Tread Softly
How I’m learning to be gentle with my mind
How might you be gentle with your mind this month?
I really like this question. My writer friend, Bingz, posed some variation of this question to her community a few days ago, and when I sat down to read her words, they curled around my shoulders in a gentle embrace.
How might you be gentle? I’ve already been exploring some variation of this theme. Near the start of the month, I came across a quote on Instagram that really struck a chord:
A tip during September:
Wherever you go, whatever you do, whatever you feel, wherever you are, tell yourself “I love you” in your native language. Really feel this. Really mean this when you say it. Feel it from the bottom of your being and from the top of your heart. Every now and then, say this. Let this also be the first thing you say when you wake up and the last thing you say before you sleep.
— Nina Lekic via @moonomens
This is something I’ve started doing when I wake up in the morning: I take a moment to place my hands on my heart and my belly and whisper the words, “I love you.”
Sometimes I say it to my body when I’m in the shower. I thank my ankles and my feet for carrying me through the day, send love to my hip that is aching.
It’s taken me a long time to be able to say these words to myself and be in a space to receive them. Still to this day, there are days when it’s easier than others. For a long time, I harboured hatred towards my mind, my psyche, my body. They didn’t fit the box others told me I should be able to slide into. I was always a little different.
Tough to survive
As for many of us who identify as sensitive, I grew up in a home where my family didn’t necessarily know what to do with my gentle heart. I’ve come to realize I am an innately gentle person, but I learned to be tough because that was the only way I knew how to survive.
When I was soft, I was told I needed a harder shell. My gentleness was often looked at as though it were a kind of inconvenience; even though my mother tried her best and my father told me it was okay to cry, I could sense the subtle currents of what they weren’t saying.
My ancestors survived war, immigration, entrepreneurship, academia, and the hard work of running a farm. They learned that the way to accomplish anything in life was to be tough, to have a thick skin and push yourself to do the things you don’t always want to. They knew how to survive.
But now I find myself here, and my gifts look different. I am an artist and a writer, a deeply empathic, intuitive human, grounded in the unseen as much as I am present in this physical life. My sensitivity is my gift, but it has often been made to feel like a burden. My mind adapted to protect me as best it could.
For much of my life, I have been my own worst critic. My mind learned to be harsh with my emotions, because if I said it first maybe it would hurt less.
That inner critical voice likes to tell me all the ways I don’t measure up because I’m too soft. At times, it doesn’t understand the way my heart pulls and tugs and perceives the world, the way my intuition will guide me to things that don’t always ‘make sense.’
How we struggle with our gifts
I know my mind carries an incredible intelligence. I am in awe of how I can recall a memory in vivid detail, as if it only happened yesterday, even if years have passed.
My mother will often look at me with this bemused expression on her face and tell me she never understands how my brain can take in and store so much information from a single encounter. How I can listen to two different podcasts and read a chapter in a book and synthesize the information in a way that makes it easier to digest for the next person I share it with.
My mind could be my greatest ally, one of my most brilliant gifts.
But it has also been my greatest foe, stopping me from taking risks or enjoying the things I love.
Because I was surrounded by people who didn’t fully understand me, no one knew how to train me to utilize the gifts of my mind. Sensitive children are often told to stop overthinking and take more risks, because the adults around them were never given the tools to process their own emotions. How, then, could they be expected to help a deeply empathic child learn to navigate the world with all their feelings?
I know my mind adapted to survive as best it could. That is why it has all these spiky spots and sharp edges.
But if I show my mind the love and care it always needed, that hard shell can begin to melt away.
This is how we heal trauma: one gentle interaction at a time.
We meet our thoughts with curiosity and compassion, rather than judgement. We learn to observe the voice that just wants to keep us safe. We learn to intercept the inner predator that seeks to separate us from our tribe before it can cause irrevocable damage. We learn to be guardians of the more sensitive parts of ourselves.
Tread softly
Historically, I have not been very good at being gentle with myself.
I say that, but maybe it’s a judgement I don’t need. I was doing the best with what I knew at the time. But now I’ve learned I can be different — I can tread softly in the spaces that are hurting.
This is how I am choosing to be gentle with my mind this month: by pausing when I notice my thoughts are harsh or spiky, and taking time to breathe into the words, “I love you.”
Thank you, Bingz, for the beautiful prompt to reflect on this question. I gently invite Camille Grady and Jenny Lane to do the same, if it so resonates.
And to you reading these words, thank you for being here. I appreciate your presence.