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Category “change & challenges”

Why I’m in Therapy Again, and Not Ashamed to Share It

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“Emotional pain cannot kill you, but running from it can. Allow. Embrace. Let yourself feel. Let yourself heal.” ~Vironika Tugaleva

Ah, therapy, my old friend. We meet again.

I thought I’d released you from my life. I thought I no longer needed you to maintain my sanity.

I was wrong.

Third time’s a charm, as they say.

The First Time I Went to Therapy

I was eighteen when I had my first encounter with therapy. My parents had just divorced under pretty devastating circumstances, and my first serious relationship had crumbled at my feet.

It was a double betrayal.

My …

Everything Seems to Be Falling Apart
 Because It Is

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“A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because its trust is not on the branch, but in its own wings. Always believe in yourself.”  ~Unknown

If you’ve ever stopped and thought, “What the hell am I doing?” or “How did I end up here?” believe me when I tell you that you are one of many—including me.

Feeling lost is stressful enough, but what about when we disappoint ourselves more than anyone around us? What do we do when we have no sense of direction or purpose, and dwindling confidence in ourselves?

I …

When People Want to Help but Just Make Things Worse

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When I was fourteen years old, my family spent a week of vacation in the northwoods of Minnesota. We rode horses, sailed on the lake, sang songs around a campfire, and all the other things most teenagers tell their parents is lame. Even if they are having fun.

After this week of boring, according to me, my family loaded up into our van and began what should have been a five-hour drive home.

Except it wasn’t five hours.

Thirty minutes into the drive we were in a head-on car collision. Triaged and transported to different hospitals around the area, it …

How to Move Forward When You’re Out of Work and Feeling Lost

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“My attitude has always been, if you fall flat on your face, at least you’re moving forward. All you have to do is get back up and try again.” ~Richard Branson

Let’s face it, losing a job sucks! Over the last couple of months, I have been chatting with friends who have recently been affected by organizational changes resulting in being out of work involuntarily. This is a situation all too familiar to millions of people, frequently through no fault of their own. Often it’s a result of an economic downturn, restructuring, acquisitions, and cost savings.

A couple of years …

How I Found Hope and Inspiration After Years of Quiet Desperation

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“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” ~Henry David Thoreau

How many years do we live with a sense of quiet desperation, faking the connection we have with ourselves? Why do we deny ourselves authentic living and exchange our time for mindless living?

Over the years, life silently and slowly eroded my identity away. By the time my son was twelve years old, I’d completely lost touch with reality. I was always busy trying to be everyone’s hero and creating this perfect little world around me. While juggling the …

It’s a Myth That We Can Just “Get Over” Pain and Loss

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“There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human—in not having to be just happy or just sad—in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time.” ~C. JoyBell C.

“I just feel like it’s never ending… like I should be more over it by now,” my friend says, her eyes looking down at her mug of tea. She lost a loved one three years ago in tragic circumstances.

Her words make me sad, and there are layers to my sadness: I’m sad for her loss, her grief, for the difficulty she …

Collective Trauma Online Summit—A Transformative Free Event

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Do you ever feel overwhelmed by everything that’s going on in the world and powerless to help? Even if you avoid the news—which to be honest, I generally do—you’ll still be bombarded with the latest conflicts and tragedies when you log on to social media. We may look to our smartphones for a little break from the chaos, but really, there’s no escape from it.

It’s not that we don’t care—that’s not why we often try to zone out and tune it all out. It’s just all so heavy and scary and disheartening, not to mention never-ending. Still, we can’t …

The Negative Impact of Not Feeling Your Feelings

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“If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.” ~Sidney Banks

I spent most of my life scared of my feelings. Having feelings and expressing them made me mentally ill—or so I was led to believe by a large number of mental health professionals. When I felt sad, they labeled me as depressed. When I showed any signs of anxiety, they gave me another list of mental health disorders I needed medication for. And if I was angry? Oh well, that was the absolute worst. That clearly proved …

If You Don’t Like the Cards You Were Dealt…

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“People are so caught up in their own negativity and losses that they give up on creating the future they want.” ~Grant Cardone

I have a friend. Let’s call him Ram. Ram is always angry because of the cards that he was dealt in life. He comes from a middle-class family that has no money or inheritance. He got a decent education but couldn’t go to a better college because his parents didn’t have the money to fund it.

He’s disappointed that his education has limited his opportunities. He’s frustrated that he has to spend money on public transport while …

3 Practices That Help Ease the Pain of Being Highly Empathetic

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“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” ~Walt Whitman

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in another’s experience and understand with depth the gravity of their situation. In general, I believe the world needs more empathy.

But I’ve learned over the course of my twenty-nine years that sometimes being a highly empathetic person is incredibly painful. And sometimes too much of a good thing is a bad thing.

