Category Archives: Spirituality

Gift-giving

Posted on December 24, 2025 by Christy Barongan
Photo by Angela Roma on Pexels.com

I’ve been having moments of synchronicity lately. According to Jung, moments of synchronicity are meaningful coincidences that signify an opportunity to cultivate a deeper connection between the mind and the universe. They often occur in times of crisis and are opportunities for growth.

Most of my moments of synchronicity involve people with whom I am having similar epiphanies. We are going through similar crises, and we are using our self-awareness, our talents, and our minds to find out how to make the life that we want happen.

For example, I was going to write a post on gift-giving the other night, but a book that I’ve had on hold, The Serviceberry, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, became available. I saw that the book was only 2 hours long, and I’m behind on listening to 4 books a month, so I thought I’d knock it out to try to get back on track. I wasn’t sure what it was about, but I loved Braiding Sweetgrass, and she was featured in one of my meditations when they were focusing on gratitude that week. So I was confident I would like it.

Talk about synchronicity! In the book, the author differentiates between gift economies, which are based on the philosophy of abundance and promote gratitude, reciprocity, and community. Which is exactly what I was going to write a blog post about. She compares gift economies to economies that are based on scarcity, which result in competition, hoarding of resources, and surrendering our values so that we actually harm what we love.

A good example of this would be toilet paper at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Even though people had no idea about anything related to COVID, they figured they better go out and buy all the toilet paper that is available in their local grocery store. And maybe some other grocery stores nearby.

And even after people found out that COVID does not cause GI difficulties that result in a need for extra toilet paper, thereby making it unnecessary to hoard toilet paper, it was still hard to buy toilet paper for months. Because the attitude was, screw all of you! I’ve got my toilet paper so I’m going to be OK if I have COVID because I beat you to the punch!

By the way, the CDC advised against going to the grocery store and buying all the things in a state of panic. But what do they know? It’s a dog eat dog world out there!

In contrast, when Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina in the fall of 2024 so badly that it wiped out all the roads and no emergency personnel could reach rural communities, these communities shared what little resources they had with one another until they could get help. Gift economy.

Kimmerer, who is Potawatomi, gives an example in which someone says something to a man in their tribe like, why don’t you make preserves out of the berries so you can have some for later? In reply, the Native American gentleman says something like, I store the berries in the belly of my brother. Because what good does it do me to have more berries than I need if my brother is hungry? The non-Native American thought Native Americans weren’t very smart and that they probably aren’t going to survive. (Which is true historically because of the Trail of Tears.)

Kimmerer also gives an example of how in an economy of scarcity, we take something like water, which is freely given by Mother Earth, and turn it into something scarce by polluting it. For example, some companies dump their waste into water reserves so that it is no longer safe to drink. So now the only way to have water that is safe to drink is to buy bottled water. Except everyone can’t afford to buy bottled water. Or food, for that matter.

In fact, when there are natural disasters like hurricanes, people go out and buy all the bottled water in every store they can get to and hoard it, just like they do with toilet paper, now that I think about it.

If you’e interested in reading this book yourself, Kimmerer is donating all presales of the book to organizations that protect and restore land.

What I was going to share about gift-giving is that I realized that turning my blog into a book is only the first step of doing what God wants me to do to fulfill my purpose. The book will allow me to have an opportunity to promote its release by providing workshops that will be called Normal in Training: Teaching Adults How to Rest and Play.

Because they already know how to work. In fact, that’s the problem with enjoying life in today’s world. We spend so much time making money to survive if you’re poor, or accumulating wealth if you’re rich, that we don’t spend enough time resting and playing.

But to live a full life, according to one of those weekly meditations I mentioned earlier, this Native American spiritual leader said that in their culture, work, rest, and play are all equally important. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty brilliant. Which is why I decided to give these workshops.

In the workshops, my co-author and I will present our unique knowledge bases. My knowledge base relevant to the workshops is positive psychology, therapy, mindfulness, and self-compassion. My co-author’s knowledge base relevant to the workshops is service dogs, art, publishing, organizing presentations, and wisdom, since she is 76 years old.

We’ll explain why rest and play are important to prioritize mental health and allow you to enjoy your life rather than to work until you die.

Or why it’s important to do things now instead of wish you could do them if you had more time.

Or to decide that in order to take care of everyone else, you have to take care of yourself first.

Or to decide that the money you were going to spend on upgrading your Mercedes Benz might be better utilized on something that gives you time to connect with yourself, to the people you love, and to something greater than yourself–like nature, or another culture, or whatever you like to take a deep dive into.

And then we will start the activities, which will be like an adult version of a day in kindergarten. Because we’re healing our inner child by letting that child rest and play.

