Tips for Inner Questing: Meet Your Quester

You will keep running into the same lessons over and over again until you learn to do something differently. -Possibly me? It's similar to the famous Carl Jung quote, but with a personal reframe

Let's talk a little bit about how the Universe sends you lessons. The Universe gives you more of what matches your current patterns and the energy you put out into the world. And if your patterns and energy stay consistent, then the Universe is a dynamic bitch of a teacher that is all about experiential learning and testing you on the fly to figure out what to send next.

Now, when I say Universe, feel free to swap in God, any gods that resonate with you, Source Energy, or anything beyond yourself that creates divine order. It's the grand design, and to me, they are all very similar concepts in different packaging.

Anyway, the Universe will keep sending you lessons over and over until you learn and make a different choice. And in my experience, those lessons get harder and rougher the longer you take to learn them. That's why I think this work of inner questing as I'm calling it is so important - maybe the most important work you will ever do - because it actively shapes the reality you live in and draw to you.

I've personally had some very hard lessons on the importance of boundaries and setting clear expectations of how to treat me early and often, because when I let someone in, I have historically used people pleasing and self-blame as tactics to ensure I don't lose them. That's not for everyone across the board mind you, but for the people who I value and I choose to let into my heart. Now you may not realize that taking hyper-accountability in times of conflict with a loved one - which is easy to do if you're highly empathetic and can always see all sides of the issue - is actually a crisis response tactic you're using to diffuse confrontation and avoid the uncomfortable feeling of someone else being upset. So you overwrite your own emotions, take on theirs, and go into a state of defending the relationship and the very person who has actively hurt you, whether they did so intentionally or unintentionally.

This very pattern has led me to walk back valid concerns or needs I've raised until it gets to the point where I can't anymore because it feels like it's killing me inside. Then, I do what I need to do, say what I need to say, but the relationship is past saving because the line crossed is too trust-breaking. And I've been holding it in or passively communicating for so long that the hard line I finally draw seems like it comes out of nowhere. Now I know I've shared my needs along the way, albeit not as strongly as I should or could, but the real thing missing was accountability. I may have said it's an issue, but I never held the other person truly accountable because I didn't want to lose them. But what I've actually done is created a self-fulfilling prophecy by which I train people they can treat me a certain way for fear of losing them, and then I don't like how they treat me and I ultimately end up losing them anyway.

The big difference here is vulnerability. Because if I'm myself in the moment of crisis and hold my ground, I'm vulnerable to rejection - they can decide to take or leave the boundary I've set, and me with it. Whereas if I people please and compromise myself to keep them in the moment, they keep choosing me and I'm not rejected. Instead, I'm just drained and a little less myself than I was before. But when I finally walk away because it's just too much and doesn't feel true to me anymore, that process feels like something much better than rejection - it feels like liberation. And that has been my pattern for most of my adult life. Holding on to feel chosen and then realizing they never really knew me because I never let them. Glossing over the deal breakers because I didn't want it to break.

And the whole pattern comes down to one emotion - fear. Everything is either motivated by love or fear at its core. And I give them all this love that comes from a very real, pure place deep inside me because I see their worth so clearly. But when that love is threatened, fear takes over. And this has cost me a lot over the years - two marriages and several friendships - all relationships that I valued more than anything and still treasure even though they had to end. But that's exactly the problem. I valued them more than I valued myself. And that is why inner questing and learning to sit solidly steadfast in who you are and who you are not is so vital. It is the essence of being alive.

Now it's not to say that I wasn't being myself with these people. I wasn't standing up for myself or willing to put myself first in the situations where I needed to the most. And while that feels better in the moment because you've restored external harmony, your inner harmony takes a toll. And that draining effect feeds anxiety, depression, and burnout and drives you straight into the arms of your maladaptive coping mechanisms like excessive screen time, alcohol or all the fun drugs, sexy fun, or any number of things that can be totally healthy when you aren't just chasing an escape.

