Category Archives: Depression

Superwoman Under Stress: How to Overcome Over-Responsibility & Guilt

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I’ve encountered, through my work, many professionally successful women who struggle with immensely stressful lives.  It seems that they are pulled in so many directions that they’re breaking under the strain of their responsibilities.  They feel trapped in a life of unhappiness where every day is just about making it through the day with what little’s left of their energy reserve.  Having a successful career seems to come at a price, and this is especially true if you’re a woman. 

Whilst a lot of men’s issues can be traced to an unwillingness to grow up and be responsible, many women suffer from feeling overly responsible for those in their lives.  For one thing, women are naturally nurturing.  We have an inbuilt sense of needing to nurture the emotional needs of others.  Men, on the other hand, tend to act on a need to provide materially for their family and friends.  This is one of the ways the genders are wired differently and it is this kind of difference that make men and women complement each other so beautifully in relationships.  But while these different tendencies are our innate gifts that help foster closer relationships with one another, they can cause a great deal of confusion in certain contexts.   

Feeling emotionally responsible can be a curse, it can generate guilty feelings.  As I’ve written in previous posts, guilt is a corrosive energy that eats you up from the inside and quickly erodes your sense of worth.

Typically, a woman who holds a highly-demanding job and also has a family to look after can feel overwhelmed by responsibilities that go beyond her duties.  It is not just about juggling a career and family – often, a woman running a business will feel responsible towards her employees who have become like her extended family members, and she feels a level of responsibility for their welfare that exceeds that of an employer’s.  Thus, even when outwardly she is capable of making hard business decisions that affect her employees, the stress that builds up from guilty feelings can accumulate overtime.  For instance, making the decision to terminate the employment of someone is never easy, but for someone who feels guilty about not fulfilling her role as multiple nurturer, her guilt can reach damaging levels.   

This stress will tend to spill over to her family life and make her more distant with her family as she struggles with these uncomfortable feelings which are made worse by her sense of failure as chief nurturer for her spouse and children.  Concurrently, she may also feel she has failed as a friend as she judges herself to be doing insufficiently to support her friends or to fulfil her various roles in her social and community circles. 

If this sounds a bit like your life, try these suggestions: 

#1  Time-Off, Get Away

Find a time away from your environment.  Remove yourself from all sources of guilt, i.e. what triggers you to feel guilty (family, work, etc).  Even if you can only find half a day, it will give you back so much in terms of clarity of thought and energy.  It will also allow you to connect to your true self again, get to know your own needs and give you a chance to nurture your needs for a change.  Bringing back some balance this way will allow you to go back to your environment with a fuller tank and better ability to nurture others.     

For this reason, it is imperative to make it a priority to put aside some time for yourself every day.  Asking someone who is caught in a life of over-responsibility and guilt to take time out for herself on a daily basis is often met with resistance, as she is convinced it is impossible to find any free time from her busy schedule.  But it’s essential to find that time or you risk becoming even more unhealthy and unhappy.  Challenge yourself if you think you can’t possibly sacrifice anything from your schedule to create a slot for yourself.  Think of the consequences of burning out if you didn’t do something to correct that imbalance now.  

#2  Give Up Being Control Freak

Those close to you might have joked about you being a control freak.  Even if you tend to laiugh it off, ask yourself honestly if you might be just a bit too attached to your roles.  If so, you are putting in too much effort trying to control outcomes.  Most women are resistant to give up this control because it makes them feel like they’re not being a responsible mother/wife/boss.  But if you’re too controlling as a mother/wife/boss, giving up some of this control will make you a more responsible mother/wife/boss.  This is because when you’re stressed out from the crazy need to control, you will express your frustrations to those around you and end up doing the opposite of nurturing the emotions of those you love. 

One of the symptoms of being too controlling is depression.  I believe that depression is caused by an excess of giving or efforting.  When we focus all our energy on controlling, our energetic system becomes blocked: there is no flow of creative energy or life-force – and we feel drained, discouraged, uninspired.  In this state, you are useless as a nurturer.  Magic happens when you let go of this illusional control.  It opens up avenues, options, ways out – and you find your power again. 

#3  Take Risks, Delegate

In your efforts to control outcomes, you leave no room for mistakes.  Striving for high standards may be a good thing but it can cross the line of being healthy when it becomes an obsession.  A lot of the stresses of a ‘high-powered’ career woman can be alleviated by a willingness to delegate.  Yet she imagines that the consequences of not doing the work herself will add to her burdens.  Nobody can do it better than I can, is a common protestation.  If this is you, let go of perfectionism.  What you deem to be perfect is only one way of looking at things, and giving up your idea of what is perfect will relieve you of so many of the unecessary burdens you’ve chosen to carry.  Accept that mistakes may be made by those to whom you delegate the work.  Allow room for mistakes to be made, knowing that it will correct itself in time. 

