Note: Below, you’ll find timecodes for specific sections of the podcast. To get the most value out of the podcast, I encourage you to listen to the complete episode. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors. For an exact quote or comment, please contact us.

Transcript

00:00 Announcer:

Awareness That Heals Episode, 110.

00:02 Announcer:

The Awareness That Heals podcast helps its listeners learn to develop the capacity to have a more healing response to emotions and situations rather than becoming stuck. Your host, Robert Strock, has practiced psychotherapy for more than 45 years. He wrote the book Awareness That Heals: Bringing Heart and Wisdom to Life’s Challenges to help develop self-caring and the capacity to respond in an effective way to life’s challenges, especially at times when we are most prone to be critical or to withdraw. Together, we will explore how to become aware of our challenging feelings and, at the same time, find alternative ways to live a more fulfilling and inspiring life.

00:46 Robert Strock:

I’m very pleased to welcome you again to Awareness That Heals, where we do our very, very best to bring heart and wisdom to our very real-life challenges that are universal for all of us. We start again and again with being aware of what is most difficult for us, and you’re being asked to really look at what is most difficult for you and how we can care for ourselves at these critical times. Now, it’s very important that you hear the link and the connection between those two because when we just go to what’s difficult for us, it could seem like it’s a bummer and we’re going to get stuck. But the whole point here is to see the way we can honor our challenges and not stay stuck. And today we’re going to look at the foundation of what I would consider both mental health and spiritual health in a very grounded way. We’ll explore both how we can use our most challenging feelings to discover and live more and more from our core needs.

02:27 This is one of the most profound and simple meditations that you can do. It is very subtle as it has the potential to guide you hour-to-hour, day-to-day, and even moment-to-moment. What is my core feeling? You’re asking yourself first. This is what you’ll be inquiring about that gives you the keys to find the deepest and dearest need that your sensitivity is guiding you toward. Really look at that word your sensitivity is guiding you toward. When you’re asking yourself, what is your core need? You need to access the most sensitive part of you.

03:21 How much do you get this? Just look. Do you have a sense of what your core needs are? It might be something like to be loved, to be tender, to be communicating, to be strong, to set boundaries, to know how to merge. But whatever your core need is, that’s what’s important, and your sensitivity will help bring you there. And can you see, this needs to not be philosophical. This needs to be organic and make intuitive sense to you. This is not a philosophy, and if you look closely, you’ll see for most of you that as a child, it was more easy to see, more obvious that your needs, whether it’s to be hungry, whether it’s to have another one of your kids in the sandbox, in your classroom to be nice to you. These kinds of things were intuitively obvious, but as we’ve gone more and more towards success and traditional values, we’ve lost this simple skill of recognizing our feelings and connecting them with our needs, not all of us, but most of us, and to varying degrees.

04:50 Now, as adults, the same longing, of course, exists in a more diverse way, but most of us have forgotten that it’s a golden key to guide us toward our hearts and using what can be called our wisdom or intelligence or the smartest part of ourself. Now, let’s not only take a look at this, but put you in the center. And that’s so critical in this guided meditation to follow that you put yourself in the center so you can experience what it’s like to really be where you’re most challenged and guide yourself while you’re in that state.

05:45 Guided meditation is for so many people, the best way to truly gain benefit in your response to personal challenges. As you invest in bring your own experience to the guided meditations, you’ll give yourself the best chance to change longstanding patterns from suffering toward a state of well-being, peace, and healing. It’s important to put yourself in a comfortable body position in a private space where you’re not disturbed, turn off your phone and be ready to really be alert. So as you take your next breath, ask yourself, what is it that you feel most in the present moment just for a starter, just to sense yourself. What do you feel? You’re grounding yourself as you ask that? And it doesn’t have to be something big. It’s not contrived. Just what it is, you might feel nothing. You might feel empty, but whatever you feel, maybe it’s in your body, maybe it’s in your heart. Whatever’s there, honor it by giving your awareness to it without trying to change it at all.

07:23 It’s very likely not going to be dramatic. Occasionally it will be, but the whole point is wherever you are is perfect and you’re just attempting to be with it. Have the courage to just connect with wherever you are in your inner most source, and if there’s any kind of injury, hurt, or suffering, feeling it as fully and as simply as you can. Let this be the warmup to the key question, which is, what is it that I most need that isn’t fulfilled, that this feeling is showing me? What is it that isn’t being fulfilled in my life that’s recurring? And just pause. It could be fear, it could be anxiety, it could be anger or intolerance, and you may not know what the need is, but you’re asking yourself, what do you need? And of course, you need to also be aware of feelings that are there that are not satisfied, that will give you clues.

09:03 Realize that by asking yourself this question, after a while, it becomes simply your guide back to one of the most essential parts of your real self. And by real self, I mean the part of you that cares. Doesn’t it make sense to you to want this life to have caring and for you to be a significant source of this caring? Just pause and feel. Isn’t it obvious if I bring this caring to me that I have a better chance of being fulfilled in this life and also for caring for others and recognize you are the only one that can guide you in this very intimate way and let this become a growing first nature. First nature as if it’s natural to you, and if it’s new, then you’re just starting and good for you. And if it’s familiar, recognize that you can continue to deepen it.

10:40 So when you feel sad, what is it that will make you happy? When you feel frightened, what is it that will give you a greater chance of being courageous or safe? When you feel irritable, what will allow you to have a greater chance of being more peaceful? Now, sometimes, for example, it might be that when you’re irritable, it might help just to acknowledge your irritable and that you’re trying to find a way to be more calm or patient, you’re pausing. At other times it might be better as your guidance suggests that you just lie down and put your hand on your heart and ask, what’s most important to me today?