The morning will be divided into 3 types of workshops, depending on the skills that my clients have in the city that the workshop will be held in. They will include: 1) something related to art, 2) something related to bodily awareness, and 3) something related to self-awareness.

There will be several options in each category to choose from. And if you want to do more than one, luckily for you, they will all be streamed and participants will have access to the recording as part of their registration fee.

After lunch, there will be afternoon workshops that people can pay extra for. They will vary from city to city, based on what my clients and I use to self-regulate. They will include things like short yoga sessions, massage sessions, stretching sessions, mindfulness coaching, pickleball lessons, singing lessons, creative writing lessons, UGC creator lessons, and acting lessons.

Since no one is required to do anything they don’t want to do, there will be a quiet room in case people are overstimulated. There will be pop-up stores that my clients own. There will be food for breakfast, a mid-morning snack, lunch, a mid-afternoon snack, and an optional dinner that participants can attend to get to know other people in the workshop.

The food will be provided by clients who started their own business or by local vendors who are trying to compete with big businesses.

You can also choose to spend your time asking local vendors about their yoga studio, massage studio, pickleball club, mediation center, pottery studio, knitting/crochet group, etc.

There will be a local bookstore where people can buy our book, Neurospicy and Thriving, as well as books that my co-author and I think are important to read.

There will be a local craft store where you can buy supplies for a beginning art project, and one of our art experts will help you get started.

There will be a store where you can make your own emotional first aid kit. This tool kit is essential for self-soothing once you have become dyregulated and you’re thinking brain has gone off-line.

There will be a place where you can download free art into a book, a magnet, a mug, or whatever you want. You will only have to pay for whatever it costs to make the item, and you can make a donation for whatever you think that item is worth.

All participants will also have the program in which every vendor will have an ad so that if they decide later they want to use one of the vendors that was at the workshop, they will know how to contact them.

Even clients who don’t have a store or a skill yet all want to start learning how to do something that they’ve always wanted to do but never made it a priority, like knitting. So that when the workshop comes to their city in a few years, they can lead the workshop on learning how to knit. It is making my clients step out of their comfort zone and do all the things they’ve always wanted to do but never had the time or the courage to try.

I also tell clients that their presence in the workshop alone is proof that we can all learn how to enjoy life. Because when they tell their story about where they were when they started therapy and how they got to where they are now, participants are going to be like, whoa! It’s really possible!

This is an example of a gift economy. You give based on your talents, and what you receive is even greater than what you give. Because that’s how reciprocity works.

But we’re not giving to receive. We’re giving because we want to help other people who felt just like we did in our lowest moment, so that they know that it can get waaayyy better. And we will all show you how to do it. You will have lots of options and choices.

This workshop will be coming to a city near you. But first we have to finish writing and publishing the book. And then, you are all going to learn how to thrive. If you want to. No pressure. You have free will.

So stay tuned!

P.S. This was in my meditation the night I wrote this post:

More synchronicity!

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Hip Recovery Update

Posted on September 12, 2025 by Christy Barongan

For those loyal readers following my hip replacement surgery, I wanted to give you an update.

Despite not playing pickleball, not being able to go to barre classes with my family, and being far less social this summer, I was in fairly good spirits until a few weeks before surgery. I had to start asking for help from my family, and I hate asking for help. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I don’t like asking for help because I’m sensitive to rejection. My inner critic is always telling me no one cares about me, so it’s easy for me to interpret people’s actions as not caring.

In addition, my surgery got moved up by a week. To most “normal” people, that would be good news. But I had been planning for 3 months to have the surgery on a particular day, and the change required me to cancel additional appointments, cancel my friend’s visit–which I had been looking forward to all summer–and stop my pain meds immediately. Not that they were helping. But still. It required a lot of change.

I was also dreading feeling more pain than I was already experiencing, since it had become excruciating. And I was determined to do my exercises every day until the surgery. I ended up skipping my exercises the night before surgery because I had to wake up super early and by that point it seemed irrelevant.

The good news is that I was super relaxed and joking with all the staff, nurses, and doctors while I waited for my surgery. I fell asleep before they even started the anesthesia because they gave me something for anxiety. And after I could feel my legs and they made me walk, I walked effortlessly. And because they gave me an epidural, I wasn’t in pain until about 12:30 am Saturday morning.

I have to admit, the next 2 days were pretty excruciating. Mainly because I was trying to be compliant and get up and walk every hour or 2 while I was awake, and it was torture getting on and off the couch. l only used the pain meds to sleep because I was so paranoid about addiction, so mainly I sucked it up. Luckily by Monday I was good.

This was also when I had my first PT session and he said I was in the top 5% of people in recovery. And you know how I like getting A’s. He said I didn’t need to use the walker anymore and that I would be able to drive later in the week, which is 3 weeks earlier than expected. And as he predicted, by Thursday night I moved back home and by Friday I was walking unassisted and drove 3 times.

