Happy Enough
Are you truly happy or just “happy enough”?
A trend that I see in counseling is clients who are in long-term relationships and are questioning whether they should stay in the relationship or leave. I hear some variation of “well, I’m happy enough”.
What is “happy enough”? Does that mean overall that life’s a 5/10 on a happiness and joy scale and even though there are glaring, obvious dysfunctions and miscommunication in your relationship, it’s not worth it to the person to try for better?
I’ve seen a couple different mindsets that contribute to a person staying in a relationship even when it’s detrimental for them to do so. The first I would classify as “This Is Probably The Best I Can Get”. This can stem from a place of low self-worth and feeling as though asking for even the bare minimum of their needs to be met is asking too much. This can originate from not having your needs met in childhood, which therapy can help heal.
The second mindset is “I Don’t Have To Be Happy As Long As My Kids Are Happy”. This level of codependence is unhealthy and will set you up for a lifetime of resentment. It will also set your kids up for a lifetime of wishing that you would have made different choices so everyone could be happier. If no one has ever told you this before, you are worth having the life you want to have and the love you deserve.
You’re supposed to have needs in relationships. You’re supposed to have needs if you’re single. You’re supposed to have needs if you’re HUMAN. Basic courtesy, asking your spouse to provide support, affection, emotional labor and kindness are the bare minimums for being in a relationship. If you are with someone who is not providing these things for no reason*, then you need to seriously evaluate whether or not you want to remain in that relationship. (*do NOT come at me if you’re a husband and you’re mad because your wife won’t have sex with you and you spend all your time looking at your phone or in your wood shop or playing video games or drinking in your garage with your friends. Do better.)
I work with couples all the time who are living completely separate lives under one roof. This level of independence in a relationship works for a small percentage of couples, but I find the level of emotional and physical intimacy suffers.
I also work with couples where one party doesn’t see anything wrong with their selfish behavior and expects their spouse to continue to meet their needs. Good luck with that.
I believe we only get one shot at this thing called life and to stay in a relationship where you “guess you’re happy enough” is a tragedy. You can choose to do the work to make things better. Couples therapy can help immensely.
You can also absolutely continue to choose that tragedy.
-KS
February 6th
Every year on February 6th, I think about an old friend who isn’t in my life anymore. It’s bittersweet because the time I spent with this person and the memories we made together opened my eyes to many things and changed the way I saw myself and the world forever.
It might sound a bit dramatic to say that, but this person was the first person I had ever been close to who was highly intuitive, like me. We know from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator that intuitive people are in the minority in society, and that when they meet each other, it feels like kismet. This friend understood me in such a way that not only could they finish my sentences, they could finish my thoughts. We spent countless hours on the phone together (they were at a different school in a different state) when I was in college and the beginning of young adulthood, sharing ideas about the world and our unique perspectives. The hours we talked were in the thousands. The inside jokes were countless. The road trips…..epic.
February 6th is their birthday. I was never able to celebrate them in the way they deserved, because they didn’t like birthdays. They didn’t like the spotlight at all, really. All they needed and wanted from me was my presence, my conversation, and my insight.
They were the first person in my life by whom I felt truly seen. I have never had another friendship like this in the almost 25 years since. Having had someone in my life who I was able to be truly vulnerable and who brought out the best parts of me allowed me to see those things about myself for the first time. If I was smart, funny, engaging, and adventurous in their eyes, maybe I really was those things!
So, every year on this day, I think about them. I think about where they are now and what they might be doing with their life. I wonder if they have ever had another friendship like ours, and for their sake, I hope they have had a multitude of them. I hope their heart is overflowing with the kind of connection we had and they feel seen and loved in all the ways a friend can feel those things, over and over, for life.
I wonder if our paths ever crossed again if we would even like or understand one another, because of the many ways I’m sure we both have evolved and changed. For that reason, I hope we never do. It would break my heart to realize that we no longer have the capacity for connection we had back then. But I will carry those memories with me for the rest of my life, and my heart will smile a little, subtle smile when I’m reminded of something we used to talk about.