#4  Create Distance From Your Critical Voice

Take a moment to notice that critical voice in you.  Pay attention to what it’s saying to you:  You’re a bad mother.  You’re a heartless bitch.  You’re not good enough.  You stupid woman.  You’ve done it again, haven’t you!  

This is the voice of your inner critic.  But you have adopted it as your own voice and you are totally convinced about what it is saying to you.  Reclaim your power from your inner critic by acknowledging that you are not your inner critic and it is not you.  It is just a voice that has taken on the messages from certain authorative figures in your life.  Creating a distance from your inner critic and its beratings will allow you to assess yourself in every situation more rationally instead of automatically buying into what it is saying. 

As strange as it may sound, your inner critic’s role is to protect you from being hurt.  Quite likely, as a child, you had learnt that certain behaviours brought on painful consequences.  For instance, you learned that after school when you went outside to play instead of doing your homework, your mother would scold you for being lazy and punished you.  To prevent you from being punished again, your inner critic serves to remind you what not to do again, over and over.  Acknowledge its intention but know that it is operating in the wrong context. 

#5  Learn To Say No

When you’re feeling like you have a thousand things to do, the only way out is to say no.  Saying no does not mean having a confrontation; you can be firm but polite, and firm does not mean hard or harsh.  Be gentle yet unwavering.  When you state what you want without any guilt or apology, people will likely accept it without drama.

Notice how your inner critic is making it difficult for you to say no.  Again, acknowledge why it is saying what it’s saying, and go ahead and do it anyway.  Notice the screechy and exaggerated tone of its warnings, designed to scare you off.  Refuse to be scared off from your efforts to nurture yourself.  Feel the satisfaction and excitement as you make your own choice, independent of what your critical voice is saying. 

#6  Celebrate Your Compassionate Nature

Turn your attention for a moment to acknowledge the part of you that is compassionate.  Sure, if you worry yourself sick over too many people’s welfare, you’re being overly responsible.  But it doesn’t take away from the fact that it is based on a positive quality.  Now strip it down back to its basic quality which is love.  Recognising that there is love at the heart of your problem can motivate you to see yourself in a more positive light.  After years of listening to your inner critic, it’s easy to believe that you’re a highly flawed human being.  It comes from focusing too much on how you’re not delivering, which will actually take you further away from love.  On the other hand, focusing on the aspect of love behind your intention can bring you closer to fulfilling your role as nurturer, to yourself as well as to others. 

#7  Learn To Nurture Yourself

It is interesting how women are natural nurturers but often we don’t know how to nurture ourselves.  There’s an almost self-sacrificing nature in us.  It is imperative that you learn to nurture yourself or else you’ll be driven to manipulate others to get their love and approval.  Nobody but you can give you what you need.  When you learn to nurture your own needs, you keep your relationships clean without acting out any unfinished business you may have with your parents in the context of your relationships.  Look at your unmet needs and think about how you can provide for yourself emotionally. 

Bear in mind that self-nurturance is an attitude rather than a list of things to do.  How might you change the way you relate to yourself?  Could you see yourself through a different lens, or modify the way you think about yourself?  Turn that compassion towards yourself and forgive yourself for the little things you beat yourself about. 

#8  Strengthen Your Sense of Self

When you have a strong sense of yourself, you’re less likely to burn out from the demands of your roles.  It’s valuable to spend some time to get clear about who you are, beyond your roles as mother, wife, boss.  These roles have shaped your identity and you have adopted this identity as your immediate reference of who you are.  Yet who you are goes deeper than your ability to fulfil these roles.  What inspires you?  What drives you to become more than who you are being now? 

Pay attention to your emotions; they give you clues about your inner self.  Notice and acknowledge what is going on in your emotional world.  Explore your inner world – the dark and the light in you, the weak and the strong, the good and bad.  Observe the spectrum of emotions in you and what motivates you.  What makes you special?  Who are you, without your identity? 

#9  What Are Your Hiding?

Work, business, and your sense of responsibility for others, may be an escape – a way for you to mask unprocessed emotions.  Ask yourself what you might be afraid to face if you took away your identity as the boss or whatever your job title is, the reliable friend, the supportive wife, etc.  In other words, you may be creating dramas to distract you from your inner turmoils.  These dramas, including the generated anxiety, may act as your drug and you are addicted to it (see my next post on this subject).

