Category: Identity

There’s something very meditative about cleaning a fish tank. Once every few weeks Creature, my 1.5 year old betta fish, finds herself unexpectedly scooped into the little plastic cup she came home from the local PetSmart in and swims warily back and forth watching me complete my mission. I used to have a tank in my childhood bedroom and that’s when my dad taught me the basics of maintenance; he taught me how to use a rubber hose to siphon dirty water out of a tank into the obligatory 5 gallon Home Depot bucket while preparing fresh, conditioned new water in a second bucket. Next, I take out all the accessories— the moss balls and aquarium plants (all silk because bettas have soft fins that can get torn on anything sharp or scratchy) and rinse them all off and wipe down the sides of the tank to get any algae that’s grown. A small acclimation period later and Creature finds herself back in a brighter, cleaner version of her same old world. It’s a repetitive process, with the same steps and same results every time, and something about that is soothing to me.

I got my first betta fish, Wallace, about a year after I moved to LA. I wanted a pet and betta fish are often advertised as the lowest maintenance of the low maintenance. What I didn’t expect was how much fun fish parenthood would be. Getting to pick out all the foliage, color of the gravel, find out about fun extras like real wooden logs or fake leaf hammocks just for bettas to feel happier in their homes; I was obsessed.

It was amazing to me how much of a difference this small addition to my household made to my everyday life. Having a little responsibility, a little life that was waiting for me to come home and give it love in the form of pellets and proximity, was a bastion in a year that was often difficult. I know now that my experience isn’t out of the ordinary; there are studies that show that watching a fish in a tank can lower blood pressure and improve mental wellbeing. There’s something comforting about the sight of a fish slowly circling a tank accompanied by the white noise sounds of the water filter.

Betta fish have so much personality for beings that are roughly the same size as a novelty keychain. Every betta I’ve ever had swims up to greet me whenever I enter the room. They are also, almost uniformly, extremely dramatic. When I first introduced Wallace to a tank with a filtration system (in an attempt to be the best fish parent I could be), it created a little current in the water which was apparently a world ender for Wallace. He would intentionally swim into the path of the current and then act FURIOUS when he was blown to the side by the incoming water. Wallace’s other favorite activities included intentionally jamming himself between an aquarium plant and the wall of the tank and then getting frustrated that he had to wiggle out of it (he would do this no less than 3 times a day) and lying on the floor of the tank extremely still to make me think he had died. Oh, and sometimes if his little leaf hammock came detached from the tank wall he would watch me fix it and then knock it back down again. We had a good time. Wallace died the day after I traveled home for Christmas, creating an extremely uncomfortable situation where a subletter I had only shared about ten words with had to become a fish funeral director for a pet that wasn’t hers, but in his defense this was a very funny prank and therefore very on brand for him.

Now that I work from home and my desk is set up near her tank, my current fish Creature will often gravitate towards me, keeping an eye on me as I work. She also recently caused me to waste about ten dollars on meal worm-based food I was promised was healthier and better for her but which she hated on sight and refuses to eat. Every betta fish I’ve had is this exact mix of sweet and uppity in a way I have a hard time explaining to people who have never had one.

Something that really endears me to betta fish is how resilient they are. I knew from my childhood experiences with fish and the many, many mournful trips to the local PetCo that followed that fish are fragile and the main thing that they do is die. I’ve gotten in the habit of making my fish earn their names, waiting a set period to make sure they don’t expire on me before I blow a name on them. I waited so long to name Creature that she got stuck with what is basically a non-name. With the occasional exception, bettas generally don’t require this kind of fuss. They have truly lived up to their low-maintenance reputation, in my experience. They ‘re unbothered by skipping meals, although overfeeding can be more dangerous. You can trust them, to a certain extent, to just keep swimming. I find that comforting.

I struggle to describe the connection I feel to bettas in a way that doesn’t make me sound like Tom Hanks’ character in Castaway drawing a smiley face on a volleyball. The truth is that bettas have this amazing ability to make you care more about them than you thought you would. When I made the choice for the “low-maintenance option” I didn’t anticipate breathlessly asking a pet store attendant what he thought I should do to cure Popeye or prevent The Ick, or that I would have an entire shelf full of water treatments and pH kits to make a bowl of water more perfectly imitate some gross lake somewhere.