Hearing stories of the pain that people experience can be extra painful when your mind tries to carry their pain around …

My Favorite Tip to Ease the Pain of Grief

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“It’s also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that’s sitting right here right now
with its aches and its pleasures
is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.” ~Pema Chodron

Many people like to think of grief as an emotional experience. It’s something that dominates your internal, emotional space, and that’s it.

But it doesn’t take long when you’re in the thick of grief to experience grief that isn’t emotional at all.

You feel heavy. Like there’s a giant weight on your shoulders.

You feel like your legs are weak and shaking from …

When Things Go Wrong, I Remember This Day

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“There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.” ~Richard Bach

I’d wanted to visit Alaska nearly my entire life. I’d always wanted to see the vast landscape, majestic scenery, and awesome wildlife. So as a single, middle-aged mom with two boys aged fourteen and twelve, we went.

It was going to be an epic trip—travel from our home in the Midwest to Anchorage, a few days to Denali and back, then down to the coast and a cruise all the way to Vancouver. So …

3 Negative Inner Voices and How to Challenge Them

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“Beautify your inner dialogue. Beautify your inner world with love light and compassion. Life will be beautiful.” ~Amit Ray

There is no better way to feel good about yourself than changing your internal dialogue. Yes, you have the power to change your inner voice. You can choose to speak to yourself in a positive way or a negative way.

Stop all activity for a moment.

Be still. Notice what your inner voice is saying. Do you hear anything? If not, ask your inner voice this question: How does it feel to be still?

Listen.

Is your inner voice declaring that …

What a Month of Daily Panic Attacks Taught Me About Anxiety

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“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

It happened in the middle of an intimate moment, about a month before my wedding.

One minute I was enjoying a kiss from my fiancé and the next thing I knew, I was clutching my face and writhing in agony.

At first, there was a loud thud in my chest, as if my heart had skipped a beat.

Then out of nowhere I started getting this strange sensation—like the kind of feeling you’d get on an elevator that’s going down too fast. The feeling was so …

The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth

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“You only see in others what you have in yourself.” ~Annette Noontil

I now recognize, after observing painful patterns repeat many times, how things that trigger me are just lessons I need to learn that are often delivered through other people. The more painful the experience, the more I can see (in retrospect) I learned from it.

Every now and then, when I find myself getting sucked into thoughts about the rightness or wrongness of a situation and how much pain it’s causing me, I take a step backward. I can see that people are just the mechanism to my …

You Can Have a Tender Heart and Still Be Fierce

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“Life is a balance between what we can control and what we cannot. I am learning to live between effort and surrender.” ~Danielle Orner

For too long, I felt myself pulled between two shores of my identity. On one side was my yoga teacher, meditator, healer identity—my tender side. On the other side was my activist, change-maker role—my fierce side.

I always felt like I was too tender for some and too fierce for others. It made me feel like I didn’t fit in anywhere.

Definitely the soft-hearted “woo” person in my activist circles. And I was definitely the …

Living with Depression and Anxiety: How to Lessen the Pain

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“I am bent, but not broken. I am scarred, but not disfigured. I am sad, but not hopeless. I am tired, but not powerless. I am angry, but not bitter. I am depressed, but not giving up.” ~Unknown

Depression and anxiety. Two words we hear often, but unless we have actually lived with them, we cannot come close to understanding the tremendous impact they can have on one’s quality of life.

Depression and anxiety can make people feel as if they are worthless and better off dead. What a horrible plague. But it is 100% possible to tame these two …

Maybe I Don’t Need to Make a Big Change in the World

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“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

As a teen, I was passionately idealistic about justice, love, and compassion. Reading the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and other icons of justice inspired a desire to make a big change in the world.

Older people would attempt to temper my enthusiasm with a dose of jaded reality, saying things like, “That’s just the way the world is,” and “You can’t change people.”

I vowed to never be like that. I didn’t want to give into the status quo and turn …

When You Feel Tired of Hoping and Trying, Remember


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“What happens when people open their hearts? They get better.” ~Haruki Murakami

What do you do when just can’t do it anymore? When the pain is too much? The discouragement is too much? The hoping and trying are too much?

It’s not that you haven’t tried. You’ve been brave. You’ve been persistent. You’ve been soldiering on through hurt that other people don’t understand.

It’s that you’re feeling broken from the trying.

That’s how I felt when my husband died of stomach cancer. There were two healing realizations that changed not only the path that I was on, but …

What If Everyone Were Conspiring to Help You?

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“The sage perspective accepts every outcome and circumstance as an opportunity.” ~Shirzad Chamine

No doubt you’re familiar with paranoia. In the modern world, it’s hard not to be. And as Joseph Heller wrote, just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not after you. But there is another way to look at the world. What if you could see every situation in your life as a positive conspiracy, aimed at aligning you with your highest good?

This might seem outlandish, but it’s not as crazy as it seems. If you imagined that the person annoying or challenging you was …