:

Trail run.
Drop Archie at daycare.
Drive to my favorite café.
Latte.
Breakfast.
Open laptop.
Write.

But all my cues were gone.

No trail run.
No daycare.
No Twisted Tree Café.

My Monday this week wasn’t even close to that. Did I even know it was Monday?

Tuesday rolled around. The thought of writing briefly crossed my mind—but not enough for me to do anything about it. Plus a 4-hour drive put me in yet another realm of consciousness.

By this morning I felt more awareness creep in—oh, I haven’t written anything yet this week.

It wasn’t cause for a 4-alarm fire, but I was caught off guard. How could it be Wednesday afternoon and I hadn't even thought about writing?!

So, I thought, let’s write about what’s happening right now—life had changed significantly and I was off my game. Any other humans at work relate?

As I pondered, I realized how strongly my environment had supported my writing.

My environment had been doing far more work than I realized.
I wasn’t just relying on motivation.
I was relying on cues and a carefully crafted rhythm.
I was “aware” of this to a degree—I had been the one to put the routine into play.
But it had become rote—it was just “something I did” every week.
We do this, and then this, and then this and “now we write.”

I was the same writer but in a different environment with no routine. And the writing wasn’t happening effortlessly.

We could stop right here and just say, “ok, Linda, get thee do the nearest coffee shop!”

But it's not just about the place. It's about the conditions the place made possible.

Annie Murphy Paul, in her book, The Extended Mind, explores how our environments—both natural and built—shape and extend our cognitive processes.

Hold onto your hats.

The book argues that we do some of our best thinking outside of our brains.

Wait…what?

Isn’t the brain the one in charge? Maybe, maybe not entirely.

Paul argues that thinking isn't confined to the brain. It extends into our bodies, our surroundings, our relationships, our movements—even our gestures.

One of my favorite anecdotes from the book beautifully illustrates her thesis.

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman—two psychologists famous for their work on the human mind and its habitual shortcuts and distortions—did much of their work by talking and walking together, through the bustling streets of Jerusalem or along the rolling hills of the California coast.

“I did the best thinking of my life on leisurely walks with Amos,” Kahneman has said.

Maybe Amos wasn't simply a colleague. Maybe he was part of Kahneman's extended mind.

I’ve done some of my best writing at the Twisted Tree Cafe in Medford, MA with the hustle and bustle of the barista as background noise.

But I don't think it was just the café. I think the entire sequence of events invited me into the creative process.

movement
Archie
coffee
space
sound
time
ritual

Maybe I didn’t just leave behind my favorite café.

Maybe I left behind part of the environment that helped me think.

Yes, I still managed to write this essay—even while sitting at my sister’s kitchen island. I can tell you, though, it was slower and there was less ease.

This experience has me thinking less about finding another coffee shop and more about intentionally creating a new environment for thinking.

Trail run?
Coffee?
Writer’s cabin?

Try This.

Consider the conditions that help you do your best thinking.

movement
time
space
sound
ritual
relationships

Which of those are already working in your favor?

Which ones might be worth designing more intentionally?

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Meet Eleanor Grace. At 8:10pm, she left the dressing room to take her spot on the world’s stage— all 9lb 2oz of her!! Her dad said her mom worked hard to make Eleanor’s opening night a complete success!

Beautiful metaphor. Beautiful moment.

Tears filled my eyes and then I had a full on cry in my car. Joy and grief mingled in that moment. For a few minutes, I felt the full circle of life. One life begins, another ends. Eleanor Grace begins her stage debut; my Dad, George Leonard, prepares for his final act.

One emotion—joy—tumbled into and opened up the other—grief.

A child is born and your father dies.
You get the promotion and lose the colleague you loved working with.
You sell the house you’ve outgrown and grieve the life you built there.
You move to a dream home in the woods and miss the neighborhood you’ve left behind.

We are messy, complicated creatures often experiencing messy, complicated things. Being tidy isn’t what happens on the human life stage.

And the accompanying emotions don’t usually come one at a time, politely waiting their turn to be cued on stage.

Opposing emotions are often hard for humans to hold. There’s a desire to resolve emotional tension quickly. We like certainty and clarity. Our brains like to predict and like to conserve energy—you never know when the saber-tooth tiger is around the corner—so arriving at clarity and resolution feels good.

But life doesn’t work that way. Neat and tidy isn’t served up on a platter.

Psychological health—or at least some semblance of okay-ness—may require building the capacity to hold multiple truths (and emotions) at the same time.

When we push emotions away, they don’t actually disappear. They tend to linger in the wings, waiting for another chance to make an entrance.

Our brains expend enormous energy trying to keep unwanted feelings contained. Sometimes the harder we push, the louder they get. Have you heard the old saying, “what you resist persists?”

Naming what’s happening—joy, grief, relief, fear—helps us organize the experience instead of being swept away by it.

I used to be that person who was highly emotional but didn’t actually discern, process, and integrate my emotional experiences. I was “emotional” but not fully feeling or dealing. And worse, I pushed emotions down because they overwhelmed me.

Looking back, I confused having emotions with processing emotions.

They aren’t the same thing.

In recent years my course of study in non-violent communication opened up a rich path of emotional granularity—the ability to identify and distinguish among emotions.

People with higher emotional granularity don’t simply feel “bad.”

They might feel:

• disappointed

• relieved

• nostalgic

• proud

• lonely

• hopeful

all at the same time.

Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart explores 87 emotions and experiences.

One of her most startling findings was that most people can identify only three emotions in real time: happy, sad, and angry.

The problem is that life is rarely that simple.

We might say we’re sad when we’re actually grieving, disappointed, lonely, nostalgic, or discouraged.

Brene writes that language is a portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness. When we don’t have words for what we’re feeling, we struggle to understand it, regulate it, or communicate it to others.

I had some level of emotional granularity this morning—feeling joy and grief and knowing it—and with that came the complexity of contradictory emotions.

Any of these resonate?

• Birth of a grandchild: Joy and grief for the grandparent who isn’t here to meet them

• Selling a home: Relief and sadness

• Retirement: Freedom and loss of identity

• Moving to a dream location: Excitement and loneliness

• Child leaving for college: Pride and heartbreak

Integration—holding both things at once—allows for complexity. The nervous system becomes less rigid. We can experience all the things. Instead of either/or it becomes both/and.

