Journey

In high school I ran cross-country and track and played soccer. My perfectionistic tendencies made me as good as I was. I worked hard and played harder. By the start of high school I had always dreamed of playing soccer but never had the opportunity. When tryouts started I was recovering from ankle surgery the week before and could barely move my foot. I had no ball skills and had to be told how to kick the ball the right way, which I couldn't do anyways because I couldn't turn my foot. The coach saw something in me and put my name on the list of people who made the team. I hustled that first year, and I mean put my heart and soul out on the field leaving nothing behind by the time I walked off. My position was a defensive center mid-fielder, and my main job was to keep the best player on the other team from getting the ball. None of it was enough, though. I wanted to be the best. I wanted to have all the ball skills, score the goals, defend the goal, win. I was all-state my se...

During the most difficult time of year, the coldest months, some animals hibernate. Bats hibernate in the winter by finding an abandoned area and going into a state of torpor. This is where most bodily functions are slowed down to help them regulate their temperature. They can drop their heart rate down to as low as 10 beats per minute from about 600 beats per minute or more. Sometimes bats awaken and adjust their body temperature, but they continue in this state of torpor throughout the winter months. During the times I struggle most with depression and suicidal ideation I tend to hibernate away from people. I stop communicating what is going on and isolate myself so I don't have to explain how I feel, or even experience what is going on inside of me. It is part shame and guilt and part fear of the next possible step. You see, I have been in the hospital probably 30 times in the past three years. I am afraid of being away from my family or inconveniencing friends who need to tak...

In 1980, Coach Herb Brooks led the U.S. hockey team to a victory over the seemingly unbeatable Russian team. In the movie Miracle, Herb pushes his team to trust the process and each other by repeatedly having them skate sprints after a tough loss. This was to teach them they could work together, trust each other, and far outwork what they thought they were capable of. They played each game leading up to the big one with passion, and although they wanted victory over the Russian team, they wanted to improve as a team and play together. Herb was not interested in building a team with the best players but rather the ones who would push hard and fight together . They had to trust the process. The Philadelphia 76ers also used the idea of trusting the process as they rebuilt from the ground up in 2013 with General Manager Sam Hinkie. He was less concerned with the outcome and having a winning season than he was with growing a team that could make long term strides. He believed in  mak...

Heart disease is sometimes very subtle. It might start out with mild shortness of breath and fatigue that goes mostly unnoticed. I see a cardiologist once a year because of a medication I am on that can cause cardiomyopathy, or a hardening of the heart making it difficult for the heart to pump oxygenated blood to the body. I don't have heart disease, but I fit into a category of people at risk for it. Shame is a little like heart disease. Insidious. My first warning sign that shame was beginning to control my life was in the subtle ways my conversations with my brother, Matt, changed. We stopped talking about me and started talking about clinical ideas associated with the degree in counseling I was moving toward. He had questions, and I was happy to answer anything that did not focus on me. We talked frequently, but I was hiding something so shameful that he could not know the gravity of the weight I felt. I was certain even my brother could not forgive my behavior and choices, ...

When I lived with my brother I helped him cut trees down and split wood for the wood burning stove (the only source of heat in the old farmhouse we lived in). One day as Matt was dropping a tree it was my job to watch to let him know to jump out of the way. I gave him the signal, and it fell. I was standing between the tree and the shed when it split, and it fell on me. Somehow I did not get hurt despite it dropping right on top of me. A few weeks later Matt decided to burn the brush pile from that same tree. We poured what should have been diesel on the limbs. It was gasoline. My brother blew himself up with a wave of flames and a loud boom. Somehow he did not get hurt except for some singed eyebrows and eyelashes. This is some sort of crazy empathy. He felt bad for almost killing me so he wanted to understand and share my experience and feelings. Okay, not exactly the true definition of the word and not exactly how it happened. My first year of graduate school I was balancing ...

My therapist recently asked me about vulnerability and shame; what it means to me now and the relationship I want to have with it in the future. It felt really relevant because I had just read two books by Brene Brown, the shame and vulnerability researcher. I have the same relationship with talking about my emotions as I do with experiencing them, so I wrote this: She was a freshman in her first semester of college. She was giving a speech in Speech class, and everyone was staring intently as she provided information about herself and her journey. It was vulnerable to stand up in front of the freshmen class and talk about what she was passionate about. She probably felt even more vulnerable when she sat down and her neighbor told her that her fly was open and her ladybug underwear had been showing throughout the five minutes of that passionate speech. It was probably also vulnerable for him to tell her that he saw her underwear. When I was in high school I decided I would bench 13...

I was talking with my son a little while ago about intense feelings that he described as something much more than sadness. He was saying that older people don't feel things as strongly as kids do. He was getting picked on in school for having a crush on a neighbor girl and was feeling the embarrassment as well as the loss of trust. I talked with him about how it felt when my brother, Matt, died in June and the loss and pain I feel even now not having my brother to talk to. I don't do well with experiencing and acknowledging my feelings, especially loss. I tend to numb what I can when I can and therefore miss out on the sorrows as well as the joys of life. As a matter of fact, I have been numbing to the best of my ability for many, many years now. Self-harming is my thing. I've been doing it since second grade, and even now I struggle daily to allow myself to tolerate feelings rather than utilize what I find to be comforting. When I look back on trauma I have experienced...