Jeremy Mohler

Writer and meditation teacher

How to cope with the emotional dumpster fire that is 2020

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I’ve been a broken record recently playing all the Pema Chödrön hits. But, get this:

[When] you wake up in the middle of the night with an anxiety attack and when you can fully experience the taste and smell of it, you are sharing the anxiety and fear of all humanity. People’s stories are different, their situations are different, but the experience is the same.

This pandemic just won’t end, will it? Wildfires. Hurricanes. Record unemployment. Winter around the corner. Two old men fumbling through an election, one of them a flat out racist, the other unwilling to stand for anything that would actually change people’s lives.

Everyone I know is suffering on multiple fronts. We repeat, mantra-like, “There’s just so much going on in the world.” Even pets are acting needier than usual.

But what Pema is getting at is: At least we’re not alone. We might be physically isolated. We might be tired of interacting through little boxes on screens. But we’re all feeling more or less the same emotions: anxiety, impatience, fear, anger, loneliness.

The trick is to just admit that they’re there. Don’t hide from them. Don’t beat yourself up for feeling them. Don’t take them as evidence that something’s wrong with you. Because your best friend, your neighbor, your postal worker feels them too.

My default move is hiding from uncomfortable feelings, stuffing them down and pretending everything’s fine.

But not the other day. During a group therapy session, someone teased me in a way that embarrassed me. Just like that I was 14 again, worried about what the girls in class think. My stomach squeezed up in that familiar way. I felt a million miles from the little boxes on the screen.

But because the group therapist had created such a safe space, another part of me felt secure, solid, stable. Instead of hiding, I was able to notice how curious I was. Wow, look how scared part of me is, I thought. I wonder what it was that triggered me. What if I just allow this discomfort to be here?

That’s what we have to try to bring to our inner world, that curiosity. That unconditional positive regard, as the psychologist Carl Rogers called it.

“People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be,” Rogers once wrote. “When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, ‘Soften the orange a bit on the right-hand corner.’ I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.”

Once I got curious and “fully experienced the taste and smell” of the embarrassment, it didn’t feel so overwhelming. I even was able to tell the group that I felt a little scared. They, of course, accepted me. I was less alone—less like a 14-year-old in gym class. Less like I’m the only person who’s afraid in the whole wide world.

Rogers, again: “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

Start small. You don’t have to work with your feelings about the pandemic, about Trump, about climate change, all at once.

Just try to stay by the fire a little longer when you feel that familiar tightness. When you’re feeling lonely on a Friday night. When your partner falls asleep without saying they love you. When your boss wants you to work late again.

Pema with the mic drop:

We can close our hearts to life to try to protect ourselves against difficult circumstances. Or we can let difficulties soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.

I’m a writer, meditation teacher, and host of the Meditation for the 99% podcast. If you’d like to work with me on your meditation practice or being more mindful in your life, reach out. Get my writing straight to your email inbox here.

Download my free ebook on starting and sticking with a meditation practice here.

How I turned my anxiety into an ally for getting sh*t done (and actually relaxing)

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Our endless fears, worries, and resentments make life harder. But what if — like the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche once put it — we could turn our unsettled mind into an ally?

That’s what I’ve been doing recently, at least with one of my big worries. I’ve been taking Sundays completely off — no plans, no work, no obligations. I let the day unfold at its own pace, doing whatever feels right in the moment.

If I feel like turning around during an aimless walk, I turn around. If I want to lay on the couch and read all day, I do it.

A year ago, this wasn’t possible. A part of me couldn’t let go of the to-do list. I’d try to relax but also sneak in some writing or cleaning or running errands. I’d reason with myself that I’d worked all week, so I should relax. By the end of the day, I’d feel restless — worn-out but tense and fidgety.

What changed? My relationship to this striving, hustling, checking-off-the-to-do-list part of myself — which I’ve named “Striver.”

