I moved back in with my parents.

Published 1 day ago • 2 min read

Dear Reader,

I moved back in with my parents last week because our lease was up, and our re-build is still not ready. So, I’m writing this from my old room—looking out at the same eucalyptus tree I looked at when I was fourteen, in a room that is no longer mine, now filled with my mother’s paintbrushes and Macy’s floral bedding that only a grandma can love.

Looking up, I see the wooden moon and stars I hung in junior high. Looking down, I see my husband’s black socks.

Needless to say, I’m feeling a bit out of sorts.

I am no beginner at this, having lost my way many times. I also specialize in working with creative leaders, super helpers, and successful strivers who, for one reason or another, have gotten lost.

Where do you feel lost right now? Is it in a transition? In your body? In a relationship? At work?
Or somewhere inside yourself?

When we feel lost, we do all sorts of things that spin us around even more. Consider a place where you feel lost. Do you:

Overthink it?
Avoid it?
Blame someone else?
Try to fix it immediately?
Numb out with food, technology, busyness, or work?
Ask everyone else what they think?
Tell yourself a story about how you “should” be further along?
Get irritable with the people closest to you?
Cling to the one solution that is not actually working?
End up in strange loops?

Last week at ACT Bootcamp in NYC, I taught therapists an approach called network modeling. It’s a way of making a psychological map of your struggle, and it may help you see your own patterns more clearly too. When you map out your struggle and all the ways you get lost in it, you begin to see why we get caught in “strange loops.”

Try this strange-loop map:

Draw four circles on a page.
In the first circle, write the feeling, story, or situation you feel lost in.
In the second circle, write what you do when you feel lost—even though it isn’t really working.
In the third circle, write the short-term consequence. What do you get immediately? Relief? Control? Avoidance? A feeling of righteousness?
In the fourth circle, write the long-term consequence. What does it cost you over time?
Now connect the circles.

That’s your strange loop.

Here’s my embarrassing example:

Dr. Joe Ciarrochi for concept design of "strange loops"

With your strange loop mapped out, you can start to see where you could "perturbate" the system, as Steven Hayes calls it. What would disrupt your strange loop?

This week on the podcast, I share some ideas. And this month in my online membership, we are diving even deeper—with meditations, group discussions, and a book club.

Because, poet David Whyte says it well:

“Eventually we realize that not knowing what to do is just as real and just as useful as knowing what to do. Not knowing stops us from taking false directions...Because for those who are really lost, their life depends on paying real attention.”

So, for now, I’m doing what my mom taught me to do if I ever got lost:

Stay exactly where you are.

Getting lost and found,

Diana