Colleen King Ney is a psychotherapist. She began her spiritual journey in 1998 after a traumatic divorce that led to alcohol addiction. Now she works with technology companies in Silicon Valley, helping people understand their addictions to doing, achieving, and busyness. She encourages her clients to be more reflective and to get in touch with who they are, what they need, and their own limits.
Colleen started Zen practice one evening in August 2012. After the meditation, chanting, and lecture, she ran to her car and started dancing. The ritual, she says, “triggered something” and encouraged her to continue her practice. Zen practice deepens her relationship to silence. “The gem of it all is that Zen is simple. It helps me connect with the true nature of myself and others. It’s deeply nourishing, and I am so grateful.”
Teresa Bouza: You’ve been a therapist for over three decades?
Yes, since 1985.
It seems that therapy as a process is very mental, while Zen meditation stresses learning through your own experience by developing your intuition and being less logical. Have you reflected on this?
As a therapist, I try to help people get on a path where they’re more connected to their experience. A shift goes on that opens them up. It’s not just mental or intellectual. It’s the experience in the moment.
The analytical part of therapy examines how people move away from their truth, how their past history has created their defenses, and how they defend against their feelings—they don’t want to see certain things. You’re peeling away layers that obstruct them from their experience. I like to help people look at how they’re turning away from parts of themselves they don’t want to see.
Zen practice is helpful when one is ready to reflect more, be quiet, and access intuition. To be with oneself is easier after you’ve peeled away some of the layers. When people say, “I can’t meditate,” they think they’re not ready to do something like that. I usually encourage them to check it out.
I guess slowing down is a challenge here in Silicon Valley.
If you’ve worked in Silicon Valley for a while, you see the culture of busyness and speediness, that people are discouraged from reflecting; they’re just doing. I see it all the time in the companies I work with. This busyness affects our thinking, the way we feel, our behavior. A lot of people walk around feeling like failures, trying to adapt to this crazy culture.
Why do they feel like failures?
Everything is about success and doing and being busy, and it’s never enough. There’s a lack of limits; things are faster and faster, and the technology itself appears to have no limits—the Internet seems limitless; knowledge seems limitless. The experience of just being human and having humility and limits seems passé; it’s all so distorted.
There’s a lot of delusion about, “I could be better, I could know more, I should do more, everyone else is doing more.” They are disconnecting from their intuition and their capacity for reflection; it’s about doing and they’re getting disconnected from themselves. Even those who are successful don’t feel connected to what brings them happiness. That makes them feel like failures.
People ask, “Why aren’t I happy? I went to Harvard and I’m here in this big tech company; what’s wrong with me?” I don’t think they can slow down to check in with themselves, because they’re so attached to success and achieving. They don’t access what they really want and need and feel.
You’re describing a pattern among these highly successful people at tech companies, that they don’t feel they are enough. Have you identified other patterns?
Not enough and a lack of acknowledgment that as human beings we have limits. The sense of having limits or humility is out of whack, because there’s always more to do. The idea of success is based on money, achievement—more and more and more. It’s addictive. As a consequence, they’re losing touch with who they really are, what they really need, and just the limits of their bodies. There’s always a sense of dread, “OMG, there’s another thing I don’t know and I could learn it if I sit and watch another YouTube video.”
What advice do you give to these people?
Be mindful and pause. Slow down. Yesterday I saw three new people, and they were all out of control.
Meaning what?
Out of control with busyness, time. They don’t know their limits. They’re not feeling they’re enough, there’s always more to do, and there’s another promotion they’re chasing. Their life is unmanageable in the sense of it’s never enough and they’re overworking or maybe not even happy with what they’re doing. They’re not acknowledging that, because they think they should be doing this thing they’re doing. There’s a lack of control; they feel unbalanced.
How do people react to your advice to slow down? Do they think it’s possible?
A lot of people ask, “Why aren’t I getting promoted and why can’t I control my promotion?” They’re used to moving ahead and are very dependent on the idea that success is a way of feeling good about themselves. If they’re not getting a promotion or they can’t control it, they start to feel self-doubt and insecurity, as though they’re falling apart.
Are you able to tell if these people are on a path to transformation after you’ve worked with them?
Absolutely. Some people do get on a path to transformation. How many? I don’t know; I see a lot of people. It’s about developing a practice in one’s life. My work is helping people connect their values and principles with the rest of their life, so they don’t feel separated from things vital to their sense of wholeness. That’s the priority. In my mind, it has to be a feeling. It’s not enough just to analyze.
You really want to see a change, especially in the case of addictions, right?
Pretty much everybody has some kind of addiction. We all have compulsions; we all look outside ourselves for external soothing. The people who are really on this doing and achieving and fast pace are addicted. There’s a lack of self-awareness, of self-growth. It’s dependency on things outside of ourselves, such as “If I don’t get a promotion, who am I?” They try to do something and control it. It’s loss of connection to self, and it can’t stop.
How can we overcome addictions?
First, you have to admit you’re in trouble. Many people have trouble admitting that what they’re doing isn’t working. They have denial; they rationalize. People who are attached to busyness also rationalize. They glamorize being busy, as if we’re all supposed to be living like that. You admit that your behavior, your thoughts, and your feelings aren’t working well, that you have a problem. Then it becomes a matter of how else are you going to live.
I talk to people about having a practice in their life. It’s not just therapy once a week or ten sessions, it’s about every day. We have to surrender and admit that we don’t know everything and that we can’t control things. People have trouble with that because they feel like they should be self-sufficient, independent, and a doer, but overcoming addiction is about reflecting, admitting you don’t know, admitting you don’t have control, and embracing that understanding.
Can you share a little of your own experience with addiction? How did you overcome it and how did your spiritual practice help?
Addiction opened the door for me to spiritual connection. Growth often comes from suffering. The pivotal moment is admitting. I was at a red light on the corner of El Camino and California Avenue in Palo Alto, and I said to myself, “Oh my God, I’m an alcoholic.” I admitted I was drinking too much.
I went from humiliation and shame to a journey of humility and transformation. Admitting I can’t control something, I realized I needed outside help, something bigger than me to help me. That spiritual nugget opened the door for me to know myself more, to be hungry for transformation, and to get lots of help. I embarked on a journey that has deepened and deepened ever since. For the last few years, spiritual practice has been the priority and the joy of my life. I live and breathe it. My work as a therapist has become much more spiritually focused. I feel very lucky.