My progress has continued to improve rapidly, but because my entire body had been compensating for my hip, I have become more aware of my back pain, which had been present before the surgery but I guess I didn’t register it. But since I dove into work the second week because of my irrational fear of not having money, I had a knot in my back that I had to try to massage and stretch out 5-6 times a day. I would have much preferred to take all the time I had set aside to be off and watch the U.S. Open but the drill sergeant was not having it.

On a positive note, my friend did get to visit me over Labor Day weekend, which worked out better because I was able to walk and drive. We even went to Anakeesta, which ended up being a bust. But I made a video about it that I thought was funny, even if no one else on the trip did.

I’ve learned a lot of lessons from this experience, some of which I’ve shared on my Instagram page if you want to check them out. But I’ll share theme here, too.

  1. People care. As always, when I’m vulnerable, my inner critic is the loudest, but it is always wrong. My family took great care of me. My friend drove for me and gave me tons of positive reinforcement. My friends checked on me. Even my clients asked about me. It’s true that it is an illusion that we are separated from love. We are always connected.
  2. Pain tolerance is a mixed blessing. Had I gone to the orthopedist sooner, like 3 years ago when I had planned, perhaps I could have delayed my surgery. But if it weren’t for my determination to be as strong as possible and do the exercises for 3 months before my surgery, perhaps I wouldn’t have recovered so quickly.
  3. Patience is a virtue. I argued in a former blog post that it is not, but that’s because I was, and still am, impatient. But having to wait for hip surgery, and having to wait another 4 weeks to play is helping me practice, and I think I’m the better for it.
  4. I have much to be grateful for. It’s true that in any given moment, we can look at what we don’t have, or we can look at what we have. We can look at both, even, and perhaps that’s the better option. Rather than “bright-siding” it, which is dismissive of our pain, we acknowledge everything and then decide what in this moment we want to focus on. Right now, the thing that keeps me going is the hope that I can play tennis again, after 6 long years of not being able to. And even if I can’t, I want to be active and see my friends again.

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I’m Taking Voice Lessons Again!

Posted on July 28, 2025 by Christy Barongan
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

So you know how much I love Karaoke. I am still singing, but my range is shot because of the damage done by my GERD (acid reflux) and some medications I was taking for 15 years (more on that in next post). Although the fundoplication surgery combined with compliance with my inhaler when exercising has really helped with my asthma and throwing up, my range hasn’t improved much.

I have debated on taking voice lessons over the past year because I see how much my friend Michelle and my niece Sadie have improved–and especially since I have an acting contract and can deduct the cost of the lessons–but I still thought it was a waste. It’s not like I sing for a living. My family and friends don’t care if I can’t hit the high notes when we sing Karaoke.

Luckily my family, friend, and niece wouldn’t let me give up. When I asked my brother if it made sense to get lessons if you had a broken instrument, he said that you can still improve the sound that you get from it. Michelle said that I just need to access my head voice for my high notes and that can be learned. And Sadie, the relentless optimist, said I won’t know unless I try. Plus she thinks I can be friends with Deanna, her voice instructor, and she’s always worried about me having friends because my closest friends are all in Roanoke.

So one day, I decided to research whether you can heal your vocal cords from GERD, and it turns out that you can with voice therapy. I figured voice therapy might not be that different from singing lessons, so I contacted Deanna and asked her if the two were similar. Not only did she say they were similar, but she also struggles with GERD and asthma and has learned to alter her techniques to accommodate these issues. So I was sold after that!

I’ve had 4 or 5 lessons now and already my range has improved, although the strength of my voice is still weak. The most amazing thing I’ve learned iis that the reason why I haven’t been able to sing high notes is that my tongue, vocal cords, throat, and larynx have been traumatized from all the throwing up. So essentially, I’m doing trauma therapy. I do exactly what I do with clients but with the focus on my tongue, jaw, neck, and throat. I am training these muscles to relax. Tell the muscles that they’re safe. We’re just releasing sound and air now.

The other thing that voice lessons have taught me is that I’m too hard on myself. I push until my body can’t take it anymore. A bunch of my loyal readers have told me that I’m too hard on myself but it’s hard to let myself off the hook. It’s hard to accept that I can go easy on myself, despite all the self-compassion practice. Although it’s much better than it was when I started this blog.

In lessons, I’m always trying to force the notes out rather than allow them to come out. Very similar to language used in mindfulness–allow, soften, create space, play. This also applies to why I need hip surgery. Because when my hip started hurting 10 years ago, it never occurred to me that I could have arthritis so I never went to the doctor. By the time I found out in January, I was already at the point that I needed hip replacement surgery.