Susan Cain, author of Bittersweet, speaks to the idea that the deepest moments of human meaning are often tinged with both gratitude and loss.

Perhaps emotional health isn’t about deciding which feeling is true. Perhaps it’s about expanding our capacity to hold more of the truth.

Joy and grief.
Pride and heartbreak.
Gratitude and loss.

Try This.

Think about a situation you’re living right now.

Is there an emotion you’ve been giving center stage? What feeling might be standing quietly in the wings?

Instead of asking yourself, “Which emotion is the real one?”

Try asking:

“What else is true?”

You might discover that relief and guilt are both present.

Pride and sadness.
Excitement and fear.
Gratitude and grief.

Sometimes healing isn’t found in choosing between competing emotions.

Sometimes it’s found in making room for all of them.

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No big deal.

But it was a big deal to her colleague. His vehemence and intensity surprised her. It seemed out of proportion to the objective facts of the situation.

She said, “He came in so hot it was like he was killing a gnat with a jackhammer.”

Vivid metaphor. His actions, to her, felt like overkill.

Gnat—fragile and bothersome, but a minor inconvenience
Jackhammer—loud, reverberating, destructive

Feels like a mismatch.

Jackhammers are monologues, for sure. Hard to get a word in edgewise and if you do it probably can’t be heard over the noise.

We never know what someone is carrying when they walk into a conversation. It can be unnerving to be at the other end of a tirade. Depending on our nervous systems we can come back at the person with just as much bite or we can be stunned into silence.

But there is a middle path. One that requires extraordinary skill and an integrated brain—not to mention a nervous system that doesn’t immediately view the incoming as a threat.

I have heard so many of my clients puzzle over how to deal with someone who seems out of their right mind. The point is that in those moments, people really are out of their right minds.

And chances are you could shoot right out of your mind, too. Not many of us can tolerate an onslaught of pure, red hot energy and not have any reaction.

We often react quickly and automatically—defending, persuading, proving, withdrawing, or fixing. Any number of ways to meet the energy.

What could we do instead when someone comes at us with disproportionate emotional intensity?

The moment the energy intensifies, let go of your current agenda. The content of the conversation becomes less important than the energy of the other person.

Forget about rehearsing your next point or argument.

Your only job is to understand what is happening in the other person. Some of you may think, “well, that seems unfair—this person is not only a jackhammer but a jackass—why do I have to do the work?!”

The frustrating reality is that someone has to interrupt the cycle.

If both people meet jackhammer energy with more jackhammer energy, nobody learns anything and nobody feels understood.

Which means the burden often falls on the person who can stay present.

Oren Jay Sofer’s book, Say What You Mean, is a treatise dedicated to non-violent communication. One of the main principles is: Every behavior is an attempt to meet a need.

If we stay on the level of someone’s jackhammering behavior we will never truly understand the human holding the jackhammer—what his needs are or the why beneath his actions.

Anger often arrives first.

But anger is rarely the whole story.

Underneath might be fear, disappointment, embarrassment, helplessness, or a longing to matter.

The jackhammer is simply the tool that showed up first.

So, we first let go of our agenda.
Then we turn our attention to the energy within us and the energy of the other person.

The critical question is now: “How do I stay present enough to understand what is happening between us?”

I often suggest having some back-pocket phrases to name what you’re experiencing in a non-confrontational way. The first few moments are always the hardest.

Those phrases are a tool to create a pause to help you come back into presence (or into your right minds).

“I’m surprised by your energy right now.”
“I’d like to understand what’s happening here”
“This feels bigger than the issue we’re discussing—what’s going on for you?”

It’s possible this could amp the other person up. If it does, it’s time for you to share your needs.

“I think we should table the conversation as I need the energy in the room to lessen.”
“I am having trouble staying in a productive place.”
“I need a calmer environment in order to proceed.”

Last night—after writing this piece—I became the jackhammer.

I am in the last days of packing to move to another state. I am signing papers today on the sale of my current home. There have been a lot of last minute and unexpected asks around financial issues.

If one more person says the word cost basis I might throttle them.

I received some final paperwork that made no sense to me. Anything numbers related and I tense up. Given everything else on my plate, it didn't take much. I had worked myself into a lather and was convinced I knew exactly what was wrong.

My real estate agent—Donny—is the calmest person I have ever met. When I called him I was all high intensity jackhammering—raising my voice, impatiently explaining in a know-it-all tone what I thought was wrong (which is ridiculous given my numbers phobia).

I finally caught myself and said, “You know, it’s possible I don’t know what I’m talking about. Can you explain how the closing attorney came up with this number?”

Donny never took the bait.
He stayed calm while I ricocheted around the conversation.
His steadiness gave me just enough room to catch myself.

I also think somewhere subconsciously the image of the gnat and the jackhammer was imprinted on my brain. I was able to stop myself short and shift gears. Not an easy task given my level of activation.

My needs weren’t actually about numbers. They were about ease, clarity, and feeling like the ground beneath me wasn’t shifting.

By the way, I was right. The numbers were wrong. But so was I.

Try This.

Think about the last time someone came at you with jackhammer energy.

What happened in your body?

Did you get bigger?
Smaller?
Defensive?
Silent?
Nauseous?

Now ask yourself a different question.

What do you think was underneath the jackhammer?

Not whether they were right. Not whether their behavior was acceptable.

What do you imagine they were trying to protect, defend, or get?

Remember, when someone comes at you with jackhammer energy it’s almost always about them and it has nothing to do with you.

And if you’re feeling particularly brave, ask yourself one more thing:

When have you been the person holding the jackhammer? And what’s yours to own?

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Meaning that whatever is about to come out of the feedback giver’s mouth is something you’re supposed to not just accept, but embrace—the perfectly wrapped present with a beautiful bow on top.

I imagine you can hear the sarcasm dripping from my “Yeah, right” subtitle. Maybe even an eye roll.

I’ve given really shitty feedback to people and I’ve been on the receiving end of some really shittily (not a word, whatever, don’t give me feedback on it) given feedback.