11:52 That a golden guidance. When I say that, I mean that is one of the lifestyle choices that you can make, that when you’re unclear or you’re disturbed, that you’re going to guide yourself to either metaphorically or physically put your hand in your heart and just ask that question. The important thing is you’re interested in two things all the time, for the rest of your life. What is it that I feel and what’s my feeling state that is most impacting me now and today, and what is it that I need? Just take that in. If you can’t find it, know that you need to go back again and again and ask that question. There’s no rush.

13:02 Let this second question be honored even more than the first one. Recognize that you have the capacity to be dedicated and to increase that dedication, to be the caregiver of yourself, and that yes, being aware of your feelings, that’s going to take you part of the way and being aware of your needs is going to bring you a step further and closer. You’re looking for needs like being understood, receiving kindness and tenderness or empathy. Just being listened to, having more peace and just being interested in what you need is such an important key. Do you get that? How valuable that is to your quality of life and that the tone that this interest is being shown is very likely to have an impact on you feeling the quality that will be most nurturing and nourishing to your heart, your body and your soul.

14:42 You actually can fall in love with asking, how can I care for myself? There can be music, there can be rhythm, and just notice as you do that now, as you’re asking yourself, how can I care for myself? Is the tone supporting you? And when you don’t know what you need and it’s totally unclear, recognize that you need to discover what you need. This is going to be the most common situation, something to be proud of. You’re venturing a terrain where you don’t know what is it that I need? It’s a profound place to be, and the tendency is to exit too fast. So you may have to come back to it for hours or days, but it’s a completely worthwhile truth to discover about yourself, the direction you want to move in your life and see if you can just let yourself be at peace anticipating that this is going to be the case. You won’t know what you need and that’s really okay, and it’s a sign you need to give it more attention.

16:34 Then as another important theme, you want to develop the capacity to be humble, like an informal prayer from a kind place I’d like to be more and more interested in what I need because it’s not my well-grooved habit and just move myself toward appreciation that this wisdom, this intelligence, this self-caring, this guidance and your life has come to a place where you’re ready to hear and honor this endless discovery of what need is the most essential to your well-being. None of us are the same. This is a great beginning, middle, and end to guide you in this direction.

17:45 What else would you want to do with your inner life, but take good care of yourself and recognize that this isn’t the central way that you’ve been taught how to live and devote yourself, as much as makes sense to you to ask that question for the rest of your life, recognizing that the more you do it, the more access you’re going to have to improve your own quality of life. May this be so. So, notice where this leaves you. Are you in touch and do you have a sense of what direction you need to steer yourself?

18:45 This potentially sets you up perfectly to continue onto the next meditations that will guide you how to really make this link tangible. How to move from challenging feelings to actually meet your needs, not only to understand them, but actually the stepping stones to meet the needs. You have as you’ve listened closely the basics of the direction and the rest of the meditations will take you step-by-step. Do you get this distinction between understanding your challenging feelings and you want to move towards your needs? But then of course, there’s subtlety of how do you make those steps to make that more viable? It’s not enough just to understand the direction you need to execute it with your mind, with your heart, with your actions, and with your contemplation. If you’re really ready to go there, then your basic trust is expanding and is in a great place, and you found a gift for life and even more for expanding your quality of life and the quality of life for those around you and may you appreciate the importance in our troubled world of you giving this potential a reality and a devotion.

20:40 Announcer:

Note: Below, you’ll find timecodes for specific sections of the podcast. To get the most value out of the podcast, I encourage you to listen to the complete episode. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors. For an exact quote or comment, please contact us.

Transcript

00:00 Announcer:

Awareness That Heals, Episode 108.

00:05 Announcer:

The Awareness That Heals podcast helps its listeners learn to develop the capacity to have a more healing response to emotions and situations rather than becoming stuck. Your host, Robert Strock, has practiced psychotherapy for more than 45 years. He wrote the book “Awareness That Heals: Bringing Heart and Wisdom to Life’s Challenges” to help develop self-caring and the capacity to respond in an effective way to life’s challenges. Especially at times when we are most prone to be critical or to withdraw together, we will explore how to become aware of our challenging feelings and at the same time find alternative ways to live a more fulfilling and inspiring life.

00:47 Robert Strock:

A very warm welcome again to Awareness That Heals where we focus on bringing our heart and our wisdom to our life’s challenges. We start again and again with being aware of what is most difficult for us. Recognizing these difficulties are universal for all of us, whether we recognize them or not and how we can care for ourselves at these critical times. Today we’re going to discover the vital link between your feelings and needs that are most supportive to you. You’re going to be given a guided meditation that will help you experience how you can open to whatever you feel without being afraid and naturally inquire what is it that I most need to take care of myself? This is a merging of our wisdom that this question leads to when we’re suffering in any way. When we really get this link, we have a depth of understanding of how we can start to take really good care of our hearts. No matter what feeling state we’re in, we’ll also take better care of our close relationships and the world. This practice is perhaps the most simple, profound practice that all of us can do.

02:27 Asking yourself, what is it that you most need to support yourself while you’re in the middle of this difficult feeling. And it’s a masterful way of guiding yourself no matter what feeling you’re dealing with. It could be a need to accept what you feel, to be kinder to someone else, to communicate, to be empathic, either through giving the empathy or even receiving it, or perhaps to be understood. All of these are examples of needs. You’ll be given a chance with a guided meditation to find the specific need that would reduce and relieve your suffering. I would encourage you, if you’re not very familiar, to go to AwarenessThatHeals.org and on the top bar, click on the Introspective Guides that will give you 75 of the most challenging feelings and 75 of the most essential needs that will allow you to be more fluid and literate.

