Imposter Syndrome

There are a few things I think I do very well.  Clean a kitchen counter.  Make a green smoothie.  Parallel park.  And provide a supportive, compassionate oncology massage. 

Recently, I applied for a part time job working exclusively with people during and after their cancer treatment.  I had no doubt that I was qualified for the job.  I had met the hiring manager before and she had encouraged me to apply for any openings they had.  The interviews went very well, I thought.  All in all, I looked forward to good news and a little financial sigh of relief. 

About a week later, I received the news that I had not been hired for the position.  I immediately began my retroactive storymaking.  Of course I could sense that the hiring manager and I didn't quite gel, I just didn't want to dwell on it before.  Come to think of it -- it did seem like she had made a decision well before she talked to me. 

In short, I was trying to come up with a story that felt somehow better than what I really felt.  Because what I really felt was that I was (am) a complete imposter, deceiving no one but myself with my ridiculous confidence. 

And, really, if I was wrong about this one thing, wasn't I wrong about everything else too?  Had I ever really bacteria tested my kitchen counter?  Maybe all those people who tried one of my green smoothies were just being polite.  And when was the last time I had managed to parallel park in a truly tight spot? 

I suspect that far too many of you recognize this syndrome.  Maybe you're in the middle of it right now.  Maybe, like me, you feel it like a movable wall that magically appears five steps into every single one of your new ideas.  Maybe, like me, you are letting the disappointment obscure the lesson. 

Although the imposter syndrome is strong with me (and is fed by the far more difficult practice-building tasks ahead of me,) I am still in touch with my rational brain.  She knows things.  Like -- I am supremely qualified for that job, and I am not the only person who is.  Or -- my interview follow-up game is pretty weak, so perhaps I hurt myself in that way.  Even -- the more difficult, self-employed path is much harder, but it also brings me more overall happiness. 

Rejection sucks.  Any kind of rejection.  And rejection for something that I know (I just know!) I would be great at -- this feels particularly unfair.  Somewhere in there, I know that this is one person's decision about one job.  I have all these stories -- all these true stories -- of people who felt better after seeing me.  I have a conviction that I am doing the work I am meant to do, or I will be when I get my practice built up a bit more. 

The movable wall still appears, and I am learning that it is made of styrofoam.  Or biodegradable corn-based materials, if you prefer.  The point is, I can kick that sucker down any time I please.  And I'm ready.  Almost.  Just another thin layer of confidence, and it's going down.   

I'm keeping the lessons, though.  You can bet that if I ever interview for another job, my follow up game will be on point.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Let's talk about fairy tales for a minute.  Princes and princesses and happily ever after.  Trolls under bridges outwitted by young men who follow the advice of old crones in the woods.  Enchanted castles, apples, spinning wheels.  Magic around every corner.

When I was little, I had an illustrated book of Grimm's Fairy Tales.  I would spend hours poring over every page, getting absolutely lost in the details of the illustrations.  The stories were, of course, sanitized versions of the original tales, but they still contained a hint of the original menace of the Brothers Grimm.  Like salted dark chocolate, this little hint of danger/salt made the sweet stories so much better than other, completely scrubbed versions I found.

Now, as an adult women who has lived through the falseness of easy "happily ever after," I have a love/hate relationship with most of the stories.  The one that still draws me in, though, is the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses.  If you haven't heard of it, you can get the full version here.  Here's a very short version:

A King had twelve beautiful daughters.  He locked them in their room every night as they slept, but still every morning their shoes would be completely worn out as if they had been dancing all night.  The King asked for help to discover their secret, offering one of his daughters as the reward.  Some people tried and failed.  One man, taking the advice of an old crone he encountered in the woods, discovered their secret.  The princesses followed an enchanted pathway to a castle every night, where they danced all night, then traveled the pathway back to their room before dawn.  The man who solved the riddle married one of the princesses and they lived . . . . well, you know.

The part of this story that draws me in every time is the period from 12-6am, when the princesses are away dancing all night, dancing with such abandon that they completely wear through their shoes.  See, I can't resist an unspoken back story.  How did the princesses find the enchanted pathway?  Why were they locked up in their room at night in the first place?  What compelled them to go dancing every night?  And what in the world did they do after their secret was discovered?

