It seemed fitting to figure out a bit more about beginnings before we went much further…
We all have those things we’ve been meaning to get around to. Those ideas, projects, dreams, and plans that we claim mean a ton to us, that we’re working up to, and that we will most certainly devote the best of ourselves to as soon as we’ve gotten this or that to-do done, and as soon as the time is right. We say that we’ll do it when we have the time.
Sound familiar?
It’s a tune I’ve known well. And one I’ve had to thoroughly face.
Because I don’t have the time to write this.
At least that’s what it’s felt like most of the time up until now. Even at points right up until I started typing this, that old song ran through my mind. ‘No time.’ At least none that’s just presented itself with a clear go ahead and a sweeping tie up of all the other loose ends, to-dos and distractions in my life. No welcome mat rolled itself out and beckoned me forward.
Yet somehow I am here.
It took a while to get here though, and it took many go arounds in my mind, and more tests of my self-trust than I can count (years of writing for other reasons, practicing counselling in the public system and in my own practice and getting a sense that I wasn’t terrible at it and might have some worthwhile ideas to share).
Mostly, I had to face this:
You’re never going to ‘have time’ for the things that mean the most to you. Because the world isn’t just yours. Time is just here. It isn’t designed with any of us specifically in mind. We are required to chose how we spend our time. Life won’t chose it for us - and if it does there’s a small likelihood it will be in the way that you truly want.
What I mean by this, is that unless perhaps you have a very specific life set-up with people coming to you for requests that also match your deepest selfhood needs, the time you need to do the things you’ve always wanted to do isn’t going to just be handed to you. You aren’t going to wake up one day and suddenly be ready to seize all that you’ve been waiting for. At least not in a way you can replicate. Not in a way that’s going to be sustainable and take you the distance.
The time to do what you need to do to be whole with you, to look in the mirror and know you didn’t let the most important parts of yourself go because life just got too busy, that’s the sort of time you’re going to have to create. You’re going to have to clear out what’s in the way. You’re going to have to make space for what you want and then fortify that space so that nothing can interrupt you. And then you’re going to have to choose that thing of importance. And then keep choosing it. And you’re going to have to keep fighting for it when the distractions and requests, that will always be there, come knocking.
But I know you already know this deep down. Knowing this doesn’t make it any easier to choose though. I get that. We live in a busy and demanding world that seems like it’s always going to want something from us. And most of us are tired. It takes a lot of intention and effort and practice to take care of yourself in a way that doesn’t leave you regularly depleted in this life. I know that too.
But there’s something that might help: figuring out how to get started.
This is what I had to figure out to be able to write this.
I’ve figured out how to get started on many other things in my life, I’ll admit. But this was different. And I’ve thought about why.
Getting started on anything important is hard. Getting started on something new and important is even harder. However, getting started and then sticking to, something new and important and uncertain, is perhaps one of the hardest things we can ask of ourselves.
This is because it involves opening up. It involves seeing something that isn't real yet, and trusting that it can be real. That you alone can make it so. It involves tolerating discomfort. And to really truly be in it, with all of you, with your whole unique self, well this will almost certainty involve suspending attachment to outcome.
Opening up in unconditional trust like this, especially towards something that really matters to us, is our most sincere chance for goodness - for us to shape our life into what we truly want it to be. But doing this, especially if there is uncertainty involved, requires facing and being in a ton of vulnerability.
Being in vulnerability with something that matters a lot to us is no small feat. It’s enough to send most of running back to our favourite outlet for distraction, into anxiety, into self-doubt, into devaluing and dismissing our treasured vision, into practical bypassing and doing what other’s might ‘expect’ of us instead (that’s where a lot of our ‘time’ goes), and most importantly into fear of what will happen if we can’t actually have and be what matters to us most. I think for a lot of us, unless we have a ton of support rallying around us or are really well practiced in intentional emotional regulation (and can actively move ourselves out of the discomfort of uncertainty), this usually just presents a set of odds that we can’t really convince ourselves is worth it. Why be in that kind of discomfort, especially if there’s no certain reward or relief waiting on the other side of it?
It’s funny though, because the things that matter the most to most people, involve facing this exact combination of opening up, newness, uncertainty, trust and vulnerability. Relationships. Art. Careers. Having Children. Travel. Performing. Learning a new skill. Telling uncommon truths and speaking your mind.
These things challenge us.
Going to counselling involves navigating these exact challenges, all while feeling, typically, not the best we’ve ever felt about ourselves. This is a huge request of our vulnerability and systems. The act of being willing to ask for support, to open ourselves up to be seen and experienced by another, to be listened to on topics we’ve kept hidden, requires a ton of discomfort tolerance and it involves a lot of trust.