03:46 When you recognize the feeling that’s most difficult, you’re asking how do you want the people around you to be supportive, to satisfy the need that is most present for you? What quality would their energy have? How would they treat you? What would the words be that represent the satisfaction of your needs that would allow you to be cared for, empowered, and to experience greater peace? What tone would they use? This is so often overlooked, but what tone would they use? Some examples of this need could be the need for connection, trust, affection, appreciation, being understood, or what would hit the spot for you.

04:48 One of the keys is to recognize that whatever need is most difficult for you is likely to be one of your greatest needs. We need a glimpse of what need is challenging for you to satisfy. It could be one for kindness, tenderness, communication, strength, or whatever quality or need is particularly most important to you that would be received as sensitivity to your heart. Recognize that going for what you most need means you’re listening and responding to what’s most important to your heart, and that’s not always obvious. It’s an art form where you need to keep asking what’s most important to my heart, to my soul, to my body that would make me purr. No matter what you’re taught or experienced in your world, staying with a difficult feeling that is most happening and asking what your need is supports you to continue to learn how to take best care of yourself. Now, this might sound simple, but you need to be able to do two things at once. Be sensitive to your feeling and ask that critical question. What else could ever make more sense? Pause and let yourself see if this leaves you with a, “Yes, I want to do this. I want to know what my feelings are and then inquire as to what I need.”

06:40 Your feelings, when they’re recognized, especially your challenging feelings we’re talking about, can always catalyze you to ask what thought, what quality, what action will benefit me given what you’re feeling at any given time. When you don’t know what you need, let yourself remember that this means your greatest need is to discover what you need, and that will help you. This is going to happen a lot. The deeper you go, the more likely you are to encounter confusion, and that needs to be seen as a plus. I’m confused about what I need, and it’s such a valid question to ask, what is it? When you’re hurting, or you’re afraid, it’s important to be able to identify that and then to keep penetrating into what you uniquely need. This is a sign of depth to delve more deeply into an area you’re unaware of, which makes you an explorer to find wholeness or more wholeness in your heart. So now we’ll begin the guided meditation.

08:17 Guided meditation is, for so many people, the best way to truly gain benefit in your response to personal challenges. As you invest and bring your own experience to the guided meditations, you’ll give yourself the best chance to change longstanding patterns of suffering toward a state of well-being, peace, and healing. It’s important to put yourself in a comfortable body position in a private space where you’re not disturbed, turn off your phone, and be ready to really be alert. Let yourself breathe as sensitively and naturally as possible. No need to force things. It may just be a subtle tweak of going a little slower, a little more rhythmic. With the same rhythm ask, what are you feeling either in this moment or recently that is most challenging to you?

09:36 Now, notice the way the words are being spoken to you right now. There is a sense of caring about what you need. This is so important to help guide you. Take your time and keep reflecting until you’re really clear about what you feel. Remember now and see if you can plant seeds forever, that every challenging feeling has core needs that will guide you toward self-compassion. Take a moment and ask, does this make sense to you, this connection between valuing your challenging feelings and then at the same time having the sensibility to ask, what is my core needs or what are my core needs that would best help take care of me when I’m in this feeling?

10:53 Now, this is only the beginning because identifying your core need doesn’t automatically bring you there, but that’s where we’ll be going in all the future meditations. Again, every challenging feeling has core needs that will guide you toward self-caring, self-love, self-trust, self-empathy, and self-compassion. See if you can let this in because it’s a revolutionary concept. Most of us feel a feeling and we just stay there. We don’t have a voice that comes in and asks us, how do we take care of ourselves? What do I most need? And this needs to be injected not only in your conscious mind, but in your unconscious, so you know want to care for yourself no matter what you feel.

12:06 So return to your most significant challenging feeling and take a few moments to really feel it now. The more you can feel your feelings, the deeper you will go and the closer you’ll be to the clue of, what do I really need while I’m feeling this feeling? It could be starting with something like acceptance. Yes, it’s okay that I feel like this. Now, that might sound obvious, but recognize right now that it’s very likely not the way you normally go when you feel a feeling you don’t like. You’re adding a yes, it’s okay I feel this way, and this could lead you to realize, oh, I need to communicate this, or I need to be gentle with myself while I feel this, or perhaps I need to be stronger or empathic, courageous.

13:30 Sometimes it’s just trusting or being understood by someone else or perhaps even understanding yourself. Support your feeling now as you allow your body to breathe into where it’s most affected and be inspired to be curious, asking again and again, what do I need to best take care of myself? Allowing yourself to go deeply into this, you will start to enjoy the very taking care of yourself, and you’ll realize that a difficult feeling is not a monopoly. It’s the starting point. It gets to catalyze you to ask that question, how do I take care of myself? What do I need?

14:37 Notice how you respond as you hear those words. See if you can enjoy yourself as you’re curious, because when you’re in a difficult feeling, of course it’s not going to be a joy, but there can be a subtle place of I’m actually learning how to care for myself while I don’t feel good. My mind is my friend. My mind can be my wisdom guiding me to my needs with a deep, gentle breath, recognizes curiosity as to how to best take care of yourself is like being your own best friend. It is an act of self-love. Do you get that? And if you do, it’ll be very motivating and not just once in a while, not just as a hobby, but as a lifestyle, and for those that practice this more and more, you can start to see the older you get, the wiser you can be, the more you can take care of yourself, and there’s a lot to look forward to as you get older and wiser and more automatic in this way.

16:08 Do you get that? This is not a homework assignment. This is common sense that we all have not been taught. It’s a gift that you can give yourself. It is accessing your own guidance. At first, it will feel a bit contrived, but it’s being true to your nature to have great interest in your own quality of life. Let yourself end with an informal prayer. May I make this link from whatever challenges me to be drawn, to discover and dedicate myself to my needs? This is a blessing from your heart. May it be so. So notice where this leaves you.

