Tag: Life

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Emotional Work

Day 188 and Space

I over scheduled my day today. I figured it was fine as I left some half hour blocks between calls, pitches, errands, workouts and chores. That’s what most lives are like right? You get up, shower, exercise, get the family fed, go to work, have a short lunch break to eat at your desk, go back to work, then you’ve got errands and then it’s back to family obligations.

If that’s what most people’s lives are like it’s no wonder we are in the midst of a rebellion. I’m exhausted. I haven’t had a moment to think or self reflect at all. I feel so far away from myself after the parade of obligations. And I actually meditated and did thirty minutes of “brain training” on my at home EEG. And I went for an hour long walk! So why do I feel like I haven’t had any space today? Those things are restorative right?

It sounds incredibly luxurious when I put it down on paper. I’m doing shit to improve my brain function and I got 10,000 steps (I like to take calls while walking) so why do I feel frazzled? As it turns out I’ve actually faced this problem before. And thanks to my daily exercise of writing I put it down on paper. I can learn from myself.

I benefit from unstructured unencumbered time at rest. It’s not that I need it to be alone time or quiet time as much I need full on rest. I thrive when I have no reason to get out of bed. I do my best reading and synthesizing when my mind is free to wander without any obligation to anything but that space.

When I wrote that I meant it in the context of devoting enough time to active rest. But as it turns out I don’t just need rest on weekends. I need to give myself time in between tasks. I need to let my mind wander off instead of forcing it on to the next activity. I need to take some space to myself between each activity, even if it’s a nice one like a walk, to absorb and synthesize.

I’d encourage you to consider if you are giving yourself enough space to let your experiences integrate back into your mind and body. Sure we all have our obligations but maybe you’d be more efficient at them if you have yourself the space to breathe in between them. On that note I’m going to put on some television and go shit post on Twitter. I need to integrate my learnings from the day.

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Emotional Work

Day 185 and Small Potatoes

I’ve been stewing on something for the whole day so I’ve not felt I had the mental focus to write. Plus it’s 4th of July and I was busy eating BBQ and watching Roland Emmerich movies. I’ve watched Independence Day every single year since it came out and that’s as traditional as Die Hard on Christmas.

The reason I was stewing this morning is I feel like I’ve been wasting my energy on something. It didn’t start as a waste but it’s dawning on me that I’m not the best at protecting and preserving my limited reserves. I say yes to say too much.

I’ve got to stop fucking around with small problems. If I’ve got the capacity to manifest shit into reality 20% of the time why am I using that up on small potatoes when it’s just as much work to do it at scale?

Why put my energy into solving smaller problems when I can swing for the fences? Why do I think small potato problems are worth an iota of my energy. I am the type of woman who refuses to cook because it’s an inefficient use of time when industrial society has packaged foods. So why the fuck do I keep saying yes to people and problems that I don’t think are worth my time when I won’t even boil water? What the actual fuck is wrong with me.

I just feel too much social pressure to say yes to asks. If someone gets me excited to help I’m terrible at stepping back. I got convinced I was a mean bad person when I said “no” as a younger woman. I was told I wasn’t being accommodating. I was told I wouldn’t be well liked if I wasn’t nicer. Now I’m beginning to realize this was potentially poor advice. Might even be a function of gender (got to be a good girl). Either way I’ve got to stop saying yes to shit.

I’ve got limited energy and time. We all do. But it’s especially true for me as I deal with a disability in my ankylosing spondylitis. A chronic disability means saying yes like an abled person is terrible strategy. I’ve got to play the game smarter, budget my energy and time like the limited resource that it is and get over any past perceptions I cling to about “being nice.”

You know what isn’t nice? Saying yes to something you don’t want to do because you don’t want to hurt someone. Then you hurt two people. And one of them is yourself.

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Emotional Work

Day 179 and Invasion

As a child I felt that I wasn’t always wanted. Whether or not this is true is somewhat beside the point. What we feel as children lingers in our emotional profile for the rest of our lives. The flip side of feeling unwanted for me is feeling invaded when someone wants me. Ironic right? Talk about a “careful what you wish for” situation.

To overcome feeling unwanted as a child I developed the capacity to draw attention. Despite wanting nothing more than to be wanted, now as an adult I can negatively when people do in fact want me. It’s a perverse double edged belief system born out of a child’s logic. Because I so badly wanted to feel wanted for so long the hurt and fear of that experience lingers.

I’ve written in some detail about the complex relationship I have with being wanted and the expectations I feel when I am the center of someone’s attention. It’s not an emotional pattern I’ve cleared yet. But I’m trying to notice how it impacts my life. Because if you get what you want you also need to want what you get. I want to be learn to be comfortable being wanted.

