Balancing Authenticity and Emotional Resilience - Lindsey Carnick

Discover the art of balancing authenticity with emotional resilience in our latest episode of Pleasure Principles. Join me, Avik, as I engage in a compelling conversation with Lindsey Carnick, a distinguished therapist and founder of Onward Psychological Services. Dive into the complexities of staying true to oneself amidst societal pressures and internalized judgments. Lindsay offers profound insights on how these external demands can heighten feelings of sadness and alienation, while highlighting the importance of understanding the unique contexts we inhabit. We address the real-world challenges of maintaining authenticity in a fast-paced society that often pushes us to present different versions of ourselves in various settings.

We also tackle the anxiety of choice and the fear of missing out, encouraging listeners to narrow their focus without feeling overwhelmed. By validating our feelings and recognizing the universality of human emotions, we remind ourselves that empathy and compassion are boundless. Explore a reimagined approach to self-care that goes beyond Instagram-worthy stereotypes, emphasizing simple, accessible practices like guided meditations and brief physical activities. Reject the all-or-nothing mindset and embrace small acts of kindness and presence in daily interactions. This episode is a heartfelt invitation to care for yourself and those around you, fostering a collective sense of well-being.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Embracing Authenticity in the Modern Age
• 11:33 Navigating Feelings and Seeking Help
• 23:19 Reimagining Self-Care Beyond Instagram

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

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Speaker 2: 0:59

Hey everyone, welcome to Pleasure Principles, the podcast where we dive into the real, raw and sometimes hilarious conversations about the complexities of life, relationships and everything that brings joy and meaning. I'm your host, avik, and today we are stepping into the world of emotional resilience in the modern age. So we have an amazing guest with us today, lindsay Carney. Welcome to the show, lindsay.

Speaker 3: 1:27

Hi, thanks for having me. I'm so glad to be here.

Speaker 2: 1:30

Wow, lovely, lovely. So, Lindsay, like before we start our conversation, I'd quickly love to introduce you to all of our listeners. So, dear listeners, lindsay is LCSW, msw, ma and a powerhouse therapist, storyteller and founder of Onward Psychological Services. So get ready for an episode that blends inside empathy and some surprising truths. So let's jump in and explore how we navigate the sadness and stay true to ourselves when the world seems to demand otherwise. So welcome to the show again, lindsay. Thank you, it's so good to be here. Lovely, lovely so, lindsay, I'd like to start with. I mean, what does it mean to navigate this sadness in today's woke age?

Speaker 3: 2:21

I think that looks different and means different things for a lot of different people, depending on where they are in their lives and what their particular unique context is the micro communities that they're in, the macro communities. Authenticity itself is a pretty contested idea and some folks are really uncomfortable with authentic parts of themselves. They have judgments about those parts and harsh sort of critiques about whether they should or shouldn't be like that, which makes it really hard not only to be authentic with other people because you're not being authentic with yourself but to really be in alignment with your values, because it sort of suggests that we're internalizing the world, the external world of shoulds, and that goes along with how we perceive our opportunity to be authentic when it comes to hard feelings like sadness to be authentic when it comes to hard feelings like sadness.

Speaker 2: 3:28

exactly, I totally agree on this and also um, on the on this, like um, what to say? Like uh, do you think that societal pressure to appear always aware can worsen the personal sadness to appear what, I'm sorry, what was the oh, I'm saying, like uh, regarding the pressures like always aware, always aware, like to appear, so can this worsen the personal sadness?

Speaker 3: 3:56

Oh for sure, I think all of us feel deeply let's use the word badly, which could include sad, right, as well as a couple of other things. I think we all skew towards feeling deeply badly when we feel misunderstood and to be misunderstood is a harsh experience, whether it's because somebody has unintentionally misunderstood us or because we feel some sort of pressure to your point or obligation to present in some way that is other than how we are in a given moment or an era or a chapter of our lives or within a certain context. So the pressure that people experience, whether it is in some degree perceived or sort of self-generated, is tremendously alienating for people. It sort of kicks them out of their own lives and that feels terrible.

Speaker 2: 4:58

Exactly, yeah. And also like how do we balance authenticity and emotional resilience when everyone seems like hyper aware?

Speaker 3: 5:12

Hyper.