17:23 Are you in touch, and do you have a sense of connection between your feelings and your needs? At first, it’s very likely that it will have some vagueness. Don’t be discouraged or don’t let the discouragement stop you. Hopefully, this inspires you or will soon inspire you to be captivated with curiosity as to how you feel and what need or needs will most support you with whatever you’re feeling at any given point in time. Take a moment and ask, are you curious when you have your particular difficult feeling, I wonder what it is that would help me? I wonder what it is that would soften me, or strengthen me, or move me in the direction that I need to. This sets you up perfectly to continue onto the next meditations that will guide you how to really make this link tangibly. How to move from your feelings to meet your needs.

18:42 You have the basics of the direction, and the rest of the meditations will take you step by step. Do you get this? This is just the basic understanding that’ll make the link, but then you need to learn how you can specifically guide yourself from this newly understood connection between the feeling that’s challenging for you and the needs that will most support you while you’re there. Do you feel hopeful? And if you don’t feel hopeful, it’s because you’re not committed yet or you don’t have faith in yourself. If so, recognize that this commitment or faith is your core need. Most of us will start off where, ahh, it sounds right, but I’m not sure I can do it. But then what’s needed is to dig deep and say, this will help me if I can get it, and so my need is to commit myself to go in this direction or gain more faith that I can do it, and I can make this link between my difficult feelings, and my core needs to that particular feeling. If you are ready, then your basic trust in your organic intelligence or what’s natural to you is happening, and you’ve found a gift for life, especially if it’s not just in your memory but it’s actually in your guts because it’s intuitively obvious if you take the time that when you’re not feeling good, of course, you want to find a way to move in the direction of helping yourself. This link will lead you to be a benefactor to expand your quality of life. I wish this for all of you.

20:57 Announcer:

Note: Below, you’ll find timecodes for specific sections of the podcast. To get the most value out of the podcast, I encourage you to listen to the complete episode. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors. For an exact quote or comment, please contact us.

Transcript

00:00 Announcer:

Awareness That Heals, Episode 107.

00:05 Announcer:

The Awareness That Heals podcast helps its listeners learn to develop the capacity to have a more healing response to emotions and situations rather than becoming stuck. Your host, Robert Strock, has practiced psychotherapy for more than 45 years. He wrote the book Awareness That Heals, bringing heart and wisdom to life’s challenges to help develop self-caring and the capacity to respond in an effective way to life’s challenges. Especially at times when we are most prone to be critical or to withdraw together, we will explore how to become aware of our challenging feelings and at the same time find alternative ways to live a more fulfilling and inspiring life.

00:47 Robert Strock:

A very warm welcome to Awareness That Heals, where we are really trying to support ourselves and you to bring heart and wisdom to our life’s challenges. And it’s easy to understand that concept, but it’s so important that we recognize we’re embracing what is most difficult and dignifying the challenging emotion itself. We’re dignifying it to breathe to be allowed, but at the same time recognizing that it’s the starting point of being a pointer in a direction toward what we need. But we can’t bypass our challenges and just go to our needs because our feelings that are challenging are really the core code that guides us to exactly what we need if we trace it. And we also can’t just fixate ourselves on the challenging emotions because then we’ll be stuck. And when we fixate, we’re stuck in the muck when we actually allow it gracefully or semi-gracefully just to be there for a period of time. It creates dignity, humility, and humanity.

02:40 And today we’re going to be focusing on something that in my experience is the foundation of both mental and spiritual health. And that is we are focusing on the challenging feelings leading us to all the essential values and qualities that all the great religions have talked about. And in a sense, we could call it a blend of spirituality and psychology because psychology supports us to feel our challenging emotions but is not long on creating values that are the universal values. And spirituality does guide us to universal values, at least in theory, maybe not always in practice, but it’s kind of short on really recognizing the importance and the dignity in being authentically human.

04:02 So this blending of allowing and supporting and encouraging our humanness to be as it is and to be given space-time perspective is so crucial that we don’t do what is frequently called spiritual bypassing, that we really allow the feelings to be as they are with awareness and with a minimal amount or preferably no judgment, just this challenging feeling is here as it is, whether it’s fear, anxiety, anger, depression, I see it. And then we remember, oh, I have this other side of me that has these core essential values that I want my life to be as much as possible. And so we’re making this link between our challenging feelings and our essential needs, and it’s an embrace of both psychology and spiritual or religious values. It kind of blows my mind that this is not really taught as a foundation for both mental and spiritual health.

05:47 The only other person I know of who taught this tremendously beautifully is Marshall Rosenberg, who died a while ago and was an international mediator. But to the best of my knowledge, this linkage between feelings and needs is not a part of any well-known psychotherapist or spiritual teacher. And I’m not saying that to brag. That’s not my point. My point is to have you recognize that we’re entering terrain that isn’t likely to be familiar to you. And for that reason, I’ve made two charts into what I call the Introspective Guides that hopefully you have in front of you now that lists the 75 most challenging emotions. Not that it’s the only list, but it’s a list and 75 essential needs that are those values that I’m talking about that are in religion or spirituality and supporting making that linkage. So they’re both dignified, putting these together as close to the same time as possible, challenging feeling and wanting to, and preferably actually being able to live in our most essential needs is a meaningful life.

