What is Empowermend?

That’s me as a kid. Silly, playful, and carefree. At least until lots of shit happened.

I didn’t hear the words “I love you” when I was growing up. Hell, I’m not even sure I got a “How was your day?” Don’t get me wrong, my parents do care about me, but it was a rough childhood. A lot of my needs went unmet and I often felt unheard.

They would fight all the time. Screaming, throwing things, slamming doors, sometimes even hitting each other (or me unfortunately). Outside of that, my dad largely ignored me. My mom cared about me, but she enmeshed me and would often complain about how horrible my father was. I don’t recall many “normal” conversations with my parents about how school was or how my friends were doing.

A typical day would be that I’d go to school, come home, eat dinner alone while my parents yelled at each other, do homework alone while my parents continued yelling each other, and then my mom might vent to me about my dad as I got ready for bed. This went on until I left for college.

Unsurprisingly, I had no idea how to connect with people. I had very little confidence and did not feel worthy of love, or worthy of anything, really. I wanted to be liked, but I was annoying and awkward, and my social skills were next to zero. Making friends was already quite difficult, and don’t even get me started on my dating life. It was horrendous/didn’t exist in the slightest.

I turned my attention to achievement.

Maybe if I am successful, then I’ll be popular, girls will like me, and life will be awesome.

I pushed myself to become faster, stronger, and more athletic. My grades were mostly A’s, I finished high school near the top of my class, and I graduated college with two engineering degrees. I took a well-paying job at a software company and worked my way into a managerial position there. Surely girls will be flocking to a successful and fit guy, right?

…Not quite.

I was lucky enough to meet some incredibly kind and loving friends along the way, who helped with learning more social skills, but life still wasn’t where I wanted it to be. I still wasn’t dating anyone, despite my strong desires to have a romantic connection. I felt terribly insecure around women and felt extremely lonely. At least for a while, until…

I met her.

I still remember it, it was a pickup ultimate frisbee game after work. I was 23 years old at the time. She was beautiful, athletic, and kind. Damn, who is that? I told myself I had to “fill up my water bottle” after the game so I could walk in the same direction as her and introduce myself. (I did not need more water by the way.)

Somehow, to my delight, we eventually started dating. I was on cloud nine, and it was the first time I had even kissed a girl. Finally! I guess I just had to wait long enough to find my person. The more I got to know her, the more I fell in love with her.

However, the relationship didn’t last long. Things started to fall apart because I had not dealt with all of my internal issues, even though I had no idea what was going on at the time. Six months later, she broke things off.

I was devastated. And confused. It was the worst pain I had ever felt in my life, so agonizing that I would often be uncontrollably sobbing, begging for it to stop. It felt like my heart was being physically crushed by a hydraulic press. I couldn’t take it anymore.

It was the best thing to have ever happened to me.

Like I said, I couldn’t take it anymore. Not just the pain, but the fact that I had gone my entire life with pretty much zero success in the dating world. 23 years! I knew I was missing something, I just didn’t know what. And, as if consumed by a frenzy, I went down the deep end researching everything I could find about dating advice, which also led to the gigantic world of personal growth and health. I spent hundreds of hours (probably thousands by now) reading books, watching videos, listening to podcasts, anything I could find that would help. And outside of the direct education, I also started practicing what the content was suggesting.

These practices changed my life. Here are some of the many modalities that I explored:

• Seeing a therapist

• Yoga, including becoming a teacher

• Meditation, also including teaching, and a 10-day silent vipassana retreat

• Multiple retreats focused on personal growth, healing trauma, and/or human connection

• Transformational/somatic breathwork and The Wim Hof Method

• Massage therapy and network chiropractic care

• Studying and understanding verbal and body language

• Circling/Relatefulness, which are practices of in-the-moment interpersonal connection

• Approaching and connecting with strangers in the park or on the street (often women)

• Embarrassing myself a LOT as I worked through my insecurities

As I immersed myself in these practices, I found that things were starting to shift. The trauma that I grew up with was not gone, but starting to lighten. It became easier to find more love and care for myself. I found more confidence and was able to let go of a lot of my neediness/attachments. More often than before, I was able to just be myself without being crippled by anxiety.

Silly, playful, carefree.

You see, my problems with women weren’t actually problems with women. It was also never a question about my success. It was about working on my core internal self. Healing my trauma, finding more love for myself, strengthening my courage, and seeing every failure as a blessing. It was about simultaneously being okay with things as they are, and finding ways to grow at the same time.

Each of these individual practices help with this kind of development. And while they cross-train each other (ex: your yoga improves if your meditation improves), they ultimately cross-train us for life as a larger whole. We can more effectively do hard things when we’ve practiced and prepared for them in multiple different contexts. Each practice strengthens and heals us in many similar and different ways.

After spending many years with these practices, I’m quite happy, including my dating life (even if/when I’m single). And while dating was the main focus for me, it could be different for you. It doesn’t matter what it is, these practices help with life as a whole, and life is hard. Really fucking hard. We all struggle with something, and we always will. Sometimes I’m still really awkward, or I hurt someone I care about, or I totally screw it up with a woman, or maybe I come off really weird as I’m writing this post. It’s all okay and part of the larger journey.

As I continue on my own path, I also want to share and give back what I’ve learned. To help others, as others have helped me. I recognize that there are a ton of other personal growth/healing practices out there, and if there are other ones that resonate with you more, by all means, go pursue those practices.

That being said, if my story resonates with you or if you want to work with me, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m happy to work with you on one modality, or multiple - whatever feels right for you.

Either way, thank you for reading, and I hope you got something out of it.

I hope you live a happy and healthy life, filled with love and wonder.

Peter