Most recently, I realized I tensed up when my writing coach—the fabulous Jessica Fein—started to pick apart my writing.

It’s me saying “pick apart”—the part of me that feels like it’s a scab being picked—not her. She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. I still don’t like it. I want my writing to be perfect out of the gate. Leave the damn scab alone!

When Jessie and I meet she reads my piece out loud—which, by the way, is so helpful—and I beam with accomplishment when she gets to the end (with very few edits) and says, “I love it. It’s perfect.”

The other day it didn’t go so smoothly. Right from the get-go she questioned this and questioned that, pushed me on this and pushed me on that. I could feel the temperature rising in me. Not something new—I’d experienced it before with her— but this time I acknowledged it out loud.

“Man, I have a hard time when you give me feedback. I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck rising.” (Sort of like a cat arching its back in defense and hissing at a threat).

That release of tension, as I admitted it out loud, allowed the resistant energy to pass through me and we carried on.

But, as a human at work myself, it made me stop and think about that pattern in me. Where did it come from? Why do I get all itchy scratchy when someone has feedback for me?

Jessie is direct, matter-of-fact, and very good at what she does. I value what she has to say—and she’s usually right. Often what I’ve written makes complete utter sense to me, but I may have forgotten to connect the dots for my reader.

The piece of writing has become a part of me. I’ve over-identified with it. I believe it’s pretty darn close to perfect because I’ve been swimming in it for several days before we meet. I’m invested in it—in exactly how it’s written.

If the writing is me, then the “criticism” of the writing is criticism of me. Oh boy, that hits a nerve.

I value Jessie for her objectivity and distance from the piece. She brings perspective. I can’t see what she sees. That’s a gift—that is, if I can let my perfectionist part relax back.

Beyond the objective piece of feedback she’s giving me, I’m finding value in the process of receiving the feedback, noticing my reaction, and trying something different.

I was watching a show last night—I simply cannot admit what it is as it’s eye candy TV and god knows I don’t want you to think I watch that sort of thing—where one of the main characters is given advice by a therapist about how to work on his control issues.

The advice? Take calculated risks and allow yourself to feel the stress of the “safe” risk. Let your body feel it and know you’re actually not under attack or not losing control. Then when you’re in a moment where you actually don’t have control, your body will know how to be with the uncomfortable feeling and not freak out.

Getting (or giving) feedback isn’t something we’re taught to do. We are taught to get it right (whatever the heck that means), and be as close to perfect as we can be. Feedback flies in the face of perfectionism.

I like the fact that I can practice getting feedback in a safe environment. Jessie is a safe human. She only wants what’s best for me. A place where I can feel the discomfort of receiving feedback and try something different—letting my cells know that we don’t always have to seize up and resist.

We (me and my cells) can practice something new so the next time perhaps the automatic “hard no” to feedback is less “hard.” There might even eventually be ease.

The other thing I’ve learned is that I have a mind of my own and I can safely push back on the feedback. I can advocate for myself and my ideas. Often I still change something about the writing but it’s now morphed into something closer to what I intended. My voice stays intact.

By articulating why I chose to express myself in a particular way, we have my views on the table alongside Jessie’s. The writing becomes even better. It’s a dynamic and forgiving process. It’s more dialogue than monologue.

Jessie and I have agreements in place that part of her job is to give me feedback but there are implicit rules in place that I still have a voice, in fact, the final voice on my writing.

Power dynamics at work are often different.

The manager has authority. The employee doesn’t have the final say the way I do with my writing. But I wonder if we’ve confused authority with certainty.

Feedback seems to work best when it remains a dialogue rather than a verdict.

Most of us are not taught much about conflict when we’re young. We’re not taught that people can have different views, that tension can arise, and that it isn’t the end of the world. But for many of us it literally feels like the end of the world. That survival instinct kicks in.

I’ve gotten my back up with Jessie a couple of times. She’s rather amazing at letting my reaction roll off her shoulders which has allowed me the space to react and the space to recover.

My goal is to keep growing for the rest of my life. If that’s true then getting curious about when I don’t like something—like feedback—is part of my human job.

Maybe feedback isn’t the gift.

Maybe the gift is finding people who can stay steady while we have our reaction.

People who don’t need us to agree immediately.

People who can tolerate our discomfort long enough for curiosity—mine and theirs—to emerge.

In that space, learning begins.

Try This.

Think about the last piece of feedback that irritated you.

Not the feedback that was obviously unfair. The feedback that got under your skin because there was at least a chance it might be true.

What happened in your body?

• Did you tense up?

• Start explaining?

• Defend your position?

• Mentally build a case for why the other person was wrong?

Before deciding whether the feedback is useful, get curious about your reaction to it.

What feels threatened?

• Your competence?

• Your identity?

• Your sense of control?

• Your belonging?

You don’t have to agree with the feedback.

But your reaction may still have something to teach you.

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Those moments genuinely delight me.

The truth is that each week I get so deeply absorbed in the writing that all of you disappear and the craft takes over.

I’m not sure how this happened because, trust me, I spent years thinking about writing and never doing anything about it. And now, every week for an entire year I’ve shown up and done the thing.

It has become a thing I do.
It has become a thing I want to do.
It has become an anchor.

One of the things I’ve come to trust is timing. Things unfold at the exact right time. Maybe I say that to justify what’s happened.

But the more I trust and not push, the more things seem to flow.

After years of thinking about writing, I suddenly knew it was time.

And then things started unfolding with surprising ease. Not by magic—I still did the footwork—but the resistance I had felt for years seemed to dissolve.

Intuition played a part. That little voice nudged me, I listened, and voila, things started happening. With ease.

My coach has always said, “line up your energy first, and then act.”

I now look back and realize all the hesitation (that I named procrastination at the time) was for a reason. I hadn’t lined up my energy. Or maybe a different way to say it is the right energy hadn’t surfaced yet.

Maybe I was working something out first.
Maybe the current reality was not conducive to my writing.

We often believe that we are faulty because we aren’t trying hard enough at something. That somehow if we were only better, smarter, more disciplined, we could make the thing happen.

That’s a belief that I challenge now. It’s not always a matter of will.