If you’re looking for an investment in your mental health, bringing a fish home is a little work for so much reward. Having a beautiful, living display to watch in the evenings and getting the companionship of these weird little roommates has paid off in spades. Betta fish have taught me lessons along the way as well; lessons in resilience, and in empathy. If I could find compassion for and even relate to something as small and different from me as a little fish, I can absolutely find the same empathy for myself and others. Bettas create such a perfect glass in which we can see our own needs: compassion, intentionality, and sometimes, a meditative hour just spent cleaning a tank out.

Have you ever felt misunderstood in a relationship, or felt that you and your partner are speaking completely different languages? Do you find yourself avoiding conflict at all costs, or alternately find yourself in arguments that never seem to solve anything? Imago therapy might be able to help. Founded by Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt in 1980, Imago teaches us to look at conflicts as opportunities to deepen our understanding of each other and look at our pasts to understand the impact they’re still having on our present.

We’re Always Growing

Deborah J. Fox, MSW, a licensed clinical social worker and couples counselor who is certified in Imago therapy, says that when Hendrix and Hunt created Imago, “they took a lot of the accepted psychological theory and applied it to marital relationships.” She says it emphasizes that we’re not done growing when we reach adulthood, and that serious relationships are yet another stage of development for us. “We’re still growing, we’re still changing and in a committed relationship we can really grow into our potential.” The dynamics we have with out partners can do a lot to impact this growth, for better or worse, and being mindful of this can already put us ahead.

Nobody comes into a relationship as a blank slate; we’re all bringing a life full of memories and coping mechanisms into any given relationship. This is why unpacking our past can help to build a better future with the ones we care about. “We’ve started to understand that nobody had a perfect life,” Fox says. “We’ve all had hurts, we’ve all had disappointments in our life, some more, some less… As adults, we’re still seeking to heal some of those hurts and disappointments.”

Two Sides to Everything

Fox says that in her thirty years as a marriage counselor, she’s seen that there’s truth in the adage “opposites attract,” even if it’s not exactly what people think. She says we often look for a partner that brings us an opportunity to grow in some way or offers a different perspective from our own; for example, someone who’s very fun loving, free wheeling and indecisive might find themselves attracted to someone more stable, dependable and organized. What they don’t realize, Fox says, is that this attraction to differences is what can so often cause friction. “Imago helps us understand that why we might want to fire our partner is really the flip side of why we hired them in the first place.” For instance, the fun loving person who marries a stable partner might, a few years later, want to “fire” their partner for not being spontaneous enough. Or, alternately, the stable person might have found themselves attracted to the spontaneous person because of how fun and exciting they are, only to find themselves wishing they had a partner who was more organized or responsible. These contradictions can be hard to understand at first, but they can also give us huge opportunities to grow. “These complaints they have about each other are really zeroing in on exactly where each partner really needs to grow if they’re gonna be their fullest person.” The stable person might realize they can learn to be less rigid or stop to smell the roses, and the spontaneous person can examine their own indecisiveness. These conflicts can be a great space to find “growth pieces,” as Fox calls them: areas where we can develop more fully or fill in blind spots in our perspectives.

Bring Intentionality to Your Arguments

You never plan on having an argument, which by definition makes them an unpredictable scenario. Fox says it can make a world of difference to plan ahead and set a few rules for what to do when you experience conflict or tempers flare. She says it’s always helpful to stop and take a beat— there’s no use trying to problem solve if one or both of you is feeling heated. “We know now that when you’re highly emotional the logic centers in your brain get dummer so they’re not as active, so that statement of ‘I’m so upset I can’t think straight’ is actually psychologically true.” In heated situations, it’s easy for your brain to go into fight-or-flight mode and start focusing on trying to protect you from danger, which means it’s not in the best state for clear, empathetic conversation. If an argument is getting emotional, the best course of action is to separate and regroup once you’ve had a chance to calm down.

The second thing that’s useful to remember in any conflict is that only one person should be speaking at a time. “What Imago teaches,” Fox says, “is how important it is that one person has the floor and the other person agrees ahead of time to listen until they finish.” Fox says she personally has her patients set a time limit of five minutes, because this is usually enough time to get your point across clearly and fully. She says the next step is to take another pause so that the listener can have time to absorb what was said without getting reactive. “It gives each of you the time to think about what you’ve heard, be reflective, and think about what you’d like to contribute to the problem.” Then the listener can take the floor to respond in their own time.