Speaker 2: 5:13

Aware of Hyper aware of what, of everything thing, like when, because, as we are discussing that, as I mentioned, like uh, because today is in this fast-paced world, it always seems like okay, okay, I have to be prepared, I have to be aware of everything.

Speaker 3: 5:33

in in this sense, like what you say uh, so in the sense that we are sort of hyper aware of all these expectations or these pressures or these influences and and yes, I think, to the degree to which we are open to all of those influences, that would certainly create not only additional pressure but sometimes conflicting pressures, right, the sense that one has to be one kind of way in one context can be authentic in limited ways in In other contexts.

Speaker 3: 6:03

It's sort of this moving target right of how much of myself can I be and how much of my experience can I really be authentic about at any given time and still feel acceptable or safe or secure with the people I'm with or the situation I'm in.

Speaker 3: 6:21

And that's really challenging because, especially as more and more of us are susceptible and sort of exposed to I think exposed to is the word I want to use more and more opinions from other people and other parts of the universe and the galaxy and the population about how it's supposed to be, literally the more pressures there are.

Speaker 3: 6:47

I think an easy, old, concrete example of this that doesn't really have to do with authenticity but illustrates the point would be you know, somewhere back in the early 2000s where if you wanted to do something for weight loss, you could easily find yourself in a place where you felt like there was literally nothing you could eat, because it was either all carbs or no carbs, high fat, high protein, no fat, no protein, no sugar, doesn't matter, right. And these little boxes that people try and fit themselves into to be acceptable to others, or be acceptable to their community, or really feel acceptable to themselves, right? There's a set of internalized judgments about how one should be, whether that's in a specific setting or situation, or whether that's a temperament, characterological assessment. That's a terrific amount of pressure to sort of try and exist under, and I have yet to meet a person, myself included, who's ever fit neatly into one of those boxes.

Speaker 2: 7:53

Okay, Okay and okay. So what, according to you, are some of the practical strategies that people can use to manage the moment of overwhelming sadness?

Speaker 3: 8:09

Well, I think the most important thing that any of us can keep in front of us when we're feeling overwhelmingly sad is the same strategy that I suggest for any sort of overwhelming feelings, which is to recognize feelings for what they are, which is feelings, not facts, not truths, not narratives about the way things are. They're feelings and they're real. But oftentimes what happens when we have strong feelings is that we, proportionate to the strength of the feeling, we assign some sort of truth narrative to that experience that is actually quite incongruent with what's going on. You could imagine a scenario in which, if I bought a lottery ticket and I feel like it's a winner really, really strongly it really feels like this is going to be the winning lottery ticket. The strength of my feeling about that has never corresponded to that being a reality.

Speaker 3: 9:11

Right has not happened one time, and so if we can try and accept the emotional experience for what it is, without attaching to some of the storylines that inevitably come with an emotional experience, then we're setting ourselves up for a really sort of emotionally free and authentic experience where we can feel what we're feeling without being weighed down by the sort of like hyperbolic, catastrophic narratives that often come with that. So in the case of sadness, often one might have a feeling of being extremely sad and along with that comes a fairly catastrophic narrative about what's causing that. That is not in fact the reality of what's happening, but the strength of the feeling sort of reinforces the belief in that storyline, without recognizing that it's a storyline.

Speaker 2: 10:14

Oh God, okay. And also like how can we stay true to our stories when social media pushes?

Speaker 3: 10:30

us to curate them? Hard question Again. I think the more to your point about being exposed to increasing levels of influence about how things should and shouldn't be, the more we are exposed to other sources of perceived rightness and wrongness, the more likely we are to question ourselves right and to question whether we're where we should be or shouldn't be, or doing it how it should be done, whatever any of those things mean in any given moment. I think there's some real wisdom to limiting the amount of influence one is exposed to. To be perfectly honest, I'm sure you're familiar with the sort of stories about they've done these incredible studies. The one was. It was called I can't remember the formal name of the study, but it was referred to as the JAM study and it had something to do with supermarkets. Do you remember this?

