Tag Archives: lovingkindness

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.

1 Comment

Posted in Psychology, Self-Acceptance, Spirituality and tagged , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Birthday Reflections, Part 2

Posted on June 16, 2025 by Christy Barongan

You know how people ask you how you feel to be a year older and you usually say the same? Well this year I felt great! And I haven’t felt great in a long time. Which is why I haven’t written a blog post about myself for a few years. So I figured it was time for an update.

It’s been almost 4 years since I’ve moved, and it has taken a long time for me to feel like myself again. Like, in the past few months I had gone through a long depressive episode that was the worst I had ever experienced. And I was already feeling pretty bad, since I moved because I was under so much stress I thought I was going to die before I got to retirement age. So to think that things were going to get better and instead have them get worse for 2-3 years really made me question my relentless optimism.

But I still pushed myself to make a life here–without friends who I considered family, without tennis, which was my life, without financial security, and without a partner. I did lots of things out of my comfort zone. I went to Meetups. I forced myself to go to fitness classes. I started playing pickleball even though I sucked at it. I went on dating apps even though I hated it.

The only things that were successful were pickleball and dating apps. I have made some good friends now, and I met someone who I’m still seeing. He’s a lot younger than me, which was hard to reconcile at first, but now it actually helps me feel younger. In my first birthday blog post I said that I didn’t feel that mature, and I still kinda don’t. Maybe it’s because I am so in touch with my inner child. I don’t know if the relationship is going to last, but I’m becoming more comfortable with not knowing and just accepting what is.

I’m also trying a lot of new things this year, which is also helping me feel more joyful. I’m into Lego flower sets, in addition to my other hobbies. I signed an acting contract with a local talent agency in December and last month I signed a contract as a UGC creator, despite not having any acting experience or not knowing what a UGC creator was. So it’s been an interesting journey. I’m not expecting to make a lot of money, but it gives me other ways to express myself and be creative. And just to see what happens without any expectations.

For my birthday, one good friend came down to visit me, another good friend sent me a meal, the guy I’m seeing came down to surprise me, and I celebrated dinner with my family and with one of my pickleball groups. So I ate well for several days. And all of the Happy Birthday wishes really moved me. I feel so grateful that people took out time to wish me happy birthday. Sometimes several times. Although that might have been an accident. I do that, too. Now I understand what senior moments are. Or what I like to call brain farts.

The other evidence that I’m getting older is that I’m scheduled for hip replacement surgery on August 21. I’ve obviously had arthritis for decades, and I knew my hip was hurting, but I didn’t realize how advanced it was until I fell while playing pickleball back in January. We were going to Disney World in February and I was going to have to walk 20,000 steps a day, so I decided to go to an orthopedic doctor. For some reason, it never occurred to me that the pain could be arthritis. Even more shocking was that it was so advanced that he didn’t think the injection would help and that I would need hip surgery soon. I didn’t believe him but he was right. The first injection lasted just short of 3 months, and the 2nd injection didn’t work at all.

Despite these telltale signs of aging, I’m still in pretty good spirits about it. The prognosis looks good. I should be able to return to pickleball pretty quickly. And I have people to look after me while I’m healing. Financial insecurity and not having anyone to rely on have been 2 of the biggest anxieties of late. It turns out I don’t have to worry about either. For now.

But that is another place where I’m trying to practice mindfulness and be in the moment. My favorite quote is that mindfulness is the process of constantly letting go. Maybe one of the reasons I started practicing is because I knew it was going to be hard to let go of all of the things you lose in life. And to accept all of the things that I had already lost. Plus I wanted to be aware of all of the things I still have to be thankful for. And since I’ve started practicing lovingkindness as well, I’m better able to feel other people’s love rather than question it, worry about losing it, or be anxious about not being loved at all.

I also mentioned in my first birthday blog post that having people read my blog was a gift that I had not anticipated. People would tell me how much it meant to them, when I was just sharing the things that made me feel so flawed. I had no idea how great that would feel. Now I only write occasionally, but people still read my blog, even though I do nothing to promote it anymore. And I’m thankful for that, too.

So brain farts and hip replacement surgery vs. all of the love and new experiences I have in my life. I’ll take that ratio. And speaking of numbers, 56 is divisible by 2 and 7, and is therefore not a prime number. If you read my first birthday post, you know how I feel about prime numbers.

8 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Mental Health, Relationships, Self-Acceptance and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

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.

1 Comment

Posted in Spirituality and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

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.

10 Comments

Posted in Mental Health, Relationships, Spirituality and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

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.

3 Comments

Posted in Spirituality, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

On the Road to Enlightenment, Part 2

Posted on April 11, 2016 by Christy Barongan

25c0e1bebdd359ffd1966e7a37a1714b

So I finished reading “Lovingkindness,” and I’ve concluded that people who dedicate their lives to meditation must not have mental illnesses. This is not to say that I did not get anything out of the book. I loved the book, and I have recommended it to several clients. It’s just that I think you have to have a certain level of mental stability to become enlightened.

When I went to this conference on trauma, Ron Siegel, another mindfulness guru, practically said the same thing. He said that you need to be fairly mentally stable to go on a silent retreat because you realize how much your mood is affected much more by random thoughts than anything that is going on in the external world. When you’re depressed and anxious, those random thoughts can be fairly persecutory, so to be left alone with them without anyone to tell you that they’re not real could be a major mental health hazard.

I’ve been feeling depressed this past week. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, because this is what happens at the end of every term. I should be used to it by now. But how do you get used to the pain? To your brain telling you all of these things that aren’t true? Every time feels like the first time. Maybe that’s why it takes so long for me to admit it’s depression. I keep thinking it’s something else. Something real. Something that might go away if only this thing happens. Or this thing. Why are these things not helping? Oh. It’s because I’m depressed and nothing helps. Nothing stops the pain.

I played tennis today and even that didn’t help. However, it was an unusually frustrating experience because it was so windy. You think you can go out there and do your thing like you always do, but no. The wind has other ideas. The wind is like, you think you have a good serve? See if you can get the ball over the net if I’m in you’re face. You’re not strong enough. I bet you thought that ball was going to be 2 feet out, didn’t you? WRONG! You lose the point. So we ended up stopping early.

I told my friend I needed to write a blog post and she said I should write one about the wind. How it can be a metaphor for something. And the wind actually is a pretty good metaphor for depression. It makes you feel like you suck. Like you don’t know how to play tennis at all. All of your strengths are stripped away from you, and no matter how hard you try to overcome it, you cannot play your game. And during that 2 hours while I was playing in the wind, that’s exactly how I felt about being depressed. I was trying to be in moment, out in the sun, spending time with my friends. I was trying to enjoy myself, be thankful, focus on nothing but the ball. All things that come natural to me when I’m not depressed. But my demons, like the wind, just kept telling me how much I sucked.

There really is so little you can do to stop the pain in the moment when you’re feeling depressed, so I tried to practice self-compassion. To be kind to myself. I ate lunch. I read old journal entries, because I find them hilarious and prophetic. I wrote in my journal. Tried to watch tennis. And then finally I took half an Ativan and took a nap. And now I’m writing a blog post. And I do feel a little better.

I guess if practicing lovingkindness and self-compassion can at least help me battle my demons, that in itself makes it worth the effort.

Leave a comment

Posted in Mental Health, Self-Acceptance, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.