When You Don't Feel Like Yourself

come to the table

Dear friend,

You’ll notice things look pretty different around here. I’m trying out Substack, and I hope you like this updated, simplified look for Embodied! One feature I think you might enjoy is that you can leave comments. Our community loves to connect, so I love that you might be able to discuss how these pieces connect with your life with one another.

From where I sit, I see smoke where there are normally mountains. Wildfires in Colorado and across the West have clogged the skies with ash for months, as though the atmosphere is in mourning, shrouding what is normally beautiful in a veil of grey, grey, grey.

The smoke obscures our view of the mountains, but it cannot remove them.

This year has shadowed our view of ourselves, but it cannot crumble the mountain of who you are.

It seems like it’s been a six month stretch of seeing shadows. I can’t tell you how many times this year I have thought or said, “I just don’t feel like myself.” The hangry, paingry, dark version of me and you keeps showing up, like a Groundhog’s
Day alternate reality we fear won’t end.

The parts of ourselves that have long been sitting in the shadows of our souls are a lot noisier this year. We can’t drown the sound of our vulnerability as easily as we could in the past, and I believe it’s in listening and befriending our vulnerable parts that we’ll actually be set free. The shadowed selves of 2020 are the exiled parts of me and you begging to be freed. 

Last fall, we celebrated our friend Mish’s birthday outside at a long table filled with friends talking under the setting sun. It was her first birthday alone after separating from her now ex-husband in an unwanted divorce. We were a party of 14, gathered and chosen with care in a season of her life when choice was both a sword and a scalpel. Under twinkle lights with margaritas in hand, we took turns toasting Mish’s resilience and speaking our hopes for her future out loud. Grief and gratitude sat side-by-side at the table. Both were heard. And both were held. 

This year, in the wilderness of a worldwide pandemic, evenings like that are a distant memory. But in the solitude and shadows, Christ gathers all the parts of ourselves with equal care to sit at the table of our souls. 

There is a table in the wilderness, where every part of you has a seat.

But you have to wander into the wilderness to sit down.

A system of therapy called Internal Family Systems highlights how we each have three parts that surround our truest self: managers, firefighters, and exiles. Managers and firefighters are protectors—valiant, often over-functioning, loud parts of ourselves that have been trying their darnedest to safeguard our security, belonging, and worth. 

The manager parts of you are that voice, like mine, that barks marching orders to the beat of more. Like therapists Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller wrote in their book, Boundaries for Your Soul, managers are the part of us that drives us “to perform, produce, perfect, and please.” Managers mobilize you to avoid emotional pain, preemptively positioning you to avoid being corrected, judged, or rejected. Firefighters rush in to slow the blaze when you are. These parts of yourself douse pain with the water of distraction and dismissal to get you back to believing you’re okay. And exiles are the vulnerable parts of you that have felt far from okay. They’re the parts of you that have been banished to a dark little corner of your soul, where you’ve attempted to sequester pain from the past to keep its fingers from smudging the present. Managers and firefighters have been trying to protect your exiles. The thing is, the way they protect often also belittles. 

The manager parts within me have long sat at the head of the table, bossing everyone around, fighting with the firefighter about how much food I’m actually allowed to have, and snapping at the exiles to shut up and make themselves invisible. Eat faster. No one is interested in that story. No one cares. No, you can’t have another helping. We come to tables ready to fight for scraps and significance. We’re more comfortable being at war with parts of ourselves than being friends.

But God speaks peace over every part of you that clashes and clings for control. Your greatest joy and deepest belonging no longer need to be safeguarded by striving. Your worth is welded to Christ’s finished work on the cross. 

Lay down your arms. No one part of you can command your soul. No one part of you gets to tell the others they don’t belong. The managers and firefighters can move to the side. 

Only Christ can sit at the head of your soul.

Christ sets a table in your soul where every part of you has a seat. 

Your protectors can learn to listen. 

Your exiles can tell their stories.

And there’s food for everyone.

Faith is coming home every day to a crowded table with Jesus at the head. Faith is the feast where every part of you can be heard, for there is no fear beyond Christ’s peace and no shame beyond Christ’s love. 

When your managers or firefighters sat at the head of your table, they were in Christ’s place. They couldn’t see him from there. They couldn’t hear his laugh or see his smile. But here, from the side, they learn to relax in his love. They realize their role is significant even when they don’t try so hard.

Come sit down at the crowded table in your soul. The wholeness you long for can only happen when all the parts of you are welcomed and befriended. Here at the table, we learn: friendship with Jesus is inseparable from friendship with yourself. 

Make room at the table for your exiled parts like you would for dear friends. When fear, sadness, overwhelm, or shame speak up, getting uncomfortably noisy in your body’s sensations, ask them to tell their stories of what hurts. Like my friend Adam Young says, “Big feelings in the present often mean that your body is remembering something from the past.” Curiosity and patience toward those stories invite them to be heard and held by Christ. The table of friendship with Jesus is the only place lasting healing can happen. 

Earlier this week, I felt afraid of writing this letter. Anxiety ran zig-zags across my chest like it was escaping a burning house, zooming all clarity of thought straight out of my head. My manager part was like a loud, angry coach on a soccer sideline, trying to shame me into being better at this whole writing thing than I’ve been in this tough season. I finally slowed down to gently ask fear to tell me its story instead. And that’s when I realized this fear is the exiled kid in me who still worries that if I don’t perform exceptionally, I won’t get my parents’ attention. My 31-year-old self still fears being overlooked by parents who had bigger things to focus on. There, with fear’s story told, I felt the friendship of Christ. In his gaze, I started to breathe easier, believing I’m never overlooked. The words I write don’t need to be exceptional to hold his attention; he’s pleased with me just because I’m here and his.

Here in October 2020, I frequently feel like a shadowed version of myself. And you probably do too. But maybe these shadows are exiled parts asking to be heard. Maybe the many moments when you and I feel off give us that many more moments to mindfully come back to the table where Christ calls us home.

There is a table in this wilderness, where we will be made whole.

—KJ

How to begin welcoming all the parts of you to this table:

Our managers often want us to hurry past pain, and our firefighters often want us to numb or minimize it. So, when you feel a painful emotion, try pausing instead:

• Pause in the midst of the noise within you.

• Breathe. Force yourself to sigh. Sighing is your body’s way of sending out signals that you are safe. Sigh again. Pausing and breathing tell the scared parts of you that they are safe to be heard. 

• Ask your big emotion to tell you its story. What pain in your past might this big feeling be about? Ask the Spirit to show you wounds that need healing. The table of friendship has enough space for however this feels—uncomfortable…hard…healing. Be expectant that Jesus is here, looking at you with kindness.

If you haven’t picked up a copy of #ThisTooShallLast yet, might I suggest this season of feeling stuck and out of sorts could be the perfect time? ;) Spoiler: the point of the book isn’t that hard things don’t end. It’s that Christ’s Kingdom of welcome lasts longer. 

Some more words to soothe your soul:

• The Best Way to Memorize Scripture Has Little to Do with Learning Words, a piece by me in the October edition of Christianity Today

• Healing from Relational Pain, a podcast interview with my friend Heather Lobe Johnson, where I share candidly about church hurt + healing

• Anxious People, the latest book by one of my fave fiction authors, Fredrik Backman. He makes me hope, laugh, and hope some more.