Some days-weeks are very good, many days-weeks are so-so and pretty mundane. But then there are some days-weeks that I can only call, with my most charitable words, “knock-you-on-your-face-and-kick-you-in-gut bad.” Usually such weeks hit out of nowhere. Like you aren’t prepared or ready and you walk into that Monday assuming it’s just another week.
These are the kinds of days-weeks when sleep at night is laughably elusive. The kinds when your/my adrenal glands go into overdrive. For me, they are triggered by a few things that are also wrapped up human evolutionary imperatives out of my control such as fight or flight but I also suspect some of us are more prone to them than others:
- Someone that I trusted doesn’t like me.
- An injustice has occurred.
- A big old life change out of your control pops up.
I recently had one of those triple whammy weeks.
I am convinced that the reason my body keeps me up all night under these circumstances is not merely instinctual or chemical, but practical. I am, if nothing else, a midwestern hard worker type. The three bullets above present, to my brain, problems that need solving. Some part of me is convinced that my 1am, 2am, 3am rehashing of what to say or do next, my doom-scrolling, my obsessive checking of email, my stream of consciousness journal entries, my spreadsheets of potential concept map networks, my note taking app of talking points, my research on google scholar, and yes, even recently, and I am INCREDIBLY embarrassed to admit this to you, my CONVERSATION WITH CHATGPT (which had surprisingly good advice to help calm me down; please do not be like me- talk to an actual therapist), one or ALL of these things will magically solve the problem, make me feel better, and at the very least regain some semblance of agency in my control of my life.
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA. Because we all know . . . .
| Things I Can Control | Things I Can’t Control |
| My response to things | Everything else |
So yeah, I really just need sleep.
But still, when I think about all of my middle of the night activities and the goldendoodle snoozing beside me, I can also assert with some degree of “yes this is true” that they all are doing SOME work in shaping my understanding. . . in bringing me back to myself when I am in a cortisol-fueled frenzy of my own brain chemical making.
So just imagine you are in this state for which you have no words and you go to chapel and Rev Annie puts up this graphic featuring Walter Buggeman’s framework that I would summarize as “there’s a Psalm for that”:
Wow, that’s pretty dang helpful.
Then you go home to try to go on a run and clear your head and this new Hidden Brain Episode pops up on your feed.
As your breathing quickens you get lost in some serious wisdom from psychologist Fred Luskin, psychologist and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project.
When we feel off balance, upset, dysregulated, we construct grievance or blame stories to help us initially feel better. This practice is “useful in the short term and destructive in the long term”.
But that’s the direct result of anger on the brain. Anger reduces blood flow to the prefrontal cortex. Your thinking capacity and your creativity are dimmed. If you can soothe that anger in the moment, then you get your blood flow and your brain back, and you get a chance to think of some different strategies. And that is the simplest description of how forgiveness is helpful.
So, one time, we brought them to the window of the fifth floor of the building on Stanford’s campus. We opened the blinds and said, literally, let the sun in, . . . it’s in your past, and you want to make sure that this . . . doesn’t serve as like a full solar eclipse, and it doesn’t mean that this didn’t happen, but you can open back up to goodness. And we gave them some practice in changing the story that they tell, the grievance story, not just to talk about how terrible it was, but what are some possibilities for moving forward.
I never tell people to forgive and forget. I tell them to forgive and remember differently.
Just take two slow deep breaths into and out of your belly. Slow and deep. Just take two slow deep breaths into and out of your belly. And when your belly inhales, allow it to expand. And now bring to your mind’s eye a picture of someone you love. Just bring to your mind’s eye a picture of someone you really, really, really love. And try to feel that love in your body.
This is how I developed the forgiveness project. I started trying out my new story with my wife. I created a story that looked forward, not backward. And I got hope again.
I finished the podcast just as I arrived back home; the sun was sinking low. I heard the familiar pop pop rhythm of my son dribbling the basketball on the driveway. I smiled. He had lugged out an old trampoline from the toy room upstairs, a room that has largely been abandoned since my babies lost interest in the piles of figurines and baby dolls in bins.
“Check this out, Mom,” he said, comically bouncing off of the springs and doing exaggerated dunks with his distinctive mix of childlike play and young-adult like prowess.
“Shoot a few hoops with me?”
As the sun melted down, a breeze hit my face that felt like a reminder of spring. I grabbed the ball and checked it up. I posed with the ball over my head, yelling “STEPH CURRY” in preface of an outrageously unlikely three pointer. I may, heck, I probably would miss. But this moment, this early evening light, this warm wind, this laughing squeaky-voiced boy I loved, all of it:
It felt like hope.
