Pride is delight or elation arising from an act, possession, or relationship. The major shift I want you to make is away from mere understanding that you have to work on your mental health, with force, with pressure, with seriousness. I want you to be elated by the way you get to grow.

We have to stay awake to our experiences to understand what’s happening within us and respond effectively. We are co-creating reality with our environments. In striving to respond effectively, we can use the human proclivity to add meaning to experience to create lives that are more and more values-driven. If you pay attention and learn to read your feelings well, you can add meaning that helps you build your life in a way that is more and more meaningful to you over time.

Shame gives us the urge to hide and withdraw. The way through shame is for you to remind yourself of your humanity and share your shame in settings where that sharing reconnects you to others.

There is a unique reciprocity in meeting someone who you might never meet in any other context of your life and feeling a sense of connection with them. In addition to the connection, if what you know about yourself and your suffering can uniquely offer them a different perspective and contribute to their healing, it feels especially good.

You see patterns of suffering of other people and you understand yourself a little better. You can see the pattern as a disorder. You feel compassion for the disorder, rather than shame about it. You start to get curious about the details of the disorder that start as very subtle thoughts or behaviors that can gradually take over your experience. My hope is that as you hear suffering in others, you both understand what’s happening for you and you reframe your attitude towards it with curiosity and compassion.