And for most of you who’ve contemplated going to counselling, or have undertaken your own counselling endeavors, you’ll know it can also be an uncertain task. Yes, there are things that make any given counselling experience more or less likely to be of use to you - attunement with your therapist or what most people call ‘fit,’ a counsellor’s skill level in terms of flexibility, adaptability, reliable use of therapeutic tools and having healed their own unconscious wounds and blind spots, and their current level of emotional availability (yes this fluctuates even for therapists). But a lot of that also has to do what what you as a client are willing to give, the vulnerability you are willing to stand in, and the effort you are willing to commit to the process. And this, like with any relationship, endeavour or challenge, can really test our willingness to make time, to continue to make time and to show up with as much of ourselves as we can muster. It’s a ongoing request of our trust and vulnerability systems. And these are significant requests.
That’s why I tell most new clients that they are currently at the most challenging point of therapy - getting started.
At the point at which they are contemplating coming to therapy, but not yet experienced in what it is and what it requires of them, they are often not yet practiced in enduring this particular type of uncertainty. Or new trusting. Or emotional and identity vulnerability and opening up the parts of themselves that are calling for support therapeutically. This is why I attest that the getting started part is the most challenging phase of the counselling process.
Once we know we can do something, and have genuinely experienced that it is worth it, we have incentive. Natural emotionally backed incentive. Until we have this, we have to have imagined incentive. Or, we have the incentive to leave suffering.
This is the incentive that brings most people to counselling the first time round. Not necessarily the desire to grow or be safely in vulnerability (it’s hard to know that’s even an option when we are traumatized or highly depressed or anxious) but the desire to rid oneself of an obviously destructive discomfort (anxiety, depression, trauma symptoms). With these discomforts and pains present, the new beginnings vulnerability often weighs less significant in comparison, and then coming to counselling becomes simply a necessary, lessor and tolerable discomfort.
Yet, true healing, or becoming whole and living from our full self involves more than just the overcoming of suffering. We are incentivized to remove suffering from our lives by instinct. Our body knows its not good for us and that we can’t stay in suffering indefinitely and be alright. In this way, negating suffering, since it is motivated by instinct, is less of a choice and more of a biological necessity. This is important to acknowledge, because once the pain that has motivated us to be vulnerable has receded, then we have to find new incentive to keep going with our healing journey. Or with anything really, if ridding ourselves of pain is what incentivized us to start in the first place.
To let our beginnings truly work, and for them to stay as more than just started efforts, we have to learn to be vulnerable in the face of uncertainty, newness, opening up and trusting, because it matters, not just because it hurts us not to do so.
From all of this, the point I think I’m trying to make, is that vulnerability and the sort of soul yanking, teeth clenching discomfort that accompanies it, has to be worth it. For us to get over the new beginnings discomfort. And for us to keep going once we’ve started.
So the question I think really becomes - for new beginnings, the true matterings of our lives and the things we’ve always wanted to do but aren’t sure that we can - how do we make starting and keeping going worth it?
I think not having an answer to this is why I thought about making a blog for almost a year before I actually did it.
I had to come to terms with the reality that if I was looking for a reason solely outside of myself to write a bunch on topics near and dear to me, but that I wasn’t sure where it would go, that I probably wouldn’t do it. Because I didn’t and can’t really know what this will ever truly mean - to other people at least. If it will matter. If it will have any impact. I’m not famous. I don’t know who will read this, if anyone. So I had to own that I could only do this in part for other people’s benefit.
I had to get clear about my conditions. I had to fully embrace that I was not doing this for any certain outcome, conditional expectation or result. I had to just do it for the sake of doing it. Because I believe it matters. Because I believe in and have unequivocally seen the impact of the information, and realizations and speaking up about the matters I plan to speak about here.
And because I believe in practicing what I preach. I believe in practicing worthwhile discomfort.
I find writing to be an act of vulnerability. And because of this I know it will grow me in ways that align with my selfhood, even I can’t know what those are just yet, even if I can only trust and have a vision for what that will be. I feel a little more whole and self-congruent every time I put word to paper (even if electronic) and share that with the world (whatever this really is).
This is the sort of whole I wish for everyone. This sort of whole is a homecoming.
I hope in sharing about my process of overcoming new beginning vulnerability, which I know I am not alone in experiencing the way I do, that you will feel seen and validated in yours. And encouraged with a bit of insight about how to take the next steps towards what really matters to you:
Get clear about your vision.
Level with yourself about your expectations and conditions.
Know that you won’t likely feel like you have time for it at first. But own that you can chose your time.
See where the possibilities for unconditional mattering, normalizing vulnerability and uncertainty tolerance exist within you.
Most of all know that you get to chose your mattering. And that no one else can chose it for you.
Being in mattering is also how we come home to ourselves.
I hope you’ll give yourself permission to own your time and to not have to fight for a seat at your own table. There’s a good chance you’ll have to fight to be at few other tables in this life.
But your table is where you get to chose what’s important to you. Even if it’s hard. Especially if it’s hard.
Because it’s ok that it’s hard. Trust me - it just makes it worth all the more once you actually do it.
Which I really trust that you will - because you truly are capable of it.
Big Love,
Carly <3