07:36 And it’s universal because every one of us has challenging feelings and every one of us have some values, even though of course we can find examples of extremes. But staying with the dominant center, it’s universal that we need to embrace and face our challenging emotions and let them be used as aids to find our essential needs that will fulfill, inspire not only ourselves, but we’ll help our ailing world. This very thing of not being able to get to our needs, we can track this through history, that fear and anger itself has created wars when it’s not able to be experienced and then go to the needs, but instead is acted out. I remember all too well our fear of communism and invading Vietnam and how many wars are based on exaggerated anger and projected anger. And because anger was not able to be resolved. And we’re seeing it today with what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine and not being able to make the link that this anger is being acted out and not faced by Putin.

09:31 And this has been a large part of the story of humanity, of not being able to put together, ahh I face my emotions, I let them be there. And what are the universal needs that take care of everyone that don’t harm anyone? And I use this to highlight how important it is on the world stage and how equally important it is on the intimate stage of your relationships and my relationships and everyone I know, their relationships. Today we’re going to be focusing on feelings of inadequacy, something that unquestionably is there at the deepest level for all of us, but is so frequently suppressed because it falls very high on the list of horribles or unacceptables. But my experience is when you have the courage, when I have the courage, when others have the courage to admit, I feel inadequate. It allows courage and dignity and confidence to be developed in that area.

11:07 We feel inadequate if we suppress the inadequacy, we’re frozen there. And so the importance of being able and even wanting to expose our inadequacy where it’s safe ground. I’m not suggesting we announce it in the public arena, but where we have a trusted friend or a trusted relationship that says, “I feel inadequate in this area, and I really want to move to develop my confidence, my competence. I want to get perspective on this. I need to find the direction that will support me.” Now in some cases, like for me with technology, I’m inadequate and I say it without judgment. I’m not very good at it. Some areas, it’s just no big deal if we don’t run away from it. All of us are inadequate in some areas of our life, but it’s like a boogeyman or it’s like cooties. We can’t have feelings of inadequacy and bring dignity to it.

12:30 And what we’re talking about today is exactly that we can. And it’s not I “am” inadequate, it’s I “feel” inadequate. And maybe in some way it just would be more accurate to say I’m not developed in that area. And most importantly, it can be used as an inspiration to grow in that area if it’s an area that we have the capacity to grow. So we either need to grow or we need to accept those are what our needs could be one way or the other. And to be able to discern which direction we need to go, we need to look, and I’m asking you right now to look at where you felt inadequate in your life and to ask yourself, how could I have best handle that? And as it arises again, how can I best handle it? Am I with someone who’s mature enough where I can afford to say it out loud?

13:43 Can I use it and say it without heinous judgment and just say, I want to be honest and say, I feel inadequate here, and I’d like to be able to develop, can you help me? Or where can I find help? Or where can I have the dignity of acceptance that I’m just undeveloped? And the inadequacy is actually a judgment for just not being developed. So today, you’re going to get a chance to put yourself in the center of the feeling of inadequacy and not let it mean to you that you are inadequate. Just that this is the area where I’m least developed. And then the big “and,” how do I best take care of myself, which is utterly unique. Every person in every area of inadequacy is completely different.

14:47 In my experience as a counselor, many of the greatest breakthroughs has been when a person in a couple says, I feel inadequate sexually or I feel inadequate in communication. And then the next question is always, can you give me more detail? Can you go into it more? Can you have the courage to acknowledge it? Then someone might say, well, I can’t have an orgasm, or I can’t, when I feel insecure talk about it or when I’m competitive, I can’t get out of it. And then the questions come, well, how can you best support yourself either to have an orgasm and really open yourself up or to find the other ways to love while you’re not orgasmic? Or how can you communicate what it is that you haven’t been able to communicate? How can you access the humility and the courage to be able to bring that out in the open?

16:11 So let yourself scan, and this is a very, very subtle emotion for most people or state. It’s kept usually under the covers. So you might have to look a lot more closely to be able to find where this is the case. There are so many ways to be inadequate. We can not be successful enough, we cannot be handsome enough, not young enough, not pretty enough, not thin enough, and the list goes on forever. So it’s inevitable that all of us, a part of being human is having feelings of inadequacy. What we’re talking about today is not making it an identity and adding the inquiry of how can I discover what my needs are to support me while I feel inadequate?

17:15 So as you prepare for the meditation, see if you can glimpse moments where this is a fleeting feeling or thought and you want to get out of there as fast as possible, but you see that there’s another alternative because it’s one of the areas where the greatest breakthroughs happen. Having the courage to face inadequacy and not have it be inert or a fixed quality is one of the most courageous acts in humanity. And so we’re going to give you this chance to not only now glimpse these situations, but to stay in the feeling of inadequacy and be resourceful enough to be tolerating it. And then inquiring, how do I move toward my needs to either lessen my feelings of inadequacy or to really commit yourself because it’s important and you have capacity and identifying the needs that are going to allow you to most develop the confidence and sense of adequacy.

18:53 It’s really a mindblower. When you realize that your feelings really are a pregnancy of finding, discovering, and living your essential needs and being able to be your best self. Then what happens when you really realize that is you’re as interested in discovering your feelings and living with them with acceptance as you are and living your most fulfilling needs. Because the question is, would you rather be pregnant or would you rather be alive? And to me, and I think to you, if you really think about it, they’re both absolutely the peaks of life, one feels better, but it allows a birth to happen. The other one is, you’re already birthed. Do you want to be part of the creative process to move into life? Or do you just want to be the best of life? So as we start the meditation, I encourage you to warm yourself up. Being open to both acceptance of being undeveloped or the courage and inspiration to go for development. And prematurely judging yourself is not the way we want to go. We want to have the grace to acknowledge these feelings to ourselves for sure, without horrible arrows pointing at ourselves, beating ourselves up. And we want to see which direction our needs would naturally take us.