Working on your personal issues will give you back some control and sanity when you realise that a bulk of your stresses are unconsciously created by you yourself.  You can then make an empowered choice to let go of this pattern and create a calmer, more fulfilling lifestyle.  

 

I wrote this article not to highlight the weaknesses of the female gender or to diminish the sense of nurturance in women.  Rather, it’s to show you a more empowered way to embrace the beauty of being a woman in the context of operating in the business world where our sense of responsibility can sometimes be overdriven and cause us problems.  When you turn that nurturing quality to yourself, your perception of how much work there is outside of you will change.  That old adage, “You need to be selfish in order to be selfless,” is never truer.  You need to take care of yourself first before you can take good care of others.       

Unleashing Creativity Without Using Drugs

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There is a belief among many whose profession lies in churning out creative works that drugs enable them to tap into their creative well, that without drugs they could never produce the works that have earned them their professional recognition.  Writers, musicians, artists whose lifestyles involve indulging in too much drugs and alcohol usually find it a huge struggle to give up the substance they’ve become addicted to when they embark on stopping their subtance abuse.  This is the main challenge for every ‘creative type’ individual I have worked with in addiction.

On a lesser level, even those who are not dependent on creative output for a living also struggle with the idea that their creativity may be dampened when they stop using.  By the time someone comes to rehab, their substance abuse usually has become so deeply entrenched and intertwined in every facet of their lives that they have relied on the substance to see them through every task that requires effort.  Even when under the influence of the substance their cognition may be impaired and their senses dulled, they have come to belief that they can get through their day-to-day activities quicker and easier.  Without the substance, they fear, life would be boring and flat, as the substance has enabled them to go to certain places they otherwise would not (or be able to) go – mainly related to their self-expressions.

Creativity isn’t just for the ‘creative types’ or those with too much time sitting in front of a piece of paper or canvas trying to produce creative works.  It is a much needed quality in every aspect of our lives.  What is creativity?  Creativity is, to me, simply the ability to put ideas together in new ways.  It may be expressed in the form of visual artwork (combining shapes, colours, textures, media in new ways), writing (combining words, concepts, storylines in new ways), or musical pieces (combining notes, rhythm, melodies, sounds, genres in new ways).  We may also express creativity when finding solutions to tricky problems, and this may be expressed in the form of a unique business plan, a clever PR or lobbying campaign, a win-win action in a personal relationship issue, or a fantastic vacation trip.  Therefore, without creativity, life would be pretty dull and mundane.

In fact, the sense of deep fulfilment that comes from being creative is similar to life force itself.  When we are being creative, we are in a flow of experiencing Passion and Inspiration – a kind of hypnotic feeling that takes us to the part of us that is divinely powerful.

I strongly believe it is a myth that we need drugs to reach our highest creative potential.  Drugs do not contain a magical property that makes us creative.  Rather, they remove our inhibition towards self-expression – i.e. the mental/emotional block which gets in the way of our creativity flowing is removed for us so that we are able to express ourselves without censoring.  With our inhibition removed, we become more daring in expressing ourselves, bypassing any fear of rejection and inadequacies that usually cause us to close the door to our inner creative source.  As we continue to keep that door opened, our creative energy is able to flow freely, and we are able to sense the deep fulfilment that comes from being creative.

Whether we use drugs or not, our creativity will flow with the absence of that block.  Therefore, the underlying issues behind the block need to be addressed and alternative ways of removing the block explored in the treatment of substance abuse for those who strongly depend on their substance of choice to boost their creative output.

In the same way that people consume alcohol or drugs to boost their social confidence – believing that they need that substance to take away the discomfort of interacting with others and to allow them to feel free in expressing themselves – drugs and alcohol have become a quick way, a short cut, to reach our space of creativity.  The function of the substance in both cases is the same: to remove the layer of fear which prevents us from freely expressing ourselves.

Fear of Embarassment & Shame

You may fear being rejected because you’re afraid that what you produce isn’t going to be good enough in the eyes of other people; or a fear of embarassment, shame or humiliation when others judge you for your expression.  The crux of which is the belief that you are somehow flawed or inadequate.  Relying on substance to make us feel more comfortable in expressing ourselves allows us to escape taking responsibility for ourselves: somewhere in our mind, we are aware that a drug has been consumed and somehow it is this powerful substance that is doing the expression for us.  Because it is the drug, and not us, that is deemed to be doing the work, we have an excuse for when the rejection comes – i.e. that we are not fully responsible for this expression and therefore whatever we are being judged for isn’t entirely a reflection of who we are.  Hence, the drugs serve as an escape clause for being told that we are flawed.