Speaker 3: 11:33

And for those, for anybody who's not familiar, the essence of it was this when you try and get people to buy jam, you know, like that you put on toast or whatever it is you put jam on. If you give people too many options, they easily become overwhelmed and don't buy anything. You're better off giving them four options and calling it a day or something like that, and I think we develop this sort of FOMO anxiety about consuming all the things right and this anxiety about not knowing what we don't know. And there's this stuff out there, and what if I'm not taking it all in and reading all the things and exposing myself to all the possibilities? And the bottom line is is, firstly, none of us are ever going to do that. There's no end to the rabbit trail, right? Nobody's going to read the internet cover to cover and secondly, there's really no upside potential in creating a situation for yourself where you are sort of racing to stay on top of all of these ideas or stay in a position of authority about how all these things might or might not relate to you.

Speaker 3: 12:44

I think there's some real wisdom in actually narrowing down the aperture of what we expose ourselves to and saying you know what. It's going to be okay if I don't stay on top of all those things and sort of stress test how they may or may not apply to me. I think that's okay. And it requires a little leap of faith to have the sense that there's a lot of noise out there and spending more time sorting through the noise doesn't mean you're going to get into any more gold nuggets, it just means you're going to waste a lot of time on noise. Okay, okay.

Speaker 2: 13:24

And also, like I mean from the listener side. I'm saying, like listeners often share, that they feel guilt for kind of experiencing the sadness when it's kind of bigger issues. So how would you address that?

Speaker 3: 13:44

I'm so glad you mentioned that. That's such a huge stumbling block for so many of us, this sense of guilt or shame, even, that we have the feelings we're having when, intellectually, we can point to other people who are having, as people call it, objectively, much worse experiences, and I think it's really important. A couple things are really important. One is to recognize and make peace with the idea that multiple things can be true at the same time. Okay, so you and I, sitting wherever we're sitting at any given moment, not in a war zone, for example. Let's take an extreme example. It's true, being in a war zone is something that most people who are not in a war zone can't comprehend, and that's a degree of suffering that most people can't comprehend unless they've been in that situation. And also, it's okay to acknowledge that the experience, the feelings of human suffering are elicited by all sorts of different conditions, all sorts of different conditions. And so, while your suffering may not be elicited by something as extreme as living in a war zone, that doesn't mean that your suffering or your sadness is not what we would call or what people argue over. Is the word legitimate? Of course it is. You know, humans experience the same range of feelings, regardless of the situations that elicit that feeling. So we could say something that scares me, that causes fear for me, may be very different than something that causes fear for you, right? And maybe something that causes fear for me? I'm going to make up an example. I don't happen to be scared of clowns. Fear for me. I'm going to make up an example I don't happen to be scared of clowns. But you might say you know well, being scared of clowns is objectively, sort of like, less significant than being scared of a pandemic, because a pandemic can actually hurt you and a clown cannot. It doesn't matter For the person experiencing the fear, fear is fear is fear is fear is fear, regardless of what elicited it. It's not. The feeling is not conditional based on the context in which it arises. And so I like to give people a really healthy sort of dose of encouragement and reassurance that human feelings are universal and it does not serve the person in the war zone for you to minimize your own suffering. Firstly, that has no impact on them and they wouldn't want you to do so. They wouldn't say well, look, you're not in a war zone, so you should not feel that way. Nobody would say that because everybody understands that human feelings are really universal experience that can be elicited under very varied conditions. Yeah, in the same way that your fear might be from a pandemic or it might be from a clown, it's still fear. Fear is fear is fear.

Speaker 3: 16:49

And the feeling of guilt seems to suggest that by feeling badly about something whatever badly means to you that by feeling badly about something whatever badly means to you maybe that's sad, that you're somehow taking away something from someone else who is in quote worse conditions, who's also feeling that feeling. And I think we really need to be rigorous in paying attention to the fact that it doesn't take anything away from anybody else For one to feel sad, for example, you are not stealing empathy or compassion that would otherwise be going to someone in a war zone or whatever your extreme example would be. So I like to remind people that A there's no scarcity of empathy and compassion in the world. If you need some empathy and compassion in the world, if you need some empathy and compassion from yourself or from someone else seeking that out, doesn't take it away from someone else, which seems to be part of the fear.