20:56 Guided meditation is for so many people, the best way to truly gain benefit in your response to personal challenges. As you invest in bring your own experience to the guided meditations, you’ll give yourself the best chance to change longstanding patterns from suffering toward a state of well-being, peace, and healing. It’s important to put yourself in a comfortable body position in a private space where you’re not disturbed. Turn off your phone and be ready to really be alert. So as you begin this meditation, just let your attention hover around your heart. And if it feels natural, put one or both hands on your heart. And if nothing else, just feel it as it is and just whisper the words I care about you, even if you haven’t been able to come into this world as much as I wish you could. And as you whisper these words, see if you can sense a response. Is your heart happy with you, unhappy with you? And don’t try to change it. Just be interested in what it shares with you. Listen to your heart. Let your hands be a vehicle of conveying from your wisdom heart to your heart that you wish it well,

23:06 That you know the reason you’re alive includes your wish to bring as much heart as possible to your life. And this hovering around your heart is something that you can and you get to do, whenever you have a free moment. It doesn’t take long. Lie down in bed, you can sit in a chair. So appreciate that you have this capacity to hover around your heart. And as you’re ready, let yourself have the glimpses of where you have felt inadequate and where you might even anticipate that it’s going to continue in your life. And see if you can soften the edges of the inadequacy feelings so that they don’t become exaggerated, really critical. And let yourself see if you can experience it a little bit more as undeveloped, because inadequacy itself, as has been stated, is a little judgmental. Inadequacy, I am with you, I see you, it’s okay because we’re all human. And so it’s natural that you have this feeling. I embrace you, I tolerate you, I accept you. And look and find the part of you that wants to nurture, that wants to be protective, that wants to help the inadequacy feeling evolve.

25:23 I’m not going to abandon you. My presence can last longer than your feeling. I’m with you forever and I’m going to be endlessly asking you, how can I support you? How can I be with you in a way that’s going to allow you to be your best self? I don’t have an agenda. I don’t have immediate answers. This one’s going to require going deeply into the feeling because it’s so unique, which way you’re going to come out to support yourself. Acceptance and developing are almost opposite ends of the spectrum, but they’re both healing depending on the situation you find yourself. See if this makes sense to you. There’s nothing at all inadequate about being undeveloped, especially if you face it honestly and you look at it realistically because it’s universal. We’re all undeveloped. So see if you can imagine those situations, probably especially in intimate relationships, where you could tie in an expression of, in this area, I feel undeveloped, I feel inadequate, and I’d like your help, help me accept or tolerate that in this area, I’m never going to be good at math. I’m never going to be able to read well, I’m never going to be an athlete. I’m never going to be able to change my nose or my skin

27:38 or whatever it is. I want to accept myself. I want to have the courage to be able to go for developing in this way, in this next step where I’m not leaving it vague with just general labels. It might be I’m undeveloped in the area of communication and I want to go see a therapist. I want to talk to a friend that’s a great communicator. I have a capacity that I haven’t developed, or I want to be taller and I can’t be, or I want to have hair and I can’t have hair, and I want the acceptance. So this discovery of your essential needs when the inadequacy is there, is one of the biggest transformational potentials because when we’re feeling inadequate, it has a tendency to want to make it an identity. And because it’s so often hidden, the subconscious makes it grow because we aren’t having conversations with it, the shame and embarrassment so often with it. So appreciate your exploration right now of feelings of inadequacy and see if you’re ready to say inadequacy feelings. I see you, and I’m on your side to give you space to breathe and to listen to you as to how you can be supported.

29:49 Recognize how universal you are, even though you very likely privately feel you are uniquely undeveloped. And see the big breakthrough, maybe even experience the big breakthrough of I now can embrace it, and I can have the question of what direction, what thoughts, what actions, what qualities do I need to bring to these feelings of inadequacy to help me find my heart, find my wisdom, and embrace the feelings of inadequacy. And may you and may we all embrace our feelings of inadequacy and realize that this is the peak of courage, humility, honesty, and integrity. And may this be more and more a part of your world, in our world.

31:20 So just let yourself be honest with whether that is something that you can take in, that your inadequacy feelings can actually be a source of courage, humility, trust in yourself, and that it could be a bridge to other people that are mature, or whether you feel so afraid, so sure that it will be used against you or you’ll be humiliated that you don’t feel that you can move forward outwardly or maybe even inwardly. And then ask yourself the question if this is true, do you have a glimpse? Do you have at least a glimpse of, I may be able to tolerate this. I may even be able to selectively share this with one person. And no matter what, can you see how hard this is for everyone universally and that you’re in great company, but you have a chance to break out of that company? And so if this is an area that’s hard for you to move forward with, recognize how utterly normal it is.

33:07 And hopefully, you have a glimpse that if you can find unusual courage to be able to experience this more inside you, which is the first step, just admitting it inside without adding and piling on shame that you’re on a path to be able to gain the energy that you’ve been stuffing down. And instead, you’re giving yourself room to breathe and recognizing that if you hover around your heart, that it’s very likely that your heart will accept not only your feelings of inadequacy or being undeveloped, but everything. So wishing for this compassion, this heartfelt wisdom to encourage you to be utterly transparent and more and more tolerant of yourself when feelings of inadequacy arise. And recognizing that this is one of the pinnacle points of human evolution. And if you can even glimpse it, that you’re ahead of the pack. And the prayer is that we may all move more and more to see this paradox and this helping us move toward a more sane and adequate world.

35:06 Announcer:

Note: Below, you’ll find timecodes for specific sections of the podcast. To get the most value out of the podcast, I encourage you to listen to the complete episode. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors. For an exact quote or comment, please contact us.