Oh well. Old habits die hard so I’m trying to have compassion for myself. Pushing myself helped me to accomplish a lot of things, and it was the only tool I had in my tool box at that time. But practicing mindfulness and self-compassion have given me so many more tools, and taking voice lessons is helping me practice these tools in a different way.

And because I’ve also added the lovingkindness practice, I’ve finally discovered how to be happy in the present, in this moment. Even when I’m in pain, with little contact with anyone, and without being able to play pickleball.

The choice is ours to free ourselves from the obstacles we create in our minds. Luckily I have God, my family, my friend, Deanna, and myself to thank for this newfound freedom. And if there’s anything that you think is holding you back, it’s not too late for you to be free, either.

By the way, Deanna gives Zoom lessons and also teaches acting, so if you’re interested in working with her, let me know.

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Lovingkindness in Times of Need

Posted on October 6, 2024 by Christy Barongan
Photo by GEORGE DESIPRIS on Pexels.com

Today in our group lovingkindness meditation we made sure to include all the people affected by Hurricane Helene, from the victims to the rescue workers and volunteers. To those of you who asked about my safety, I appreciate your concern. Luckily, Knoxville was not affected, but Sadie’s college, Furman, is in Greenville, SC. Helene is the worst hurricane to ever hit South Carolina. She was out of school for over a week, and as many of you know a good portion of I-40 was washed out, as is the city of Asheville in general. It will be inconvenient for the next several years to pick her up and take her back, but that’s a small price to pay compared to those who have lost their homes, their cities, and their loved ones in the 6 states that have been affected by Helene.

I’ve heard lots of stories about people helping others in obscure places where help had not yet arrived. They were checking on one another, sharing food and resources, even though everything was scarce and their survival was not guaranteed. It seems that times of disaster often bring out compassion, tangible aid, donations, volunteers, as well as prayers and gifts of lovingkindness. I’m always moved to hear these stories. It gives me hope that maybe somehow we can cross the divide and care about other people, despite their differences from ourselves.

During this time I’ve also been reading Braiding Sweetgrass, a series of anecdotes written by Robin Wall Kimmerer. She is a Native American poet with a Ph.D. in Botany and so has studied the earth as an object of scientific investigation as well as a mother that provides for all the living creatures on earth. If you check it out, I recommend the audio book because she is the narrator. Not surprisingly, her story is filled with sexism, racism, and dismissiveness for thinking that there can be a reciprocal loving relationship between things like plants, bodies of water, trees, fish, and people. Since industrialization our relationship with nature has been anything but that. Nature’s gifts are something we feel we can take, as much as we want, without worrying about what the consequences will be when these gifts run dry.

I found out about this book because someone in our mediation group recommended it to me. There is a point during the lovingkindness meditation in which we send our gifts to all sentient beings. Things like, may they be safe. May they be happy. May they be healthy. May they live with ease. Before I practiced regularly, I defined sentient beings as all the people on earth that we didn’t individually mention. But the more I mediate, the more my definition of sentient beings grows. I realized that animals are sentient beings. If you believe that there is life on other planets in the universe, then extraterrestrials are included as well. And I thought maybe plants could feel. Possibly. After reading Braiding Sweetgrass, now I know that not only can plants feel, but they have their own language. They suffer and they thrive depending on how well they are cared for. Just like us. So now I extend my gifts of lovingkindness to Mother Earth as well.

To be in the midst of the damage of Helene and reading this book at the same time, I realized that in times of need, the angel on our shoulder is more likely to take over and we give without thinking about the categories that have become so polarized in the last 8 years. We don’t care if they are from the North or South, rural or urban, Democrats or Republicans. We remember that we are all people, more alike than different, all worth helping and saving, comforting and caring for.

But why does it take a disaster to bring out this side of us? Wouldn’t it be nice if this is the mindset we cultivated all the time? Instead of seeing the other as the enemy, in competition for goods and resources, some seeming more human than others, better or worse than others. To me, it doesn’t matter which religion you belong to, or if you just think of yourself as being spiritual in general. But however you define your spirituality, I hope that it comes with a practice.

This was my goal in creating this mediation group. I don’t know what the specific religious beliefs are of most of the people in the group, but I know that if you consider yourself a spiritual being then love must be central to what you believe in. So in this time of crisis, I hope you do practice loving in some way. And in times of plenty, I hope you do the same. I know that in this year of practicing lovingkindness more regularly, I hear a call to reach out and help more often, and my commitment is to say yes to every call. And like I said in my last post, the love always comes back to you.

If you’d like to join the meditation group, email me at cbarongan@gmail.com and I’ll put you on the mailing list.