She says another tool she uses with her patients is mirroring, a more intense version of active listening. “If you do it right, it’s not only reflecting back the words you’ve heard but it really is an effort to step into the other person’s world and really understand what they’re saying and why they’re saying what they’re saying.” She says that in our everyday communications we can miss so much of what the other person is saying because we’re feeling defensive or trying to think about what we’re going to say next. When you listen to someone with the intent to mirror, you’re more likely to understand what they’re saying because you’re summarizing their perspective in your own words after they speak. Fox says that, for many of her patients, mirroring is when they finally understand their partner’s perspective on something, even if it’s a topic that’s come up a thousand times. “When you’re actually asked to mirror something you listen in a different way.” She says mirroring is even more powerful because it lets the speaker know they’ve really been heard, and lets them clarify anything they’ve said after the fact.

The Power of Understanding

Fox says creating this kind of space where both people are really listening and working to understand can revolutionize our relationships. “That understanding can lead to a greater feeling of connection between two people, because a lot of what creates tensions is when people feel disconnected, misunderstood and isolated.” When there’s room to share without judgement or fear of a snappy reaction, it gives us time to get to the bottom of what we’re really trying to say. Fox says we often know where we’re starting when we speak up about something but we’re not always sure where we’re going to end up. Talking things over with an empathetic partner who’s focused on listening can help us find the deeper causes to our conflicts. “It can really help the person who’s speaking to access a more vulnerable place in themselves, which is probably where the source of the problem is.”

In this way, Imago can be an amazing tool for bringing us closer together while drawing attention to the places where we experience misunderstandings. The ultimate goal is to see conflict not as inherently bad but rather as an opportunity to learn more about our partners and ourselves.

Learning More

If you think the principles of Imago therapy would have something to offer you in your relationships, there are several ways to pursue it further. The tools it teaches, like mirroring, are easier to incorporate when you’re working with an Imago certified therapist in a dedicated space. Fox says that Imago workshops can also be a great resource for couples; many are now offered virtually online or socially distanced for safety. To learn more about the basics of Imago or get more insight into its teachings, you can also read Hendrix’s and Hunt’s original book, Getting The Love You Want, as well as its companion workbook.

We’ve all experienced it: that uneasy, lingering feeling that something is off balance. When that little voice in your head is speaking, but you can’t quite figure out what it’s saying. When you hear yourself saying one thing, but your gut instinct is in opposition to your words. Sometimes it’s not very clear, but it’s there. And that’s your truth speaking. So what does it mean to honor your truth? It seems easy in concept, but can often be difficult in practice— especially with so many external factors at play. We are surrounded by ads, opinions, images, and even people that can make it a challenge to listen to our own voices.

I’m a person who has luckily never had much of a problem with sticking to my convictions, and even I find all of the noise out there to be overwhelming at times. However, there are ways to cut through the clutter! Here are 5 tips that will help you to recognize your inner voice and stand in your truth.

1. When In Doubt, Write It Out

If you’re not sure where to start honoring your truth, journaling can be a useful tool in connecting with your inner voice. Ask yourself what your values are, what is most important to you in life, and list them out. It’s simple, effective, and might give you a surprising amount of clarity. If you can’t pinpoint your convictions, how can you be expected to be grounded in them?

2. Just Say No

This one seems easy enough, but can be quite difficult for many. And that’s okay! Most of the time saying yes leads to unexpected opportunities and fun experiences. But it can also be a detriment to your mental health if you feel that you’re saying it too frequently or being taken advantage of. This is when a simple no can be extremely powerful. It’s not rude, and it doesn’t mean you’re incapable. In fact, it shows just how capable you are of setting healthy boundaries for yourself! Next thing you know you’ll be rattling off Brené Brown quotes and going on self-help retreats in the desert.

3. Speak Up

Next time you feel uneasy, or think that a conversation or situation is heading in the wrong direction, stop for a moment. There’s a reason you’re feeling this way, and you shouldn’t just dismiss it. If it’s appropriate to speak up and voice what’s bothering you, do so. Sometimes, honoring your truth has to mean acting on that truth as well. You don’t have to say things in a perfectly eloquent way either— you’re human. Just be honest in the moment. In the long run, it will feel so much better than going over it in your mind hours later when the opportunity has passed.

4. Go For What You Want

If you’re feeling stuck or unhappy in your career, relationship, or any other sphere of your life, ask yourself this question: Is this really what I want? Knowing what you want is half the battle! Once you’re clear on this, it becomes a lot easier to communicate, plan, and problem solve. It can be sobering to admit to yourself what you actually want and need, but ultimately worth it. Every step you take to honor your truth will start to connect back to your goal, which will undoubtedly give you a sense of purpose and satisfaction.