Transcript

00:00 Announcer:

Awareness That Heals, Episode 99.

00:04 Announcer:

The Awareness That Heals podcast helps its listeners learn to develop the capacity to have a more healing response to emotions and situations rather than becoming stuck. Your host, Robert Strock, has practiced psychotherapy for more than 45 years. He wrote the book, “Awareness That Heals: Bringing Heart and Wisdom to Life’s Challenges,” to help develop self-caring and the capacity to respond in an effective way to life’s challenges. Especially at times when we are most prone to be critical or to withdraw Together, we will explore how to become aware of our challenging feelings, and at the same time find alternative ways to live a more fulfilling and inspiring life.

00:46 Robert Strock:

Thanks again for joining us at Awareness That Heals, where we really focus on bringing our heart and wisdom to our life’s challenges. Now, when I just say that, that itself is a miracle for us, not only to identify our life challenges but to really bring our heart or our core best intention to where we suffer, where we’re challenged the most. So, I don’t want you to miss the importance of just that simplicity of awareness of challenges and moving in a direction that’s going to help you be your best self, find the needs that are most beneficial to serve your life. So we start again and again with being aware of what’s most difficult for us and where these difficulties are universal. And by recognizing their universal, hopefully that allows you to see the legitimacy of all your challenging feelings and also critically how we can care for ourselves at these crucial times.

02:13 Today we’re going to deepen how we can ask the kind of questions that are from the heart, which is a crucial capacity that will change our life once we go beyond intellectual understanding and develop it as a practice. Now again, that’s crucial to intellectually understand it is not very beneficial. It’s taking it in deeply enough so that when we have a challenging feeling, we have it as a practice, that we’re going to be aware, so deeply that we have a challenging feeling and we wanna move toward our needs. And you’ll be supporting yourself today by doing a guided meditation that gives you a great chance to discover and support what you most need when challenging feelings and situations arise. And it highlights the importance of being aware of what’s difficult for you and deepening your realization that without it you can’t really move in a healing direction with your wisdom.

03:16 When you realize you’re having a challenging feeling, you’re being encouraged to say, no matter what you feel or how difficult it is, oh good, I can see the challenge and now I have a chance to evolve because I can see it. I’m also an observer, and that observer gives me the chance to move in a direction toward what’s needed, rather than having a reaction that says, oh shit, not that feeling again, which then takes you away from being able to deal with a challenge. This gives you the best chance to use your awareness to move in a direction that fosters your healing and a sense of greater well-being.

04:06 It can’t be stated loudly or clearly or more emphatically than to recognize that this is a major victory. Every time you can observe what you feel when you’re challenged without having any further distancing or judging, almost none of us have been taught how important this is and what an evolutionary step it is to not get paralyzed or go unconscious when we’re challenged. It’s so important that we see that when we identify a challenging feeling, that we recognize the paradox. Cuz if we recognize the paradox that instead of seeing it as shit, we see it as gold, even though we feel it, it doesn’t feel good. But when our awareness can see, this is the key. This is the master key to start with, where we’re challenged to liberate ourselves. Life is utterly empty, if we completely ignore our challenges, cuz then we’re unconscious and yes, we might be able to do certain things, but we’re not going to be able to develop the sweetness in our heart.

05:18 We’re not gonna be able to develop intimacy, we’re not gonna be able to develop our character, we’re not gonna be able to grow. Let yourself keep being guided even as you’re hearing words from me, to stay with your awareness of your challenging feeling. So we’re going to be doing, as you know, a guided meditation. And for those of you that have listened to the prior podcast, you know that the focus is on asking questions that are going to be supportive of your heart and that are coming from your heart and your wisdom and not asking questions that are veiled judgements, like, what in the hell’s wrong with you? Why did you do that? Not, I can’t believe you’re doing this again, and hopefully by now you’ve made that distinction intellectually. The whole point of this next guided meditation is to deepen your capacity to drop into questions from your heart and in a certain way to fall in love with these questions. And that reassuring you that you can afford to stay aware of your challenging feelings because you now have ways and questioning from your heart is one of the major ways.

06:47 Guided meditation is, for so many people, the best way to truly gain benefit in your response to personal challenges. As you invest and bring your own experience to the guided meditations, you’ll give yourself the best chance to change longstanding patterns from suffering toward a state of well-being, peace and healing. It’s important to put yourself in a comfortable body position in a private space where you’re not disturbed, turn off your phone and be ready to really be alert. So, allow yourself to remember something that sounds obvious but isn’t obvious, that you wanna guide yourself in a direction that is gonna care for you and care for others, and that you have a heart and that you want to activate that heart. And just notice as you hear those words, what it stimulates does it stimulate trust? Does it stimulate judgment or inadequacy? Just notice it. Notice what your reactions are and come back to that intention that you know you wanna live a life that is kinder towards yourself, that is more courageous, that is more patient, that allows you to live a quality of life that is your potential. And whatever doubts arise, just simply ask, is it really a legitimate question that I want to care for myself? Or do I want to care for myself?

09:03 Or is it simply just reactions from life where you get lost and you forget? So allow yourself to remember, even though you may have many other feelings that you know somewhere in the depths of your being that you want to care for yourself. And while you’re in the response to that, let yourself ask the question, what is the one challenging emotion either right now or during this time period that is most challenging. And appreciate the fact that you are observing intelligence and that you are being called by it right now for it to be recognized and appreciated? It is asking you to discover what is most difficult so that you can help yourself and recognize that this is utterly paradoxical. Because when you can identify where you feel stuck or where you’re buried, you feel like you’re in quicksand, it gives you the chance to see that you have a need that isn’t met. It also gives you the motivation to deal with an area where a part of you is really struggling. And also to see that if you’re unaware of where you’re challenged, you’re going to be rising above it and it’s still gonna be challenged and you’re not gonna be able to deal with it.