Speaker 3: 17:51

And secondly, to be honest about experiencing human feelings and the breadth of emotional life that we all have is simply to acknowledge our common humanity. It doesn't make someone selfish or arrogant or unaware. And I think in this day and age where there's so much suffering in the world, this day and age where there's so much suffering in the world, many people have sort of this self-consciousness. They seem to be concerned that if they are authentic about their sad feelings, for example, then they'll be judged by other people, that other people will say like that's not a real problem and how could you be taking up problem space with that non-problem? But again, there's no, there's no sky, there's no ceiling on problem space. Everybody has these feelings and these experiences and we're not taking valuable resources away from other people's perspective, like if a listener is hesitant to seek help due to the stigma, then what advice would you give them to push through that barrier?

Speaker 3: 19:20

Hmm, that's such a great question, and there are certainly several stigmas that I think people have about reaching out for help, and I like to suggest a couple of things. If someone finds themselves in that situation, one is to sort of I call it third person reality testing, which is to ask yourself okay, if it wasn't you, if you were speaking with one of your closest friends or someone in your family and they said to you I'm thinking about you know, or it seems to me that I might benefit from some help, or I'm really I'm going through a hard time, what would your response to them be? And about 99.9% of the time, people say oh, of course I would encourage them to do that. Right, of course I want them to do that. Of course that's a good thing, of course they should feel great about that, and so I encourage people. You know, the person that we are usually hardest on, way above and beyond anybody else, is that person named I? Yes, and so we give ourselves a hard time for things that we would never give other people a hard time for. That we would be encouraging and supportive of. So, in an attempt to right-size our inability to be kind to ourselves, it's helpful to ask yourself what would I say to somebody else who I care about if they were in this situation? Would I encourage them? And the answer is usually a resounding yes. Secondly, I'd encourage people to really be open-minded and honest about what it is that they would, what kind of help they would like.

Speaker 3: 20:57

Sometimes I think the stigma, so to speak, is around what it means to get help and what kind of help are you trying to get and what do you think that looks like.

Speaker 3: 21:07

There are really wonderful mechanisms and people and professionals from a really diverse range of backgrounds, and treatment orientations and helping orientations that can be helpful in ways that most people can't even imagine, and often in very efficient ways.

Speaker 3: 21:26

Some people, if we're talking about formal therapy, perhaps some people think of that as being something that takes years and deep commitments and spends a lot of time sort of like navel gazing in ways that they're not comfortable with, and that's simply not true.

Speaker 3: 21:43

There are remarkable modalities of therapy available that are brief, that are solutions focused, that are really forward looking and dynamic, and so I encourage people to sort of check themselves on what not just stigma they think they're responding to, but their own sort of biases or stories, or maybe even simply lack of knowledge about what help might really look like and what might be helpful to them with what they want help with. Because, at the end of the day, when you reach out for help, the person who's going to be the most helpful to you is one who understands what you want to get out of it right, and that's who you need to work with, is somebody who is in good alignment with your goals for whatever help means to you, not a sort of externally imposed structure about what it means to capital G get help. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 22:40

Yeah, exactly, lovely, wow. So that's really really great. Thanks for sharing this, I would say, and it's a great discussion. And one more thing before we wrap like many listeners struggle with balancing self-care and the responsibilities, so, like on this, how can they manage that without feeling kind of selfish or guilt what I say?

Speaker 3: 23:13

Yeah, yes, oh, that's one of my favorite things to talk about. I'm so glad you brought this up. So one thing I really like to emphasize for people is to broaden their definition of what self-care means. Firstly, self-care does not mean something you saw on Instagram that somebody else said you should do. It does not mean that unless you're doing an hour of yoga in a gorgeous setting, doing a handstand on the Angel Oak. Whatever the case may be that that's self-care, or that self-care is a bubble bath with no one around for X number of minutes, or it is this kind of workout or that kind of.

Speaker 3: 23:51

We have some really rigid ideas that are perpetuated by sales and capitalism about what self-care looks like, and I like to encourage people to think really open-mindedly about what might actually make them feel cared for, not what do they think is the thing that checks that box. For so many people, to your point, the so-called self-care activities have become these daunting, additional sources of stress and guilt and often, for people, elicit feelings of additional distress because they feel like, well, I'm failing to do self-care and I ought to be. You know I didn't get to yoga. Shame on me. So now, in addition to feeling stressed out, they're distressed that they didn't do the thing that everybody's telling them they ought to do and that it looked like this and they couldn't Instagram it and therefore it didn't happen.