“Repetitive patterns in our lives are messengers,” says psychotherapist and meditation teacher Ralph De La Rosa. “There’s truly nothing wrong with any of us — we’re just lacking in clarity and compassion.”

There’s nothing wrong with me. In fact, my relentless hustle is what got me up this morning to write this blog post.

But ignoring Striver — which is what I used to do on Sundays — doesn’t do any good. Neither does numbing out. When I used to get drunk or high on Sundays, I’d still feel that anxious restlessness come nighttime.

What changed is I started bringing clarity and compassion — as De La Rosa says — to my experience.

Clarity is noticing when Striver appears in my mind. Oh, there you are, Striver, I note in my mind, when striving thoughts arise.

Compassion is accepting and even welcoming Striver. Take the day off, little buddy. If you rest today, you’ll be stronger tomorrow.

Usually, Striver will keep butting in throughout the day — because that’s just what he does. But each time, I acknowledge his presence and tell him to relax. When Striver rests, I can rest — like truly rest.

We’ve all got striving parts and lazy parts and righteous parts and lonely parts and scared parts and all kinds of parts. The trick is changing how we relate to them. From ignoring or outright hating them to welcoming their anxious, wild, powerful energy.

Think about how powerful you’d be if fear, anger, and anxiety weren’t holding you back. Rather, what if they were on your side?

As the socialist feminist poet Adrienne Rich wrote in her poem “Integrity”:

Anger and tenderness: my selves.
And now I can believe they breathe in me
as angels, not as polarities.

I’m a writer, meditation teacher, and host of the Meditation for the 99% podcast. If you’d like to work with me on your meditation practice or being more mindful in your life, reach out.

Download my free ebook on starting and sticking with a meditation practice here

Stop waiting for everything to get back to ‘normal’

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Close the other browser tabs, put your phone in a drawer, and take a few deep breaths. Ask yourself, silently, internally, “How am I holding back? What am I waiting for?”

Not in the sense of, I should be doing more. With wide open curiosity. In the sense of, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” as the poet Mary Oliver asks.

Part of me is waiting. For things to be just right. For all my work to be done. For the weather to be perfect. For enough money in my savings account. For the lover I’ve always wanted. For the community I’ve so badly needed. For coronavirus to be over so we can get back to “normal.”

Occasionally, I am awoken, and the part of me that’s waiting let’s go. In the dark morning my dad would come to take me fishing. Hank Williams Jr. cassette tapes and the windows down on the way to the river. The smell of the boat engine’s gasoline. Its phosphorescent sheen in the water. Largemouth bass jumping as the sun rises. Life was living through me, as it always is — but I wasn’t stopping it.

Nowadays it’s a friend pointing out a hawk above us. Or a bite of a good meal. Or when I volunteer at the food bank.

And sometimes, even rarer, I wake myself up. I somehow remember to be mindful, to not be so hard on myself when I realize I’ve forgotten to pay attention. To not see my preoccupation as more evidence that I’m sleeping through life. To not hold myself liable — because, what is a “self” anyway?

Stephen Jenkinson, a social worker who has worked for many years in palliative care, says, “You’re not supposed to feel bad about having forgotten. You’re supposed to feel more. That’s the invitation.”

What I hear in that is this: When you realize you’re waiting for something that will never come, don’t pull back even more. Get curious. Step towards the mystery. Stop resisting life because you’re afraid of what comes at the end of it — because that’s coming, whether you resist or not.

In other words, assure that part of you that’s holding back that it’s okay to back off, surrender, let go. Whisper the words of Elizabeth Gilbert in its ear: “You are afraid of surrender because you don’t want to lose control. But you never had control; all you had was anxiety.”

I’m a writer, meditation teacher, and host of the Meditation for the 99% podcast. If you’d like to work with me on your meditation practice or being more mindful in your life, reach out.

Download my free ebook on starting and sticking with a meditation practice here.

Photo by Drug Addiction Clinic Vita