If I don’t break this pattern I’ll he caught in the same cycle of attraction and repulsion for the rest of my life. Because I’m not actually feeling invaded in many cases. I am feeling the memory of the hurt of being unwanted. Rather than accept the closeness I said I wanted it feels safer to push it away. But that’s no way to live. We can all break our childhood trauma. So I’ll keep at it.

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Emotional Work

Day 172 and 3 People

I recently heard in my therapy practice that there are three distinct people being juggled inside of you at any given moment. The person you want others to see you as. The person others see you as. And finally the person you actually are. The hope is that you find a way to be at peace with all three.

I am not at all congruent on this matter. I’m not even sure I can articulate the distance between who I am and external reality. In my head, I’m introverted, cerebral and not very interested in other people. In my head I prefer to keep to myself.

That doesn’t match at all with the person who others see as cultivating and thriving on attention. The person who enjoys spending hours on social media doesn’t seem introverted. I think that’s the person others see me as. They see me as an extrovert who intuitively gets attention.

And that sure as shit doesn’t match the person that is smart, hard working and well connected. Thats the person I want to be seen as. That’s the “brand” I think I should have to be respectable in the eyes of others. I want to be seen as the person you turn to who can help you solve a problem. I want to be seen as the person you turn to if you need an introduction. And then I want the people I send introductions to to trust that I will only send them the best people.

Of course, the truth of the matter is I am all these people. I am an introverted cerebral person that likes to spend time alone with her thoughts. I am also the person who thrives on attention and knows how to cultivate it. And I am a hard working person who you can count on to make good introductions and steward your social capital well.

So next time you get worried that the world thinks you are someone completely different from who you see yourself as just remember you are 3 people. You are different. You are the person you want others to see you as. You are the person others see you as. And finally you are also the person you actually are. It’s all you. And it’s wonderful.

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Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 162 and Reactivity

I’m sensitive to everything. Physically I mean. I’m surprisingly tolerant of emotional volatility, which means I’m well suited to entrepreneurial nonsense and financial chaos. Physically, on the other hand, I’m a hot house flower. Orchids have a wider band of tolerance than I do. If you don’t feed, water and rest me on a precise schedule I will cascade from blooming to dead in a few hours. Only a slight exaggeration.

I’ve got endless examples I can share. I can go from zero strain & a low heart rate when working out at 65 degrees to vascular distress and heart rate spikes at 75 degrees. When I was younger I would get drunk from one drink and now I can’t even have a sip of wine without turning beat red. If a drug has rare side effects I’m virtually guaranteed to get it. My doctors are pretty familiar with this now and like to make jokes about it. “Well .001 of patients experience thinning hair so you will probably go bald!”

On a day to day basis I hate this because it means I have a lot less flexibility to fuck around. I will find out. I need to keep strong rhythms and routines. And I can often spot when even a planned and positive therapy has negative consequences almost immediately.

For instance, I take an immune suppressing biologic every two weeks to keep my immune system from getting too worked up and causing inflammation. I’ve got ankylosing spondylitis which means the swelling shows up in my spine. It’s good to keep this suppressed. This drug lets me walk and live normally which is awesome! Yay! But on the day of my shot and about 24 hours after I feel like shit. I can literally feel my immune system getting shut down in real time. I’m sniffly, tired and slow today. While this is good in the long run, we want to keep my immune system down, I’m grumpy as fuck that I feel the effects of this drug.

The upside to this reactivity is even modest changes show up in my tracking tools. I can leverage many subtle therapies, diagnostics, treatments and supplements to significant effect. It’s probably a factor in my affection for biohacking. I can see results quickly. The feedback loops tend to be short and noticeable for me, which thanks to tracking many variables over a long time span, means I can isolate effects within relatively short order. So while I’m a pain in the ass patient I’m also a pretty emotionally satisfying one. If you make a correct diagnosis on me you will find out pretty fast. That’s so satisfying.

The irony of this short feedback loop reactivity is that I mostly work on longer term horizons and on extremely volatile things. Maybe it’s because I get the benefits of compounding because I have built up so many positive habits? I don’t get worked up by any individual data point because I’m used to seeing extreme reactions in myself. No big deal. I don’t mind chaos at all because I don’t have much chaos in my daily life because I’m constantly managing my own biology. Maybe I’m actually perfectly suited for my professional life now!