How many times have you forced something to happen and look back and say, “Geesh, I wish I had done that differently,” or “I probably should have waited.”

Fear, ego protection, “shoulds” drive us into action. Or we suffer in stagnation thinking there’s something wrong with us. Either way, put away the whip, people.

David Hawkins in his book, Power Versus Force, argues that there is a fundamental difference between power and force.

• Force relies on control, pressure, coercion, intimidation, manipulation, or dominance.

• Power arises from truth, integrity, alignment, compassion, and authenticity.

Force may win in the short term, but Hawkins argues that power is sustainable because it attracts rather than compels.

Power is getting in alignment and then acting. Humans at Work is a testament to that principle.

So, 52 weeks, 52 posts. What’s the experience been like for me? What have I learned?

• I love writing for the sake of writing

• Absorption in a task is healing

• Routine grounds me

• Commitment steadies me

• Writing crystallizes experience

• I feel more “me” when I write

• An object in motion stays in motion

There is more. So much more.

The act of writing both engages my brain and quiets my brain. All the outside noise fades into the background and all the inside noise steps aside, allowing me to be present and fully engaged.

When we become deeply absorbed in a meaningful activity, our attention stops scattering in a dozen directions. For a little while, the brain becomes organized around one thing.

A flow state is possible.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (major mouthful of a name) writes about this in his book Flow. Fulfillment—and I would add a sense of wholeness—comes when we are absorbed in a meaningful challenge.

Looking back, I wonder if that’s part of what writing has given me this year.

Not just 52 posts, but 52 opportunities to gather the pieces of myself into one place.

Try This.

What activity quiets your brain? Do you have a thing that settles and grounds you, something you can become fully absorbed in?

T.V. doesn’t count. I am quite familiar with couch potato pose.

For one of my friends cooking is the thing. That’s a good one—as one does have to eat every day!

I think the point is finding something that absorbs us. Something that quiets the mental chatter and gathers our attention in one place.

Something we love enough to return to again and again. Over time, those small acts of commitment become anchors.

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It was at once vulnerable and stark.

A definition of stark: something “unpleasantly or sharply clear.”

It felt so relatable and so shocking—like a bucket of ice being thrown over my head. It made me pause and think, “Am I using something in my life to hide? Am I putting all my eggs in one basket and is that a disaster waiting to happen?”

Like if that thing just ceased being, would there be anything left to stand on?

This I had personal experience with.

There was a time when I had no idea how unconsciously enmeshed I was in certain aspects of my life and my identity. That is until it all crumbled.

All of us will experience this at some point in our lives. One minute life looks like this, the next minute life is irrevocably changed. It will never be the same again.

A relationship ends.
Someone you love dies.
A child—now young adult— leaves for college.

Some of these changes are predictable, others unpredictable. Not sure one is easier than the other. Those big things that we see coming can still catch us short.

What happens when the thing that changes has been key to your self-definition?

The person who said, “I use work to hide” knew that something was up with the over-indexing on the one thing.

We proclaim:

I am a spouse.
I am a mother.
I am a runner.
I am a CEO.

And then there’s this:

I am a workaholic.
I am an alcoholic.
I am a food addict.

It sort of doesn’t matter the content. We can over-index with any role or identity we claim. Even people in recovery can lose a sense of themselves.

At one point I was so stripped back to the core that all I could do is rake leaves day after day with a hot thermos of tea nearby and music in my ears.

I became leaf raker.

It’s all I could do. Rake leaves. Because all the things I counted on as “foundational” were gone.

Leaf raker was temporary. There were only so many leaves to rake. I wasn’t at risk of becoming a full-time leaf raker.

In contrast, many people I work with get very caught up in their work selves. It makes sense. They spend an awful lot of time there. And work is an endless source of things—life-giving, meaningful, and stimulating (not to mention financially rewarding) and downright soul-sucking at the same time.

And even with the sound of our souls being sucked dry we persist. These identities give us something to rest our minds on (and get dopamine hits from).

But when does it move from something we do to someone we are?

When is it a healthy functional relationship we have with the role and when does it become an enmeshment and a place to hide or a place to escape?

What happens when our brain organizes around one dominant identity?

It certainly gives structure and routine and a way for the brain to have reliable predictions about the world.

The brain is fundamentally an energy-conserving prediction machine (see Lisa Feldman-Barret’s work). Over time, repeated identities and routines become neurologically efficient pathways.

Work isn’t just “a thing we do” it becomes a stabilizing structure the brain uses to organize meaning, predictability, reward, status, belonging, and even safety.

So when work becomes the primary organizing structure, the brain starts treating threats to work identity almost like threats to survival.

The “feedback” your manager just gave you? Deeply humiliating.
The mistake you made on that financial report? A crisis of epic proportions.
The fumble you made in the Board presentation? Soul crushing.

I’m not trying to minimize how awful we can feel in these circumstances. But when we’re one and the same as work—i.e., there is an enmeshment of sorts—it can feel catastrophic.

And we can jump through hoops to make it right again. Each time we do that—automatically and unconsciously “hoop-jump”—we lose contact with ourselves.

This happens in any form of intimate relationship that we find ourselves in. For the protagonist of our story her main relationship is with work. There’s an intimacy there. For her it created a sense of safety (most of the time) and predictability as “real” relationships puzzled and confused her.

That’s a story for another day.

Work, in particular, is one of the places where we are most susceptible to an enmeshed identity because workplaces reward the things that reinforce the identity fusion:

• hypervigilance

• over-functioning

• urgency

• self-abandonment

• constant responsiveness

Work is a strategy to meet so many valid human needs: connection, fulfillment, meaning, achievement, creativity, self-expression, competence, effectiveness, consistency, stability, structure, mattering, belonging.

These needs are rich and meaningful.

But if attachment to the identity supersedes self-connection, our brain narrows.

We lose our ability to ask the question:

“Is this healthy?”

And over-index on:

“What must I do to survive here?”

Try This.

Leaf raking, for me, was a small step back to myself. Much of my identity had been stripped away. I shifted to something simple, routine, structured, and physical—rather than performative.

I mean, I’m sure if I could’ve gotten a grade in leaf raking it would have been an A.