When I was suffering from depression, I often found it easier to write creatively.  At times, I would harness feelings of pathos and tragedy to deepen my emotional pain.  Through the depth of pain, I was able to reach into my creative source and express my truth from that space.  Like drugs, depression is sometimes used as a tool to unleash our creativity.  ‘Creative types’ like poets and artists have a hard time giving up their melancholy as they believe it helps maintain their connection to their creative genius.  In a sense, depression and melancholy are altered states which allows us to momentarily suspend our ‘ordinary’ identity to justify our creative output.  Like drugs, depression gives us the reason, the excuse, to express ourselves freely.

Fear of Having Little Creativity

Another fear that prevents us from freely expressing ourselves may be a belief that we are not naturally creative.  That only certain people are born with extraordinary creative abilities, whilst the rest of us need special assistance to force out of us whatever latent creative potential we may have.  This is not true.  Even those who are ‘creative types’ have periods when their creativity is blocked, supporting the premise that it is not that some of us are born more creative than others.  I believe that everyone has the same creative abilities and potential, the only dfference is how freely we can express our creativity.

If the channel from our source of creativity, through our expressiveness, into our space of creation, is unblocked, then creative energy flows.  The source of creativity is constant; it always holds its infinite potential.  What is being created depends on how freely and easily we express ourselves.  Understanding this point is vital to addressing what impedes our creativity.  Once we recognise that our source of creativity is infinite, that we do not have to be ‘special people’ in order to be creative, we can work on relaxing those mind-directed fears that narrow our channel of expression.  Allowing ourselves to freely expressing ourselves is what unblocks our creativity.

Removing Blocks to Creativity

You’ve probably heard of the saying, “Your external world is a reflection of your inner world.”  Meaning, you can look at what is happening in your world and examine where it might be a metaphor for what is going on inside of you.  Similarly, your actions and behaviours, as well as the people and things around you, can have direct influence on shaping your internal world.  That is why, changing your external world must involve the changing of your inner world, and vice-versa.  To ease the flow of your self-expression as a channel for creativity, it helps to look at how you might be holding yourself back in some area of your life.  Where in your life are you stuck?

By ‘stuck’, I refer to a state of being unhappy yet unable to get out of the situation.  The staleness and stagnation becomes a dense energy that blocks creativity from being expressed.  Creating movement will encourage that energy to flow.  An effective way to unblock creativity is to change your environment or to make yourself do something new, thereby injecting freshness that can dissipate the block.  The idea is to move the energy of stuckness.  Sometimes, the stuckness shows up as rigidity in your physical body.  Move the energy of stuckness by physically moving.  Many people have reported being more creative immediately after exercise or massage.  I have found that most of my creative ideas come when I’m travelling in a bus or airplane.  You can also create movement by moving projects along, doing something different or differently, and being spontaneous.  Movement breaks down the blocks to creativity.

The way I see it, drugs work because it creates movement on a more micro level.  It changes the bio-chemicals in our body and puts us in a different state.  Rather than attributing any increased creativity to the actual bio-chemical changes, I attribute it to the fact that there has been movement.  The movement itself, not the nature of the changes, is what triggers creativity.  There is a psychological factor of expecting drugs to do certain magic which promotes a bigger expectation of change, which in turn encourages more actual change.  Yet it is this expectation that results in bigger or more movement, which breaks down the block.

Another way of creating movement is by reaching deeper into your creative source.  If you’ve been used to having drugs in your system, the absence of drugs will leave you vulnerable to raw emotions.  Staying in that space of vulnerability and being honest about what is there will allow you to reach places deep within yourself and bring out more authentic expressions.  As a result, your creative output will tend to have a more personal, authentic flavour.  It may take time to get to this place as it takes courage to remain vulnerable and look at yourself honestly.  But the rewards are worth the trust and patience it takes.  With time, you will find that the works you produce will be better than ever.

In the course of reaching this space, you may feel flat at times – as if there is nothing there.  Where there appears to be nothing, there is silence.  Drop into the space of silence.  It is the realm where everything is found.  It’s a free fall into your creative source.  Without trying to conjure up anything, ideas will flow naturally.  Immersing yourself in silence is like standing before the very point of creation – where the infinite potential of creativity is about to explode into manifestation.

Two weeks ago, I was inside an abandoned tunnel that was totally devoid of light and sound, where I had a cool experience of being simultaneously at the beginning and the end of Creation.  I was the Creator standing in infinite space – a blank canvas for my creativity.  Yet the nothingness contained an infinity of everything that is possible.  The silence within us can lead us to that space.