The circumstances under which we ended our friendship are complicated, but boil down to me not being satisfied with what we had. It was so magnetic, so indescribably close, that I couldn’t help but think it needed to be something else than what it was. And they were not able to be that, for reasons I know, and reasons I don’t know. It will forever be the most confusing and difficult thing I’ve ever gone through.
It will also forever be the one friendship I will never forget.
Happy birthday, old friend.
Dear Church Camp Friend:
Hi, old friend:
I saw your comment on TikTok under one of my videos in which I share about my deconversion journey. You seem concerned, so I wanted to touch base and let you know a little about my last few years. I know it’s been decades since we’ve seen each other, and honestly, you wouldn’t recognize me now…in many ways.
Back in the day, when we were at church camp together every summer, could you tell I was a complete wreck? Anxious as all get out, worried about every action, every word that came out of my mouth. Was I pleasing God? Was He mad at me? Would I get into Heaven? If I had a crush on a boy, I had no idea what to do with that or how to approach it, knowing that I wasn’t supposed to have “lusty” thoughts, but having them anyway. Then guilt because I couldn’t control my thoughts. I was supposed to want to be modest, and purity culture was an incredibly strict bar that we had to meet. Remember how, at church camp, we had to wear t-shirts over our swimsuits but the boys didn’t? And, how we had to wear shorts that touched our knees, so our moms had to sew them because the stores didn’t sell them that long? I learned at an early age that my body was something to be feared. It could lead a boy to assault me.
I always wanted to be a good friend, too, but that was difficult due to my anxiety. I didn’t want anyone to know that I sometimes got so anxious that I would pull my hair out, because a Good Christian Girl doesn’t drink, or smoke, or sleep around, or any of the other things other teens did when they were anxious, so I had no place for my anxiety to go. And I wasn’t even SUPPOSED to be anxious, because the Bible said “be anxious for nothing”. I felt something must be REALLY wrong with me because I was anxious all the time.
I felt such pressure to save everyone. Like, literally SAVE them. From hell. I was inundated with messaging that put the impetus on me to make sure that my friends and family were all going to heaven, and if they didn’t, that was on me. I remember this from the earliest days of church and church camp, which would have made me about 9 years old. Telling children that they are inherently sinful and wicked, that they cannot trust themselves, their feelings, or their intuition, and that they are singlehandedly responsible for saving other people from eternal torment really seems like emotional abuse from where I sit these days.
About a year ago I decided I was done. I was done allowing an institution to tell me what my value was. I was done outsourcing my coping strategies to things like “give it to God”, “it’ll all make sense in Heaven someday”, and whether or not I was modest enough to protect men from “stumbling”. I also had to take a long, hard look in the mirror and admit that it had been years since I could say I actually believed what the Bible says. I was just afraid of losing my community, my good standing with my friends and family, and my identity.
But let me tell you, friend, it has been incredible. I know you may not believe me, and trust me, I know literally all the rebuttals you might have for me. I know, because I used to use them on other people. If someone stepped away from the church, that just meant they had “taken their eyes off of Jesus” and were “being influenced by the world”. And we had to pray that something would “prick their hearts” and they would “turn from their evil ways”.
So how, you ask, did I get here?
I spent hundreds of hours with hurting people. In my work as a therapist, I have a front row seat to others’ pain. And it was remarkable to me how many people had been hurt by religion. I don’t just mean the fundamentalist cult-like ones, but even the mainstream ones who let them know, in no uncertain terms, that they were NOT OKAY. These people had devoted their lives to organizations who told them they couldn’t trust themselves. They learned codependency from childhood (“I can only be okay if everyone around me is okay”), and they lived with a lack of self-worth like nothing I had ever seen from non-believers. They were afraid, of everything, all the time.
Fear is an amazing control mechanism. If you can make people afraid, you can control them. It was at the moment of this realization that the veil started to lift for me.
I had lived my whole life in fear of a God, of a hell, of disappointing others.
And I was done being afraid. Even if that meant walking away.
So, to sum up…I don’t believe in sin. I don’t believe in heart-pricking, I don’t believe in hell, and I don’t believe in God.
And I’m okay.