This is tricky terrain. Our identities matter to us—as they should. We build lives around them. We depend on them. And we would be utterly devastated if they disappeared.

But maybe the question is not whether we have identities.

Maybe the question is:

Do I know who I am underneath them?

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Of course the phrase literally comes from electrical wiring where two wires are connected incorrectly and transmission signals go haywire.

It’s a perfect metaphor to think about brain wiring and how two people can be looking at the same situation and see two entirely different things. Don’t get me started on the state of the world right now. Crossed wires everywhere.

In my last piece, my friend recognized that it wasn’t just a matter of crossed wires, they were working with entirely different circuitry.

How does it come to pass that two people can be on such different wavelengths?

When we’re born, we are a combination of tabula rasa (blank slate) mixed with a unique combination of genes. Some things are just going to play out the way they’re going to play out—think hard-wired.

Other things can be shaped and molded—by our early caregivers, teachers in school, intimate relationships, even natural or man-made disasters. It all plays a hand in how we evolve and develop.

Once it was thought that we reached a certain age and that was it. We’re done cooking. But in recent years the field of neuroscience has shown how much more plastic our brains are than we once thought.

Neuroplasticity is the ability for our brains to change until we’re underground or scattered to the winds.

But do we want to change? Can we change? Or does early wiring get so cemented it’s out of our conscious control?

Attachment researchers and neuroscientists have increasingly come to understand something profound:

Early experiences don’t just shape our memories. They shape our biology.

Repeated childhood experiences—especially around safety, attunement, unpredictability, neglect, or emotional inconsistency—help wire the nervous system for what it expects from relationships and the world. Those patterns can become deeply procedural and automatic, not just “beliefs” someone consciously holds.

For example:

• A child who grows up with emotionally available caregivers may develop a nervous system that expects connection and repair. And acts that way.

• A child who grows up with chaos, criticism, emotional absence, or frightening caregiving may wire for hypervigilance, emotional shutdown, distrust, or relational instability. And acts that way.

Over time, the way people act, their responses to life—whether supportive or unsupportive of connection and repair—stop feeling like strategies and start feeling like “this is who I am.”

That’s where some might conclude: “I’ll never change.”

Or people around them might conclude: “That’s just the way they are.”

But these responses are simply adaptations the nervous system made to keep the system safe. And sometimes these adaptations distort the connection.

For my friend, and her sanity, she’s come to accept what will not change. That her friend is simply wired a particular way due to early childhood influences and certain environments or situations that feel threatening elicit a protective response.

Sometimes there’s a tiny shift, and she is pleasantly surprised and cautiously optimistic. But often, like a rubber band, he snaps back to the same behaviors. So not expecting anything to change is a way for my friend to stay emotionally stable in an unstable and unpredictable environment.

Some nervous systems were never wired for sustained emotional availability, mutuality, or repair—especially under stress.

But that doesn’t mean change is impossible. It may just be slower than the average bear.

I’m seeing this with my pup, Archie, where his early wiring causes him to have a low threshold for stimulation. His environment is something I need to manage. Keep the stress low and manage inputs before he goes over an edge.

I am one of his constants. And treats help too.

Not so different from a human. Notice what amps the stress response. Notice what tips the person over the edge. Notice the things—words, space, acceptance—this person might need to stay in their window of tolerance and maybe stay in connection.

It’s not a stretch to think about how some of this plays out in our places of work. We do, after all, bring our nervous systems to work.

Some people experience ordinary workplace moments as existential threats:

• performance feedback

• exclusion from a meeting

• someone setting a boundary

• loss of influence

• not being chosen

The nervous system reacts as though survival is at stake.

And in workplaces, these reactions are often mislabeled as attitude problems, resistance, lack of professionalism, or being “too sensitive.”

Rarely do we stop to ask: What is this nervous system protecting against?

But there’s often little time (nor capacity, nor interest) to tend to people’s nervous systems in the workplace.

I remember a particularly challenging time when my manager had called a meeting and indicated “no need to prepare; this is a time to connect and check-in.”

But what happened next was a request to go around the room and provide updates on our projects—ok, unexpected, I thought—but I’ll rise to the occasion.

She proceeded to drill me on a specific project. I was unprepared for that level of drilling and immediately felt threatened, got testy, and then shut down.

She could see it, I could feel it, the team observed it. Yikes.

I have a nervous system that shuts down when it feels emotionally overwhelmed, doubly so when I’m put on the spot and feel unprepared, or when someone comes in too aggressively. Witness my reaction in Battle of Blame.

Words matter. Energy matters. Intent matters. Context matters.

My manager was and is a delightful human. And, yet, at the time my nervous system did the “danger, Will Robinson” dance. She and I reconnected shortly thereafter and resolved the situation.

And, for me, each time I experience conflict or emotional overwhelm and someone is willing to repair with me, my nervous system learns that not all interpersonal conflict is at the saber-tooth tiger level.

Try This.

Pay attention to the people who help your nervous system settle.

The ones who make your shoulders drop.
The ones who don’t escalate when things get hard.
The ones who can repair after rupture.
The ones who make conflict feel survivable instead of catastrophic.

Our nervous systems are constantly learning from one another.

Sometimes healing isn’t found in fixing all the crossed wires.

Sometimes it’s found in finally being connected to someone whose signals feel safe.

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It’s certainly sharp and memorable and gives you that “oh, I could have had a V-8” kind of feeling. Like, snap out of it and try something different.

What strikes me is this: We’re being called insane for persisting in something that may actually be reasonable (for us). Particularly when our actions involve another person.

Maybe it’s not insanity.
Maybe our behavior isn’t the problem.
Maybe the other person simply isn’t capable of responding any differently.

Another way to think about this: We have a need, and we keep acting the same way in hopes that need will be met.

But the other person quite probably isn’t playing the same game we are. Completely different set of rules. Completely different game pieces. Completely different way of seeing things.

Most likely completely different internal wiring.

This doesn’t just happen with individual people, we might be interacting with entire systems that have their own playbook.

If we think about corporate culture for a minute, we can see how things might be structured to reinforce some behaviors and discourage others. Slowly (or quickly) a culture forms that says, “This is the way we do things here.”