I've begun to see this story as a kind of metaphor for things in my own life.  There is, first of all, the literal dancing.  I started dancing on a regular basis about four years ago.  I make it important in my life, even if no one ever knows the dancing is happening.

The more lasting metaphor for me, though, is the pursuit of what brings happiness, the opening of a pathway that leads to an entirely new world.  A few years ago, around the same time I started dancing, I decided that things that scare me are things I need to try.  I have not regretted any of the scary things I tried, even if they did require a little bit of resetting afterward.  Lately, the scary thing that has opened up an enchanted pathway is the move back to Kentucky.  I am in the process of discovering and re-discovering work that I love.  Most of the discoveries are still in the 12-6am place, waiting for the right time to be brought into the open.   Meanwhile, I am doing the work, wearing my metaphorical shoes to metaphorical bits, and enjoying every minute.

Watch this space for updates on what's going on with my work.  Fairy tales aside, I guarantee any news will come from me, and not from some prince who magicked his way into my private work spaces.

(this picture is a page from Buddha's Brain by Dr. Rick Hanson.  It's a great read.)

Synchronized Swimming

There is a neck hold I teach sometimes in Oncology Massage workshops.  It requires you to gently slide both hands under the client's neck while they lie face up in the table.  Once your hands are in place, you maintain a relaxed, gentle hold, encouraging your client to relax their neck.  It is surprisingly effective.  All the therapist has to do is sit still, gently holding and patiently waiting. 

The hardest part about this technique is actually getting into position.  Ideally, the therapist can get their hands into position without moving the client's head around, especially if they are working with someone in active treatment.  I tell my students to think of synchronized swimming, where what you see is all grace and calm and softness, while there is absolute flailing chaos underneath the surface.  At this point, I demonstrate getting into position.  I pull the most ridiculous face I can, while my hands move with grace, calm and softness.  Everyone laughs.  Almost everyone understands. 

What we do is a lot like synchronized swimming.  Everything on or near our clients' bodies should bring only comfort, while beyond the boundary of our clients' space, we may be frantically wondering where we put the lotion bottle, realizing we forgot the bolster, or just letting any invasive thought from the world outside the massage room pass through so we can be present in the space again.  Grace, calm and softness in the air, flailing chaos underneath. 

We ask too much of ourselves when we try to imagine that everything we do in our massage room is done as a beautiful, never-seen dance.  The place where we hold the peace and the power of massage is the space around our client.  Beyond that, there is work to support that space.  It started on our first day of massage school, struggling through anatomy, physiology and technique.  It continues every time we take continuing education, working hard to integrate new knowledge into that which is known and comfortable.  It is there every day, as we work to shield our clients from the little human mishaps that happen in every life.  (Like the countless number of times I have completed a massage with my glasses slid all the way down my nose because I couldn't get them properly pushed up.) 

We owe it to ourselves to embrace and learn to love the chaos, because the chaos makes the peace work.  We owe it to ourselves to thank the work and the chaos for making the dance possible.

Just a Minute

The natural foods store has a new employee.  He is clearly of retirement age, which isn't so unusual.  This is one of the things I love about local businesses -- that they often hire people who might not be the "expected" employee of their kind of business.

I went into the store on what was, I think, his second or third day of work.  Long enough to be left alone to do his tasks, not long enough that he was entirely comfortable or efficient with them.  He happened to be working at the register that day.  As I was shopping, I noticed how he would take his time doing his job, carefully making sure everything was accurate, and taking a moment to actually talk to the people coming through his line.  He said "How are you" in a way that invited a true answer and a conversation, not in that dismissive, I've-done-my-duty way that most people say it.   He took a little longer than most of the other cashiers, and he tried to make a true and real connection with every person who came through his line.  Being the way many of us humans are when we get all task focused, some of the people who went through his line did not appreciate his friendliness.  While everyone was polite on the surface, there was often an air of "just get it done so I can get out of here" subtext.  I will admit that I was feeling particularly task-focused that day, so I kind of dreaded taking my few things to the register.  It took a conscious effort to make eye contact and smile back, but I did it.