I’m actually way more than okay. I’m a hundred times less anxious. I trust myself. I know my worth, and it’s not in being a part of any faith system. I am not constantly worried that I am disappointing Someone who cannot be pleased. I am far more kind, far more loving, and far more understanding than I ever was when I was a Christian. I remember how we used to be taught to be humble and not “full of ourselves”. Well, now I am completely full of myself in the best possible way and it has truly been transformative.
Because I see people now. TRULY see them.
They are not just souls to save to put in the Won column. They aren’t sinners who need Jesus and who need to turn from their wicked ways, they are not pawns in some cosmic chess match. They are humans, and they themselves are divine. It’s weird, when you stop seeing people as saved/unsaved, bad/good, holy/sinful, turns out you are a lot happier and people like you better.
Like I said, I know all the rebuttals and things I can expect from Christians to say to me once they read this. There is nothing you can say that will surprise me. And, friend, I don’t need or expect you to understand. You are going to see things the way you see them for as long as you decide to see them that way. Nothing I can do about that.
In the summer of 1998, while I was a student at a Christian university, I went on a mission to Scotland for 6 weeks. During our training for that mission, we were taught how to knock doors and talk to people about Jesus. The first thing we were supposed to do was establish whether or not the resident we were approaching believed that the Bible was true. If they said, “yes, I believe the Bible is true”, then we knew what to say next to try to convince them that OUR interpretation of the Bible was truer than anyone else’s (how audacious, but whatever). If they said “no, I do not believe that the Bible is true”, we were just supposed to wish them well and move on to the next door, because it was futile to try to argue with someone when your belief foundation was different.
I’m in the latter camp now. Because when you peek behind the curtain and realize it’s just a bunch of old men trying to keep you afraid, everything changes.
-KS
A Boat with No Anchor
Ever since I left religion/Christianity/any kind of a faith system about a year ago, I have struggled with a very lost feeling. From the time I was seven years old, I was told constantly that I was supposed to live every breath for Jesus and to strive to make him happy in everything I did. I was taught to doubt my own thoughts, feelings, and desires because they were sinful and worldly and not of God. I was to outsource my decision making, self-worth and emotional catalog to the Almighty because he would be able to help me make the right decision. He would be the good in me and there was no good in me apart from him. He would help me temper my emotions into something palatable for the churchgoers.
I am now experiencing what I can only describe as the terrifying solace of freedom from all of that.
On Instagram earlier today, Derek Webb (formerly of Caedmon’s Call, a ‘90’s Christian band I loved) posted something on his page about his deconstruction journey. He said “Hey, I know life sometimes feels like death. I can’t explain how I know, but you’ll be ok. You don’t need what you’re losing and what you’ll find on the other side will be immeasurably better. Just don’t lose hope.” I was struck by that and felt he was speaking directly to me today. I commented back, “I think the hard part for me is I know what I’m losing (religion, belief, faith) but I don’t know yet what I’m supposed to find or where to find it. I just feel like a boat whose anchor was pulled up but there’s no map to shore.”
I had never thought of it like that, but that is exactly how I feel. Just tossed around, wondering which way the shore is. So much of my life is like that right now. 2021 was a transformative year for me and my inner life now would be almost unrecognizable to the me of 2020.
In 2020, I was convinced I had found the golden ticket when it came to losing weight, only to find in 2021 that my metabolism was wrecked and the weight was not staying off, no matter what I tried. I also lost the close-knit community that came with the diet plan and ended up feeling incredibly duped and angry.
In 2020, I thought I just needed to find a church that was more progressive and affirming than the one I grew up in, so my husband and I tried out a different one. It just wasn’t right for me either and I knew it. It’s been over a year since I attended a church service, after going 3 times a week for the first 36 years of my life and at least once a week for the next 7. I don’t miss it, for the most part, although it did feel nice to feel like I was a part of something greater than myself. I just can’t reconcile the rest.
Again, duped and angry.
Working from home as a therapist has been an amazing turn of events. Not having to drive 2500 miles a month commuting to the city 5 days a week has saved more than just mileage on the car and money on gas. As an introvert, empath, and highly sensitive person, it saved my sanity in many ways. I absolutely adore being able to do what I feel I was put on this earth to do, but I do feel that such a solitary career contributes to a feeling of isolation and loneliness many days. While I have no plans to change my career, I know I need to seek out other social opportunities.