If you’re a new employee, for example, you may find yourself deeply frustrated that the things that have worked well in your last job, simply aren’t working in the new place.

Maybe you are a bit “insane” to go against the culture’s grain.

In woodworking, going against the grain can leave rough edges, resistance, splintering. The material stops cooperating.

Cultures can work the same way.

When you persist in a system that fundamentally rewards different values, the friction compounds. What feels principled to you may feel disruptive to the culture. What feels healthy to you may violate the unspoken rules of belonging.

In this context, persistence doesn’t signal resilience—it signals misalignment. You rub against the grain, the system does not behave as you expect.

And it’s particularly hard when what’s standard for the culture is something that feels dysfunctional to you or steps on one of your cherished values.

At a minimum, seeing and naming the cultural patterns may help you adjust your expectations and make more conscious choices about how you engage.

If you don’t modify your approach, the system may spit you out. Or if it’s intolerable you’ll leave after multiple attempts at trying the same thing over and over again and not succeeding.

Is this really insanity? I think not.

When we shift to the personal context, it gets even more interesting.

I recently had a conversation with a dear friend who was describing a particularly difficult time in an important relationship in her life.

She said, “What I say won’t change his template. His narrative won’t change.” She went on to describe how he has distorted and negative views about her that make absolutely no sense to her.

She then said, “You know, nothing has changed with him, but I come to wisdom a lot faster.”

That might be the shift.

Not trying to get a different result—but getting to clarity faster about what is and isn’t going to change.

We keep trying because what we’re doing makes sense to us. Because it reflects who we are. Because we’re making a false assumption about responsiveness where it may not exist.

But there comes a moment when the question changes.

Not: What else can I try?
But: What is this person actually capable of?

And am I willing to see it clearly?

Try This.

Think about a situation where you feel stuck or frustrated.

Ask yourself:

Am I repeating a behavior that truly isn’t working?

Or

Am I expecting a person—or a system—to respond in a way they may not be capable of?

Notice what shifts when you consider that possibility.

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Try it.

Stick your finger out as if you are accusingly blaming someone and you’ll notice those three fingers curled back toward you.

That pointer finger is so sure it’s right. In contrast, those other three fingers are tucked in tight.

Out of sight. Out of mind.

You might even feel the nails of those fingers digging into the flesh of your palm, supporting the pointer finger’s surety.

Recently, on an early morning woods walk, a friend was describing a contentious situation. “It’s been a Battle of Blame,” she said. I imagined words flying like arrows back and forth.

It got me thinking about those words—“Battle and Blame”—and how one so often leads to the other. A battle brews and blame follows. Or blame is an opening salvo by one, the other responds in kind, and then we’re off to the blame races.

Blame inherently carries a certain type of energy. You can feel it in your body—tight chest, faster pulse, sharper tone.

It’s not just a thought. It’s active and accusatory.

It’s hot.
And feisty.
And ready for battle.

Dukes are metaphorically or actually up. Cortisol is on the rise. Temperature spikes.

Inflamed brains are honestly not interested in what those three fingers curled back at us are saying. And brains that are in the blame game can calcify quickly.

No interest in shared responsibility. No interest in understanding or empathy. No interest in asking the question: What’s my part in all of this?

Self-inquiry requires a nervous system and brain that are stable, neither of which we have when we’re busy blaming and battling.

When our brains are at their best, they are working from a place of integration. Different parts of our brain are online, connected, and working together. It’s like a well-oiled machine where each part is doing its job working in synch with the others.

When your brain is integrated:

• You can feel something and think about it.

• You can pause instead of react.

• You can hold your perspective and someone else’s at the same time.

You can say, “I’m upset… and let me think about this.” You are flexible, adaptive, and resilient. Or at least at a minimum you can pause.

The problem is an inflamed brain literally says, “no thank you” and can easily reach for blame or shut down.

Case in point.

I’ve mentioned here before that I’m selling my house. I did the obligatory “let the neighbors know” rounds. Everyone, at least on the surface, was positive and encouraging.

And then not so much.

One neighbor decided he would take the opportunity to address a problem with a rock wall dividing our two properties.

Ooh boy. Let the Battle of Blame begin.

We have different communication styles. Where I start with relationship niceties (and expect that from people around me) he starts with the task.

He’s an assertive communicator. I’m not.
To me, he felt like a bulldozer.
To him, he was just being direct.

His approach felt like an affront. I felt accosted. My brain agreed. After listening to him for a few moments, I shut down and walked away.

For someone who profiles as an “Amiable” (in Social Styles), a “Driver’s” tone of voice, behavioral mannerisms, and lack of relationship skills can feel like an attack.

Drivers confront others, focus on the issue, look for rationale, and become more demanding. Check mark on all fronts.

The more Drivers get amped up on stress, the more autocratic they can become.

Hence, the “certified letter” I received several days later.

As only an Amiable would do, I had sent a “relationship-based” text after reflecting on my part of the interaction. I took ownership and the text was meant to be reassuring.

When under stress, Amiables often yield to others’ viewpoints, waver on their opinion, give in, and focus on smoothing over relationships. Partial check mark. I was definitely trying to smooth over the relationship. Not yet ready to give in.

I had thought long and hard about how he might be feeling, what his needs were, and what shared ownership of this problem could look like.

As only a Driver would do, he responded to my text with a short, task-focused letter informing me of the certified letter, quotes he was getting, and his expectation that I would fix the issue.

Guess what? When Amiables are pushed too hard, we eventually become autocratic ourselves. Ooph. I was in danger of pressing my foot on the autocratic gas pedal. A battle was brewing.

But I tapped the brakes instead.

Tapping the brakes allowed me to slow everything down, take a beat, and consider all the angles. My brain was slowly coming back online.

I was definitely still bolstering my position (gathering my army!) but I also began to include the possibility that my neighbor truly believed the rock wall was my rock wall. Now mind you, I had a survey that showed shared responsibility.

But my internal dialogue started to shift. Maybe the rock wall already existed when he built his house? Maybe he was nervous about having to deal with new neighbors? Maybe he simply has a different communication style.