About a week later, I set up my massage chair at the same store to raise money for a local charity.  He was working that day as well.  From my spot, I could see all the registers.  I could practically see the whole store, but the point is that I could see him working.  He had the same manner, the same friendliness, and the same speed as he did the first day I saw him.  He was still clearly learning the job, and still taking pleasure in starting a conversation with every person who came through his line.

I stayed for a couple of hours, met and massaged a few people, and raised some money.  I packed up to leave and decided to pick up a few things while I was there.  I got my items and went to his checkout line.  He asked me, as he did everyone else, "How's your day?"  He commented on my chair and talked about how he loved to get massages.  So I chatted a bit, then I asked him how his day was going.  And I really meant it.  I wanted to hear.  He told me that every day was a good day, every day he was standing upright was a good day.  I must have looked a little quizzical, because he went on to tell me he had three open heart surgeries in the past couple of years, so he was grateful for every single day.  I smiled, we shook hands, and I went on my way.

It was a gorgeous afternoon, lovely bright sun slanting across the trees with their remaining leaves.  Warm enough to walk outside, cool enough to sit close to someone.  I started my drive home through the park -- the long way -- so i could enjoy a bit more of the day.  About five minutes into the drive, it hit me:

Three.

Open heart surgeries.

Three of them.

Three times, this man had his body invaded and literally broken open to try and fix something.  Three times, he had fallen asleep with the very real and probable idea that he would not wake up again.  Twice he had done this and gone through recovery and maybe thought he would never have to do it again, but he did.

And here, on the other side, here he was working at a natural foods store and trying to make connections with people who mostly just wanted to finish their tasks.  Here, I thought, was a man who learned the very hard way how important it is to wait.  Just a minute. And see the person in front of you.

And this is another thing I love about local businesses.  Because they hire from outside the "norm," every visit is the potential to learn something valuable.  If you wait.  Just a minute.

To Be Seen

Quick survey question:  How many articles have you seen on your social media feed asking some version of this question: How do I relationship?

My answer is well into the double digits.  It's a good question, and, I'm worried, one we are getting worse at answering as we retreat further away from collaborative living.

What I mean by collaborative living is this -- living in such a way that we spend more time talking to people in front of our faces, where we use more voices, hands and facial expressions than emojis.  But even more than that, living in such a way that we know our neighbors and we know the people who own the businesses in our area.  Shopping locally, caring about the whole street where we live and not just the portion surrounding our possessions.

Lots of people write more informed words on this topic than I do.  Today I am thinking about just one aspect of it that interests me.  I am worried that we are losing the skill of being seen.   I am talking very deliberately in the passive voice.  It is not so much our ability to see and know other people that I've been thinking about, but our own ability to let ourselves be seen and known.

Our online lives are carefully curated, often by well-meaning but careless gatekeepers.  I mean, of course, ourselves.  We choose what to share and show and how to frame it.  In doing so, we necessarily exclude a large portion of our reality.  We tell ourselves this is because not everything we are is for everyone to know.  And we are right, but we are also losing a valuable skill.  The skill of letting someone see.

There are truths about myself that I don't like.  But they are true, and they are pieces of all that goes into myself.  Recently, I have had the great honor to meet friends who really want to see all of my pieces, and I am realizing I don't know how to do that.  I mean, I can open up, I can show the whole picture, but I fear I have lost the knack of handling their reaction, of not taking personally those things which are not personal.  And someone else's reaction to things about me that are true -- those are not mine to take personally.

I see this often with some of my clients.  Even though I work with soft tissues, everyone brings their whole self into the room, and their emotional, spiritual and intellectual truths sometimes come out through the movement of their bodies.  If I see someone often enough, I can start to see the changes in their lives just in their gait or facial expression.  It's not magic.  It's observation, something I've practiced for as long as I've been practicing massage.  I'm not in the habit of commenting on it, but I am in the habit of seeing.  Because of this, I have been fortunate enough to see how powerful it can be for a person when someone just sees.