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Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 158 and The Mondays

I feel like Garfield but I don’t like Mondays. After two glorious days of reprieve, on Monday I restart the constant parade of medical appointments, biohacking activities and other habits and routines I maintain to keep my body healthy. And even with all that effort, my health is still bottom decile. The routine I lay out below can feel overwhelming with the amount of time it takes and yet if I don’t care of my body…well it won’t take care of me.

Garfield the grumpy cat falling out of his bed as he realizes it’s Monday

I woke up at 730 and made myself a breakfast of berries and homemade yogurt from raw milk. I used to be an intermittent faster but now I have to take medications with food so breakfast is back.

At 830 I read the news headlines and top articles from Bloomberg, New York Times, and the WSJ as well as listen to NPR’s morning edition. Then I need to do my physical therapy and stretching.

At 9 I go for an hour long walk. In order to keep inflammatory conditions under control, it’s recommended that I do at least an hour of low impact walking to keep limber. During my walk I will listen to more financial news and podcasts. Today I treated myself to Exit Scam by Aaron Lammer. Normally I listen to Odd Lots or something more specific to my corners of finance like Flirting with Models. I decide to go with Exit Scam as Aaron Lammer impressed me so much in Odd Lots a few weeks ago with his episode on yield farming.

At 10am I organize my supplements for the morning. I take Ray Kurzweil levels of stuff that is monitored by not one but two functional medicine doctors. This doesn’t include the slurry of powders I drink in water, just the nice easy pills.

Then I am hooked into a EEG for an experimental “brain training” protocol called dynamic neurofeedback. The best metaphor I’ve got is to defrag your mind and reorganize your pathways. It’s basically CBT with an EEG. The session lasts for 33 minutes I also sneak in a meditation during this time.

Electrodes hocked up to my head for an EEG as I do dynamic neurofeedback

11am means it’s time to lift weights. I can’t do much and I need long rest intervals but I did a full squat cycle.

1130 has me showering and doing doing cold therapy. Yes I stand under a freezing shower for 5 minutes and do Wim Hoff breathing. Somehow I also manage to wash my hair.

At noon I have a banh mi (the pork and short rib from Daikon are quite good) and finish an episode of Mythic Quest. It’s wonderful and I recommend you get Apple TV just for this and Ted Lasso. I needed the break to just hang with Alex and do nothing for a minute.

Finally at 1pm I am able to get some work done. Getting emails out, checking on deals, reading some pitch materials and checking in on portfolio companies. I should have a straight shot through to 3pm to work before therapy but my mother and I ended up on the phone.

3pm is a full hour with my therapist. Arguably the most important hour of the week, especially for getting my mind right for Tuesday’s productivity.

4pm I have a brief break to take more supplements before I go back for two hours of group therapy.

Yes you read that correctly. On Monday I have 3 hours of back to back therapy. What else can I say? I’m committed to my emotional growth. We do family systems work and group work is particularly helpful for seeing your reactive patterns and how they are or are not mirrored back. As much as I sometimes resent how much time I sink into this work I do believe it’s the best ROI on time. We repeat the patterns of our childhood unless we clear them.

Finally at 6pm l have time to do things that are not explicitly for my mental or physical health. So yeah I’ve got mixed feelings on Monday. I want to live life beyond treatments and working on myself. I wish I could live without meds, supplements, physical therapy, walking, lifting weights, meditation, and therapy. But I guess that is what Tuesday’s are for. Monday is just Monday. And yes I repeat some of those activities every single day.

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Emotional Work

Day 148 and Ted Lasso

As I’ve written about before, I like shibboleths and secret codes. And Ted Lasso is my go to show for the language of emotional empathy.

It’s touched a nerve for a certain corner of the internet. The folks yearning for positivity. It shouldn’t have worked. And yet the show’s curiosity opens up your heart. It was a tonic for a tough year. So much of its magic is about learning to accept others as they are and love yourself for you.

Jamie Tartt: “Coach, I’m me. Why would I want to be anything else?”
Ted Lasso: “I’m not sure you realize how psychologically that is

I’ve written about the concept of psychological safety in building partnerships, most recently in venture capital. If you have a desire to improve your bonds with others try Ted Lasso. It will teach you much about feelings you never knew you had.

Whenever someone special is going through something in their life or if I just really love them I’ll rewatch Ted Lasso. I’m having an afternoon off and doing just that.

Categories
Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 147 and Over My Skis

For a Colorado native (let’s ignore that I was born in Silicon Valley) a number of our most cherished pastimes are kinda “meh” for me. Skiing is a sport that I can take or leave. That apres ski life is much more appealing than cutting it up on the slopes. But one key metaphor from ski culture gets used lot. “I’m over my skis.”