Along the way throughout these challenges, however, there was so much love, laughter, joy, and genuine fun. But there was also a high-functioning achiever with depressive and anxious tendencies crushing her career while quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) suffering. And through this, I got degrees in Biochemistry, English Language and Literature with a focus in Film and Media Studies, a Master's of Public Health in Health Education, and a PhD in Behavioral Health. Because as a highly intelligent empath who seemed to just understand people, behavior change was always a fascinating subject. Especially since I was struggling to change my own behavior.

There was also an underlying loneliness and sense that no one really understood, as much as I wanted them to. But I've come to realize that if you understand, see, and love yourself, you don't need others to love, see, and understand you in the same way. You don't search for that validation externally because you have it with you all the time. And it's from that energy that you can confidently be yourself and create relationships that last.

So that's what I'm here to do. I'm here to be my authentic and whole self, totally honest and as vulnerable as possible, which is all I ever strived to be. And if I can help heal my fear of rejection by showing myself to the world like this and saying, "Take me or leave me," then that's wonderful. Because if you love this, great. But if not, I'm still awesome, mistakes and all. I can screw up and still be worthy of love, the most important love there is - self-love.

So that's me - a doctor of behavioral health who is about to finalize her second divorce and has spent some alone time over the past year really digging into her patterns, recovering from PhD and relationship burnout, and is now starting a blog. It may sound like I'm one step away from getting bangs or dying my hair, but I assure you, this is the upswing if you want to join the ride.

So for those of you ready to take this journey with me, here are some baseline tips for optimal inner questing:

• Be curious, not judgmental. I know my Ted Lasso fans out there already know and love this quote from Walt Whitman. And Ted Lasso is an amazing show full of words of wisdom, but this pearl is the most important rule of inner questing (if there are really rules to it). I will be referencing the science or theories behind many of the things I do and recommend, but there are some bits of this that will require a different part of you than your brain - faith. Because some of the tactics I have tried work without a lot of hard science to support them. It is the line where science and faith in something beyond ourselves meet, and both come from the same place - a fundamentally human drive to understand the world in which we live and our place in it. So when we are going inward and doing this work together, try to meet new concepts, new self-knowledge, or anything that feels uncomfortable with curiosity and an open mind.

• Resistance is futile. Not to be too ominous and Borg-like here, but another way to say this is "What you resist, persists." There is a lot of messaging in the self-help industry that's along the lines of, "Just do it." Now sometimes, that is a great strategy, and it works in the moment. But I want to caution you against taking this on as a full-time life motto when inner questing. Because it's not always easy to override your patterns when they are programmed into your nervous system, and the "Just do it" mentality can feel very accusatory if you find yourself in a position where you just can't seem to do it no matter how hard you try. Sometimes, you need to stop resisting. That doesn't mean wallowing or just letting yourself give up. What it means is that you may have to actually sit with what your feelings and explore the information your emotions are trying to give you in order to actually love yourself and make a change. This will come up across my posts with more information on how to do this, but don't feel like you're failing if the pattern just seems too hard to break. That just means you haven't dug deep enough into the root cause and blockers to actual move past them.

• Move towards the fear. Now this one isn't a quote from a show or a movie, though I do think the concept has been said by many people in many different ways. "Move towards the fear" is just how I like to phrase this motto to myself on a daily basis. I don't mean, "Oh, there's a lion, better run towards it!" Although, for my fellow animal lovers out there, that may be your instinct, and you're sick just like me in the best way. What I mean is that if something scares you, you will want to learn to quickly assess whether that fear is a valid survival concern or a fear that is coming from an overactive nervous system trying to guard you from something you'd actually love to do or are passionate about. Those are the fears that we need to learn to tell to shut the fuck up - maybe not exactly like that, but in a nice way that your body receives and responds to. Your fear might be doing something external like starting a business (or a blog sharing your inner thoughts with the world), trying out for the local theater to embrace your love of acting, asking for that promotion you know you deserve, or even this very work of digging deeper into your own feelings, fears, and patterns. But I am telling you, those places where the fear comes up are often the very things that help us grow and become stronger, more confident people in our own skins. It's how you learn to live without regret. And who doesn't want that?

So, now you know a bit about me, a bit about the goals of Inner Quest Insights, and a bit about where I'll be guiding you if you choose to read on. So, I guess the real question is...