When Good Advice Doesn't Help
You Fold It In
“It seems like you feel time differently when you’re in Colorado.”
I used to doodle this Indigo Girls quote in the margins of my high school notebook paper. I can still picture myself in 11th grade Chemistry class, hiding behind my long hair and pretending to take notes while actually writing out song lyrics, thinking about cute boys, and staring out the window.
I had fallen in love with the Rocky Mountains on a youth choir trip the summer before. After that trip, a large portion of my young adulthood revolved around the project of getting back to Colorado. I raised money for ski trips, volunteered for work crews, traveled with my friends, celebrated graduations, and even spent part of our honeymoon there.
In my late twenties, I finally convinced my parents that we needed a family vacation to my favorite state. They had never been, but my dad loved to fly fish the rivers in Arkansas, so it wasn’t the hardest sell. He came prepared with gear for all of us. On the first morning of the trip, we stood on the gravel shoulder next to our rental car, pulling on brand-new bulky waders and the clunky boots you need to stand in cold rushing water.
I grew up fishing with my dad on summer evenings with a Snoopy pole, some worms and a stocked pond. What I know now that I didn’t then is that a kid who thinks she’s good at fishing is largely the result of a parent doing a lot of work to set said child up for success. But how hard could it be?
We clunked ourselves out into the river and my dad began showing me how to cast.
“When you throw your line out, you need to flip your wrist.”
I flipped my wrist.
“Not like that. Like this. You just flip your wrist.”
I flipped my wrist again. I was absolutely flipping my wrist.
“That’s still not it. You need to flip your wrist.”
My wrist had never been more flipped.
Deep breath. I turned to him. “Is there any way you could explain this in different words? Because I think I am flipping my wrist. I’m clearly not doing it right. But if you say flip your wrist to me one more time, I am going to lose my mind.”1
It took me a very long time to realize this wasn’t really a story about fly fishing.
This is a story about the gap between hearing words and understanding an experience.
I spend a lot of time on the therapy-speak part of the internet. All the cool kids are doing it. There are all these phrases that have become common language now:
do your work,
listen to your body,
set a boundary,
regulate your nervous system,
go to therapy.
They’re good phrases, some of my very favorites.
And also, sometimes I feel like we’re all trapped in some SNL sketch, repeating the same handful of phrases so often that we’ve turned them into cringy, overused language. We’re folding in the cheese.
It can all feel a little like being told to flip your wrist, like if you would just listen to your body—whatever the hell that means—all of your problems would be solved.
But these phrases became popular for a reason. When you’ve experienced relief or growth or healing, you naturally want to share it with other people.
The problem is that a phrase is not the same thing as an experience. You can’t instruct someone to do something and expect them to know what you mean.
“Listen to your body” is a phrase.
Learning how to notice tension, fear, exhaustion, hunger, grief, and delight inside your own body is an experience.
“Set a boundary” is a phrase.
Learning that you are allowed to disappoint other people is an experience.
“Do your work” is a phrase.
Figuring out where to begin is an experience.
I have discovered that a lot of people are standing in the river thinking they are following directions and wondering why it isn't working.
What does it actually mean to do your work?
How do you listen to your body if you’ve spent decades ignoring it?
What if you know you have stories to untangle, grief to process, patterns to examine, but you don’t even know what the first step is?
Do you call a therapist? Read a book? Phone a friend? Buy an Instagram course? Sit quietly and wait for enlightenment?
I’ve spent a lot of years collecting stories, books, ideas, and conversations that helped me make sense of things that once felt impossible to explain. I have a psychology degree, a trauma care certification, and what some people might generously call a weird obsession with neuroscience and nervous system regulation. I'm also still figuring plenty of it out myself.
I’ve found myself increasingly interested in the space between hearing the words and understanding the experience.
Because I suspect there are a lot of smart, capable people standing in rivers all over the internet trying to flip their wrists.
It’s possible the writers of the following scene were in the river that day because this is exactly what it felt like.
Brilliant. And really helpful.