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Loneliness and Lovingkindness

Posted on September 5, 2024 by Christy Barongan

A few weeks ago I went with Sadie’s parents to drop her off to college. I was honored to be invited to this rite of passage because I’ve been babysitting Sadie since she was 3. If you’ve been following my blog, then you know that Sadie is more than a niece to me. She’s the twin sister to my inner child Sophie. When she was younger she always wanted to pretend we were sisters. I was more than happy to be the age she picked for me, which was usually something like 16 while she was 7. Still a large age gap between sisters but in reality I’m older than her parents.

Because she is an empath, emotionally intelligent, and wise beyond her years, she worries about my mental health. She knows that I feel lonely when their family goes on vacation so she’ll often call me while they’re in France or Italy or wherever they are. I feel guilty that she can feel it and tries to make me feel better, but that is definitely one of the reasons why we are so similar, since I obviously do the same thing, being a therapist and all.

My dad got depressed when I went to college, and because I am also an empath, I got depressed, too, although I didn’t realize that was the reason at the time. In some ways, he never recovered. I was the first of 4, so the nest kept getting emptier and emptier year after year. My dad coped with his loneliness by living in a state of mania. Ironically, in the end this has resulted in him being completely cut off from the family. But in his fantasies he wins the lottery and he buys a hotel and we all leave our jobs and work at the hotel together, running the family business. Strange how our coping mechanisms for loneliness end up leaving us feeling even lonelier than we were before.

To make matters worse, I’ve been seeing someone for the past few months who often leaves me feeling lonely because he’s long distance and doesn’t need a lot of contact to feel connected. Or perhaps more accurately, he doesn’t want to feel lonely so he doesn’t let anyone get too close. I often wonder if this is some repetition of my own trauma to be with someone who makes me feel lonely. I talk to my therapist about it a lot, and she and I both think it’s me. I read a book about parentified children that captured my loneliness well. When you’ve had to be the one to tend to other people’s feelings and haven’t had someone care about your feelings, you always feel lonely, like you have to it all on your own.

I think there’s something about the immigrant experience that heightens the feeling of loneliness because you are so far away from your family and you don’t go back often. It leads to intergenerational trauma for the descendants of immigrants. Whether parents tell you or not, you carry the struggle with how to feel connected to a place with people who are different from you, who may not even accept you.

My dad’s first depression was when he came to the U.S. for residency in medicine. He wanted to go back to the Philippines but Marcos had declared martial law so going home wasn’t an option. I think he married quickly and had children as an antidote to his loneliness. In fact, my younger brother and I were both born while my parents were still in residency, which is pretty rare.

So far it hasn’t been too bad since Sadie left, thanks to cell phones. We’ve talked several times, we text. Also, because I’ve been practicing lovingkindness regularly and in my weekly meditation, I am constantly reminded that we are always connected, and that loneliness is an illusion. Just like my not feeling loved is an illusion. When I first started meditating, I could feel other people’s feelings more clearly–new clients, friends I hadn’t seen. Several months ago I made a deal with a client that we would practice lovingkindness as a way to heal our country, and since then I have felt other people’s feelings even more intensely. As a result, I started wondering about how a particular client was doing who I was no longer seeing. I reached out to her and found out that she was not doing well and was feeling lonely so we start meeting again. It is because of her that I started the lovingkindness group and have started blogging again. In fact, she gives me more homework than I give her. So although I reached out to her because I felt her loneliness, it turns out that she has helped me feel more connected, as well.

Lovingkindness is like a boomerang–it always comes back to you. So now when I’m feeling lonely, I send lovingkindness to the person I’m missing and ask them how they’re doing. Most of the time I feel connected again.

If you’d like to join the weekly meditation, send me an email at cbarongan@gmail.com and I’ll put you on the list. There’s no cost, no obligation to attend, or even to stay for the full meditation. I’ll also send a recording of the meditation for that week so that you can listen to it on your own time if you prefer. Hope to see you there. It truly is an antidote to loneliness.

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Lovingkindness Experiment: Month 1

Posted on August 5, 2024 by Christy Barongan

Since my announcement that I am offering a group lovingkindness meditation once a week to anyone who is interested, I’ve had 5 meditation sessions so far with varying numbers of people attending. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, and so far the group meditation has been small in number but powerful in impact. Here are some of the things I’ve witnessed so far:

  1. It really works. I’ve been doing the lovingkindness meditation on my own for several months and I can already tell it’s changing me. Like, one day I was lost in this huge medical complex and couldn’t figure out what building I was supposed to go to for my appointment. When I parked and got out of my car, after driving the entire perimeter of the complex, I looked around and thought, wow, so many people hurting in this small space. So I decided to send out lovingkindness to everyone in the area. It was just a spur or the moment thing. I had even forgotten that I had done it until much letter. But lately, I’ve had the urge to do that sort of thing.
  2. It’s even more powerful with others. I know Jesus said something like “when 2 or more are gathered together in my name…” something happens. Maybe it’s something like your prayers will be answered, but I don’t necessarily believe that all prayers are answered. Like God is a genie in a bottle or something. But I think when people come together for loving purposes, the love is magnified. A synergistic effect. Like mixing benzos with alcohol. But don’t do that. That’s bad for you. Come to the meditation instead and see what it’s like to feel the power of love magnified.
  3. We can ease our own pain. I decided on a whim that rather than just focusing on the lovingkindness I would start with a breathing meditation and body scan just to give people the feel of what a full meditation is like. After the first session, the people who had attended that session acknowledged that they had all been experiencing chronic pain but by the end of the meditation it was gone. Not forever, of course. But that’s why it’s called a practice. Check in with yourself every now and then. Send comfort to where you feel pain. It will make you feel better.
  4. It’s getting easier to “love my enemy.” This step is one of the hardest parts of the practice–sending lovingkindness to someone who you find difficult to love. Perhaps because they’ve hurt you, someone you care about, or people in general. But people who hurt are hurting, and if they weren’t hurting they might be lifting others up instead, as this group has committed to do. Sometimes you have to send them different gifts. Maybe things like, may they feel compassion. May they be self-aware. May they feel their feelings. These are, after all, the things that help people in therapy.
  5. I will show up for myself. In my first post, I said that even if only one person shows up, I will meditate with them. It has never been the case yet that no one has shown up, but if that happens, I’ve decided that I’m going to do the lovingkindness meditation anyway and send the recording out to people on the list. Maybe no one will listen, but maybe someone will and it will make a difference. And ultimately, the practice is for me first and foremost. So I will show up for myself every week.

I’m continuing to do the weekly lovingkindness meditation, so if you were toying with the idea of joining before, you can still do so and see for yourself if it has any benefits for you. There are no obligations to stay the whole session, to speak, or to continue to participate after signing up. Just email me at cbarongan@gmail.com and let me know that you’d like the information.

Hope to see you there!

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Try a Little Lovingkindness

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Christy Barongan

But I say to you who hear,

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.

1 John 4:8

I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’ve never been one to watch the news. I tried to change this after I was in grad school when I didn’t know that the whole Waco thing happened. And I didn’t know that we were going to have an eclipse and was wondering why the sky looked so weird, as I looked right up into the sun without any protective eye wear. My fellow students asked me if I lived under a rock. I guess I was in my own world, sticking to reruns of The Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island over CNN.

Now I don’t even try to watch the news–and I get minimal notifications on my phone–but I am not ashamed of it at all. In my line of work, I have to save my energy to see my clients, and I can’t allow the intense negativity of every update take up residence in my brain. I rely on my family and my clients to tell me if something important is happening, like if China is floating a balloon across the U.S. to spy on us. Maybe it makes me uninformed, but sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Still, despite the lengths I go to protect my energy, it’s impossible not to feel the divide in our country. I know we have always been a country divided, but I had never felt it so keenly as I have since Covid. And although we may no longer be living in a pandemic, pandemonium still feels very close at hand.

In every religion they say that love is the only force that can conquer hate, and it is our job to spread love. And it’s up to us to say yes to that job and to do it in a way that uses our unique talents. I know that I was supposed to become a therapist because since I’ve gone into private practice clients that I’ve seen decades ago have reached out to me to work with me again, saying I changed their lives. Yet most of the time I was at my old job I felt like a terrible therapist. The clients that I’ve seen since I’ve moved to Knoxville have said the same thing, even though the first year and a half of my time here was perhaps the darkest period of my life. Somehow, although I was barely able to function in every other area in my life, I was still able to help people. This is not about me. It’s about God. God has made sure that I’m able to do what I’m supposed to do in this lifetime–to help others in need.

But lately, with the country being divided and both sides full of hatred, pointing fingers, I feel the need to step it up a notch. I’ve started doing the lovingkindness meditation, which is a Buddhist practice in which you cultivate your ability to be loving, even to your enemies. The reason why I like it so much is that it’s empowering. I can put in the work to become a more loving person. I can make this happen. I have to admit, I’m not as diligent about doing it as I would like. It’s a lot like exercise–you have to be committed to the process. And sometimes after work I’m just too exhausted to do it.

I can feel it changing me, though, even practicing lovingkindness imperfectly. I’ll often teach clients how to do the lovingkindness mediation when they need a way to feel empowered, and for those who try this or their own spiritual practice, it changes them, too. I imagine there are more people out there who are looking for the same thing. Who want to do something other than feel anger, helplessness, and fear. Maybe there are people who want send out love to the universe but haven’t figured out how to do so yet. So I thought, well hey! Maybe there are some people out there who might want to do the lovingkindness meditation with me. I think that doing it in a group is probably similar to what Jesus said about 2 or more people praying together. It makes it more powerful. Even if one person joins me, it doubles the amount of lovingkindness that goes out into the universe. And who knows? Maybe there will be even more.