I have to rebuild what I lost when I removed myself from other communities.
It feels really hard, but I know I have to be able to put some new anchors down.
-KS
Stop Waiting to Live Bigger Until You're Smaller
“I don’t want to do x-y-z at my current size”
“It will be so much fun to do that once I’m smaller again”
“I can’t imagine doing that right now, in this body”
These are thoughts I have multiple times a day. Maybe you can relate. Whether it be dreaming about next football season and attending Chiefs training camp, football games, and tailgates, or looking at summer clothing online and realizing I’m going to have to replenish my entire wardrobe when warm weather comes again. These thoughts make me feel shameful and very discontent with where I am right now.
I saw a TikTok the other day that simply said “Stop waiting to live bigger until you are smaller” and that hit me right between the eyes. How many things do I forego just because I don’t want to have to experience it in the body I’m living in right now?
Sadly, many.
I met with a personal trainer on Friday for a consultation and I feel like I have a lot of work to do on my nutrition before I even begin the gym training part of this transformation. Watching myself try to stretch and show my mobility in those full-length mirrors was brutal. Shame crept in again, pretty hardcore. Then, like clockwork, Facebook Memories popped up this morning and showed me a video of myself last Valentine’s Day when I weighed significantly less.
The reminders are everywhere.
I am trying to remember that I am not the same person I was last year in many ways, and most of them wonderful. I have so much less fear in my daily life. I am not trying to please an unpleasable god and I am not raking myself over the coals because of my life choices. I am also not trying to please people anymore. That feels good.
And even though I am still working on things with my weight, I want to try so hard to continue to live a BIG life even though I am currently in a big body. Not stifle experiences and things I want to do just because I may be a little uncomfortable or sweaty or slow. Life is too damn short.
Who’s with me?
Mending but Impatient
I am tired.
So very tired.
As many of you know, I have been battling with my weight for most of my life. If you can relate, today I want to speak directly to you.
I know how exhausting it is to have mixed, conflicting messages hurled at you from every corner of your world. Scrolling through social media, you see one post touting the latest “health” craze, which is just a restriction diet disguised as a health plan, followed by a post from a “successful” keto disciple, and to finish off your 30 second scroll, a post about how you should love your body no matter the size. The fact that messages exist about needing to be different than you are right now in order to be valuable or desirable is confusing to say the least (and leans toward “maddening”).
Honestly, way too much of my inner dialogue is about food and weight. If I had to estimate, I’d put it at somewhere near 75% of my waking hours when I’m not working. It’s either “what are we going to eat for breakfast/lunch/dinner”, attaining and preparing said food, holding myself to an impossible standard about what I should or shouldn’t be eating, and then raking myself over the coals based on my less-than-ideal choices.
Full disclosure: I am struggling immensely with everything related to food and body image right now. I have faith in myself and am trusting the process, and I am going to get there….but I am not there.
It’s mourning the loss of those jeans I can’t wear anymore and the several trash bags full of clothes I have given away because they don’t fit.
I have 2 pairs of jeans that fit and 7 that don’t. I don’t know why I can’t let go of them, but I just can’t.
It’s seeing myself in pictures from a year ago (thanks, Facebook) and remembering what it felt like to be lighter. Not just physically, but emotionally. I was happy. Elated, proud, accomplished. I had lost 175 lbs. and was thinner than I’d been since high school. And I thought I was doing the right thing.
Now I know that I was also starving myself—but being told (by people who were profiting off my desperation) that I was doing something good for myself (and others, but that’s a whole other post). It felt good to feel like I was treating myself with love, but I know now I was just putting myself in a worse situation. I have a lot of shame around that whole part of my life. A ton of shame.
I know from listening to Dr. Brene Brown that shame does nothing good for us. It keeps us trapped, isolated, disconnected. Am I super jazzed to see people I haven’t seen in several months who were so complimentary about my weight loss? I’m pretty nervous about it, actually. Do I want to write a blog post about how most of my thoughts are about food and berating myself for gaining weight back after losing so much? No. Do I want to feel stuck and hopeless and terrified of gaining it all back? Also no. (Am I getting help for this? Yes, but it is not a quick journey, much to my impatient dismay).