To be over one’s skis is to risk crashing. Being over ones skis happens out of enthusiasm. An inexperienced or unfocused skier lets their center of gravity tilt forward over their knees. Best case scenario, you are simply going too fast and you better “pizza” your skis to slow down. It’s a endearing but slightly awkward experience which is what makes the metaphor so appealing. It’s never a bad faith metaphor merely a goofy oops.

I got over my skis this week. I’ve been so excited for my workload (new investments, new startups to advise) and some new structures forming in my life (chaotic.capital is coming into focus) that I’m leaning in and finding myself going too fast. A friend of mine, who is my favorite person to “over do it” with, was on the phone with me a lot. I was excited to talk to her. But all this added up.

I realized oh shit I need to slow down. I haven’t crashed yet but I’m french frying. There is still time for me to “pizza” or in the immortal words of South Park’s ski instructor Thumper

If you french fry when you should pizza, you’re gonna have a bad time

I love french frying, the food, the ski position and the metaphor for speed. I want get over my skis. But if I don’t pizza “I’m going to have a bad time.” So with true Colorado wisdom it is time to kick back, get some THC and pizza. May this edition of Rocky Mountain wisdom aid you in finding balance on the slopes and off.

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Emotional Work

Day 137 and Feeling Invaded

The line between feeling abandonment and invaded is thin for me. Being a child that often felt abandoned by my successful but distant father ingrained in me a fascinating pattern as an adult. I fear that I won’t be chosen, but when someone does choose me I easily tip right over into feeling invaded. I suspect this is a pattern many others will recognize.

There is a deep yearning to be the priority. My desire to be the one that gets picked is so strong. Such is the lingering fear of abandonment on the inner child. But because I have more comfort and recognition in the feeling of abandonment, when someone shows up for me it’s a swift inversion to the feeling of being invaded.

How dare this person who I so desperately wished would choose me then actually choose me! I will then become shy, distant, evasive and cold as the feeling that someone has overstepped their boundaries (which they haven’t) makes me retreat. For anyone who has ever been so sure that someone gave them all the signals of desire only to have it feel as if it was yanked away, this is the pattern your desired may be reenacting.

Because the consequence of being wanted is, well, being wanted. They desire something of me. I don’t even just mean this of friends or sexual partners. I can be thrilled that someone has chosen to work or collaborate with me and then when they approach me as if I have committed to them I will seize up with anxiety. The agony I feel at someone wanting something from me even when I gave them every indication that I want to give that thing to them is intense. My chronic fear of calendars is a deeply comical manifestation of this fear. I’ll spend an entire day agonizing over one short phone call in an otherwise empty day.

I doubt I’m special in this pattern of yearning and retreat. One of the most quoted lines from Star Trek is Spock noting “After a time, you may find that ‘having’ is not so pleasing a thing after all as ‘wanting. ‘ It is not logical, but it is often true.” For me it is often true and it is a pattern I wish to break. For when I reach out and offer my time and emotions to others I do mean it. The fear of invasion and patterns of retreat are simply a reactive pattern from my childhood. It is protective, and even in the mind of a child, logical. But children’s logic can only take you so far in life. As an adult I take responsibility for my emotions and through mindfulness can move beyond it.

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Emotional Work

Day 133 and Emotional Shibboleths

When I was a kid I was terrified of drinking. A family member went to daily Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and my reaction to it was “I hope I never become an addict because this seems like a huge time commitment.” Little did I know that it’s one of the best possible uses of one’s time! As a kid I had not yet been initiated into the secret code words of emotional work.

AA and Al-Anon are filled with shibboleths. So many phrases (don’t “should” on yourself) or or even a single word (triggered) that I heard in daily life turned out to be passwords for the initiates into emotional work.

It’s not just AA that uses a these types of passwords to show that you too have committed to to either program work or some other system of working on yourself. Inner child shows that you’ve done family systems or trauma work. Speaking of mindfulness generally means you have committed to a meditation practice.

Once you commit to therapy, performance coaching or program work (which isn’t just for alcoholics Al-Anon is for anyone) you will find yourself noticing the little hints that someone else is also on a path to working though their self limiting beliefs. Wait that was another shibboleth! Entire television shows like Bojack Horsemen and Ted Lasso light up the minds of folks on this path. My favorite quote from Ted Lasso is a classic framing of self love work

Coach, I’m me. Why would I want to be anything else?” Jaime

“I’m not sure you know how psychologically healthy that actually is”. Ted Lasso

If you ever find me using phrasing you don’t recognize it’s quite likely it’s because much to the chagrin of my teenage self I now know that this is the best possible use of an hour a day to work on oneself.