So if you think this might be a practice that you’d like to try out, I’ve decided that if even one person wants to do the lovingkindness meditation with me, I’m going to host a 30 minute Zoom meeting weekly where we can practice together. In the first 10-15 minutes I’ll teach you how to do it and construct your own mediation. And in the last 15 minutes, we’ll practice it together, silently. Or you can do whatever practice you’d like, if something resonates better with you.

If you’d like to try it out, email me at cbarongan@gmail.com and I’ll send you the day, time, and Zoom link. No obligation to stay the whole time or to come back if it’s not for you. But I hope there are some people out there who are willing to give it a shot. God knows we need it.

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Salon Therapy

Posted on January 31, 2022 by Christy Barongan

I’m not gonna lie. Things haven’t been great. Which is why I haven’t posted anything. But I want to write something without giving the rundown of all of the crappy things that are happening to me. So I decided to write about a true story. Something that happened to me yesterday.

I went to the hair salon because short haircuts require a lot more maintenance than long hair. I had my hairstylist for 17 years so going to her was more like a therapy session. But I don’t have the energy to drive 5 hours to get my haircut, so I had to make a random appointment with this hairstylist I’ll call C.

I really don’t like small talk. I mean, I can do it obviously, but it’s tiring. Fortunately, C was quite the entertainer. Super upbeat and high energy. He was dancing and styling at the same time because he said that when he hears a good beat he can’t help himself. Even if the music is just in his head. Which it wasn’t in this case. There was music playing. I totally get what he means though, because I feel the same way about a good song. You just gotta sing, even if no one else can hear it, you know what I’m saying?

He was pretty uninhibited until he asked me what I do for a living and I said I’m a psychologist. This is one of the annoying things about being a psychologist. People think that you are analyzing them so then they get self-conscious. So I tell them I’m off duty, blah blah blah. And then they relax and tell me all their problems. And because I’m a good listener and would rather have a meaningful conversation about people’s personal lives than small talk, so I guess I encourage it.

This was an unusual “therapy session” in that C had more of a psychic problem. His friend wanted to have a seance for fun one night, complete with Ouija board and everything. After the Ouija board didn’t work, and even though he was not a psychic expert and really didn’t think anything would happen, C had everyone hold hands in a circle and started inviting spirits to communicate. And a boy and girl did show up, although C was the only one who could “see” them in his mind’s eye.

The boy wanted to give a message to C’s friend, the seance-thrower. This boy, who I’ll call D, wanted her to know that he’s OK and she doesn’t have to feel guilty. It’s not her fault. The usual message that spirits seem to want to communicate to us. So the seance-thrower starts crying and freaking out, because when she was in EMT training she had tried to save a little boy’s life who was in a car accident and thought it was her fault that she couldn’t resuscitate him.

For some reason, this incident didn’t freak C out. But afterwards the ghosts kept coming. Like something out of The Sixth Sense. Or Ghost. He could hear voices talking to each other in his house even though he lived alone. He thought he might have been losing his mind. He could sense things about people that he shouldn’t have known and felt compelled to ask them questions like, did they ever find out who murdered your cousin? He almost lost his job because he was freaking people out.

Finally C told a friend what had been going on and his friend asked C if he had been messing with an Ouija board. C told his friend about the seance and his friend said that he needed to close the seance. C said the steps were weird but they worked. I didn’t ask what they were because if this is the part that he wasn’t willing to share the details about I figured they must have been really bizarre.

So his questions for me were, do I think he’s crazy? Is there brain science that would explain what happened to him? Should he consult with a psychic? If he gets in touch with these psychic powers, will he lose touch with reality?

I have to admit, this is not my area of expertise, but a lot of people in my family see ghosts. Fortunately, I am not one of them. I do, however, read a lot of books on near-death experiences (NDEs). And the most recent one I read called Proof of Heaven is one of the better ones because the person who had the NDE was a neurosurgeon named Eben Alexander. He’d had many patients tell him about their NDE but figured it was just some brain thing that scientists hadn’t figured out the answer to yet. But then one day he got meningitis out of nowhere and went into a coma for 7 days and was completely brain dead. Right before they pulled the plug, he woke up and his brain was working perfectly normally. He’d had a longer than usual NDE that he remembered quite vividly, and after that he quit his day job and now uses his NDE experience to help people understand their own trips to heaven.

So to make a long story short, I told C that I didn’t think he was crazy, and that what he had was a gift (and sometimes a curse, but most gifts are like that). That people who are high in empathy like therapists also have to create boundaries to make sure they don’t lose their minds, so talking to a psychic expert might help. And, most importantly, that science can’t explain everything that happens to us and that he should check out Proof of Heaven. He was so excited that he said he was going to go to Barnes and Noble right after our appointment and buy it. And that we could talk about it the next time I came in.