Do I worry constantly that the people who praised me for my weight loss and were kinder to me then are silently judging me for my weight gain and putting me back in the “do not engage with” category? Pretty much every time I go outside.
Do I have to remind myself what my dietician tells me—-that if someone has a problem with the way I look that it is THEIR problem and not mine? Every day. Does my head know that and my heart not fully believe that yet? Also yes.
I am very fortunate to have people in my life who loved me at 350 lbs., at 170 lbs., and love me now. I understand this is not always the case. But, no matter where you are on the scale right now, today, or where you are at on your journey toward self-love and acceptance, I see you and I care about you. You are worth having a life full of peace of mind and peace about your body.
I am too. We are mending. We will get there, together.
On Mending
You don’t have to heal.
Let me say that again…you don’t have to heal.
You can absolutely continue to look at the emotional wound, trauma, addiction, breakup, neglect, or dysfunction in your life and sit in it. Forever, if you want to. You can continue to tell the story of why your life is miserable, why you can’t move forward, and why other people should have acted differently towards you. You can chalk another heartbreak up to the fact that “people suck” and choose to continue to numb out that painful feeling with another bottle of wine, pint of ice cream, or six-hour Netflix binge. You can spend an entire evening replaying the events of your past few years and assigning blame to the major players, who, with their selfish and destructive intrusion, have robbed you of achieving your full potential. You can choose to ooze bitterness out of your every pore because life and people and circumstances have royally screwed you over.
You absolutely get to choose to do that.
But what if you didn’t?
What if, instead of continuing to evaluate your life through the filter of your trauma or adverse experiences, you chose to mend them, like a sock with a gaping hole in the toe?
The thing is, we all have a metaphorical “hole in our sock” at some point in life. Maybe we were born into poverty, go through a divorce, or face a medical diagnosis that “doesn’t look good”. Some of us might have lost a child, either to death or rejection once they became an adult. Conversely, the rejection we have experienced might have come at the hands of a parent, who by all accounts, is supposed to love us…and because of their own personal demons, was unable to do so in a healthy or consistent way. Maybe we have been saddled with an addiction that we cannot seem to shake no matter what we have tried.
I feel like we have all experienced something that needs mending….but we do have a choice whether to heal that hole in our life or continue to carry it around like a backpack with rocks in it. “Mending”, as far as this community is concerned, just means continuing to choose to do the emotional work to heal, on a daily basis.
So, why take this journey toward healing? Why not just accept your “lot in life” and do your best with what other people and circumstances have dumped on you?
“If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll continue to bleed on people who didn’t cut you”- Unknown
People who are not mending continue to cause harm to those around them, whether physically, mentally, or emotionally. They perpetuate cycles of abuse, neglect, addiction, and lay waste to the relationships in their lives. They are distant, cold, or abusive parents….or go to the other side of the continuum and show enmeshment and codependency with their children. Either way, they’re bleeding on those who didn’t cut them. They don’t realize they are hamstringing the next generation by not mending these wounds themselves.
If you’re in a relationship and you’re bringing your unhealed emotional wounds…be prepared for a bumpy ride. Expecting another person to carry things never meant for them to carry, or put up with your toxic behavior (that is coming from a place that needs mended) is a recipe for disaster. I wonder how many relationships could have thrived, not just survived, if mending was done on the part of both partners. So many people just don’t know that they have the option to heal. They consider happiness, security, and peace just something that “isn’t for them”.
Employees who aren’t mending are a poison to their work environment. Continually bringing drama and upheaval to those around them, they are also bleeding on those who didn’t cut them. This becomes especially bad for all involved when those employees are in positions of authority and who are creating a culture that is mentally taxing and overwhelming, creating a ripple effect that is felt all the way from CEO to custodian.