5. Review Your Friends List

Friendships are extremely important to us as humans and can bring so much color and joy to your world. In the same way, the wrong friendships can wreak havoc on your life. If there’s a particular person in your circle that perpetuates drama or brings you down, don’t be afraid to start emotionally and physically distancing yourself. Your friends are an extension of your own values and beliefs, and are there to uplift and support you. Life is too short for fake friends. Luckily you’re an adult and don’t have to invite the entire class to your birthday party!

I hope this list allows you to examine what you are actively doing in your life to honor your truth. It’s easy to ignore our inner voices, because facing the truth can just be plain scary. But with a little practice it will get easier, and your life will continue to bloom in new ways. Staying true to yourself always pays off.

Intuition, gut feelings, hunches— we all have terms for the messages that come from within, telling us things without logic or observations to support them. How is it that sometimes we just “know” things without being able to explain how? What is intuition, and how much should we trust it?

It turns out, intuition isn’t as mysterious as we might think. A lot of what we consider to be intuition is subconscious knowledge and memory, the things we don’t even know we know. Our brains access that unspoken information to help us, giving us a better ability to understand our world and make decisions than we could just using our conscious minds and logic.

“We may actually know more than we think we know in everyday situations,” Ken Paller, professor of psychology at Northwestern University, told LiveScience. Using intuition, our minds can access memories and other details we don’t even remember collecting. We might think of our intuition simply as a gut feeling, but the truth is that it’s its own kind of knowledge and can be just as helpful as we journey through life.

Intuition in Business

You may have heard that in your professional life, the only way to succeed is to put your feelings aside. While staying in control of your emotions is important, suppressing them can be dangerous. Think about it: not only are you invalidating your own responses to things, but you’re ignoring information that could be helpful to you!

Studies say that the emotional parts of our brains might be able to respond faster to stimuli than the cognitive side can; in other words, your feelings can bring you some information faster than your rational thoughts can. When you’re more in touch with your emotions, it can give you greater insight into your intuition.

A study by Harvard Business Review of 36 CEOs found that 85% of them relied on their intuition (in the form of rules of thumb) to make decisions. These rules of thumb were various forms of shorthands for all the knowledge that their experience had given them, put into a form that was useful and accessible for them. Instead of trying to discount or suppress their intuition, some of our culture’s most successful people know to value and prioritize it as an asset. Your intuition can be a skill that can help you accomplish your goals if you learn to pay attention to it.

When you’re following your intuition in business, it means listening to the side of your brain that sees things you can’t. Body language, past experience, and so many other things could be informing the gut feeling that’s nagging at the back of your mind. When you’re dealing with other people, or even just comparing a current situation to something that you’ve experienced before, your intuition can help bridge the gap between your conscious and your subconscious and carry you even further towards your goals.

Intuition and Creativity

Every day, you experience far more than you’re able to consciously process. Sights, feelings, interactions: your unconscious mind stores so much of it away. This subliminal knowledge can give so much power to your creativity. It’s important to listen to your heart when you’re creating— it has so much of value to offer!

Creative efforts are a space you can, and should, trust yourself the most. You have nothing to lose from leaning into your intuition and following it wherever it leads you. Leaning into your deeper spirit will yield truer results; not only will trusting your intuition help you produce creative works but it can help you know yourself better.

We know that our hearts speak in more ways than just logic and thoughts. How else can you explain the way certain songs, paintings, or other works of art speak to us? Letting our intuition guide our creativity will produce results we would never see otherwise. Your intuition can point you towards a wound that needs healing or an issue you weren’t aware of because it sees things that our conscious selves are blind to. Making it a priority to listen to and trust your intuition can give new life to your creative process.

Ways To Strengthen Your Intuition

Studies have shown that just like any other skill or muscle, your intuition gets stronger the more often you use it. Intuition is a superpower and we have a lot to gain from learning how to trust and rely on it more fully. Here are a few ways you can work to make your intuition stronger and start relying on it more:

• Keep A Journal. Journaling is a great way to let your inner self out and start to familiarize yourself with your deeper thoughts and feelings. If you want to sharpen your intuition, use the journal to trace moments you had particularly strong feelings about choices and keep track of how situations turned out when you followed your intuition.
• Meditate. One of the many benefits of meditation is that it can help you strengthen your inner voice, creating a quiet place where your intuition can speak up and be heard.
• Pay Attention To Your Dreams. Have you ever noticed how after a particularly vivid dream, the emotions of it stay with your far longer than any specific details? Dreaming is one of the ways your brain processes the information it spends all day taking in. Taking care to write down and remember your dreams, specifically the feelings associated with them, can help you understand what your subconscious is trying to tell you.
• Try New Things. One of the ways to gain more intuition is simply to experience more things. It might not sound pleasant, but even failing at things can teach you something new and add to your intuition’s ability to recognize patterns and predict what could happen next.

