What might happen if you dared to look at you reality? What if it gave you the courage to really live your life?

Sometimes you don’t want to look at your reality.  With or without awareness, you may be trying to avoid or escape certain aspects of your life.  While you pretend not to see what is going on, reality is still happening to you, and hesitating to see it is depriving you of the opportunity to actively create your life.

Does this sound like you?  We all avoid facing our reality from time to time, as a temporary and necessary coping strategy.  But, when it becomes a way of living, it’s a different story… It starts consuming your life energy, it erodes you vitality. Life is taking over, instead of you being invested in creating your life.

When we avoid our realty, we straggle to act and engage our sense of agency. We consume our life energy in defending that reality through suppressing, denial, and projections. We use our energy to resist, procrastinate, and protest against the reality – instead of using our life energy to connect and create our lives. We self sabotage our possibilities for a more fulfilling life.

We are caught I defending instead of creating our reality.

It is generally impossible to see or recognize how we get caught in defending our reality unless we have a place to speak about it, share it, verbalize it. Talking about it in a safe and emotional attuned environment can help us pilling off the defensive layers. As the fog of our defenses starts lifting we can start see with more clarity our reality.

But, is is scary to look and see your reality when you don’t not knowing what to do with it. When you don’t have  the emotional tools to do something about it. Maybe, this is even why you avoid facing reality, because you don’t trust you have what it takes to face your reality.

How do you know you are avoiding your reality?

Have you caught yourself constantly pretending that “everything’s ok” when deep inside you know the truth?  Are you tired of trying so hard to put on a happy face and be positive?

While being happy and positive is highly desirable, it can also be a defense. Being happy and positive works when your life reflects your internal reality, but pretending to be happy and trying too hard to be positive can be a defense against facing what’s really going on in your life.

If you find yourself being frustrated, moody, irritable, angry, resentful, tired, and disconnected. Maybe, despite your efforts, you’re stuck in some ways in your life – either in personal relationships or in your career. You feel unfulfilled, dissatisfied, unhappy. You lost your motivation and/or sense of agency. All these may be a sign you your life energy is used by the defensive strategies you’re concisely and unconsciously engaging to avoid reality.

No matter how hard you try to avoid the way you really feel, eventually you’ll trip over your reality or find that you are totally stuck. Facing and working with your reality, no matter how challenging it is, actually allows you to start feeling more positively about your life from a genuine emotional space. That is a healthy response to your reality that creates solutions, possibilities, and opportunities for your challenges, which feels good and empowering.

Sometimes, people deny their reality until they fall apart and end up damaging their relationships, or career, or impacts their physical wellbeing. Although falling apart is tough, it is also an opportunity to start facing your life. In times of falling apart, people make big transformations by owning and working with their reality.

You don’t have to wait to fall apart to start facing and working with your reality.

As your life reflects more of who you are, you won’t have to work so hard to be happy. Real joy comes from inside out. It’s also something that you can consciously participate in creating it.  Real joy, from inside out or consciously created, is very different than pretending.

Being actively engaged in creating your life and pushing through the challenges while savoring life’s precious moments, it is an art. The Art of Facing Reality.

I specifically work with creatives and performers, so this idea of facing reality as an art form is a metaphor that artists embrace, but it really is a creative practice that anyone can do.

As you start creating more beauty in your life and strive to replace what isn’t working, remember it’s not about having the perfect life. It’s about creating a life that represents you –  with all your human challenges, nuances, mistakes, and imperfections. And, it’s about the world becoming a better place because of how you’re changing and how you impact everything and everyone around you.

How do you get to a place of such genuine joy?

First, take a look at into your reality.  Give yourself some time to be with what you see, without trying to analyze it, understand it, or change it. Just be with what you see, for as long as you can, seeing as deep as you can.

When you are ready to take another peek, do so. Again, just be with what you see. Any fears, any disappointments, any sadness… just let feelings be.

This gradual taking-in of your reality will help you build your ability to tolerate any difficult feelings that may be triggered during this process. It may take a few peeks before you can actually really look at your reality.

When you can look at your reality without feeling overwhelmed, you can start be more actively engaged in creating your life. Begin by asking yourself questions like this:

– Is it anything you cannot change, no matter what you do?

Accept what you can’t change as active decision. In this way, you can choose how to be with what you cannot change instead of letting it control you.

– Is there something  that you could  change but instead  choose to let it be?

It’s OK, as long as you  actively make that choice and you know why and how it impacts your life.

– Finally, what is it that you really want to put your energy into actively changing?

Even the smallest changes can start shifting your life into a new direction.

By daring to look at your life and asking, and answering these questions honestly, you can start the transition from avoiding your reality to truly creating your reality. You are engaged with your reality, actively participating in your life. Actively participate in your life doesn’t mean you’re in control of your life. It means that you are influencing and creating possibilities for a more fulfilling life.

While you start making changes and pushing through challenges, remember to just be and savor life’s pleasures. Stop and smell the roses, feel the wind, listen to the music you love, watch your favorite movies, read a book that inspires you. Dance if you love to move your body.

If find yourself overwhelmed or paralyzed by fears or anxiety, depressed and reluctant to take this journey o your own, STOP.  It may be that some of the things that you are avoiding are too painful or too deep in your mind to do this emotional work alone. In this situation it’s time to seek professional help. Work with a psychotherapist to help you work though the defenses, access and expand your affect regulation skills, and to identify healthy strategies to face your reality.

Contact me to set up a free 15-20 minute consultation to see if psychotherapy can help you further your career and your personal life.

I am Mihaela Ivan Holtz, Doctor in Clinical Psychology. I help creatives and performers with emotional trauma, depression, anxiety, performance anxiety, creative blocks / creative issues, relationships, and addictions – to be and live their own best version. You can read more about Therapy for Creatives and Performers here.