Here’s what people who are not mending look like:
-resentful and bitter because they were dealt a “raw deal”
-heartbroken and fixated on their ex who chose another path
-compulsive spenders, exercisers, gamblers, substance users, and those addicted to the emotional rush of being in a new relationship (with no intention of seeing it through)
-insomniacs who can’t shut off the hamster wheel of crippling anxiety
-burned-out employees who spend their lunch break face-down in fast food in order to escape the reality that they hate their lives
-singles who just know that happiness is just the next “right swipe” away
-young adult children who blame their parents for everything that is going wrong in their lives
This list is by no means exhaustive…it encompasses most of us, because most of us are not mending. I think we are just trying to get through today, through the next meeting, through the next season, through the next emotional valley. We don’t realize that there is an alternative. That alternative is mending...choosing to do the emotional work to heal.
So, let’s say you’re ready. You realize you don’t want to continue to tread water emotionally in your life and you’re ready to heal. What now?
I’m glad you asked.
Mending looks different for each person because the “hole in our sock” is never the same. For some, intensive psychotherapy would be incredibly beneficial. For others, medication or a change in diet might be just the thing to get them started down this road. Some people need to consciously start to form healthier connections in their lives to replace the toxic ones they are leaving behind.
I feel that while the entire mending journey looks different from person to person, there are some steps each of us can take to reach a better understanding of our self-worth, capacity for emotional safety, and potential. I use the acronym SELF to describe what the first stage of this change can look like, and some benchmarks to know that we are on the right path. Achieving success in these four areas can show us that we are indeed ready to start mending in the ways we need to do so.
S – Silence the Voices
We have all been given messages about our worthiness, either directly or indirectly, from people in our past. Maybe your father told you explicitly that you could never be as great as your brother, or just never gave you any tasks at home because he assumed you couldn’t do them. Sometimes we receive messages about our worthiness when we ask out the cute boy in class and he tells us he’d “rather date his dog” than go out with us (I won’t use all personal examples, but that one stung pretty good).
Silencing the voices means taking back the authority about our worthiness from people who had no business having it in the first place. We are worthy, we have always been worthy, and we will always be worthy of having the life, love, and level of emotional connection we desire. Once we can start to believe that, our lives start to change.
E – Erase the Tapes
Thoughts about ourselves play on a loop in our head like a cassette tape from the ‘80’s. On that tape are either healthy, supportive, and self-compassionate messages or detrimental, mean, and critical ones. We get to choose. Erasing those “tapes” and writing something emotionally nourishing can make a remarkable change to our capacity to mend. No one would want someone following them around every day telling them how awful they are…but seem to have no problem when those intrinsic self-talk tapes sound that way.
Getting rid of the internal “drill sergeant” and finding our internal “best friend” is crucial, especially when making the choices it takes to mend. We aren’t going to do it all right the first time, and having a safe place to land emotionally (even in our own minds) makes all the difference.
L – Lose the Comparison
We are inundated with Instagram images of people and families who seem to have it all together. I call this the “Picture on the Mantle” phenomenon. Have you ever walked into someone’s house and they had a huge picture on their mantle, with everyone in matching white shirts and khaki shorts and they were all sunkissed and enjoying a moment on a beautiful beach somewhere? Can I tell you what they were probably doing right before this picture was taken? Complaining, arguing, grumbling about where they had to stand, or what they’d rather be doing? Nobody puts THAT picture on their mantle.
Losing the comparison sometimes means getting back in your own lane and not keeping up with the Joneses, who, let’s be honest, are also a mess. It can also mean letting go of the comparison or pressure to be something you used to be, or someone else feels like you should be. It is calling your reality what it truly is…so we know where we need to truly mend.
F – Find Your Emotional Safety
Physical safety is something we are all pretty familiar with, but emotional safety can be a lot harder to attain. I feel it is imperative to understand that our emotional safety has to be found within. When we outsource our emotional safety to others, there is always a chance that they will disappoint us, reject us, or let us down. When we are able to understand that inside of us lives a place where we can be emotionally safe and take care of ourselves in the ways we need to, there is a great freedom and ability to heal.
This inner knowing, or anchor, or compass (or another visual representation that speaks to you individually), reminds us that we will be okay no matter what. When we can truly believe that, we are one step closer to living in our fullest potential and creating the life we have always wanted.
I will be elaborating more on the SELF steps as we continue on this journey together.
I’ll say it one more time….you don’t have to heal. I do, however, believe and know that you can be on a mending journey and your quality of life can be so much better than it is today.
-Krystal Shipps, LPC