When we tap the brakes we give our inflamed brains a chance to regroup so all the parts are working together. I was better able to hold complexity—both my perspective and his.

I still don’t love his tone, his mannerisms, or his certified letter.

I’m pretty sure he’s not thinking about my feelings, nor the pressure I’m under because of the sale of the house. Drivers typically don’t do that. To them it’s not personal.

Try This.

Where do you fall on the Social Style model?

Do you focus on task first or relationship first?
Do you tend to assert your views or do you use more of a questioning approach?

Another way to think about this is to consider who pisses you off, confuses you, or makes you feel anxious or even hurt. What in their behavior, tone, and mannerisms sets you off?

There are ways you can begin to understand these folks more and even to meet them where they’re at.

Can you identify their style?
Can you see the source(s) of tension between the two of you?
Can you step into their shoes and understand their needs?
Can you let them know what’s important to you and ask for it?
Can you flex your style to match theirs?

And even then—you may be the only one doing this work.

That’s where the real practice begins.

Sometimes all you can do is lean into the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

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And when I say accept, I mean radically accept what is true right now while also holding a clear belief in my brain and body’s adaptive capabilities.

I like to believe nothing is set in stone—that anyone can move from maladaptive strategies (immediate relief, long-term cost) to adaptive ones (productive, sustainable).

We all have our go-to escape hatches—avoidance, overthinking, numbing out, people-pleasing. Ways to get relief quickly, even if they cost us later.

I can see myself using each of these strategies at various moments in time and for various reasons. Pain is real—and it’s natural to want to get away from it.

Maladaptive strategies can become the norm. So easily. We keep making the same choices to get relief in any way we can. We tread the same neural pathways over and over again. They become deeply grooved, and then easier to walk down. In my case, I sprint down a very well-worn path.

My pattern is simple: I’m fine, I’m fine…I’m not fine.

And in that “not fine” moment, I zip down what feels like the neural-wire equivalent of fiber optic cable. I jump from having my shit together to decidedly NOT having my shit together. It feels like I go up—and over—a waterfall.

It would be so much easier to tell you stories about my clients who are faced with this situation. Avoidance, anyone? The truth is this is a story best told from inside my own brain and nervous system.

If you read my piece on highly sensitive people, you know that I fit into that category. There’s a field of research on this. A notable book is Elaine Aron’s Highly Sensitive People.

About 15–20% of people are wired to process things more deeply and thoroughly—a trait called sensory processing sensitivity.

Not a disorder. Just a highly tuned nervous system.

I recently described myself—half joking—as a “delicate flower.”

But that’s not quite right.

Highly sensitive people (HSPs) aren’t fragile. We’re highly tuned.

Think about this for a minute: 20% of us—deep sea divers—walk around in a world that processes things differently than we do.

I’ve been working with a different metaphor lately—that of a tuning fork—to get a better understanding of how things are playing out for me and how I can introduce some more adaptive strategies.

Pause. Can you see me doing what HSPs do? Thoroughly and deeply processing things? Maybe just a little. Strap in, more coming.

Let’s talk about tuning forks.

A tuning fork converts a single strike of energy into a precise, sustained vibration that gradually fades—unless something amplifies or dampens it.

It produces a clean, reliable signal you can trust and orient to.

HSPs are like tuning forks.

There’s a strike of energy—and we begin vibrating.
Then another.
And another.

We keep vibrating.

For me, that eventually converts to my nervous system short circuiting. I can’t take one more energetic input. You know the termite story from last week? I underestimated the intensity of a two-week hyper-vigilant termite watch. When was the next swarming going to come? When would I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and jump?

I was simultaneously doing all the things to get my house ready to go on the market, deal with a highly sensitive poodle (HSP!), and, well, hello influenza. I was a human tuning fork with a fever and chills. Anyone in this circumstance might flip out.

Yes, this is an extreme set of circumstances. But I have a particular signature move when I’m overwhelmed. I bottle it up until I can’t stand it for one more minute and then I am desperate for help. In this case I called my sister and the moment I heard her voice, I lost it. All the emotion poured out.

My maladaptive strategy is to tip over the waterfall and let all the emotion rush out.

That’s a lot to hand to another human—especially all at once.

I was tripping down a very familiar, well-worn path. But something new happened in the subsequent days. I really looked at this pattern. It wasn’t entirely new to me, let’s be clear, but I got curious about it instead of castigating myself.

I realized I didn’t want to do it anymore. And I didn’t want people in my life to be the recipient of it either.

What this requires is a more honest appraisal of what’s happening in my day-to-day life and how those things are affecting my nervous system.

I need to catch myself sooner—seeing when there’s a build up of too much vibration.

Not to stop it.

But to dampen it before it amplifies even more.

That might still require reaching out for support—but earlier in the process—when I am not in danger of tipping over the edge.

By doing that, I’m taking responsibility for what’s happening in my nervous system.

Try This.

Do you have your own version of “up and over the waterfall”?

We all do. It makes sense—when we’re in pain, we want relief.

Start by simply noticing your pattern.

See how easily you slip into it.

Hold it with some appreciation—it’s been trying to help.

Then gently ask: what’s the cost?

And what might be a different way?

Remember, cutting a new path through a dense jungle can take some time.

Be patient. Keep trying.

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They’re structural.

My client was recently asked to step back into an area she once led—one that looked stable from the outside but was, in reality, under significant internal strain.

Like a neglected house, the frame was still standing. But inside, things had been quietly breaking down for a while. The stress hadn’t shown up yet in obvious ways—but it was coming.

And the organization’s response?

Come fix it. Quickly. And make sure the team feels empowered while you do.

My client knows this area like the back of her hand. She’s deeply accountable and wired to get things right. When something is off, she leans in—hard. She gets on top of it quickly and sees it through.

That tendency has served her well. She gets shit done. On time. In the right way.

But this is where the tension shows up.

She’s not being asked to do the work the way she always has. She’s being asked to lead differently—to facilitate and orchestrate rather than step in and fix. To upskill the team. To motivate them to take on more. To resist the instinct to be overly directive or controlling.

In theory, that’s the job. In reality, the system isn’t stable enough to support it.