Quick story:  At the last place I practiced, I had a client I saw every week for a few years.*  With that kind of continuity, you start to learn a bit about each other's lives, and you start to notice things.  She had what most of us would call a good life -- lots of love and friendship and fulfilling work.  She was (and remains) a seeker -- of truth and wisdom.  Sometimes this caused her some anxiety, especially as the world seemed o grow less compassionate in general.  Most weeks, her massage was "easy."  She had no chronic pain or injury, and she did not like aggressive work.  It was a gentle hour of meditation for both of us. 

One day she came in and she was different.  I only knew because I had known her for so long.  She spoke less and in a flatter tone.  She moved slower.  Her whole demeanor seemed heavy to me.   She asked for the same kind of work, and I did a similar massage.  I felt like I moved slower and stayed still more often in response to her own heaviness.  After the massage, she asked for some water and I brought it to her.  We sat in silence in my office for a moment, breathing together.  I made eye contact with her.

"Today is hard," I said. 

She looked startled for a moment, then she dropped her head and nodded.  In a few seconds I realized she was crying.  I walked over to her and gave her a hug.  We sat and held each other for a moment while she let all her tears happen.  When she was done crying, she thanked me, nodded, and walked out.  Not completely released, but a little more quickly and a little lighter than when she walked in. 

I don't know what made that day hard for her.  That's not the point.  The point is that she was seen, and it gave her space to cry.  I believe and hope she felt that space was safe and welcoming. 

In my own life, I have much to learn about being seen and living in my truth.  I'm starting by recommitting to daily creativity, to reconnecting to my first love (writing) and trying to find again that love of how words go.   I am also trying to risk putting more writing out in the world where anyone can find it -- can see.

And I am also recommitting to my massage practice.  While it has been a good choice to move back home, it has also been (and continues to be) terrifying, which makes it harder for me to be truthful about the kind of work I do and the kind of work I excel at.  Fortunately for me, those two things are pretty much the same. The impulse in a new(ish) home with a new practice to build is to take on all clients.  To fill my books by any means necessary.  This would, I know, exhaust my spirit.  And with an exhausted spirit, I will forget how to see, and I will never learn to be seen. 

Integrity and Feminine and Masculine

A friend of mine recently sent me a link to this blog post by Kendra Cunov and asked about my thoughts.  In it, Kendra talks about the concept of integrity, and what she perceives as the differing masculine and feminine definitions of it.  

I struggle with some of the same things she seems to be struggling with -- the whole concept of masculine and feminine qualities and how those are perceived in different aspects of my life.  Especially in business, where reward seems to go to those things labeled as "masculine," which are inherently false to my nature.  

For me, though, it is a problem of language and false categories.  We have only these two words to categorize, and they bring with them all the history of politics and inequitable social structures that has nothing to do with our truest humanity.  

My initial reaction to her post, though, was about the word integrity.  And her definitions of "masculine" and "feminine" integrity which follow.  My understanding of the definition of integrity has to do with being true to one's own internal moral compass, which intersects with, but is different than, "doing what you say you're going to do.” (Her description of society’s definition of masculine integrity.)   But what she fails to point out is that society has the definition of integrity wrong.  (Yes, I looked it up.)  Here are the official definitions of integrity:

1. the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.  
2. the state of being whole and undivided.

If I am understanding her correctly, she almost seems take the first definition of integrity as the masculine and the second as the feminine.  I find this limiting.  

I really connected with her concept of finding one’s range as opposed to finding balance.  To me, the definitions of integrity relate more to her idea about finding the range in our masculine and feminine qualities.  I think she is exactly right when she says that balance doesn’t really exist.  

I feel this in my body as I am exploring different dance forms.  In one form, balance means a strong, wide stance with a strong downward feeling.  In another, it means a lightness and a strong upward feel.  And in a third, it means the moment where you find the just-before-falling place and embrace the awkwardness of that feeling.  So in these dance forms, we aren’t talking about balance so much as we are talking about the set point which suits the dance’s aesthetic.  The photographable moment that would make almost anyone recognize, “Ah, this is a (insert style here) dancer.”  