Speaker 3: 24:47

There are some tremendously subtle, powerful and really practical tactical self-care strategies that folks can access really easily. One is and I think these things are deeply underestimated because of the social media influence on things that look great in a picture. So if you see a beautiful picture of somebody again doing yoga on the beach, you go, oh my gosh, that's the thing, and clearly that's nowhere within my grasp. What you never see on Instagram, for example, is a picture of somebody doing the breathing exercise on their Apple watch. Right, because that doesn't look interesting on a photograph. But when Apple first, I don't have any Apple products, but when I first saw the breathing exercise that you can get on your Apple Watch where you inhale and exhale in time with a picture that it generates, I was absolutely floored because it's so good and yet so many people sort of dismiss that because they go well, I mean, it's just this thing on my Apple Watch. I mean that's not really like real self-care but it is.

Speaker 3: 25:54

It's tremendous what we know about good breathing and the care impact of breathing exercises on people's stress and anxiety levels is tremendous. The research is spectacular on breathing is tremendous. The research is spectacular on breathing, and yet people are so quick to be like, oh well, I don't know, that's not yoga on the beach, nuts to my Apple Watch breathing exercise and yet there's this powerful little thing that's available to them in two minutes. You can do two minutes of that and everybody has two minutes, right. So the thing that most people fall prey to when it comes to self-care is this all or nothing, thinking about what that means, and the sort of go big or go home. Well, if I can't do an hour of exercise or eight rounds of golf, nine holes of golf, I don't know anything about golf.

Speaker 3: 26:42

Obviously, whatever it is that you're thinking you need to do, that will lead you to overlook really powerful, cool tools that are absolutely right under your nose. Anybody can get on YouTube right now, and you can literally search on YouTube guided meditation, 60 seconds guided meditation, five minutes guided meditation, however much time you have or you want to spend on it, and it will do you wonders. Two minutes of stretching, two minutes of jumping jacks, right? These really sort of micro dosing efforts are tremendously impactful for people and we know that because there's really good research on it.

Speaker 3: 27:24

But our cultures are selling us and pushing on us this all or nothing, thinking that self-care only looks like a retreat in Bali. And then we get despair ridden because most of us are not able to sort of trot off to a retreat in Bali every time we're feeling distressed, right, and then it just becomes even more demoralizing, right, and then it just becomes even more demoralizing. So I really encourage people to be open-minded and aware that a little bit of self-care goes a really long way. And self-care is whatever feels caring of yourself to you, and that may not have a category on Strava or look good in an Instagram photo, but let's keep in mind that's not have a category on Strava or look good in an Instagram photo, but let's keep in mind that's not the point. The point is to help you find some space and some movement and freedom from whatever you're experiencing.

Speaker 2: 28:20

Wow, great, lovely. Thank you so much for joining us on this enlightening episode of Pleasure Principles, dear listeners, and a huge, huge and huge thank you to Lindsay for her wisdom and perspective on navigating the sadness with authenticity and the resilience. It's so good to be here. Thank you so much. Yeah, so for the listeners, I'd love to mention if you enjoyed this conversation, do not forget to subscribe, share with your friends and leave us a review. So stay tuned for more episodes that challenge the norms, spark deep reflection and, most importantly, remind us that we are all this together. We are not alone. So, with this mindset also'll, I'll make sure I'll put all the links of lindsay into the show notes so that it will be much easier for you to reach out to lindsay, and definitely you can, you can consult with her. So let's say like do you want to also share something about the listeners or something is there?

Speaker 3: 29:28

you know, I want to encourage everybody to take good care right Take good care of yourself, take good care of the people around you. We have tremendous ability to impact the world by how we show up for the people we're close to, but also the people we're not close to, the people that you sort of pass by in your daily life and maybe don't give a ton of thought to because you don't know them or don't have relationships with them. But I'm a big believer in the ripple effect and I think if enough of us can show up with compassion and empathy and open mindedness towards ourselves, then we'll show up that way for others and they will pass that on as well.

Speaker 2: 30:09

Wow, great, lovely, great Great. Thank you so much and until next time, take care of your mind, body and find the joy in your journey. So thank you so much everyone.