This isn’t a story of a leader not delegating well enough because she knows how to fix things and loves the dopamine rush of doing it herself.

That’s not this story.

My client isn’t clinging to the work. She’s trying to hand it off. The problem is the team can’t take it. Not yet.

The team is floundering under the weight of compounded structural stress.

It’s layer upon layer of strain over time—a hands-off previous leader, changes in processes, increasing demands for more complex deliverables, a new key player who transitioned onto the team without enough transferable skills, and multiple sub-teams who are drowning.

If only one of these things were at play it would be manageable, but the stress has compounded. And the foundation is buckling.

Everyone on the team is near or at their breaking point.

My client can name the things happening but can’t quite see that this isn’t about giving the team clearer direction. She’s trying to lead a bunch of humans who are operating outside of their window of tolerance.

She was relaying a recent conversation with her “new key player” (NKP) and her frustration was palpable. No matter what my client says, and how many times she repeats things, NKP doesn’t seem to be getting it.

NKP nods a lot. Agrees. Even takes notes. But nothing is sticking.

They end up in the same conversation over and over again.

I said, “You’re like a woodpecker—pecking harder and harder—expecting a worm to appear.” No matter how hard my client pecks, nothing seems to change.

It’s not that NKP is resisting or ignoring what’s being said, she literally cannot absorb it.

It’s nearly impossible, in conditions like this, to distinguish between a performance problem and a capacity problem. And when we mistake one for the other, we double down on the wrong thing.

My client and I spent the rest of the conversation exploring how to shift the conversation with NKP and the broader team.

How do you make visible what’s actually happening beneath the surface?
How do you name the compounding stress without creating defensiveness?
How do you help the team get their feet on firmer ground?

What looks like a treadmill of underperformance is often a system trying to operate beyond its capacity. People are asked to learn, adapt, and deliver—without the conditions required to do any of those things well.

I recently had my own version of compounding structural stress.

In the middle of getting my house ready to go on the market, I had a termite swarm. Not outside as one might expect—but inside my living room. Imagine a moving carpet of termites.

Talk about structural stress.

It was layered on top of an already demanding moment. These critters kept swarming in the warm-cold-warm cycle of Spring in New England.

For two weeks I was vigilantly scanning the floor for movement—any sign of something crawling.

I underestimated the toll it was taking on my health. I was not functioning in the ways I expected of myself.

This wasn’t a performance issue. It wasn’t a “try harder” problem.

It was compounded structural stress.

Try This.

Seeing what’s shaping our or someone else’s ability to take action—or not—is invaluable. It shifts the lens away from personal efficacy alone and toward the broader system of forces at play.

The next time you are evaluating someone’s performance or wondering why they’re not getting the thing done, pause and widen the lens. Ask:

What else might be at play?
What’s shaping their capacity right now?

This applies to our own ability to get shit done, too.

Trying harder is not always the answer.

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Man, those words hit me square between the eyes. And, if I’m honest, also pierced my heart. I’ve heard those words before.

The truth is, I am sensitive.

But let’s be honest—when someone says, “You’re so sensitive,” it rarely lands as a neutral observation. It lands as a diagnosis. A problem to be solved.

My friend told me she immediately wondered, “Why am I not a strong, solid person in this relationship? Am I oversensitive?”

That question—Am I oversensitive?—is almost predictable.

Because sensitive people are inclined to turn inward and ask,

Is it me?

But there’s a phrase in my friend’s question that matters more than anything else:

“In this relationship.”

Sensitivity, on its own, isn’t a problem.

How it’s experienced—and how it’s held—inside a relationship is what matters.

Like a moth’s antenna tuned to the faintest signal in the air, highly sensitive people can pick up subtle shifts in emotional climate—often before anything is said.

When someone says to you, “You’re so sensitive,” something else happens. The focus shifts. Away from what just happened between two people…and onto you.

Your reaction.
Your wiring.
Your supposed overreaction.

It’s a subtle (umm, maybe not so subtle) move, but a powerful one. Responsibility gets relocated.

And just like that, the question becomes:
If I were different, would this problem go away?

I’ve had my fair share of this in work contexts, too. Maybe you have as well.

It doesn’t always sound like, “You’re so sensitive.”

Instead, it sounds like:

“Don’t take it so personally.”

“You’re reading into things.”

“You’re overreacting.”

Sometimes it’s even said plainly—you’re so sensitive—often followed by a laugh or an eye roll, as if your sensitivity can and should be brushed off.

Sensitive people are often picking up on real things—subtle shifts that others miss. It can be disorienting, even a little crazy-making, to feel something so clearly, and then be told it isn’t there. Ever heard of the movie Gaslighting?

To be fair, not everyone knows what to do with high levels of sensitivity. It slows things down and can muddy the waters. Efficiency and not diving too deep into the emotional stuff is at a premium in corporate cultures. Sometimes it’s the same way in intimate relationships.

But what if we didn’t skip over it? What if, instead, someone asked:

“I know you pick up on things that others sometimes miss. What’s your Spidey sense telling you?”

Or

“I know you’re picking up on a dynamic here that I can’t see yet. Can you tell me why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling?

For the sensitive person, the question then moves from:

Why am I reacting this way?

To:

What am I reacting to?

I’m less interested these days in becoming less sensitive and more interested in understanding where my sensitivity is picking up on something real.

Because sometimes the issue isn’t that you’re too sensitive. It’s that you’ve been trying to stay steady in something that isn’t.

I remember standing in a busy hotel lobby at the end of a very long day.

Loud. Public. No space to collect myself.

A senior executive—my manager—told me I wasn’t handling my emotions well.

That I was, in effect, too sensitive.

It caught me off guard.

It’s what was said, it’s where it was said, it’s how it was said. Devoid of any emotion.

In many workplaces, the rational mind is elevated over the emotional mind. Emotions are something to be contained and minimized. To be kept at home.

Try This.

It takes a level of courage to recognize that your emotions and sensitivity are signals. Important information not to be minimized.

The next time you question your sensitivity, pause and consider:

What if what I’m feeling isn’t the problem?
What if what I’m feeling will help solve the problem?

The idea is to stay in relationship to your experience long enough to understand it. And trust it.

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