He also gave me a little advice when I said I didn’t have anywhere to go to show off my haircut. He said the night was still young but to stay away from Grinder because they don’t even ask for your name.

Oh and I had to pay for my haircut, whereas I listened to him for an hour and gave him free advice.

So I ask you, who actually had the salon therapy?

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Status Quo

Posted on September 26, 2020 by Christy Barongan

As I grow older, I have a better understanding of why we pray. I’ve written posts about praying for outcomes–like in sports. Keep us injury free, God. Help us be good sports. If it’s OK to ask, maybe a win? How it feels better to pray for someone when you feel so helpless. Send an angel their way, God. Put it on my tab. How it feels to be prayed for.

Lately, because of the pandemic, I have been thinking about how essential it is to have some kind of spiritual practice like prayer, or meditation, or hiking. Spiritual practices remind us to connect to ourselves, to others, and to something larger than ourselves, so that we can maintain perspective. Unless we put in the effort, we forget. We get caught up in insignificant things. Take things for granted.

The other day I was watching a rerun of the UVA-UNC game from 1996. If you aren’t a hard core UVA fan, perhaps you didn’t know that we came back in the 4th quarter after being down 17-3 to win 20-17. A miraculous win. A reward for those who stay until the very end of the game, hoping against all odds that it can happen.

It struck me how old everything was. The graphics looked silly. The hairstyles. The uniforms. And we were so good! I couldn’t believe the number of successful pro players we had on offense and defense! Wow! I really took being good for granted.

And then I thought about other things that I didn’t think it was possible to lose. I would have never dreamed that there wouldn’t be sports to watch on TV at all. That you couldn’t go to a game. Couldn’t even go to a sports bar and watch the game with likeminded fans. Or have a watch party of your own.

Maybe it seems silly to you, waxing poetic about a football game. But in a way, that’s the point. There are so many things in any given moment that we take for granted, until they are taken away from us. I pray and practice mindfulness so that I can catch myself in the act. To cultivate gratitude. But no matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to be grateful for everything that each moment has to offer. Which means that, no matter what we lose, there are still so many more good things that remain.

This is one of the ways that I try to keep things in perspective during the pandemic. It is a gift to be able to have a game to watch at all this weekend. UVA vs. Duke, in case you didn’t know. And to be good enough to be a 5 point favorite, even though we haven’t even taken the field yet this season, and Duke has played twice. I wouldn’t have been thankful for all of these things if not for the pandemic.

So Go Hoos!

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The Uses of Prayer, Part 2

Posted on November 20, 2019 by Christy Barongan

angel

A few years ago I wrote a blog post about praying for sports. Here is the revised version of the prayer from that post:

Dear God, please let my team and my opponents remain injury-free, be kind to themselves, their partners, and the opponents, and if at all possible, to win. 

I don’t think God is some kind of Santa Claus who grants your wishes, but I have heard that God wants to be in conversation with you, which is what prayer is. And God is like a parent, and I would tell my parents that I want to win, even though they can’t make that happen. They don’t always give me what I want, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.

Although I really do pray for wins occasionally–when it’s a big game–most of my prayers are not about sports. What I pray for the most, which I wrote in another post about angels, is that God will send an extra angel on my behalf to people who I know are suffering. For me, angels are the metaphor for what in Buddhism might be called loving-kindness or compassion, which you send to people during meditation practice. I like the idea of having actual angels who look out for us. And when we pray for someone, we can ask God to let that person borrow one of ours. Sometimes I’ll ask for an extra one if I’m really struggling.

I do think angels are real. I don’t think they always look like celestial beings dressed in white, with wings and a halo. Most of the time they look like people. Friends who just happen to text and ask me how I’m doing while I’m in the midst of a mental breakdown. Strangers who stop on the freeway and ask me if I’m OK while my car is stuck in the median. A boyfriend who genuinely takes pleasure in helping me with the 2 things I hate the most–cooking and grocery shopping. These people seem like angels to me.

I imagine I have been an angel to other people, too. I do genuinely believe that my purpose in this life is to alleviate other people’s suffering, to whatever extent that is possible. Maybe that’s what we’re all supposed to be doing while we’re here on earth. To be angels to one another, using whatever unique skills and abilities we have. To provide whatever comfort we can, even though we can’t fix everything, or keep bad things from happening.

When I did that self-compassion retreat a few years ago, we were practicing a meditation in which we sent compassion to people who are suffering. I asked the leader if he really believed it helps the other person. Whether sending compassion really makes a difference. He told me that he didn’t know if it makes a difference to the other person, but it made him feel better. That has really stayed with me. That’s really the main use of prayer for me. It just makes me feel better to do it.

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