Whether you tend to go with their gut or you have trouble trusting your instincts, it can be helpful to learn the true power that your intuition can hold for you. Rather than being a thing of mystery, intuition can be a real asset and skill that can help you navigate life if you work to strengthen, sharpen, and trust it. The next time you have a nagging feeling about something, consider listening closer to what your intuition is trying to tell you— it might know something you don’t!

It’s the first day of Women’s History Month! While celebrating important women and their achievements shouldn’t be confined to just one month out of the year, we’ll take any excuse to highlight the people that opened doors, shattered ceilings and paved the way for us. There are so many extraordinary women in every field that deserve the spotlight this month. Below are just a few that I, along with the CAC team, wanted to celebrate. These women were pioneers, forward thinkers, rebels, and unabashedly themselves. I hope that they inspire you as much as they inspire us here at Carrie Ann Conversations.

– Love, Carrie Ann

1. Ruth Bader-Ginsburg

A lifelong trailblazer, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg attended Harvard law at a time when there were only 9 female students, studying law while raising her first child and taking care of her husband after his cancer diagnosis. From there she became the first woman on the Harvard Law Review before transferring to Columbia Law and graduating at the top of her class. For much of her life, RBG had to battle discrimination in school and in the workplace for being a woman. She spent her career fighting for equality, arguing landmark cases for women’s rights. She served as one of the most iconic Supreme Court Justices in history from 1993 until her death in 2020. Ruth Bader-Ginsburg will always stand as a symbol of hope and determination for women who want to see a more equitable world free of discrimination.

2. Cecily Tyson

A groundbreaking performer, Cecily Tyson’s acting career stretched over half a century, earning her several Emmys and a Tony award at age 88. After acting in 1972’s Sounder, a film that represented a loving Black family, Tyson made it her mission to find and embody roles that reflected her experience as an African American woman. Cecily Tyson passed away in January of this year but her commitment to her craft and her willingness to put her passion, convictions and talent into every one of her projects will always inspire us.

3. Frida Kahlo

Mexican surrealist Frida Kahlo is iconic for the way she was able to beautifully capture her experiences in her art. She used her talent to explore themes of identity, gender, and her ongoing experience with chronic pain. Using vibrant colors to paint powerful images of herself and the people in her life, she often mixed elements from reality with ones of fantasy and magic into enchanting works. Her talent and individuality has made her an icon for Chicano culture, feminism and the LGBTQ+ movement.

4. Yuri Kochiyama

Yuri Kochiyama’s life of civil rights activism was informed by her experiences in childhood; along with thousands of other Japanese Americans, Kochiyama and her family were forced to relocate to an internment camp after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After World War II, Kochiyama moved to New York City and started a family with her husband, becoming quickly invested in the local civil rights movement. She even formed a friendship with Malcolm X which only strengthened her commitment to the fight for racial equality. Yuri Kochiyama spent her whole life working to achieve justice and in the 1980s she and her husband successfully served in the movement to get President Reagan to sign the Civil Liberties Act which granted reparations and a formal apology to Japanese-American internees.

5. Hypatia of Alexandria

Born in the 4th century AD, Hypatia was a mathematician, philosopher and astronomer. She is the earliest female mathematician in the historic record and eventually became the head of Alexandria’s Platonist school. She was a driving force in the intellectual and philosophically rigorous culture in Alexandria, putting the city on par with great classical cities like Athens and Rome. Hypatia was a leader in each of her fields; she gave lectures on the works of Plato and Aristotle and some ancient texts even credit Hypatia with inventing the astrolabe. In a world where so many of the famous figures from early history are men, it’s so exciting to recount all the contributions that Hypatia made to society.

This list only barely scratches the surface of the contributions that so many incredible women have made to our culture and our society, often in spite of tremendous obstacles and discrimination. We hope that these stories inspire you to dig deeper this Women’s History Month and find other heroes to inspire, encourage, and remind you of the revolutionaries that each paved the way for a better world in their own fields.