The blog post has me thinking more about how I talk to my massage clients about balance.  I talk about someone’s muscles feeling balanced, about balancing time for self care with the rest of life, about the way our head balances on the spine.  But am I really talking about balance as a n achievable end point, or am I talking about a way of moving through the world with a strong sense of yourself, physical, emotional and spiritual?  I am thinking that I need to repackage every one of these “balance moments” in the service of what I really want for my clients — for them to take charge of their own wellness in their own way.   

The first thing I want for all of us, or at least one of the first things, is to find a way beyond the limiting idea of masculine and feminine qualities.  I want to lead us all first to an agreement that qualities are just qualities.  They are not commentary on how we inhabit our gender.  Of course I know that masculine and feminine are the constructs and not the gender.  In this country, though, the parallels are so close that it’s hard to separate.  For example, I have a firm handshake.  I also have long hair and I like to wear skirts and jewelry.  So, for some, my firm handshake (masculine) seems incongruous with my appearance (feminine.)  This makes no sense to me.  I’m a massage therapist.  I have strong hands.  I’m not trying to project masculinity, I’m just trying to let someone know I’m glad to meet them.  

We are still humans, though, and as such we find comfort in categories.  We seek structure as a way to understand our world.  Realistically, I don’t see this masculine/feminine coding of behaviors ending in my lifetime.  But, circling back to Kendra’s post, if we live in integrity, the real, unassigned definition of integrity, I think we can at least start down that road. If we start by being honest, and continue by striving to be whole, what need to we have to categorize the behaviors that are part of our humanity?  

Momentum

I have been trying to come up with a topic for a blog post.  I just opened my post list on the off chance that I would find a draft of something that I could finish up.  As luck would have it, I found a draft with the title, "Momentum."

How perfect is that? I clicked on it, ready to catch some momentum.

It was a completely blank page.

I consider writing something I do, always, no matter what profession I write down on my tax form every year.  True, I spend most of my week practicing massage therapy (and loving it.)  I also spend part of my week writing about the practice of massage therapy.  I love the results of the writing.  The practice of writing itself is sometimes deflating.

See, in a massage, clients provide immediate feedback (conscious or not) and it's pretty easy to edit on the fly.  There is a certain way muscle tissue feels when the way you massage it is working.  And when it is not.  I've been doing this long enough that I have a whole repertoire of different ways to approach massage.

The thing is, though, I've been writing for way longer than I've been doing massage.  I decided at age 8, when I wrote my first short story, that writing was for me.  I wrote pages and pages in my messy print, then in my messy cursive, then on my typewriter, my word processor, my computer and my laptop.  I have explored language from so many angles and so many voices that I couldn't even count them.

The difference, I am figuring out, is the editor.  Writing happens in my head.  This gives space and voice to my internal editor, commenting on and testing every sentence even as I am thinking it.  I end up trying to revise as I am writing, which just ends up slowing everything down.  Have you ever accidentally started driving your car while the parking brake is still on?  It's like that.  Forward, but slowly.  And eventually everything shuts down.

Massage, though, is a physical profession.  Of course I am thinking a lot while I work.  Remembering my intake conversation with this person, processing what I feel in the tissues through my knowledge and training, keeping track of time and how much more there is to do in the time we have.  This happens around and above the actual work, though.  The actual work involves touch and movement.  Physical movement and physical response.  There is nowhere for the editor to speak.

Ever since I started writing at the age of 8, I've been exploring ideas about creativity, trying different things to cultivate and build it.  Since I started dancing about four years ago, I am seeing more and more connections between just natural movement in the body and the ability to be creative within a structure.  (Whether that structure is words, a canvas or a choreography doesn't seem to matter.)

All of this is coming together for me this year, as I am continuing my dance training and reading more about the process of improvisation.  Using some exercises and concepts from my most recent dance intensive, I finally put together a workshop using movement and writing (or drawing) exercises to explore and encourage creativity.  Shadowdance (as I'm calling it,) gets it's first run this December in Louisville.  In the days leading up to, I am writing more, listening to the editor less, and dancing daily.  Come out and join me if you can.  Let's build some momentum.