I try to find the most random, light-hearted thing that was said at a meet-up and use it as our blog headline. Is humour a coping mechanism for me? Absolutely. Is this a weird approach? Maybe. Will you get used to me? I sure hope so!

2020 — here we go. First meet-up of the year, and like always, it was a gift. If you’re new to our free meet-ups (or have never been), we host twice monthly meetings where safe, vulnerable conversation happens. In a supported space, our conversations take us from trauma to mental health, to addiction to self-care and so many places between.

Following our meet-ups, we post recap blogs that will house resources and themes for anyone who wants to follow-up on what we chatted about.

THEME

Perspective: This could have been the title of this blog, but I figured burritos was more fun. We talked a lot about perspective, whether that was owning your truth or dealing with other people who can be triggers in our lives. Concepts like mirror neurons and sticking to “I” statements also came up (ex: this is how I feel vs this is what you do).

Mirror neurons are one of the most important discoveries in the last decade of neuroscience. These are a variety of visuospatial neurons which indicate fundamentally about human social interaction. Essentially, mirror neurons respond to actions that we observe in others. 

We started talking about mirror neurons because the topic of being triggered by other people’s behaviour kept coming up. Kim Barthel first taught me about mirror neurons, and it forced me to think about if the people who triggered me were exhibiting behaviours that I saw in myself. The idea that the behaviours we dislike in others could be traits we have ourselves, or ones we are afraid of, is a powerful exercise in mindfulness. Reflection on any level can be so meaningful.

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

Books always come up as they can be incredible resources and therapeutic tools. We polled the group on book recommendations and got some fantastic titles:

• Conversations with a Rattlesnake by Kim Barthel and Theo Fleury: of course, our list starts here. This might as well be the blueprint for meet-ups, because we circle around those chapter topics time and time again.

• The Choice by Dr. Eva Edith Eger

• Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers, PhD

• Literally anything by Brene Brown

• And anything by Dr. Gabor Mate

• The Body Keeps The Score by Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk

• Recovery by Russell Brand

• A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

• The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi

PODCASTS & VIDEOS

If you are an audio person, here are some of the podcast recommendations our group had:

• Super Soul Sundays with Oprah

• You can heal yourself

• Theo Fleury podcast

• Tracks to Relax podcast

• The Best Binaural Beats

— Amber Craig, Chair of Breaking Free Foundation