What people say
I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.
- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon
From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.
- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont
Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.
He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.
- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA
My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.
It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.
- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon
Seeking Comfort
September 7 2010
People seek comfort from life’s challenges and struggles in many ways.
And giving comfort to yourself can be a wonderful expression of self-care and self-compassion. But comfort can also be distorted into an attempt to escape or avoid what’s happening — and then it becomes just another aspect of the struggle.
Food, drink, drugs, sex, books, exercise — even meditation — almost anything can be used as a distraction, a way to avoid or transcend what’s happening and what you feel. For instance, early in our work together, one client realized that for her, running wasn’t so much exercise as it was running away from herself. As she also noticed, avoiding what she was feeling didn’t actually make it go away. It was just a delaying tactic.
And it’s a delaying tactic that tends to create more pain, usually in the form of self-recrimination and frustration. As one client said, “I know I’ll hate myself the next day when I dive into that bowl of pasta. But there’s something about its being there when I’m unhappy ... and I just keep taking one more bite.”
Comfort is deeply necessary. Providing comfort is a powerful expression of love and caring, whether for yourself or for someone close to you. But avoiding the truth of your experience and the reality of your feelings doesn’t serve you — it’s not real comfort. It may feel good in the moment (though as my client noticed, there’s often a sense of this isn’t what I really want — and I’m going to regret it), but it’s ultimately unsatisfying and frustrating.
What does provide real comfort?
Turning back towards yourself, instead of avoiding or trying to transcend what you’re feeling, is the deepest recognition of what’s true for you. That may appear frightening or even overwhelming — but in the end, it’s the most profoundly loving, comforting, and healing thing you can do for yourself.
Here are some ways that you can seek comfort without avoiding or distracting yourself from what’s really true for you.
Be with yourself
Traditional culture — and our own desire for pleasure and peace — teaches us to turn away from emotions and situations that seem to be painful or unpleasant.
Yet as I mentioned, turning away from those feelings and situations actually adds to the pain. In turning away from what you’re experiencing, you turn away from yourself. You deny what’s real for you — and there’s nothing more painful, and less comforting, than that.
Instead of turning away, be with yourself, as you would be with a friend who’s struggling with a similar challenge.
A client wrote, “When I stop trying to convince myself that I don’t feel how I actually am feeling, then something in me opens up. Something in me, something beyond me, opens to a deep well of love and comfort. And even though I may find myself in tears, there’s a softness to it, a relief that goes far deeper than I could have imagined.”
Allow everything to be as it is
When you try to manipulate your experience — whether in denial of what’s happening, dramatizing it into something other than it is, or seeking to transcend it in some way — you inevitably hide options and possibilities for resolution.
Instead, allow your vision to clear. Allow yourself to feel what’s happening, from the deeper courage of your heart.
A client noticed, “When I stop trying to change my experience, it’s like everything comes into focus again. And I often realize that I’ve been overlooking obvious answers to whatever I’m facing.”
Emotions aren’t logical — that’s no news, I’m sure. Nonetheless, it can be disconcerting when emotions appear to arise without a “reason.”
Acknowledge that you really do feel what you feel, whether or not it seems to be logically connected to what’s happening in this moment. Emotional response and release is often triggered by seemingly unrelated or even inconsequential experiences.
A few years ago on a silent meditation retreat, I found myself experiencing deep sadness and even tears. In allowing my feelings to be what they were, allowing myself to feel them moving through me without trying to explain or understand them, I experienced an internal release of something I hadn’t known was there.
Understanding isn’t necessary. Simply allowing yourself to truly feel what you feel is usually all that’s needed to experience the relief — and comfort — of release.
There’s nothing to judge
You may find yourself thinking that you’re over-reacting, or that you “should” be able to stay calm no matter what the situation — or any number of judgmental thoughts.
There’s nothing to judge. Your experience is what it is; your feelings are what they are.
When you let go of the judgments, fully being with and allowing what’s happening for you, you’ll find yourself opening to deeper places of care, compassion, and comfort than you’d ever imagined.
As a client wrote to me, “This sort of comfort is real. It’s warm, honest, and solidly authentic. It’s clear to me that it won’t let me down.”
And that’s a lot more rewarding than the pint of ice cream in your freezer.
“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.” Agatha Christie, 1890-1976, British author of short stories, mysteries, and plays.
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