11:25 So see if you can appreciate the importance of having this simple awareness. But for many, it’s not easy to stay focused on it, realize that by being aware of it, it doesn’t reinforce it. It gives you the capacity to move toward well-being. It doesn’t mean that you couldn’t be aware of it and just stay fixated on it. But when you find the awareness of it and you also add that crucial element of, of course I want to care for myself, then it becomes obvious that awareness is the beginning of a gold mine. It’s the beginning of building up another part of your heart. It’s so important to recognize this is not masochistic or a futile exercise. The point is to see what’s hard and to respond in a way that is making even the smallest of steps in a direction of being more fulfilled, peaceful, maybe even inspired. So let yourself keep returning to your challenging feeling and also glimpsing your desire to care for yourself and ask wise questions as to how you can care for yourself more deeply and sense the possibilities. And let it be utterly personal, this is you, being you.

13:26 Nobody else can do this for you. And you may be discovering anxiety, anger, despair, inadequacy, and only you can know for yourself and only you can choose to guide yourself to be there. Don’t be distracted by the words you’re hearing. Stay interested in your own inner experience and continue to ask, where do I get stuck or restricted? Even if you’ve located it already, it’s helpful to realize, oh, it’s not only that I feel this way, I’m stuck here, I’m restricted here. This is painful. And yes, of course when I’m aware I can see I wanna move towards the needs that could help soothe me or strengthen me or give me what I need. You may have words like, I really wanna guide myself or care for myself. Let yourself ask, what is the specific question that gives me the best chance to help myself given what I’m feeling or the challenge that I’m facing? And ask yourself that question, as I repeat it again, what is the specific question that gives you the best chance to help yourself given what you’re feeling or the challenge that you’re facing? What are the thoughts, qualities, and actions?

15:42 That are most helpful? And you may just start with the thoughts. And the thoughts will lead you to ideas of qualities or actions that you can take. This awareness gives you the potential not to just be frozen, but to actively care for yourself and the situation you’re in. Realize, again and again, that these questions will break up the cycle of just being in your challenging emotions and it makes it an alive, dynamic, where forever if you get this, whenever you’re feeling challenged, automatically it sparks the questioner in you that’s coming from the observer that knows you need guidance. You need to ask, what way can I find resources or qualities or actions? And it’s only interested in your well-being. And pay close attention to the tone that you’re asking yourself with. If the tone is gentle or kind or strong or emulates what you need, you know that you’re already well on your way to finding some of the essence of support. And if you see that the tone isn’t, then you want to ask the question again. It’s like finding your music. Finding your rhythm. Inquiring from the heart when you’re not feeling good, is a source of great wisdom itself.

18:05 and could also be called contemplation. And contemplation itself, just asking the questions, can be a state of fulfillment even before you get any answers. Because you can enjoy the live intention of wanting to care for yourself by the tone revealing the caring itself. You might ask, how can I feel courage when I’m afraid? How can I find harmlessness when I’m angry? How can I find trust when I’m confused? Being as exacting about the question as much as you can is an evolution within the evolutionary practice itself. So you wanna be as precise as you can with the question without being perfectionistic. You’re just doing your very best to ask the question that’s central to your difficult feeling. And you wanna remind yourself this is not something you just want to do during a meditation. This is a potential lifestyle. You can get wiser for the rest of your life. You can help the world for the rest of your life in whatever small way, it might be a smile at the grocery store, it might be a touch on the shoulder. As you ask this question, let it relate more and more to the present and the near future.

20:24 As you do that, it becomes more grounded. If we go away off into the future, none of us can do that. If we go into the past, none of us can change that. So let it relate more and more to the present and the near future. In the present, it can include things like tone of voice, the exact thoughts you’re thinking, your body language, how your eyes look. If it’s in the near future, you’re looking at the next day or two, what actions might I be able to take? What attitude do I wanna bring to this relationship that I’m going to see today? And as you more deeply realize that you get to be contemplative. It’s not that you should be, not a moral standard. It’s a gift you’re giving yourself. It’s natural that some gratitude will arise inside you because you’ve found a direction to care for yourself no matter what state you’re in. It will allow you not to be as afraid because you have this capacity that you’ve been developing to be associated where difficult state, uh, helpful question, and it becomes associated immediately. Why wait. If you remember, you won’t wanna wait.

22:23 And recognize I get to ask these questions no matter what’s happening, no matter what I’m feeling. And as you remember this and practice it, notice if you can see that you’ll become more and more liberated and relaxed and trusting and less afraid of whatever’s going to come up emotionally. And see if you can add a little appreciation, cuz you see that you’re going for your own well-being through your sincerity, your honesty, humility, and strength. And end it with a wish. May I carry this with me throughout my life?

23:35 So again, look at where this guided meditation has left you. Hopefully, you’ve been able take in a support that allows you to feel encouraged and more able to trust the benefit of staying with your challenging feelings because you know you now have a path to ask questions from your heart and whatever degree you aren’t having faith yet, that you’ll be able to do that, let this be your motivation to deepen your commitment, to find questions from your heart because it’s going to require reminders. I would even encourage you during your day, you might just say, “questions from your heart,” “questions from your heart,” just to remind yourself when you’re in the challenges, automatically. It’s like an instant association response. And I assure you that when you are really locked into being able to ask questions from your heart, how can I care for you? What do you need? The whole point of asking questions from the heart is to guide you to your own heart that’s connected with other people’s heart and to your own wisdom that’s connected to everyone else’s wisdom. Thanks so much for your attention.

25:12 Announcer: